Audience Crowdsourced Insights - The Grid Edge in 2020
**The Future of Grid Edge Technologies: A Panel Discussion**
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### Introduction
Welcome to the live audience interaction session on "Grid Edge Technologies." This event brings together industry experts, utility professionals, and thought leaders to discuss the latest trends, challenges, and opportunities in the energy sector. The focus is on understanding which grid edge technologies will see rapid growth, the role of policy, and the future of energy storage, among other critical topics.
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### Which Grid Edge Technology Will See the Most Rapid Growth?
The first question asked participants: *Which grid edge technology will see the most rapid growth within the next five years?* The options were:
- **A.** Advanced consumer analytics
- **B.** Demand response automation
- **C.** Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) integration
- **D.** Load forecasting and optimization
- **E.** Asset health and analytics
After a brief technical difficulty, the panelists weighed in on their choices. Martha Zuko Davies from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) emphasized the importance of data-driven solutions and consumer engagement. Damage Patel, CEO of GridCo Systems, highlighted the potential for demand response automation to play a critical role in balancing grid供需.
Ultimately, the audience voted overwhelmingly for **B. Demand Response Automation** as the most promising technology for rapid growth. Panelists agreed that this approach would allow utilities to leverage flexible resources and enhance grid resilience while addressing consumer needs.
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### The Role of Policy in Demand Side Management
The next question focused on demand side management (DSM): *What percentage of U.S. customers will actively participate in DSM programs by 2020?* The options were:
- **A.** 15%
- **B.** 20%
- **C.** 25%
- **D.** 30%
- **E.** More than 30%
Martha Zuko Davies provided context, explaining that current participation stands at 8%, with approximately 12.5 million customers engaged in DSM programs. She predicted a doubling of participation, citing trends toward energy efficiency and consumer demand for sustainable solutions.
Damage Patel echoed this sentiment, noting the growing interest in dynamic pricing and real-time energy management. Both panelists agreed that while residential participation might lag behind commercial and industrial sectors due to behavioral barriers, the long-term outlook for DSM is promising.
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### Industry Buzzwords: What Will We Be Hearing in 2024?
To lighten the mood, the next question asked participants to predict *which industry buzzword would dominate discussions five years from now.* The options were:
- **A.** "Grid of everything"
- **B.** "Locational marginal pricing"
- **C.** "Plug-and-play grid platform"
- **D.** "Independent distribution system operator"
- **E.** "Grid edge"
The audience overwhelmingly chose **E. Grid Edge**, with one panelist jokingly adding "modernized grid" as a contender. Martha Zuko Davies explained that the term "grid edge" encompasses a wide range of technologies, including distributed energy resources (DERs), smart meters, and advanced analytics.
Damage Patel agreed, emphasizing the importance of focusing on the "edge" to ensure reliability and resilience in the face of increasing distributed generation and demand response programs. He noted that the grid edge is not just a buzzword but a critical concept for future grid modernization efforts.
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### Energy Storage and Grid Edge Markets: Where Will We See Growth?
The discussion then turned to energy storage and grid edge markets, with the question: *Which grid edge market will see the most M&A activity in the next five years?* The options were:
- **A.** Analytics
- **B.** Energy storage
- **C.** Communications technologies
- **D.** Demand side management
- **E.** Home energy management solutions
Martha Zuko Davies argued for **B. Energy Storage**, noting that the physical nature of energy storage makes it a prime candidate for mergers and acquisitions (M&A). She explained that scaling up storage solutions requires significant investment, making it difficult for startups to compete without partnerships or acquisitions.
Damage Patel chose **E. Home Energy Management Solutions**, citing the growing demand for integrated technologies like smart thermostats and home automation systems. However, he acknowledged the strong case for energy storage as well, noting its potential to transform grid resilience and reliability.
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### Microgrid Infrastructure Development: Key Drivers
The panel then addressed microgrid infrastructure development with the question: *Which factor will be the largest contributor to microgrid infrastructure development over the next five years?* The options were:
- **A.** Grid parity of solar plus storage deployments
- **B.** Utility resiliency and reliability needs
- **C.** Large CNI (Critical National Infrastructure) demand
- **D.** Ability to participate in grid services
Martha Zuko Davies emphasized the importance of **B. Utility Resiliency and Reliability Needs**, explaining that utilities are increasingly focused on enhancing resilience in the face of extreme weather events and cyber threats. She pointed to examples like the Borrego Springs microgrid project, which demonstrated the potential for grid services beyond just backup power.
Damage Patel agreed, noting that while grid parity is important, it often takes time to achieve. He highlighted the role of regulatory frameworks in enabling microgrid development, particularly in states like California and New York.
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### Utility Regulatory Transformation: The Next Big Thing
The discussion shifted to utility regulatory transformation with the question: *Which state will lead utility regulatory transformation in the next five years, comparable to New York's efforts?* The options were:
- **A.** Illinois
- **B.** North Carolina
- **C.** New Jersey
- **D.** Maryland
- **E.** Georgia
The audience overwhelmingly chose **Other**, with panelists speculating about California and Minnesota. Martha Zuko Davies noted that California's focus on distributed energy resources (DERs) could make it a leader in regulatory transformation, while Damage Patel highlighted Minnesota's collaborative approach to grid modernization as a potential model.
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### Energy Storage Deployment: Which State Will Lead?
The final question focused on energy storage deployment: *Outside of California and PJM, which state will see the most growth in utility-scale energy storage deployment over the next five years?* The options were:
- **A.** New York
- **B.** Hawaii
- **C.** Texas
- **D.** Arizona
Martha Zuko Davies chose **B. Hawaii**, citing its unique challenges and opportunities for solar plus storage solutions. Damage Patel agreed, noting that Hawaii's high penetration of renewable energy makes it a natural leader in energy storage deployment.
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### Conclusion
As the session drew to a close, panelists emphasized the importance of collaboration, innovation, and regulatory clarity in shaping the future of grid edge technologies. The audience left with a clearer understanding of the key trends and challenges facing the industry, as well as insights into which technologies and markets are poised for growth.
