In This Article:
Dive Brief:
-
Colorado regulators want to see Xcel Energy launch a virtual power plant pilot by the summer, though the utility has warned the project is complicated and the proposed timeline is “aggressive.”
-
The Public Utilities Commission of Colorado on Tuesday held a workshop to discuss the VPP effort, as well as gas demand response and neighborhood electrification pilots. The trio of investigations is led by Commissioner Tom Plant, who said he would like to see a gas DR program operational by September and for the VPP to begin enrolling customers in July.
-
The PUC wants to utilize VPPs to shift peak load and mitigate electric system capacity constraints, though an October staff report outlined a broader range of potential benefits including helping to address affordability and equity issues, adding to system resource adequacy and introducing competition into the distribution system.
Dive Insight:
The Colorado PUC opened a “miscellaneous proceeding” in September to explore third-party implementation of pilot programs as the state looks to transition to 100% clean electricity generation by 2040. Response to questions about neighborhood electrification were minimal, however, and that project will be taken up in another proceeding, Plant said.
The Tuesday discussion focused on the path ahead for VPPs in Colorado, including what form a pilot might take and how quickly it can be brought to market.
“The company is going to need some reasonable time to digest what we expect might be a fairly complicated list of instructions for creation of a [request for proposals] that we just can't pull off the shelf,” said Tyler Mansholt, assistant general counsel for Xcel and the attorney representing its Public Service Co. of Colorado utility subsidiary in the VPP proceeding.
A timeline proposed by Commissioner Plant would have the utility issuing an RFP in January.
“Expectations that we'll just get a final decision and turn that into a fully fleshed out RFP in just a couple of weeks may be fairly challenging,” Mansholt said.
Despite concerns over the timeline, Xcel officials say they are essentially already working on VPP components. The company is developing a roadmap for a distributed energy resource management system, or DERMS, and is planning a first-quarter RFP for that initiative.
“There are a lot of vendors today that are calling themselves DERMS providers, but in our view, they're really more of a demand response management system provider. Regardless, the capabilities of a DERMS will give us the functionality, I think, to achieve many of the objectives that you're seeking to achieve in this docket,” said Zach Pollock, Xcel’s director of grid strategy and emerging technology.