Latest / Clean Power Hour / Community-Scale Microgrids with Craig Lewis, Clean Coalition | EP160

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Community-Scale Microgrids with Craig Lewis, Clean Coalition | EP160 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:50
  Craig Lewis: Community microgrids are the most cost effective way to proceed in terms of building out the energy system of the future and deliver this unparalleled trifecta of economic and environmental and resilience benefits.
• 1:05
  intro: Are you speeding the energy transition? Here at the Clean Power Hour, our hosts, Tim Montague and John Weaver bring you the best in solar batteries and clean technologies every week. I want to go deeper into decarbonisation. We do two, we're here to help you understand and command the commercial, residential and utility, solar, wind and storage industries. So let's get together we can speed the energy transition.
• 1:33
  Tim Montague: Today on the Clean Power Hour, distributed energy for local communities. My guest today is Craig Lewis. He is the founder and executive director of an organisation called The clean coalition in Menlo Park, California. Welcome to the show, Craig.
• 1:49
  Craig Lewis: Pleasure to be here. Pleasure to be here, Tim.
• 1:51
  Tim Montague: The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by Denawatts. If you're a solar PV asset manager or performance engineer, you need better data and better business intelligence. With Denowatts digital twin benchmarking technology, you get more accurate, efficient, and faster performance measurement results.
• 2:07
  Tim Montague: The fourth generation Deno recently completed a technical review by DNV you can download the report at denowatts.com, that's D E N O W A T T S.com.
• 2:21
  Tim Montague: Now back to the show.
• 2:23
  Tim Montague: You are a somewhat of a well kept secret in the solar industry, even though you're a veteran. And you know one of the most experienced solar and storage professionals bar none in the United States. It's really been a pleasure to get to know you, and learn about your work at the clean coalition.
• 2:44
  Tim Montague: give our listeners a little background on yourself. What were your beginnings? And how did you get so interested in renewable energy and microgrids?
• 2:54
  Craig Lewis: Well, the clean coalition's mission is to accelerate the transition to renewable energy and a modern grid. And we're a very technical nonprofit. So we do that through engineering and policy activities primarily. I grew up in the on the technology side of things. I've got a bachelor's and a master's in electrical engineering, and then followed that up with an MBA, worked as a electrical engineer for a few years and then did the MBA, worked as a commercial banker for a few years. And and then got back into the technology side of things working in wireless telecommunications, primarily for some big companies like Qualcomm, and Ericsson, and a few startups that people have probably never heard of, but did well enough in the wireless, wireless telecommunication side of things that, you know, I could really think about what I want to do with the rest of my life. And going back in the early 2000 timeframe, there were a few really significant events that brought out the lifelong environmentalist in me. And those those events were first of all, I lived in San Diego at the time, I had been working with Qualcomm and the California, you know, they call it the deregulation, you know, the deregulation, quote, unquote, deregulation of the California energy market, electricity market was really just a different way to regulate.
• 4:29
  Craig Lewis: There's no such thing as deregulation. It's just a reregulation. You just changing the format. And San Diego was the first market in California to just get completely screwed by the Enron's of the world that were were gaming the reregulated market, the restructured market here in California. And so that just pissed me off. And I did my research and I and I determined how that was happening. How the Enron's were gaming the system.
• 5:00
  Craig Lewis: And the federal government under George Bush Jr. At the time, would not allow California to basically defend itself against this, this market manipulation, and that just pissed me off. So California had, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars of transfer payments that basically made to the state of Texas, and that really disturbed me. So that was that was the first big event that got me thinking about I need to really move into this renewables realm and accelerate this transition to renewable energy. The second was my son was born in 2001. And so that really puts a new perspective on on an apparent human being Right, when you become a parent, you start looking at the world from what's it gonna look like for my kids and my grandkids and the whole lineage beyond if the world is still here. And so that was the first the second big events. And then the third big event was that, that George Bush got reelected in November of 2004.
• 6:11
  Craig Lewis: And, you know, up to that point in time, I thought he was about as bad as a US president could get. And, you know, particularly on the environmental side of things, and, and, and in lots of other ways, right, you know, the war in Iraq, and lots of, you know, you pile it on, but the, you know, until Trump came along, I thought that George Bush Jr. was, was really bad.
• 6:34
  Craig Lewis: Now, he's looking super good in comparison,
• 6:38
  Tim Montague: but it's all relative, it's all relative.