Thank you to all participants for making this session a success! We look forward to continuing the conversation in the coming years.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enKip Goering from itron in the Rome awesome you're Mike's waiting back there and I'll start explaining and setting us up she could sit here because we're in your Mike census Oregon so what welcome everyone to our audience crowdsource session everyone has hopefully clickers this is the fun interactive session of the morning you all are part of the panel and will be participating so a number of you are probably familiar with how this works from previous GTM conferences if this is your first conference what we will essentially be going through is you will see a series of questions come up on the screen and then everyone will have 10 minutes to essentially vote for a particular response or multiple choice questions on the screen will then show the response is live immediately after you voted and then we will also our panelist will be voting and then we'll hear how our panelists voted and also they may respond to how you all voted and essentially live react to taking the temperature in the room so it's really exciting we hope you all participate you'll see the countdown on the actual screens as we go through each question but as we go through each one I'll make sure everyone knows when voting is open and when voting is closed so with that we have our first question which essentially is which grid edge technology will see the most rapid growth within the next five years so voting is now open you'll have ten seconds to vote on either a advanced consumer analytics be demand response automation see vehicle to grid d load forecasting and optimization and e asset health and analytics oh what happened there hold on one second all right it looks like we have a technical difficulty on the first question so yes let's do that hi my name is Martha Zuko Davies I'm from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and I work on energy systems integration research and development it should be honest oh I might have the robot so I work forever Source Energy and everyone everyone that looked at me funny when I said that that is the old northeast utilities and the merged and star company together the name has changed to ever source energy so it's the company that serves electric residential commercial customers are in Connecticut New Hampshire and Massachusetts hi I'm damage Patel CEO of gridco systems great thank you all so we're going to try this again now we're going to skip that first question obviously for technical difficulties I want to make sure we actually get all the responses from the audience now you know our panel and we're going to move on to the second question which is yeah there was only like five or six so I'm going to skip and move on no you had the results in there yeah but they want as many at only seven years old oh yeah okay reset first question what percentage of customers in the u.s. both residential and commercial industrial combined will actively participate in demand side management programs in 2020 and to provide a baseline for folks in the room currently about 12.5 million US customers or around eight percent are currently participating in demand side management programs so voting will open starting now and please choose between a 15 be twenty percent see twenty-five percent D thirty percent and II more than thirty percent and now I can see that we're we're getting all of our votes in and voting has closed let's take a look at the results Wow okay large majority of you voted either fifteen or twenty percent what was your vote so I am very conservative at times and so I voted a which is so not me but that is truly because the policy will impact this I believe in the near future the utilities are changing people have to start to sacrifice demand responses or requiring changes but at the end the day as we develop the data it's going to impact the policy and I think that will overall result in in this 15-percent bracket great I voted a as well because I agree with Martha I think there's a doubling in five years is tremendous growth so let's not underestimate what a means in addition I like the question of one of the individuals in the previous session that asks do we even know what the customer wants and it's a fundamental question here because ultimately demand-side management is entering into customers homes and providing them services or explore changing their behaviors to provide something that we are not sure they want to participate in the penetration of the dsm a demand-side management will increase I don't think it will increase that dramatically in the next five years ultimately will increase I agree we'll double but I think there's a long way for us to explore what customers want and for customers to understand what capabilities they're out there for them to take advantage of great kid yes i agree with you i selected a and i think a lot of this will be there is the policy and I think the more that you see for example dynamic pricing go mainstream I think you'll see more participation accelerate doesn't that I similarly chose a for the sort of simple reason that I think it will continue to be dominated by CN I customers because they can have a significant impact whereas in the residential case the behavioral change that's required i think is a harder and work more unsustainable thing to rely on right so conservative panel and on demand side management for sure next question and this is meant to kind of light in the room and provide a little bit of humor but which industry buzz word will we all be using in five years will it be a grid of everything be locational marginal pricing which i think is a topic that we heard a bit kind of mentioned in earlier panels see the plug-in play grid platform d the independent distribution system operator e grid edge putting in a plug for that one and F others so voting is open and you have 10 seconds starting now great voting is now closed and let's see how what you all selected see the plug-and-play grid platform interesting Kip what did you pick my chick I chose I chose a great edge and the reason I like that yeah the reason the reason I chose that though is I believe that there's a lot of technology that is out there today we talk about the Internet of Things there's a lot of computing power and sensors that can be deployed in the across the grid and it's because of that I think we'll see a lot of acceleration and how we solve problems within the grid using sensors and other digital assets to take action and improve the reliability the grid they're so great name ish I chose other and what is your other oh I didn't come up with another I just chose of it you can't think I'm just betting it's not a through that wasn't easy hows it easy way out a knot oh I actually chose other but I do have another name my creative approach is the modernized grid and I actually would like to also carry at that by saying I don't think it's in five years I think the future is today and anyone from the utility side it's probably sitting in the audience including myself and the company I work with are thinking every day about how do we plan how do we operate how do we build the modern grid so to me the other options were too narrow for for a buzzword to be used in the future so I would stick with that fair enough Martha so I chose grillage it's the smart systems at the end of the at the end of the grid pushing it to the edge and so I think that that actually encompasses plug-and-play grit platforms I think a lot of these feet into it and so if you think of it as terms of smart technologies of pushing to the edge then I think you bring in the whole all these different pieces as well as others that we haven't quite identified yet great I will say I will be around for lunch so if any of the 31 people want to share what some of their other buzzwords are on be interested to hear them for sure question for over the next five years which grid edge market will see the most M&A activity and I'm glad we're asking this question because we missed the first question but really this is all around where do you see a lot of the action happening within the next five years within a particular grid edge technology do you think it's around a analytics be energy storage see various different communications technologies d demand side management or a home energy management solutions voting is now open so you have 10 seconds to select your answer great and the results Wow energy storage and analytics certainly leading with home energy management solutions pretty close behind name is what what was your boat I chose energy storage in part because i think that the physical nature of developing energy storage will actually require there to be M&A activity to be able to scale it I think you know much as we're found in other hard science types of investments it's quite difficult actually to fund such companies for the long term and so I think that the most likely scenario for achieving the economics of energy storage will be for the big incumbents to actually acquire those companies fair employment okay I chose data analytics I think as the grid becomes more connected and we collect more and more data that there will be some firms that really accelerate the innovation that create value for utilities as they do this I think some of the larger more traditional data analytics firms will will love acquire that IP ok so I chose me home energy management solutions because it impacts every single home owner all of you folks up there and as we become smarter with our technologies and the big in the ability to integrate and have them communicate people want to be able to for example handle things from their cell phone when the nest thermostat came out everybody was jumping on to getting a nest thermostat so people are really wanting to be able to bring in even as your smart car you can now you can do pretty much anything you want your car and talk and you know the speaker phone etc so I think because it's near and dear to so many homeowners and the