The following commentary was written by Shelley Hudson Robbins, Project Director at the Clean Energy Group. See our commentary guidelines for more information.

The North Carolina Utilities Commission just dropped a riveting order outlining the nightmare scenario that played out in control rooms and meeting rooms one year ago as Duke Energy struggled to keep a stable grid in the midst of Winter Storm Elliott. The December 2022 storm coincided with a collection of unexpected power plant failures, gas pipeline capacity and energy imports that failed to show up, and internal circuit controls that failed. It is hard to imagine a large section of our East Coast power grid going down. But we were close. The heroes of the story are only mentioned in a footnote: the line workers and field personnel who scrambled to their posts on what should have been a holiday weekend with family to figure out workarounds, manually turning circuits off and on to shed enough load to match available supply with a hobbled generation fleet.

The order includes a striking fact: Duke Energy’s fleet of options included almost no demand side resources. During the storm, Duke Energy Progress (DEP) and Duke Energy Carolinas (DEC) only called upon 200 megawatts of demand response each. Compared to the distributed load curtailment resources that are available to neighboring grid operator PJM, which includes 13 states plus the District of Columbia, this seems surprisingly small.

PJM has more than 30 curtailment service providers (CSPs), and over 2 million commercial and residential customers participate as load management resources, with an installed load management capacity of 7,699 megawatts in 2022-2023. Fifty-three percent of these resources were able to respond within 30 minutes. The CSPs actually delivered just shy of 10,000 megawatts of load reduction between 2 and 4pm on December 24. As PJM reported  in its September 2023 Load Management Report, demand response resources “over-performed” during the Winter Storm Elliott event.

PJM’s December 24, 2022 peak load was 136,000 megawatts, according to the grid operator’s report on the Winter Storm Elliott event released last July. PJM, like Duke, was in crisis management mode during the winter storm, but ultimately the grid operator was not forced to shed load.

DEP’s peak load on the morning of December 24 was 14,840 megawatts, and DEC’s peak load at roughly the same time was 21,768 megawatts, for a combined peak load of 36,608 megawatts. DEP was forced to shed 800 megawatts of load by turning circuits off and back on, and DEC was forced to shed 1,000 megawatts. Duke Energy’s combined peak load during Winter Storm Elliott is the equivalent of about 27 percent of PJM’s peak load during the storm. If Duke Energy had a proportionate amount of demand response capacity (PJM had 10,000 megawatts), that would have provided at least 2,700 megawatts of capacity to call upon. But Duke did not have this resource and instead, the utility shed 1,800 megawatts by turning circuits off and then back on, cutting power for hours to customers in North Carolina. Could demand response – if it were in place in DEP and DEC – have prevented the blackouts that endangered vulnerable customers on Christmas Eve? The math says yes.

In its December 22 order, the NCUC did not recommend that Duke Energy develop a more robust demand response program, even though these programs have proven to be cost effective and reliable. In PJM, fossil resources were not reliable during Winter Storm Elliott, but demand response “over-performed.” Instead, the Commission focused on improved load forecasting, avoiding planned outages in December, winterizing the fleet, improving gas-electric interdependencies, and it required Duke to file reports on just about everything except demand response.

Distributed demand response can take many forms, including aggregated behind-the-meter battery storage and aggregated control of heating loads, water heating, and EV charging. Participants in aggregated DR programs are compensated for performance, a feature that can help ease energy burden. Aggregation of these resources has proven valuable to capacity markets in parts of the country that have grid operators making decisions about dispatchable assets rather than monopoly utilities making those decisions. Further, Winter Storm Elliott demonstrated that aggregated demand response resources are reliable during winter peak demand when fossil resources fail for a myriad of reasons. This level of reliability should be reflected in how utilities incentivize these resources.

Duke Energy’s North Carolina utilities are required to achieve carbon reduction goals established by the state legislature in House Bill 951. Clean Energy Group filed its December 2023 report Distributed Energy Storage: The Missing Piece in North Carolina’s Decarbonization Efforts, prepared by Applied Economics Clinic, in the Duke Energy Carbon Plan Integrated Resource Plan comments docket as a way to launch the discussion by providing policymakers and advocates the information they need to harness the full potential of distributed battery storage as a demand response tool. Development of a robust portfolio of demand side resources in North Carolina will be a crucial element of meeting the challenges associated with load growth while simultaneously achieving the goals set forth in the North Carolina Carbon Plan.