• 6:41
  Tim Montague: Relative,
• 6:42
  Craig Lewis: those are the three big events and I just said, I need, you know, I've got enough comfort here financially, I can't retire. But I've got I don't need to worry about where my next meal is coming from, and my next mortgage payment, etc.
• 6:57
  Craig Lewis: And so I formed the clean coalition, to actually I got involved in a number of political campaigns, including becoming the energy policy adviser to Steve Wesley, who was running for governor in the 2006 election cycle in California.
• 7:14
  Craig Lewis: And so I became his energy policy adviser put together an amazing policy platform, Energy policy platform that that my intention was to get Steve Westley into the governor's seat, and then to get an appointment in Sacramento, bring all these great policies to state of California and then proliferate them around the country and beyond, you know, from from, you know, after after getting these, these Bellwether policies into California.
• 7:40
  Craig Lewis: Anyway, Steve Wesley never made it to the governor's seat, as most people probably know that we're at least thinking about politics back in the early 2000s. In this name, Steve Wesley, people probably don't even know that name. But he was the controller for the state of California. So he held statewide elected office and is a really good guy still, you know, and still is a really good guy, but he missed his window to become governor. And I went to Plan B, which was to form a very technical nonprofit to bring this policy platform to life through a different pathway, other than being an insider policymaker. And so that's, that's, that's, and basically what the clean coalition does today, is we work on policy, we still do a lot of policy work.
• 8:30
  Craig Lewis: And then and then the clean coalition is a leader on on projects and programmes that that bring solar micro grids and community micro grids to life to basically show policymakers and everybody else the right way to do things. If you go to a policymaker, and you say, Hey, here's how you should do things, and you're just describing it and words. And the next, you know, the next people in in their face talking to the commissioners at the California Public Utilities Commission, as an example, are from the utilities, which they certainly are the people that were in the office talking to the commissioner before you was a utility, that there are from a utility, the people who are going to be in the office talking to the commissioners right after you are going to be from the utilities, and they're basically telling the commissioners, hey, if the grid comes down, and it will if you do what the clinical agent is telling you to do, then that you know there's going to be blood on your hands, people are gonna die there's gonna be blood on your hands right and so you get these ridiculous you know, fear uncertainty and doubt that that basically, what that what happens is the commissioners get scared and they allow, they allow these really disastrous, disastrous outcomes like what we just saw in Lahaina where regulators let's the the old way of doing things persist, you know, getting energy over long transmission lines. And then when the when those lines get blown over, the utility can't shut them off because they're worried about getting electricity to the water pumps to fight the fires. And so they let these these wires just ignite fires you know, as they're laying in the brush and in in you know, the trees and bushes and grasses and and then you have Leina gets burned down.
• 10:19
  Craig Lewis: Whereas if line I had gone with the community micro grid approach, we would have had the ability to just turn those wires off turn those transmission distribution lines off when you have high winds and and make sure that the you know, the critical loads at the very least the critical loads can be served by local solar and local energy storage that doesn't require any energy coming from afar, meaning you don't need those wires. So we get these really perverse outcomes and vision Just cycles of, okay, we've got, yeah, we've got these disasters that happen, utilities are in there knocking on the doors of the commissioners going, we need to build up more transmission, even though transmission will not solve that problem where the only thing that transmissions are going to do is going to line the utilities pockets with more profits, because they make such gargantuan returns on investments that they make in transmission, they're guaranteed returns that are regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is not even in the state's hands. So
• 11:25
  Tim Montague: you've touched on a lot of topics here, Craig, let me stop you there. And, you know, I witnessed the the Enron manipulation of energy markets firsthand, I was living in San Diego from 2000 to 2003. It is fascinating how a, you know, a for profit publicly traded company was so influential for so many millions of people in California and other markets.
• 11:52
  Tim Montague: And obviously, that was a huge scandal, but but I want to shine a light on your work at the clean coalition. It is very innovative, if you're not familiar, check it out clean coalition, clean hyphen, coalition.org. I think you are on the bleeding edge truly innovating a model for local communities, to help them develop affordable micro grids.
• 13:09
  Tim Montague: Everyone loves solar and storage, once they learn what it can do. Not everyone can afford solar and storage. And and so we need policy innovation. We need incentives at the local, regional and federal level. And we need more knowledge and information in decision makers hands, namely politicians, but also, you know, renewable energy developers. So what is this thing? Community micro grid initiative that you have? That's one of your major programmes at the clean coalition? What is that? And what are the fruits of your Labor's if you could give us just a few examples?