ability to easily work with your cell phone and different technologies I think that's the number one area how do you not I voted be energy storage no can a mystery so we're thinking of like the reason I voted that is because my mind energy storage is supporting technology but it's not just supporting on the utility side it's also supporting on the customer side so it's serving both sides of the book call it the grid edge right so the outer edge and the inner edge or the inner to the edge grid and there's a ton of competition right now in energy storage and there's a lot of value propositions and different products that are out there just walking down the hall I had some several conversations with energy storage own companies and is just tremendous the amount of innovation product offerings partnerships and collaborations between different entities and what they're trying to offer other utilities or customers so ultimately as this product will mature as we are now I still think in the very very beginning of its maturity phase or it's not even maturity if it's a entrance into the market it will streamline itself to product offerings that are eventually going to merge into what eventually the market will use so as a hip said the bigger companies will start taking wind of that and acquiring the smaller companies to create a much stronger value proposition as you as well as the ability to see the price drop and the offerings become more cost effective across the customer and other utilities and the individual customers right next question which percentage of generation in regulated iou investor-owned utility territories will come from customer owned distributed energy resources in 2050 less than five percent five to ten percent ten to fifteen percent fifteen to twenty percent or more than twenty percent time horizon on this is 2050 voting is open and starts now and excellent let's see the results more than twenty percent Wow bullish crowd Martha you have a unique perspective from an realm sure on this so once you kick us off um so I voted for Dee fifteen to twenty percent because of the trends that we're seeing not only out there are we seeing the gigawatts of photo takes PB but also high penetration of v's and so you're starting to see that blend how they all come together and so I believe based on the trends and impacts and looking at storage and and cycling times etc and working with the manufacturers I think we're headed towards that fifteen to twenty percent great damage yeah I chose he also i think that the I've got a basic level here 2050 I think makes this answer relatively simple because you know with 30 years of compounding of an exponential growth curve I think you can pretty easily get to twenty percent but more fundamentally I think that the competitive dynamics that are driving the economics of adoption of the ER seemed seem to be only getting stronger and as a result I think there's a continual fuel for that growth great any now why don't you give us a utility view on this I voted II but I think well because initially when I was thinking about this question I was trying to figure out what we're going to be in five years ten years and then realizing it's 2050 there's going to be so much technological advancement and Martha I'm sure will is driving some of it with NREL that by 2050 I mean we're seeing by 2025 in the Northeast we can hit twenty percent penetration of PV let alone dr as a whole so I think it's not aggressive at all to see twenty percent now I would cavy it a little bit because maybe not all territories will grow at such an aggressive pace and there will be states in the nation that will have a much slower growth but as an aggregate it is feasible to see twenty percent more than twenty percent of the are in 2050 great Kip thoughts yeah so I um I was not quite as bullish Steve I chose a fifteen and twenty percent but you know I think we all know that how important policy is to to some of this but I the economics are there and they will continue to improve and I think from a socio economic standpoint we will see that demographic actually grow to people who really care about distributed energy resources both from both from a sustainability perspective and the fact that it is just generally good and second you know electricity is very very important and so as we deal with more and more natural disasters and things like that people are very interested interested in protecting their own interests there as well great we're going to pivot a bit and talk about an ask a question related to micro grids so question here is which factor will be the largest contributor to micro grid infrastructure development over the next five years is it going to be the grid parity of solar plus storage deployments will it be utility resiliency and reliability needs is it going to be large CNI demand or actually the ability to participate in grid services so a number we had a number of folks who are at the pre conference yesterday probably have some some thoughts based on that discussion but would be interested to pull the whole crowd and see what we think voting is open and starting now ten seconds you great and let's see the results about grid parity of solar plus storage deployment immediately following utility resiliency and reliability needs name is launcher kick us off let us know what you voted and then also your reaction to what what the audience voted as well sure so I have actually chosen be utility resiliency and I think in part part of this question comes down to scale and I think there are good reasons fundamental reasons for utilities actually to invest in what you can pull microgrids themselves for the purposes of enhancing resiliency initially in very remote areas but over time even as more of a standard practice for in effect creating a federated and hierarchical structure to the delivery of power to consumers so so you know I think actually the utilities will roll if we look in practice drive a lot more of the actual deployment a I think five years is the is the reason I didn't choose a because you know fundamentally generation the cost of generation does follow a scaling law in other words you get economies of scale as you generate bigger and bigger and bigger a size of power and I think micro grids for the purposes of economics I still think will continue to be difficult particularly if they're reliant on storage great kit I chose be I think when it comes you know over the next five years I do know that just some of the information that we received through our resourcefulness index was that you know at the top of utility executives mind was resiliency and reliability needs of delivering delivering power and dealing with the destructive disruptions and the imbalances that occur through distributed energy resources they're going to have to deal with that and one way to you know deal with that is you know the deploying of technology and focusing on the impact that technology's associated with a micro grid kimbery great you've done a lot of work in the space ain't on it so I'm a little biased as the director of system resiliency and strategy for every source in Connecticut I voted be as well I believe that the cost of storage is my mind still high to create that grid parity between solar and storage for the deployment of microgrids micro grids are still expensive for customers to start deploying on their own without the support of policy we see that in Connecticut we have a long-standing program in Connecticut developed micro grids and continue to develop micro grids and we find that you can make it as easy as you want to customers but ultimately there will be hurdles for customers to overcome the cost of generation from a utilities perspective reliability is paramount right the first thing we think about every day when we wake up is how do we make sure we provide the best top top reliability we can for our customers and resiliency and I'm say support keeps thinking it is something that we in the wake of storm sandy and the other two storms that have hit the Northeast but across the nation resiliency something that is becoming again a focal point for the company and without it there will be no reliability so utility investment in the thinking the development of the thinking around microgrids from a utilities perspective and I think the borrego springs example is excellent to show how you could not just provide resiliency but you could provide many other grid services through micro grids they are developed utility owned developed and what I liked about that one is actually it's a circuit based or feeder base micro grid which allows to extract other benefits that if you would have done it in a much more localized approach as far as for instance building based a lot of customers are trying to just hook up a bunch of buildings and try to create that micro grid the economies of scale when you do it along the circuit or fito at the substation pan out much differently and much more favorable great Martha so I brought it for be Tilly resiliency reliability how we're doing it but really a lot of the micro grid development has stemmed around natural disasters and so and in what you see out there today the larger scale ones have stemmed in that direction but people are not interested in ever experiencing another hurricane sandy how do you deal with this and so from that perspective I'm you're seeing a lot of cases of microgrids around that technology right so resiliency is the winner at least here on stage next question and this is an interesting one which will be the next state to take utility regulatory transformation in a comparable scope to New York's performing the energy vision will it be Illinois North Carolina New Jersey Maryland Georgia and if you don't think it's any one of those please pick other and then please let us know what you're thinking is voting is now open please all select your answer great and our results f other so Martha why don't we so if you look um maybe everybody put california i'm not sure what this for their other I'd be curious what you did for your others but be you know after California what you