Commentary: Demand response could have prevented blackouts in North Carolina is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The following commentary was written by Shelley Hudson Robbins. Robbins is a project director at Clean Energy Group. Her work focuses on the Phase Out Peakers Project and the Resilient Power Project. She has also worked for Upstate Forever in South Carolina, the Oklahoma Department of Commerce, the Florida Governor’s Office (defending the state from offshore drilling), and the Florida Public Service Commission. See our commentary guidelines for more information.

The clean energy transition calls us to electrify everything, and to do so equitably. At the same time, we need resilient power to keep refrigerators, lights, and critical medical equipment running during ever-more-frequent power outages. This, too, is an equity issue, since outages are more common in underserved communities.

Traditional battery storage is one way to keep the power on when the grid goes down. Another is developing right under our noses, in the form of battery-equipped appliances. I call it “stealth storage.” 

Last November, a California startup called Channing Street Copper Company introduced an induction cooktop equipped with a 4-kilowatt-hour lithium iron phosphate battery. The battery boost means the stove can be installed in a home with a 110-volt outlet (as opposed to the 220 or 240 volts usually required for an induction cooktop). And it cleverly includes an extra outlet so that other appliances can tap into the battery.

The battery-equipped stove may seem like yet another high-tech toy for wealthier consumers. But, in an interview with Dave Roberts of Volts, Channing Street’s chief scientist Steve Calisch described the battery in the cooktop as a “Trojan horse” – a way to introduce battery storage into households via ordinary items such as stoves and refrigerators. Indeed, built-in batteries could someday be as common as the microchips now embedded in so many products. 

Media coverage of battery-equipped appliances has mostly focused on their load-shifting powers: For example, a grid-tied stove can store energy during the day when solar is powering the grid and release it after dark or when demand spikes. But stealth storage can do so much more. Importantly, it can build resilience in the communities that need it most.

Imagine this scenario: A low-income family includes an elder with COPD who depends on a portable oxygen machine. When a massive storm hits the community, the power goes out. Fortunately, a community program replaced the family’s old range with a battery-equipped induction stove. The stove’s battery can be tapped to run the oxygen machine, keeping the family member home and out of the emergency room. A 4-kilowatt-hour battery can run the refrigerator for a few days. It can charge cell phones, run a fan if the weather is hot, or a small efficient heater if it’s cold. And of course, the battery can power the stove. By keeping these critical items running, a vulnerable family avoids a major disruption – saving resources and lives.  

Now imagine that the stove, the refrigerator, and the water heater all have small batteries, which would all be available to lend their charged power to other needs during a blackout. The result: a super-distributed, resilient network of backup power. 

If this seems far-fetched, consider the now-ubiquitous microchip. Who remembers when telephones did not contain computer chips? Televisions? Cars? The chip, formerly known as an integrated circuit, was invented in 1958 by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments (and also independently invented six months later by Robert Noyce, who went on to co-found Intel).  

At first, computer chips made complex things smaller, faster, and cooler; eventually they allowed connection to the internet, which was “born” in 1983. Fast forward a few years, and computer chips have now enabled the “internet of things,” such as smart thermostats, heat pump water heaters, and HVAC systems. These innovations play an important role in the transition from fossil fuels by allowing appliances to shift energy demand away from peak times that require the firing of the dirtiest power plants on the grid, called “peakers.” Chip and internet technology are now advancing at blinding speed to allow some traditional consumer items to play a role in the clean energy transition. 

With some help from the federal government, battery-equipped appliances could do the same. In fact, development of the Channing Street stove was funded, in part, by a Department of Energy effort. More federal support could help bring costs down for battery-equipped appliances. 

As importantly, the federal government can prioritize deployment of battery-equipped appliances in the low-income communities and communities of color where resilience is needed most. The upfront cost of adding traditional battery storage has historically been a significant hurdle for low-income households. These include both soft costs associated with installation (electrical wiring, permitting, etc.) as well as the cost of navigating local building and fire codes.

In the Volts interview, Calisch points out that battery-equipped appliances tackle these cost issues: Battery storage is installed in a factory setting, which decreases cost while increasing quality control, and specialized installation is not required at the residence. Affordable battery storage can also reach renters more easily, helping to solve the landlord-tenant disincentive problem that results in under-investment in energy efficiency and clean energy technologies for rental properties. 

If the cost of battery-equipped appliances is brought down quickly and dramatically, stealth storage can soon become as ubiquitous as computer chips. That could be good news for vulnerable communities in an increasingly disaster-prone world. 