• 13:56
  Craig Lewis: Sure, the So let's define a micro grid first. And then and then we'll define a solar micro grid. And we'll finish with the definition of a community micro grid. Because those concepts build on each other. So a micro grid, very generically, is a combination of loads. So this is appliances that use electricity, they're generically referred to as loads, combined with with a set of energy assets, that that definitely include the ability to generate energy. So so, you know, the most simple micro grid that you might, that might come to mind for people is, is basically just, you know, a building that has a diesel generator, the grid goes down, that diesel generator kicks on.
• 14:53
  Craig Lewis: And it keeps a set of loads operational, and it's usually just a subset of the total number of loads. So just just the critical loads will be maintained when that when that grid goes down, and that generator that diesel generator turns on. So a basic micro grid, you got loads, you've got energy assets, and those things are coordinated to work together. So that you have energy resilience when the broader grid goes down, or sometimes a micro grid might be completely detached from any other grid, and it might be 100% of the time, it's just self operating what's called the island and it might be 100% of the time, it's just Island and it was you know, it's never ever connected to a broader grid. A solar micro grid is where the energy generating, the energy generation is coming from solar.
• 15:48
  Craig Lewis: So that's a solar micro grid.
• 15:52
  Craig Lewis: And typically, a solar micro grid is going to be serving a single facility that's that's, you know, served by a single metre to the to the utility. So, a solar micro grid is very simply a micro grid that is getting its energy from solar. A community micro grid is takes that solar micro grid concept and expands it out to an entire grid area. So think about a neighbourhood or a town or even a city or a county, you community micro grids can be very broad. And you're basically you're taking that solar micro grid concept, you're bringing it out to a grid area that includes multiple customers of the utility and Rick requires the ability to Island sections of a grid when the broader grid goes down. So let's just say most people think about where they live, your neighbourhood. And so the whole block of your of wherever your home is right, that whole block could be kept in could be configured into a community micro grid where you've got enough solar and energy storage working together.
• 17:05
  Craig Lewis: So that when the broader grid goes down, we can Island, that section of the grid, where your home is, and make sure that you know the critical loads will stay on forever. And the rest of the loads can be maintained for a significant portion of time.
• 17:22
  Craig Lewis: So that's the definition of a micro grid, solar micro grid and a community micro grid. The clean coalition has been involved in dozens of solar micro grids around the country we've been involved in handfuls of, of community micro grids around the country. Our very first effort on the community micro grid side was actually in New York, following Hurricane Katrina. And that micro grid is called the Long Island community micro grid. And it's out in the East Hampton section of Long Island. And there's a lot of information on the clean coalition website about that.
• 18:06
  Craig Lewis: We've we've, of course, Hurricane Katrina was 10 years ago. So we did that work, you know, many years ago. But that got leveraged into work that we've done in other places, primarily in California, but also up in some island counties off the coast of Washington State that San Juan County, which has the the San Juan Islands in the San Juan County is the San Juan archipelago of islands. And so we've done community grid work in a number of places. The the first operational community micro grid in California is the redwood Coast Airport micro grid, which is in Arcata, California. Right next to Humboldt State University, which actually has changed his name to Humboldt State Polytechnic University.
• 19:00
  Craig Lewis: And that is a really ambitious community micro grid that's now been operational for several years. Unfortunately, the California Public Utilities Commission is not not being too helpful in making sure that we get the policy innovations that's needed to replicate that, that that the what we refer to as the Arcam Redwood Coast Airport, micro grid and proliferate that into communities across California and beyond. If we had a community micro grid in Lahaina Lahaina would still be there right now. And unfortunately, there was not a community micro grid in Lahaina, and Lahaina is not there anymore. Community micro grids can deliver the unparalleled trifecta of economic, environmental and resilience benefits that they bring to communities everywhere.
• 19:50
  Craig Lewis: Yeah, rich or in between doesn't matter. Community micro grids are the solution. So
• 19:58
  Tim Montague: I love the I love the concept. But I'm also it's a little fuzzy for me how you've done a lot of work in California, in in, you know, in places like the Bay Area, where it's like, community, up against community up against community.