see is there's a lot of football takes Peavy being deployed in North Carolina you've got Duke their center Dutch center right there making some tremendous disruptive impact so i will put North Carolina as my choice great kid I chose a d Maryland I was I think the results from the task force the resiliency of microgrids task force that Governor O'Malley set up had some really transformative things where they were both addressing technology as well as some of the regulatory and policy needs there that I think showed that they were pretty serious about about it great name is Jose California mostly because i think the DRP filing that yet is about to occur is a step in that direction quite a considerable step actually so I think I think California is likely to connect so do you actually do you is your thought then because that's an interesting point is your thought then that the DRP filings kick off a series of events that that kind of changed the utility into a platform provider similar to what you're looking at well I think that discussion is already happening frankly and the question I suppose is really one of how close to New York's RAV structure would we actually find in California but valuation of resources is fundamental to any type of regulatory transformation and so because that's already underway it seems we're going to some things going to pop out of that I don't know if you'll be re be like or not okay you're not okay now i have to tell you which one so i was debating actually between california in actual Minnesota I've done some research and in the past I've looked into as we were as we're looking into business models in the Northeast we started looking outside the Northeast to see what everybody else is doing and I really took this question is not just where we're going to see most net-metering a most solar penetration or most aggressive regulator that's creating paulo legislature that's creating policies for additional penetration i took it as who's actually taking a completely creative change of the old business way we were doing business as was mentioned in the previous panels and starting to look into not just reforming the energy vision but reforming the regulatory model that utilities are so confined within and the reason i chose minnesota is because it had such a has still such a different approach than New York they're doing it in a collaborative process the e21 effort that's going on over there is very interesting and I will encourage everybody to take a pic and read about it it's not just utility and the regulator and stakeholders from across the industry basically maybe someone from each one of the representatives industry in this room that are trying to solve the problem and I think this has the potential to create the right solution where we're not you know holding each other's arms and trying to wrestle who's going to win that one are we going to have net metering or not who's going to look at the what I called earlier the modernized grid there's really the customers right in the center of it there's the utility which provides that platform of that grid for folks to interconnect or for the business to be conducted and the services to be delivered there's the grid edge service providers and lots of you in the room and there is also the regulatory side of things and the business modeling site has to work if any one of those three circles that are surrounding the customers will not work financially to sustain itself as a business not going to have a good outcome at the end of it so I believe Minnesota is trying to go in the direction of a collaborative approach I found it when we did micro grids in Connecticut it worked very well so I voted other great just quick show of hands are the 44 folks who picked other how many of those were California a fair number of them okay so calif that makes sense great next questions comic relief time when will we stop using the term utility of the future voting is now open will it be at the end of this conference will it be this year do you prefer utility 20 or never it's the best term you've heard in decades voting is open just curious comic relief moment great this year plays just any comments or thur know any just any thoughts one way or the other or suggestions for better terms for the future utility well so I'll just say it is what it is it is this today and where the utilities and the manufacturers are working together to define and bring together the right business models for example if you look at large scale and vers and there was an outage you know whose responsibility would it be at the end of the day is that the manufacturers is of the utilities and so as we're starting to look at all these new technologies that are developing it is just this utility of the future utility of today I voted this year please agree any was because I really think it's just today any other thoughts I thank God I voted Dee but I think you just d okay the reason is you never get there right so it's going to be an ongoing conversation and you know transformation is not something that happens overnight I think it depends the dialogue that that we have is an industry both from a business regulatory and utility side is is key to pushing forward great name is no right okay interesting question so outside of California and pjm which state will see the most growth in its utility scale energy storage deployment pop line pipeline over the next five years we have a lot of energy storage folks in the room so will be interested to see the results here do you think it will be a new york be Hawaii see Texas d Arizona or some other state and voting has just opened please select your answer a lot of interest in this question great and the results heavy bias towards be Hawaii not necessarily sir probably nimish what are your thoughts why I chose E and hear what I really am meant to say was that I think that we're going to see the utility scale deployment really at the transmission level because that's where the economics can be made to work today for energy stories particularly as a substitute or replacement for peaker plants and I think that economics given it works today will probably continue to work and we'll probably see that more as opposed to at the distribution level gotcha interesting okay I chose B Hawaii and really what shape my thinking there was just how at the forefront Hawaii was in general with alternative energy I just made logical sense that as energy storage becomes more and more feasible and here's now that they would they would lead the the major thrust they're great I actually chose I was debating between a and B I completely concur with keep kit on Hawaii but I decided to vote for New York the reason for it is because we're talking in the next five years my thinking was that New York is in the midst of developing new regulatory framework there will allow utilities to own storage and they will require utilities to think outside the box to provide storage solutions to traditional T&B problems and I believe it could be a potential I was an honor percent confident but it could be a potential for a major utility order scale energy storing to deployment I'm not sure in the size of megawatts but more in the number of applications that they will try to use to demonstrate their ability to transition from the typical T&D investments to new innovative technologies Martha what are you thinking be Hawaii because of on the opportunity that we've seen to date with hype NPV this is really the only you to date at this scale and so as we've done tests with Hawaiian Electric those have been following the nrel research studies that we've been doing with solar city hiko and really opening the doors for PV to to scale up significantly in Hawaii I think that's the natural place now for two for this energy storage deployment pipeline great two more questions separate you guys and lunch so we'll move forward what will be the most important reliability to let regulated utilities will be using in 2020 so it's a reliability related question number of folks in the room I know are focused on these projects will it be a intelligent switches be actual distribute energy resources themselves whether they be utility owned or procured customer own resources advanced load forecasting and modeling or advanced power electronics voting is now open please select your answer great and the results advanced load forecasting seems to be the winner although it's pretty pretty spread across the answers Kip what are your thoughts on this one I chose de advanced load forecasting modeling and analytics I you know there's a direct relationship from the empirical data that you can collect across your grid operations and feed that into your load forecasting and modeling analysis I think as with the IOT and the more connectivity that is established you'll see more and more real-time analysis going on and because of that I think it will help step up a lot of the lot of the solutions for dealing with reliability great as one of our reliability experts on stage so I agree with Kip however I think we have to be a step ahead of it or step or Kip is a step ahead of my answer and the reason i picked e advanced power electronics is because you have to outfit the grid with the devices to provide the data that you're discussing or referring to so the modernization of the grid as we discussed earlier has to be in place in order for us to harness the data turn the data into information and operate the grid and such efficiency to achieve the increased reliability improved reliability that we could get from the grid but the beginning of it has to be the power electronics the ability to deploy smart switches and sensors and monitoring to improve our situational awareness all the way to the edge of the grid great day mission I similarly chose e mostly because the the challenge and reliability going forward yes comes from things like increasing storm reduced outages but also comes from the fact that the net power flows in the distribution system are increasingly unpredictable weather that's because oh export due to solar or whether that's because of