Webinar: Regulating Voltage: Recommendations for Smart Inverters

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Featured Speaker:
Ric O’Connell, Executive Director, GridLab

Ric is the Executive Director of GridLab, an organization that provides technical grid expertise to enhance policy decision-making and to ensure a rapid transition to a reliable, cost effective, and low carbon future. A recognized leader in renewable energy technology and policy, Ric has provided engineering support for more than 8 GW of utility scale solar projects worldwide, including several of the largest projects in the world.

Prior to GridLab, Ric was at Black & Veatch for 12 years where he was instrumental in building the global renewable energy consulting practice. While at Black & Veatch, Ric provided expertise to the Energy Foundation China program and had leadership roles on a number of high profile policy studies including 20 percent Wind Energy by 2030, and the California Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative.

Ric has a BSEE from Duke University and a Master’s in Renewable Energy Policy from CU Boulder. Ric serves on the board of the Energy Systems Integration Group (esig.energy).

Moderator: Charlie Smith, ESIG Executive Director

Registration Cost: FREE

Webinar Abstract: New smart inverters based on the IEEE 1547-2018 standard are expected to be available in 12-18 months. These inverters are designed to allow customer- sited generation to act more in concert with the existing grid, with key features making these devices more grid friendly than their predecessors. This webinar focuses on the ability of smart inverters to contribute to voltage regulation. The IEEE standard is not prescriptive as to how smart inverters shall support grid voltage management, instead it requires a set of capabilities that smart inverters could utilize to support voltage management. The interconnecting utility and state public utility commissions are responsible for deciding how exactly DER with smart inverters should behave on the grid.

The webinar is based on a recent GridLab paper, which aims to educate utilities, developers, and state regulators on the voltage regulation options available under the new IEEE standard, and makes recommendations based on the experience of states and utilities that have deployed early versions of smart inverters. GridLab’s recommendations balance the needs of the utilities to maintain grid reliability with the needs of customers to maximize the return on their investment in their generation.