• 20:15
  Tim Montague: I mean, it's it's a very developed area, just looking at the peninsula, for example, or down into the South Bay and around to the East Bay. It's one of the most populated areas in the country. And I can see how Okay, Calistoga, the city of Calistoga gets a micro grid. And maybe that micro grid covers a certain G geography but immediately adjacent to that geography is some other grid.
• 20:43
  Tim Montague: You know, what is what is the future of a micro grid world so to speak, and what is the difference between what we have today in the vast majority of communities right where, you know, like my city of Champaign Urbana, we're part of miso, we're fed by a utility called Amarin. And when the grid goes down, unless you have a home based micro grid, you know, a solar and battery system, and a automatic transfer switch to take you off grid when the when the grid goes down. You're You're Sol and you're without power. Fast forward to let's say, Champaign had a community micro grid that could isolate from the greater grid. That's one of the advantages and and I assume that for the most part, your community micro grids are grid attached for or regular operation, and then they go into micro grid mode during some emergency is not the case.
• 21:50
  Craig Lewis: That's correct. So on an everyday basis, the the community micro grid is generating electricity locally, it's avoiding having to bring energy in from afar, which means you don't have to invest in the transmission infrastructure, which is the most expensive part of the energy system today. And as the fastest growing component of the energy system is the grid, and and the transmission grid in particular, is relatively easy to avoid by just making sure that we get more local renewables in place, then we have load growth, if you if you satisfy that very basic requirements, or that basic, that very basic metric, you don't need to build new transmission infrastructure, and the transmission infrastructure is the utilities biggest cash cow, they get a 12% guaranteed return on equity for transmission and investments.
• 22:50
  Craig Lewis: And and that basically means that it is the ratepayers most expensive piece of their electricity bill is the transmission grid. So it's, it's a zero sum game, right. And when we get energy locally, we don't have to get it from afar. And we can avoid all those costs, that the utilities are chomping at the bit to keep on ratepayers from building out new transmission. So we've got this economic benefit that we get from community microgrids every day, because we're generating electricity, and we're avoiding the need to build out transmission infrastructure. The and by the way, we're also getting 100% of the energy that gets delivered or virtually 100% is getting delivered. So you produce it, you deliver it in the same area, you don't have line losses and congestion losses, which account for about 10% On average of the energy that gets delivered to the United States over transmission lines, you'd lose in 10%, from Trent from line losses and congestion losses. But that's a huge differential. And of course, you're having to take out pristine environments, because building a transmission line is like building a road, right, you're messing up pristine environments that you're traversing over. You know, there's a lot of benefits everyday benefits you get from community microgrids. But, Tim, I want to get to the question that you're really getting at, which is when the grid goes down, what happens when the grid goes down the grid area that has been that defines the boundary of the community micro grid, we however, that is connected, you have to you have to look at how the grid is configured, but you put grid isolation switches in the in the proper places. And when the grid the broader grid goes down, those isolation switches open, which means no energy can flow across them. And now the community micro grid is Island did. And all of the energy that's being generated within it is being coordinated with energy storage and load management solutions to make sure that the most critical loads will never turn off. And the rest of loads be they will be supported as long as they can be given energy availability, but critical lead should never ever turn off. So you that's what you're managing the community micro grid to versus the that fire station does.
• 25:08
  Craig Lewis: There's water pumps, the dispatch for emergency services, ensure that critical electric vehicles can be powered at the heating centre, making sure that you've got your your efficient, heat pump driven H back system is operational. Right? So you just basically go through and you look at what are the most critical loads for the community. And those are the ones that will never turn off and then and then everything else will be prioritised in in a sensible way. So that when there is energy available, you keep everything on, right. If energy is available, everything can stay on as normal. But you have to be able to load manage and shed loads as necessary to make sure there is energy available for those critical loads.
• 25:53
  Tim Montague: And who is managing the micro grid when you're in micro grid mode or emergency mode? Because obviously, that is something that does require some attention. Of course, a lot of it is being done by computers, but you probably also want some human eyeballs on the situation.
• 26:10
  Tim Montague: So how does that work? When you're in micro grid mode?