adoption of electric vehicles the time constants over which power now needs to be regulated are becoming smaller and smaller and so reliability takes on an aspect that requires very fine-grained control ok so I chose d advanced load forecast and modeling analytics because we need to get better grid control and a way to do that is through forecasting modeling and utilizing that data information to make the right decisions to gain control of the grid so none of you selected distribute energy resources does anyone want to comment as to why yeah neighbors well so I actually my answer really was env because you know now that the supply side of the equation starts is increasingly coming now from the customer without control over that customer asset it will be very difficult to dimension the capacity of the system without some level of control over at the end point otherwise you end up having to invest in copper to levels that increase rates for everyone and so as we're seeing in Germany as we're also seeing in Hawaii and parts of California there will be a need to curtail solar during peak times when i say peak peak of solar and if you weren't to do that your only option is to invest in a lot of cabling a lot of copper to be able to accommodate those peaks so really it's a combination of power electronics to manage power flows but selectively and hopefully infrequent curtailment to manage against capacity great I think the tricky part is 2020 so besides the maybe besides several areas and nations such as California and Hawaii and several others by 2020 it will be hard for utilities to rely on dr for reliability so i think i agree with you folks that i don't think it will be that soon across the industry that we will be able to use me for that purpose okay and I also agree that the power electronics has to pass the lead I think when you talk about latency that is key and the thought that you can centralize a lot of your activity or actions that you need to take on the grid the latency won't allow for it as the grid gets more and more more more complicated because of because of distributed energy resources grid modernization this is the communication and security aspect of information and I think it's this ties back we can't operate those device fast enough to be able to get that data in so there's so much ahead of us in order for us to get to good load forecasts and modeling and using that data to actually get to the reliability improvements we're looking to have great final question for folks is by 2020 so in the next five years how many states will adopt new rate designs to value the integration of customer owned distributed energy resources so what this is really asking is how fast do we think a number of these states will move and be able to help put in the new business models and market mechanisms in place do you think it will be a 0 to 4 be 5 to 9 C 10 to 14 d 15 to 19 and E more than 20 or more and just so folks know we at GTM are tracking about twenty one of these open cases at the moment and so it'll be interesting to hear from the audience as well as other folks how fast they actually think a lot of these proceedings will move final question and voting is open great pretty evenly split ish with about a bit of a bias towards 529 Martha what are you you're close to salvage I put d 15 and 19 that's because I believe that this is going to happen regardless if people are going to be happy or not and this is the way it is so I do and it's by 2020 so you've got some time there too that this is gonna this is just the way it's going to occur in the future not I actually voted be five to nine the reason for it is because regulators move slowly and even if they moved to get to an actual rate design that is implemented will take you additional time so I think we have over 20 states that are active in this territory belief Sam will proceed as such New York is proceeding a fairly good pace but it will still take them quite a bit to actually accomplish what they're trying to accomplish so I'm a little more i'll be on the slow curve on that and 529 is my vote gotcha Kip yeah I chose I chose B I thought we'd get a little closer to five but you know get kind of halfway there and i think i agree with you i think a lot of it comes down to the just the speed of how the regulatory bodies move I do i do think we're seeing you know again as i stated earlier more and more consumers wanting that choice and to be more control of their reliability english yeah I chose be also in part because I can sort of name at least three where the need is there and the progress towards or so i should say perhaps convergence on what those rate design changes should be seems to be occurring I do think after 2020 we may see an acceleration though because I think once a couple of states make the change and assuming that the change is successful then other states will follow so I think the hardest part here is to get the first you know three to six to actually make the change it's a it's a difficult thing to do but once they do that I think we'll find others will will jump in great so with that I think we're a time round of applause for our panelistsKip Goering from itron in the Rome awesome you're Mike's waiting back there and I'll start explaining and setting us up she could sit here because we're in your Mike census Oregon so what welcome everyone to our audience crowdsource session everyone has hopefully clickers this is the fun interactive session of the morning you all are part of the panel and will be participating so a number of you are probably familiar with how this works from previous GTM conferences if this is your first conference what we will essentially be going through is you will see a series of questions come up on the screen and then everyone will have 10 minutes to essentially vote for a particular response or multiple choice questions on the screen will then show the response is live immediately after you voted and then we will also our panelist will be voting and then we'll hear how our panelists voted and also they may respond to how you all voted and essentially live react to taking the temperature in the room so it's really exciting we hope you all participate you'll see the countdown on the actual screens as we go through each question but as we go through each one I'll make sure everyone knows when voting is open and when voting is closed so with that we have our first question which essentially is which grid edge technology will see the most rapid growth within the next five years so voting is now open you'll have ten seconds to vote on either a advanced consumer analytics be demand response automation see vehicle to grid d load forecasting and optimization and e asset health and analytics oh what happened there hold on one second all right it looks like we have a technical difficulty on the first question so yes let's do that hi my name is Martha Zuko Davies I'm from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and I work on energy systems integration research and development it should be honest oh I might have the robot so I work forever Source Energy and everyone everyone that looked at me funny when I said that that is the old northeast utilities and the merged and star company together the name has changed to ever source energy so it's the company that serves electric residential commercial customers are in Connecticut New Hampshire and Massachusetts hi I'm damage Patel CEO of gridco systems great thank you all so we're going to try this again now we're going to skip that first question obviously for technical difficulties I want to make sure we actually get all the responses from the audience now you know our panel and we're going to move on to the second question which is yeah there was only like five or six so I'm going to skip and move on no you had the results in there yeah but they want as many at only seven years old oh yeah okay reset first question what percentage of customers in the u.s. both residential and commercial industrial combined will actively participate in demand side management programs in 2020 and to provide a baseline for folks in the room currently about 12.5 million US customers or around eight percent are currently participating in demand side management programs so voting will open starting now and please choose between a 15 be twenty percent see twenty-five percent D thirty percent and II more than thirty percent and now I can see that we're we're getting all of our votes in and voting has closed let's take a look at the results Wow okay large majority of you voted either fifteen or twenty percent what was your vote so I am very conservative at times and so I voted a which is so not me but that is truly because the policy will impact this I believe in the near future the utilities are changing people have to start to sacrifice demand responses or requiring changes but at the end the day as we develop the data it's going to impact the policy and I think that will overall result in in this 15-percent bracket great I voted a as well because I agree with Martha I think there's a doubling in five years is tremendous growth so let's not underestimate what a means in addition I like the question of one of the individuals in the previous session that asks do we even know what the customer wants and it's a fundamental question here because ultimately demand-side management is entering into customers homes and providing them services or explore changing their behaviors to provide something that we are not sure they want to participate in the penetration of the dsm a demand-side management will increase I don't think it will increase that dramatically in the next five years ultimately will increase I agree we'll double but I think there's a long way for us to explore what customers want and for customers to understand what capabilities they're out there for them to take advantage of great kid yes i agree with you i selected a and i think a lot of this will be there is the policy and I think the more that you see for example dynamic pricing go mainstream I think you'll see more participation accelerate doesn't that