Avangrid has shared details on its flexible interconnection pilot project in Spencerport, New York on a webinar produced by the Energy Systems Integration Group (ESIG).
Having worked out the kinks to flexibly and reliably operate the 15 MW solar plant, the utility now plans to request regulatory approval to enable flexible interconnection for additional projects on distribution lines served by about three substations, said Zach Caruso, a lead analyst at Avangrid.
If regulators approve the request, Avangrid anticipates taking applications for flexible interconnection of solar, solar-plus-storage, battery storage and/or electric vehicle charging, he said.
Avangrid curtails the Spencerport project based on real-time capacity available, to ensure that the thermal limits of the substation receiving the solar plant’s power are not exceeded. That approach enabled a larger capacity for the project than a firm year-round hosting capacity approach would have allowed.
The region surrounding Spencerport has a summer peak in electricity demand, and much of the solar plant’s summertime generation is absorbed by air conditioning demand on the distribution circuit. Because that generation does not pass through the substation on the way to the transmission grid, it does not affect the substation and need not be curtailed.
Flexible interconnection, Caruso said, enables more solar generation to be added to the system more quickly, without the need for grid upgrades, providing benefits for ratepayers.
Avangrid controls the Spencerport project using a distributed energy resource (DER) gateway, which can curtail the project’s generation as needed. As a fail-safe mechanism if the curtailment order is not effective, the gateway can also “trip the customer offline at the recloser,” Caruso said.
The project was curtailed last year by 0.1%, and curtailment this year is expected to be about the same, he said.
According to a slide that Caruso shared, Avangrid’s two New York State utilities recommend:
- Development of a formal flexible interconnection process integrated with the state’s current interconnection requirements
- Development of a standardized interface specification for the utility-to-DER communications required for flexible interconnection
- Exploring opportunities to pilot flexible interconnections to address constraints on the 34.5 kV transmission system.
Caruso also discussed on the webinar various options for “allocating” curtailment across projects that have chosen flexible interconnection.
California has enabled distributed solar or storage projects to use a different type of flexible interconnection based on limited generation profiles, becoming the first state to do so.
ESIG Executive Director Debbie Lew mentioned on the webinar that Australia is also working on flexible solar interconnection.
Avangrid serves 3.3 million customers in New York and New England.
ESIG describes itself as “the leading source of global expertise for energy systems integration and operations.”
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