• 26:14
  Craig Lewis: Easy answer is that whatever entity manages the distribution grid, so this is where you're at voltages that are below 70 KV is a pretty standard demarcation between the distribution grid which is state jurisdictional, and the transmission grid, which is Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's of federal jurisdiction, all the transmission grid is is federal jurisdictional. The the you know when the whoever's operating the district you Using grid, so it's Amarin. In your case, they're in the Chicago area, Central Illinois, Central Illinois. My apologies. There's probably some competition there between Urbana and Chicago. But in any case, you know, whatever your utility is, so for you, it's Amarin. For me, it's it's Southern California Edison, that is the utility that operates the distribution grid. And the logical answer is that the distribution system operator, so the utility essentially, that operates the distribution system should be the entity that also operates the or they would be the easy entity to be the operator of the community micro grid. Now, if for whatever reason, the utility doesn't want to be that party, or if they're so conflicted in terms of, they're never going to do it, because they just want to keep building transmission. And they they believe that building out community micro grids is going to reduce their opportunity to, you know, build out more transmission, and they just keep slow rolling things, then then the party that that you know, that owns and operates the the community micro grid can be any party in the case of the redwood Coast Airport micro grid in California, that the party that owns and operates the community micro grid is the is the Community Choice aggregator, which is called the redwood Coast Energy Authority, RC E a is their acronym. And, and so when, you know when the grid is operating as normal, then it's Pacific Gas Electric up in that part of California PGE. So, pg&e base owns the grid assets, you know, they own the distribution lines, sure, but when the grid goes the broader grid goes down, those grid isolation switches open as I described. And so now we have an island community micro grid situation and control of the community micro grid passes to the to RCA Redwood Coast Energy Authority, and and until the broader grid is up and reestablished you know, operating as normal. The community micro grid stays Island ID and then only when the signal comes in that the all clear signal comes in at the broader grid is now ready to operate as normal than the control is is given back to pg&e. And the the grid isolation switches are closed again, meaning that that community micro grid is no longer Island and it can share energy resources with the rest of the grid.
• 29:27
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• 30:03
  Tim Montague: Yeah, and in a perfect world 100% of the American population would have access to some kind of a regional micro grid like this for emergency situations.
• 30:12
  Tim Montague: But there are various and sundry barriers to entry for this money being one right. Batteries are not cheap. And and then there's all this switchgear involved it's it's micro grids are, are not rocket science, but they're not simple either. And, you know, some people just run screaming when they hear the word micro grid, but I'm a huge fan. It is, you know, tremendous to have resiliency with a micro grid. So, yeah, well,
• 30:44
  Craig Lewis: am I just I don't know, maybe you're getting to this question. But But let me just jump in because I don't want this topic to go left unanswered. The community micro grid approach delivers the best economics to ratepayers possible. And, and the clean coalition has developed a methodology or I should say a market mechanism called the resilient energy subscription, or res we call it RAS we pronounce it as res because it basically allows ratepayers to make a reservation to and pay a fee to say we want to have resilient energy from our community micro grid, and we're willing to pay a little bit more for a small portion of our electricity to make sure that at least that portion of electricity, call it 100 kilowatt hours. The average house in America uses about one kilowatt of power, you know, so 24 kilowatt hours a day, or it's about 30 kilowatt hours a day is kind of the average American home. So if the average home says okay, well, I don't need 30 kilowatt hours a day, I only need 10 kilowatt hours a day because I just need to make sure that my refrigerator refrigerator stays operational, and my food doesn't go bad, and that I've got access to my Wi Fi connection, and a couple of plug loads. So I can keep my computers and phones, you know, powered up. So I only need maybe, you know, 10% or 15% of my normal load, but I'm willing to pay a little bit extra to make sure that on an average day, I will be getting five kilowatt hours or 10 kilowatt hours delivered from the community micro grid, and I'm willing to pay a fee for that.
• 32:23
  Craig Lewis: And and that fee is less than the utilities would go spend to build out a bunch more transmission that wouldn't be wouldn't provide you with any resilience at all. Right? So it's the most effective mark, it's community microgrids are the most cost effective way to proceed in terms of building out the energy system of the future, and deliver this unparalleled trifecta of economic, environmental, and resilience benefits. And I'm going to drop into the chat here, and you're welcome to share with your your audience, a link to the resilient energy subscription market mechanism.
• 33:07
  Tim Montague: Okay, so, so let's let's, let's walk through the process, let's say the city of Champaign decides we want to become a community micro grid.
• 33:15
  Tim Montague: And how does do the decision makers pursue that? How do they finance it? And how do ratepayers get involved in that decision making process? And what and what are the outcomes?