I similarly chose a for the sort of simple reason that I think it will continue to be dominated by CN I customers because they can have a significant impact whereas in the residential case the behavioral change that's required i think is a harder and work more unsustainable thing to rely on right so conservative panel and on demand side management for sure next question and this is meant to kind of light in the room and provide a little bit of humor but which industry buzz word will we all be using in five years will it be a grid of everything be locational marginal pricing which i think is a topic that we heard a bit kind of mentioned in earlier panels see the plug-in play grid platform d the independent distribution system operator e grid edge putting in a plug for that one and F others so voting is open and you have 10 seconds starting now great voting is now closed and let's see how what you all selected see the plug-and-play grid platform interesting Kip what did you pick my chick I chose I chose a great edge and the reason I like that yeah the reason the reason I chose that though is I believe that there's a lot of technology that is out there today we talk about the Internet of Things there's a lot of computing power and sensors that can be deployed in the across the grid and it's because of that I think we'll see a lot of acceleration and how we solve problems within the grid using sensors and other digital assets to take action and improve the reliability the grid they're so great name ish I chose other and what is your other oh I didn't come up with another I just chose of it you can't think I'm just betting it's not a through that wasn't easy hows it easy way out a knot oh I actually chose other but I do have another name my creative approach is the modernized grid and I actually would like to also carry at that by saying I don't think it's in five years I think the future is today and anyone from the utility side it's probably sitting in the audience including myself and the company I work with are thinking every day about how do we plan how do we operate how do we build the modern grid so to me the other options were too narrow for for a buzzword to be used in the future so I would stick with that fair enough Martha so I chose grillage it's the smart systems at the end of the at the end of the grid pushing it to the edge and so I think that that actually encompasses plug-and-play grit platforms I think a lot of these feet into it and so if you think of it as terms of smart technologies of pushing to the edge then I think you bring in the whole all these different pieces as well as others that we haven't quite identified yet great I will say I will be around for lunch so if any of the 31 people want to share what some of their other buzzwords are on be interested to hear them for sure question for over the next five years which grid edge market will see the most M&A activity and I'm glad we're asking this question because we missed the first question but really this is all around where do you see a lot of the action happening within the next five years within a particular grid edge technology do you think it's around a analytics be energy storage see various different communications technologies d demand side management or a home energy management solutions voting is now open so you have 10 seconds to select your answer great and the results Wow energy storage and analytics certainly leading with home energy management solutions pretty close behind name is what what was your boat I chose energy storage in part because i think that the physical nature of developing energy storage will actually require there to be M&A activity to be able to scale it I think you know much as we're found in other hard science types of investments it's quite difficult actually to fund such companies for the long term and so I think that the most likely scenario for achieving the economics of energy storage will be for the big incumbents to actually acquire those companies fair employment okay I chose data analytics I think as the grid becomes more connected and we collect more and more data that there will be some firms that really accelerate the innovation that create value for utilities as they do this I think some of the larger more traditional data analytics firms will will love acquire that IP ok so I chose me home energy management solutions because it impacts every single home owner all of you folks up there and as we become smarter with our technologies and the big in the ability to integrate and have them communicate people want to be able to for example handle things from their cell phone when the nest thermostat came out everybody was jumping on to getting a nest thermostat so people are really wanting to be able to bring in even as your smart car you can now you can do pretty much anything you want your car and talk and you know the speaker phone etc so I think because it's near and dear to so many homeowners and the ability to easily work with your cell phone and different technologies I think that's the number one area how do you not I voted be energy storage no can a mystery so we're thinking of like the reason I voted that is because my mind energy storage is supporting technology but it's not just supporting on the utility side it's also supporting on the customer side so it's serving both sides of the book call it the grid edge right so the outer edge and the inner edge or the inner to the edge grid and there's a ton of competition right now in energy storage and there's a lot of value propositions and different products that are out there just walking down the hall I had some several conversations with energy storage own companies and is just tremendous the amount of innovation product offerings partnerships and collaborations between different entities and what they're trying to offer other utilities or customers so ultimately as this product will mature as we are now I still think in the very very beginning of its maturity phase or it's not even maturity if it's a entrance into the market it will streamline itself to product offerings that are eventually going to merge into what eventually the market will use so as a hip said the bigger companies will start taking wind of that and acquiring the smaller companies to create a much stronger value proposition as you as well as the ability to see the price drop and the offerings become more cost effective across the customer and other utilities and the individual customers right next question which percentage of generation in regulated iou investor-owned utility territories will come from customer owned distributed energy resources in 2050 less than five percent five to ten percent ten to fifteen percent fifteen to twenty percent or more than twenty percent time horizon on this is 2050 voting is open and starts now and excellent let's see the results more than twenty percent Wow bullish crowd Martha you have a unique perspective from an realm sure on this so once you kick us off um so I voted for Dee fifteen to twenty percent because of the trends that we're seeing not only out there are we seeing the gigawatts of photo takes PB but also high penetration of v's and so you're starting to see that blend how they all come together and so I believe based on the trends and impacts and looking at storage and and cycling times etc and working with the manufacturers I think we're headed towards that fifteen to twenty percent great damage yeah I chose he also i think that the I've got a basic level here 2050 I think makes this answer relatively simple because you know with 30 years of compounding of an exponential growth curve I think you can pretty easily get to twenty percent but more fundamentally I think that the competitive dynamics that are driving the economics of adoption of the ER seemed seem to be only getting stronger and as a result I think there's a continual fuel for that growth great any now why don't you give us a utility view on this I voted II but I think well because initially when I was thinking about this question I was trying to figure out what we're going to be in five years ten years and then realizing it's 2050 there's going to be so much technological advancement and Martha I'm sure will is driving some of it with NREL that by 2050 I mean we're seeing by 2025 in the Northeast we can hit twenty percent penetration of PV let alone dr as a whole so I think it's not aggressive at all to see twenty percent now I would cavy it a little bit because maybe not all territories will grow at such an aggressive pace and there will be states in the nation that will have a much slower growth but as an aggregate it is feasible to see twenty percent more than twenty percent of the are in 2050 great Kip thoughts yeah so I um I was not quite as bullish Steve I chose a fifteen and twenty percent but you know I think we all know that how important policy is to to some of this but I the economics are there and they will continue to improve and I think from a socio economic standpoint we will see that demographic actually grow to people who really care about distributed energy resources both from both from a sustainability perspective and the fact that it is just generally good and second you know electricity is very very important and so as we deal with more and more natural disasters and things like that people are very interested interested in protecting their own interests there as well great we're going to pivot a bit and talk about an ask a question related to micro grids so question here is which factor will be the largest contributor to micro grid infrastructure development over the next five years is it going to be the grid parity of solar plus storage deployments will it be utility resiliency and reliability needs is it going to be large CNI demand or actually the ability to participate in grid services so a number we had a number of folks who are at the pre conference yesterday probably have some some thoughts based on that discussion but would be interested to pull the whole crowd and see what we think voting is open and starting now ten seconds you great and let's