Commentary: Battery-equipped appliances could make resilience ubiquitous is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The following commentary was written by Shelley Hudson Robbins, a project director at Clean Energy Group. Her work focuses on the Phase Out Peakers Project and the Resilient Power Project. See our commentary guidelines for more information.

With the click of a button, on January 21, 2022, a U.S. Energy Information Agency web page quietly changed. If only it had changed four months sooner. 

If you look up the Energy Information Agency’s (EIA) web page explaining energy efficiency, you will see a lengthy discussion of how energy efficiency and energy conservation are “related and often complimentary or overlapping ways to avoid or reduce energy consumption.” The language emphasizes the importance of these “complimentary or overlapping” efficiency and conservation measures in their role reducing electricity demand, which then benefits all ratepayers by reducing the cost of electricity generation, transmission, and distribution. The new page is quite robust. 

That same web page, prior to January 21, did not include these important facts. Instead, it drew a very stark line between efficiency and conservation and then proceeded to dwell upon the “rebound effect,” suggesting energy efficiency measures are pointless. 

This change seems like a wonky, immaterial thing, but it is not. 

The words on the old EIA page had a significant impact on a proposal filed with the South Carolina Public Service Commission (PSC) last year. That proposal could have opened the door to an innovative way for Duke Energy to utilize new concepts and technologies behind its customers’ meters to reduce peak demand, which is typically met by the most expensive and dirtiest energy on the grid.

The Smart $aver Solar as Energy Efficiency program, filed in South Carolina in April 2021, represented the culmination of a landmark settlement between Duke and a long list of stakeholders representing the rooftop solar industry, environmental advocates working in the energy justice space, and clean energy advocates. The concept involved combining smart meters, time-of-use rates, critical peak pricing, a performance incentive, a rebate, demand response (utility control of a smart thermostat) and rooftop solar. The demand response element would have allowed Duke to shave winter peaks more effectively, in addition to the significant summer peak-shaving accomplished by solar. 

The proposal was lauded nationally for addressing the concept of “cost shift” between solar and non-solar ratepayers, so parties were shocked when the South Carolina Office of Regulatory Staff (ORS) opposed the filing.

ORS’s primary expert witness, Brian Horii with Energy and Environmental Economics, Inc. (E3), cited the definition of energy efficiency from the 2021 EIA website in his pre-filed testimony filed on September 21. He explained how the program did not meet that definition and then stated unequivocally that including solar in the EE program “would contradict long standing, industry-wide understanding of what constitutes EE to the detriment of all South Carolina utility customers.”

During the five days of testimony in November of 2021, ORS’s definition of energy efficiency and the EIA website were referred to repeatedly in testimony and in questions from commissioners. But the “long standing” understanding of what constitutes energy efficiency that Horii emphasized in his testimony… changed, four months to the day after his testimony was filed. 

And on January 13, 2022, the SC Public Service Commission rejected Duke’s proposal by a vote of 4-2, one week before the EIA updated the language. The PSC had relied on ORS’s assertion that there is a bright line between conservation and efficiency, that the program falls in a distinct “conservation” bucket, and it should not be part of Duke’s energy efficiency program measures. By rejecting the idea that solar could be part of a carefully designed energy efficiency program, the PSC rejected the notion that reducing expensive and dirty energy generated to meet peak demand has value for all customers. 

When the SC PSC killed the proposal, they also killed the additional programs that were part of the settlement agreement.

According to the agreement, approval of the Smart $aver Solar as EE program in both South Carolina and North Carolina would lead to expansion of the program to include “other peak load reduction technologies” such as battery storage and heat pump water heaters, as well as a process to explore a program tailored to low-income customers. Approval would have opened the door to real solutions to South Carolina’s historic energy justice problems by putting energy resources in the hands of customers in a way that reduces costs and increases resilience. Instead, that door was closed. 

Would the outcomes have differed if the current EIA language had been in place last fall? The updated language clearly acknowledges the importance of expanding the definition of efficiency to embrace conservation for the sake of the climate, ratepayers, and communities that live near dirty power plants. Duke has now filed the program in North Carolina, with the continued support of the settlement stakeholders, but that proposal has been challenged by others, including the North Carolina Office of Public Staff, so the debate in the Carolinas continues. We will now see if the EIA changes matter.

Commentary: Will the changes on a federal web page impact Duke Energy’s Carolinas solar proposal? is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.