• 33:36
  Craig Lewis: Yeah, that's great.
• 33:36
  Craig Lewis: Great questions, Tim. So the the initial step is to determine where the critical community facilities are. And those are the facilities that we want to start with. Those are the facilities that should be mandated on the utilities that they create solar micro grids, and community micro grids that are ratepayer funded. So that critical community facilities should be ratepayer funded, because they serve everybody.
• 34:07
  Tim Montague: It's there talking schools, hospitals, water services, etc,
• 34:13
  Craig Lewis: emergency sheltering facilities, yes. And and then once you have that, that that sunk cost, and by the way, utilities operate under this construct of, of cost of service, utilities never lose money. They, they get to go spend a bunch of money, and then they get to recover their costs with a nice healthy profit built on top of it. So that's all that's the way the utility industry works called cost of service. Yeah, so they get to go build these these solar micro grids or community micro grids that are based on cost of service, to provide resilience for critical community facilities that all of us rely on. If Lahaina those water pumps to fight the fires, those are critical community facilities, they would have saved everybody's homes, rich or poor, does not matter. The hospitals, the fire station, make sure the dispatches working, right. Those are critical community facilities that help everybody and they should be rate rate payer funded. Once you have that fundamental sunk cost made the incremental cost to put a little bit of extra solar out there to put make that solar you know, a little bit solar project a little bit bigger, put it on more rooftops, or fill up the rooftop, don't just, you know, get to the net metering limit, build a whole rooftop up, fill up that parking lot, that parking lot just sitting there soaking up sun and, you know, heating asphalt. Let's put a little shade on it. And let's get some assets local at local local solar ready to power the community micro grid.
• 35:52
  Tim Montague: Yeah. So let's say the city has a load of 250 megawatts, you're gonna you're gonna design a micro grid for say 10% of that load, say 25 megawatts, right.
• 36:08
  Craig Lewis: Let me let me go back to just just start with critical community facilities.
• 36:12
  Craig Lewis: So whatever city you want to be using as your example, right, if they have 100 megawatt hours of annual load, the critical community, you know, I'm not just talking about the city's assets. I'm talking about the whole city, right like private, public municipal, everything, right? 100 100 megawatt hours, or you know, call it a gigawatt hour. Some percentage of that is critical community facilities.
• 36:41
  Craig Lewis: It's probably something like that. One or 2% of that total load is critical community facilities. That's what you build out for just that one or 2%. And then wherever those, those community microgrids are anchored because critical community facilities are usually concentrated in specific areas, so you have the hospitals pretty close to a fire station is pretty close to a police station pretty close, pretty close to, you know, the, the the facility that's running the water treatment as and the freshwater right they control the water pumps, you know, these these types of facilities are generally very concentrated. But you build out those community micro grids and the solar micro grids to serve those facilities.
• 37:27
  Craig Lewis: And then the incremental cost to start expanding out from there is very low. And it's because you're just now you're you're you're only having to worry about upsizing the solar and upsizing the energy storage, the initial cost of getting those initial assets out there is the expensive cost, right? You got a lot of fixed costs in that initial installation. And then it's all incremental investment from there. And so the incremental cost that needs to be collected from the rez participants, the participants that are raising their hand and saying, Hey, I'm willing to pay a little extra for some resilient energy subscription.
• 38:05
  Craig Lewis: That money goes to paying for that incremental cost to build out the community micro grid after you have your, your seed investments, sunk.
• 38:18
  Tim Montague: It's easy to say ratepayers pay for it. Okay, but the devil is in the details like how does this actually come to fruition? Some amount of money has to be raised on the front end, because you're buying major equipment, you're installing batteries, you're installing solar arrays,
• 38:37
  Craig Lewis: cost to service, this is when utilities build a new transmission line, guess how they collect it? It's cost of service, here's how much it costs.
• 38:45
  Tim Montague: Okay, so it's literally instead of building out the grid, they're building a micro grid.
• 38:50
  Craig Lewis: Yes. This is how you like you tend to the wealthiest companies out there, right. But this is how they operate. Everything is God's the service for them.
• 38:59
  Tim Montague: And and you're suggesting that utilities play ball with this,
• 39:04
  Craig Lewis: the utilities are if you're talking about investor owned utilities, they they are subjected to the regulatory compact, which means Mr. or Mrs.