see the results about grid parity of solar plus storage deployment immediately following utility resiliency and reliability needs name is launcher kick us off let us know what you voted and then also your reaction to what what the audience voted as well sure so I have actually chosen be utility resiliency and I think in part part of this question comes down to scale and I think there are good reasons fundamental reasons for utilities actually to invest in what you can pull microgrids themselves for the purposes of enhancing resiliency initially in very remote areas but over time even as more of a standard practice for in effect creating a federated and hierarchical structure to the delivery of power to consumers so so you know I think actually the utilities will roll if we look in practice drive a lot more of the actual deployment a I think five years is the is the reason I didn't choose a because you know fundamentally generation the cost of generation does follow a scaling law in other words you get economies of scale as you generate bigger and bigger and bigger a size of power and I think micro grids for the purposes of economics I still think will continue to be difficult particularly if they're reliant on storage great kit I chose be I think when it comes you know over the next five years I do know that just some of the information that we received through our resourcefulness index was that you know at the top of utility executives mind was resiliency and reliability needs of delivering delivering power and dealing with the destructive disruptions and the imbalances that occur through distributed energy resources they're going to have to deal with that and one way to you know deal with that is you know the deploying of technology and focusing on the impact that technology's associated with a micro grid kimbery great you've done a lot of work in the space ain't on it so I'm a little biased as the director of system resiliency and strategy for every source in Connecticut I voted be as well I believe that the cost of storage is my mind still high to create that grid parity between solar and storage for the deployment of microgrids micro grids are still expensive for customers to start deploying on their own without the support of policy we see that in Connecticut we have a long-standing program in Connecticut developed micro grids and continue to develop micro grids and we find that you can make it as easy as you want to customers but ultimately there will be hurdles for customers to overcome the cost of generation from a utilities perspective reliability is paramount right the first thing we think about every day when we wake up is how do we make sure we provide the best top top reliability we can for our customers and resiliency and I'm say support keeps thinking it is something that we in the wake of storm sandy and the other two storms that have hit the Northeast but across the nation resiliency something that is becoming again a focal point for the company and without it there will be no reliability so utility investment in the thinking the development of the thinking around microgrids from a utilities perspective and I think the borrego springs example is excellent to show how you could not just provide resiliency but you could provide many other grid services through micro grids they are developed utility owned developed and what I liked about that one is actually it's a circuit based or feeder base micro grid which allows to extract other benefits that if you would have done it in a much more localized approach as far as for instance building based a lot of customers are trying to just hook up a bunch of buildings and try to create that micro grid the economies of scale when you do it along the circuit or fito at the substation pan out much differently and much more favorable great Martha so I brought it for be Tilly resiliency reliability how we're doing it but really a lot of the micro grid development has stemmed around natural disasters and so and in what you see out there today the larger scale ones have stemmed in that direction but people are not interested in ever experiencing another hurricane sandy how do you deal with this and so from that perspective I'm you're seeing a lot of cases of microgrids around that technology right so resiliency is the winner at least here on stage next question and this is an interesting one which will be the next state to take utility regulatory transformation in a comparable scope to New York's performing the energy vision will it be Illinois North Carolina New Jersey Maryland Georgia and if you don't think it's any one of those please pick other and then please let us know what you're thinking is voting is now open please all select your answer great and our results f other so Martha why don't we so if you look um maybe everybody put california i'm not sure what this for their other I'd be curious what you did for your others but be you know after California what you see is there's a lot of football takes Peavy being deployed in North Carolina you've got Duke their center Dutch center right there making some tremendous disruptive impact so i will put North Carolina as my choice great kid I chose a d Maryland I was I think the results from the task force the resiliency of microgrids task force that Governor O'Malley set up had some really transformative things where they were both addressing technology as well as some of the regulatory and policy needs there that I think showed that they were pretty serious about about it great name is Jose California mostly because i think the DRP filing that yet is about to occur is a step in that direction quite a considerable step actually so I think I think California is likely to connect so do you actually do you is your thought then because that's an interesting point is your thought then that the DRP filings kick off a series of events that that kind of changed the utility into a platform provider similar to what you're looking at well I think that discussion is already happening frankly and the question I suppose is really one of how close to New York's RAV structure would we actually find in California but valuation of resources is fundamental to any type of regulatory transformation and so because that's already underway it seems we're going to some things going to pop out of that I don't know if you'll be re be like or not okay you're not okay now i have to tell you which one so i was debating actually between california in actual Minnesota I've done some research and in the past I've looked into as we were as we're looking into business models in the Northeast we started looking outside the Northeast to see what everybody else is doing and I really took this question is not just where we're going to see most net-metering a most solar penetration or most aggressive regulator that's creating paulo legislature that's creating policies for additional penetration i took it as who's actually taking a completely creative change of the old business way we were doing business as was mentioned in the previous panels and starting to look into not just reforming the energy vision but reforming the regulatory model that utilities are so confined within and the reason i chose minnesota is because it had such a has still such a different approach than New York they're doing it in a collaborative process the e21 effort that's going on over there is very interesting and I will encourage everybody to take a pic and read about it it's not just utility and the regulator and stakeholders from across the industry basically maybe someone from each one of the representatives industry in this room that are trying to solve the problem and I think this has the potential to create the right solution where we're not you know holding each other's arms and trying to wrestle who's going to win that one are we going to have net metering or not who's going to look at the what I called earlier the modernized grid there's really the customers right in the center of it there's the utility which provides that platform of that grid for folks to interconnect or for the business to be conducted and the services to be delivered there's the grid edge service providers and lots of you in the room and there is also the regulatory side of things and the business modeling site has to work if any one of those three circles that are surrounding the customers will not work financially to sustain itself as a business not going to have a good outcome at the end of it so I believe Minnesota is trying to go in the direction of a collaborative approach I found it when we did micro grids in Connecticut it worked very well so I voted other great just quick show of hands are the 44 folks who picked other how many of those were California a fair number of them okay so calif that makes sense great next questions comic relief time when will we stop using the term utility of the future voting is now open will it be at the end of this conference will it be this year do you prefer utility 20 or never it's the best term you've heard in decades voting is open just curious comic relief moment great this year plays just any comments or thur know any just any thoughts one way or the other or suggestions for better terms for the future utility well so I'll just say it is what it is it is this today and where the utilities and the manufacturers are working together to define and bring together the right business models for example if you look at large scale and vers and there was an outage you know whose responsibility would it be at the end of the day is that the manufacturers is of the utilities and so as we're starting to look at all these new technologies that are developing it is just this utility of the future utility of today I voted this year please agree any was because I really think it's just today any other thoughts I thank God I voted Dee but I think you just d okay the reason is you never get there right so it's going to be an ongoing conversation and you know transformation is not something that happens overnight I think it depends the dialogue that that we have is an industry both