GridUnity Joins the U.S. Department of Energy in Improving Clean Energy Grid Interconnection
June 7, 2022 – Boston, Massachusetts – Today, pioneering distributed energy analytics platform provider GridUnity issued a statement of support for the U.S. Department of Energy’s announcement of a new partnership aimed at improving interconnection of clean energy resources. The Interconnection Innovation Exchange (i2X) “develops innovative solutions to enable faster, simpler, and fairer interconnection of solar energy, wind energy, and energy storage, while enhancing the reliability and resilience of our nation’s distribution and transmission grid networks.” GridUnity is a proud i2X Inaugural Partner.
The process of interconnecting a renewable energy and/or storage project with electric transmission lines is currently expensive and time-consuming. Developers often submit numerous applications to identify prospective interconnection costs in a process referred to as “rate discovery”. Applications must then undergo a costly group study to determine what neessary grid upgrade costs will be amortized across the group of projects, after which many prospective projects will be dropped, at which point a study must be performed again with the smaller/new group. Each study adds significant expense and project delays, costing developers up to $640,000 (on average around $270,000), and taking at least 90 days to complete.
GridUnity works with IOUs and RTOs/ISOs to reduce these costs and delays by performing continuous Hosting Capacity Analysis on every node on their distribution grid, allowing developers to easily identify locations with enough capacity for their project to interconnect. Through experience with customers such as PG&E, GridUnity has seen that once this technology is in place, interconnection applications become more targeted and less iterative by providing developers with easy access to the information they need to right-size projects based on the available capacity of specific circuits. This kind of best practice will be shared by i2X through broad stakeholder engagement, data collection and analysis, strategic roadmap development and technical assistance.
GridUnity CEO Brian Fitzsimons, an invited speaker at today’s i2X launch event with U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, said “GridUnity’s success has been built in large part on making the interconnection process more transparent, faster, and less costly for developers, IOUs, and ISOs/RTOs. We look forward to collaborating with DOE, the national labs, and all of the i2X partners to develop a roadmap to simplify the interconnection process for all.”
About GridUnity
GridUnity® is a pioneer in cloud-based distributed energy analytics solutions. The company’s advanced grid planning and operations capabilities are leading the global shift toward highly reliable and responsive distributed energy operations. GridUnity is the only solution that integrates customer engagement, engineering automation, and distribution system planning in one unified platform, enabling innovative clients to transform their customer service and operational model. Clients include North American investor-owned utilities and independent system operators serving 17 U.S. states and 20% of the US population. For more information, please visit gridunity.com, and for the latest news, follow @GridUnity on Twitter or LinkedIn.