• 39:12
  Craig Lewis: Utility, you have been given the right to operate a monopolistic business model, because utilities are monopolies. And the regulatory compact says you're able to operate this this monopolistic business model, as long as you agree to be regulated by an entity that's looking out for everybody else.
• 39:33
  Craig Lewis: Which is you and me, the rate bears. So the utilities have to do what the regulator's tell them. That's that's the way the regulatory compact works. So what we really need as a first step, is we need our regulators to make sure that they're doing their jobs effectively, and that they're, ie dictating to the utilities to provide the energy, the future energy system that's going to provide maximum benefits to all of us in the form of economic, environmental and resilience benefits.
• 40:13
  Tim Montague: Yeah. Well, what about public power? What about Munis and Co Ops?
• 40:17
  Craig Lewis: Well, they, they, you know, one kind of folks that they are a little bit more proactive than the investor and utilities, but the reality is that the meanies often are laggards, they wait for the investor on utilities to make the move and show them how to do it. And then they just follow right there. They're basically followers. Typically speaking, there are exceptions, but typically the meanings or followers of the investor and utility so they will follow. You know, you live in a municipal utility service territory and you go, Hey, what the heck's going on here? You know, every time we have a fire the place burned you know, we get we get these massive burn downs because you guys want to turn the power lines off like in Lahaina.
• 40:58
  Craig Lewis: That's what happened in Leina.
• 41:03
  Craig Lewis: You know, that can't happen right? So that that Munis will follow. In a few cases, the Munis will lead. But at the end of the day, the the meanies aren't going to be, you know, they're not going to be 20 years behind the investor and utilities, they do have to compete and show that they're worthy of continuing on as in this municipal utility, you know, business model and coops.
• 41:30
  Craig Lewis: They're the same I mean that you coops are basically the same as municipal utilities that they have elected boards, as opposed to you know, Being part of, you know, being a department of a city type of thing. But, you know, their Co Ops are not investor owned utilities. So, in that sense, they're very similar to municipal utilities.
• 41:55
  Tim Montague: And so, do you have some kind of an out of the box solution for a, you know, a city who decides, you know, we're going to do this, we like what's going on. In we have
• 42:11
  Craig Lewis: a methodology pincushion has a methodology for developing solar micro grids and community micro grids. And, you know, if you, it sounds like you might have somebody in mind to go talk to you, just send them the link to the resilient energy subscription article that I showed into our chat, and share that with your listeners, because that is the starting point to send that to that articles, very comprehensive, very colourful, lots of analysis, and, and colourful analysis, we keep things simple, but it's colourful, lots of graphics and whatnot. And, and people will be able to understand it. And so that's the first step in seeing if we've got a, you know, a policy champion that's willing to push this forward and in any given community.
• 43:03
  Tim Montague: And do you see certain states where this is happening more than others, or, I mean, obviously, California, it's happening way more than others. And there are various and sundry reasons. I mean, California is a very forward thinking place politically. It's also a place where energy is expensive. It's also a place where you have lots of natural disasters. And so a great use case for micro grids. But where else do you see this activity bubbling up?
• 43:32
  Craig Lewis: So community microgrids are happening in lots of places the you know, even surprising places like like Florida, right? Even that that's a place that seems like it's you know, kind of lost its mind in most respects, but the they actually have several community micro grids there. Babcock Ranch is the name of one of their community micro grid communities in Florida, and it was a safe haven when the last hurricane went ripping through. I forget what it would have been so many darn hurricanes. I forget what the name of that one was, but it was about six months ago. And, and you know, folks, you know, it travelled, you know, 50 miles to go get refuge at Babcock Ranch, which the hurricane came right through there. Yep. And that place stayed operational, maintain his power, and was refuge not only for its own residents, but for for a broad swath of Florida. The Tampa has a another there's another community micro grid in the city of Tampa, which is a municipal utility, by the way. So they did a nice job there and have have deployed a community micro grid.
• 44:43
  Craig Lewis: There, there are community micro grids that are happening in various splotches around the country. And I don't have a list of them at my ready. So the ones that the clean coalition is working on specifically are all in California at the moment other than one to one or the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington State.