from a business regulatory and utility side is is key to pushing forward great name is no right okay interesting question so outside of California and pjm which state will see the most growth in its utility scale energy storage deployment pop line pipeline over the next five years we have a lot of energy storage folks in the room so will be interested to see the results here do you think it will be a new york be Hawaii see Texas d Arizona or some other state and voting has just opened please select your answer a lot of interest in this question great and the results heavy bias towards be Hawaii not necessarily sir probably nimish what are your thoughts why I chose E and hear what I really am meant to say was that I think that we're going to see the utility scale deployment really at the transmission level because that's where the economics can be made to work today for energy stories particularly as a substitute or replacement for peaker plants and I think that economics given it works today will probably continue to work and we'll probably see that more as opposed to at the distribution level gotcha interesting okay I chose B Hawaii and really what shape my thinking there was just how at the forefront Hawaii was in general with alternative energy I just made logical sense that as energy storage becomes more and more feasible and here's now that they would they would lead the the major thrust they're great I actually chose I was debating between a and B I completely concur with keep kit on Hawaii but I decided to vote for New York the reason for it is because we're talking in the next five years my thinking was that New York is in the midst of developing new regulatory framework there will allow utilities to own storage and they will require utilities to think outside the box to provide storage solutions to traditional T&B problems and I believe it could be a potential I was an honor percent confident but it could be a potential for a major utility order scale energy storing to deployment I'm not sure in the size of megawatts but more in the number of applications that they will try to use to demonstrate their ability to transition from the typical T&D investments to new innovative technologies Martha what are you thinking be Hawaii because of on the opportunity that we've seen to date with hype NPV this is really the only you to date at this scale and so as we've done tests with Hawaiian Electric those have been following the nrel research studies that we've been doing with solar city hiko and really opening the doors for PV to to scale up significantly in Hawaii I think that's the natural place now for two for this energy storage deployment pipeline great two more questions separate you guys and lunch so we'll move forward what will be the most important reliability to let regulated utilities will be using in 2020 so it's a reliability related question number of folks in the room I know are focused on these projects will it be a intelligent switches be actual distribute energy resources themselves whether they be utility owned or procured customer own resources advanced load forecasting and modeling or advanced power electronics voting is now open please select your answer great and the results advanced load forecasting seems to be the winner although it's pretty pretty spread across the answers Kip what are your thoughts on this one I chose de advanced load forecasting modeling and analytics I you know there's a direct relationship from the empirical data that you can collect across your grid operations and feed that into your load forecasting and modeling analysis I think as with the IOT and the more connectivity that is established you'll see more and more real-time analysis going on and because of that I think it will help step up a lot of the lot of the solutions for dealing with reliability great as one of our reliability experts on stage so I agree with Kip however I think we have to be a step ahead of it or step or Kip is a step ahead of my answer and the reason i picked e advanced power electronics is because you have to outfit the grid with the devices to provide the data that you're discussing or referring to so the modernization of the grid as we discussed earlier has to be in place in order for us to harness the data turn the data into information and operate the grid and such efficiency to achieve the increased reliability improved reliability that we could get from the grid but the beginning of it has to be the power electronics the ability to deploy smart switches and sensors and monitoring to improve our situational awareness all the way to the edge of the grid great day mission I similarly chose e mostly because the the challenge and reliability going forward yes comes from things like increasing storm reduced outages but also comes from the fact that the net power flows in the distribution system are increasingly unpredictable weather that's because oh export due to solar or whether that's because of adoption of electric vehicles the time constants over which power now needs to be regulated are becoming smaller and smaller and so reliability takes on an aspect that requires very fine-grained control ok so I chose d advanced load forecast and modeling analytics because we need to get better grid control and a way to do that is through forecasting modeling and utilizing that data information to make the right decisions to gain control of the grid so none of you selected distribute energy resources does anyone want to comment as to why yeah neighbors well so I actually my answer really was env because you know now that the supply side of the equation starts is increasingly coming now from the customer without control over that customer asset it will be very difficult to dimension the capacity of the system without some level of control over at the end point otherwise you end up having to invest in copper to levels that increase rates for everyone and so as we're seeing in Germany as we're also seeing in Hawaii and parts of California there will be a need to curtail solar during peak times when i say peak peak of solar and if you weren't to do that your only option is to invest in a lot of cabling a lot of copper to be able to accommodate those peaks so really it's a combination of power electronics to manage power flows but selectively and hopefully infrequent curtailment to manage against capacity great I think the tricky part is 2020 so besides the maybe besides several areas and nations such as California and Hawaii and several others by 2020 it will be hard for utilities to rely on dr for reliability so i think i agree with you folks that i don't think it will be that soon across the industry that we will be able to use me for that purpose okay and I also agree that the power electronics has to pass the lead I think when you talk about latency that is key and the thought that you can centralize a lot of your activity or actions that you need to take on the grid the latency won't allow for it as the grid gets more and more more more complicated because of because of distributed energy resources grid modernization this is the communication and security aspect of information and I think it's this ties back we can't operate those device fast enough to be able to get that data in so there's so much ahead of us in order for us to get to good load forecasts and modeling and using that data to actually get to the reliability improvements we're looking to have great final question for folks is by 2020 so in the next five years how many states will adopt new rate designs to value the integration of customer owned distributed energy resources so what this is really asking is how fast do we think a number of these states will move and be able to help put in the new business models and market mechanisms in place do you think it will be a 0 to 4 be 5 to 9 C 10 to 14 d 15 to 19 and E more than 20 or more and just so folks know we at GTM are tracking about twenty one of these open cases at the moment and so it'll be interesting to hear from the audience as well as other folks how fast they actually think a lot of these proceedings will move final question and voting is open great pretty evenly split ish with about a bit of a bias towards 529 Martha what are you you're close to salvage I put d 15 and 19 that's because I believe that this is going to happen regardless if people are going to be happy or not and this is the way it is so I do and it's by 2020 so you've got some time there too that this is gonna this is just the way it's going to occur in the future not I actually voted be five to nine the reason for it is because regulators move slowly and even if they moved to get to an actual rate design that is implemented will take you additional time so I think we have over 20 states that are active in this territory belief Sam will proceed as such New York is proceeding a fairly good pace but it will still take them quite a bit to actually accomplish what they're trying to accomplish so I'm a little more i'll be on the slow curve on that and 529 is my vote gotcha Kip yeah I chose I chose B I thought we'd get a little closer to five but you know get kind of halfway there and i think i agree with you i think a lot of it comes down to the just the speed of how the regulatory bodies move I do i do think we're seeing you know again as i stated earlier more and more consumers wanting that choice and to be more control of their reliability english yeah I chose be also in part because I can sort of name at least three where the need is there and the progress towards or so i should say perhaps convergence on what those rate design changes should be seems to be occurring I do think after 2020 we may see an acceleration though because I think once a couple of states make the change and assuming that the change is successful then other states will follow so I think the hardest part here is to get the first you know three to six to actually make the change it's a it's a difficult thing to do but once they do that I think we'll find others will will jump in great so with that I think we're a time round of applause for our panelists\n"