A proposed settlement before the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission would pave the way for a first-of-its-kind pilot on smart inverter deployment. PPL Electric Utilities had petitioned the PUC to require all new DER to install communications hardware and to allow control over their inverters by PPL’s distributed energy resource management system (DERMS). In a near-unanimous settlement filed on October 5, 2020, however, parties agreed to implement a 3-year pilot program during which some DER will operate under the autonomous control modes of new IEEE 1547-2018 inverters, while other DER operate under PPL’s external control. The pilot will study the impacts of both approaches on distribution system operation and cost, and analyze the incremental benefits of external control over autonomous operation. CRI’s Harry Warren provided expert witness testimony to the Natural Resources Defense Council in the case and helped craft the settlement. The settlement still needs to be approved by the Commission.
Learn more about smart inverter deployment in CRI’s publication “It’s Time for States to Get Smart About Smart Inverters”, and read more about the settlement in this UtilityDive article. GTM Squared subscribers can also access an article on the settlement.