• 45:06
  Tim Montague: So in our last few minutes together, Craig, I mean, this is this is, you know, really wonderful news. I love this concept. I don't have a sense of how easy or hard it is to go from no micro grid to micro grid, right? You know, the energy transition is happening faster than most people are aware. And and so, you know, batteries, for example, I say, yeah, today, a fraction of Americans have a battery in their garage in 10 years, almost everyone will have a battery in their garage. And in 10 years, maybe half of our communities could be community microgrids that's totally doable. But what are the the linchpins I guess, you know, that that community leaders need to be aware of?
• 45:52
  Tim Montague: And, you know, what can you say to them to push them over the hump and not discourage them?
• 46:02
  Tim Montague: You know, let them not be discouraged by the myriad of of points of resistance that they might meet.
• 46:10
  Craig Lewis: So local community leaders need to push on state regulatory bodies and legislative legislators and governors. Right? How does policy get made in a state because at the end of the day, the utility is going to be governed by state level regulations. So that's where the policy innovation is ultimately needed is at the state level.
• 46:34
  Craig Lewis: The the the municipal leaders, city county leaders, they need to be screaming like hell To make sure that the state level leaders are putting the policy innovations in place that are needed to force the utilities to deploy community micro grids, and allow solar micro grids to proliferate as well. And solar micro grids can be components of a community micro grid, they're very important component. And, and so the municipal leaders need to get interested, well, first of all, they need to be made aware that these solutions exist. And then they need to care enough that they need to scream like hell, to the state level policymakers. And then the state level, policymakers need to force the utilities. And again, they're most utilities or investor on utility under this regulatory compact, if we're dealing with municipal leaders that have that control, municipal utilities, right, then we don't even have to go to the state level, right, we can, we can get action at that local municipal level. So municipal leaders are important because they either have direct control over municipal utility, or they have lots of influence by screaming like hell, you know, at the state level, policymakers, the, but that's really the that that's really what this all starts with, because at the end of the day, we just need the policies in place, so that the utilities will move the community microgrids forward in their service territories, that's that's, that's you need to you need to build these projects out. And that ultimately is going to come down to the utilities, either building, owning and operating, or at least getting out of the way and not preventing some other party from building owning and operating.
• 48:27
  Tim Montague: The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by Denowatts. If you're a solar PV asset manager or performance engineer, you need better data and better business intelligence. With Dina watts, digital twin benchmarking technology, you get more accurate, efficient, and faster performance measurement results.
• 48:42
  Tim Montague: The fourth generation Deno recently completed a technical review by DNV, you can download the report at Denowatts.com.
• 48:50
  Tim Montague: That's D E N O W A T T S.com.
• 48:57
  Tim Montague: Now back to the show Very well. Well check out clean hyphen coalition.org. We'll put a link to the story that Craig's referring to it's a it's an article that he wrote, and we'll put a link in the show notes. So look for that, how can our listeners, contact you Craig?
• 49:17
  Craig Lewis: Well, I would say the best way to contact me is to send me an email. And my email address is very simple. It's Craig at clean dash coalition.org. And if you're gonna send me an email, be very specific about what it is you're you're interested in talking about. And make sure I've got your full contact record in the in the email, and, and good times to reach you back by phone. That's usually if you if you send an email to me and your your descriptive about what you want to discuss, then I can get back to you. And we can have a very efficient conversation without having to spend a lot of time scheduling and, you know, dealing with a bunch of loosey goosey conversation, we get clinical, she gets a lot of inquiries from lots of places.
• 50:10
  Craig Lewis: So I do always appreciate when somebody contacts me with a good amount of specificity. And I will be responsive in those instances.
• 50:22
  Tim Montague: Excellent. Check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Give us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify. That helps others find this content, subscribe to our YouTube channel. And tell your friends about the show. We're dropping two interviews, while we're dropping one pre recorded interview and one news roundup with my co host, John Weaver and PV magazine every Thursday. So check out cleanpowerhour.com.
• 50:48
  Tim Montague: I'm Tim Montague, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. And via email Tim@cleanpowerhour.com. I want to thank Craig Lewis, the founder and executive director of the clean Coalition for coming on the show and for all your work across the United States. Craig, it's really inspirational. And I'm super excited to see this model grow.
• 51:09
  Craig Lewis: Pleasure to be here, Tim, thank you very much for inviting me.
• 51:13
  Tim Montague: I'm Tim Montague.
• 51:13
  Tim Montague: Let's grow solar and storage.
• 51:15
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• 51:47
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• 51:53
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• 52:25
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• 52:56
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• 53:35
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