Interesting Facts About the Electric Grid
What I learned from BayREN 2023 events in California
How does the electric grid work? Will upgrading to electric appliances cause outages? Do I need to upgrade my electric service or get a new panel to switch to cleaner, better electric appliances?
These and more questions were answered in BayREN forums I attended last year. I’ve attempted to summarize 9 hours of video recordings into one blog here, with just the highlights.
Photo of a new electrical panel. © 2024 Katharine Bierce.
About BayREN forums
Every few months, the Bay Area Regional Energy Network (or BayREN), a coalition of the Bay Area’s nine counties, runs some really interesting forums. BayREN is a network of local governments partnering to promote resource efficiency at the regional level, focusing on energy, water and greenhouse gas reduction. Check out their past and future events here: https://www.bayren.org/events-training
OK, here we go with the event summaries!
As you can see in this slide from the SF Department of the Environment, a combination of efficiency AND electrification lowers overall energy consumption the most, compared to electrification only or energy efficiency (EE) only. Full slides here or watch the video of that June 2023 talk here.
The Grid: What is it and Should it Shape Policy for All-Electric Buildings?
Summary of public event held June 21, 2023
People are wondering if going electric will make the grid unreliable/cause more outages.
What people don’t realize is that utilities have been working on improving the grid reliability and resilience for decades through both demand side and supply side work.
Demand response examples: paying people to reduce energy use during a grid emergency; can have appliances flex demand when needed e.g. using your water heater or swimming pool pumps to run in the middle of the day (more solar on the grid) rather than 4-9 pm (sun down and grid running on methane gas)
Supply side example: building more generation capacity and improving transmission and distribution
Managing peaks are key to preventing outages: the grid is sized to peak demand.
Time of use matters a lot. (See my blog on Tips on Reducing Utility Bills with a Heat Pump here for more on Time-of-Use rates.)
Efficiency as well as electrification together REDUCE total energy use and REDUCE emission and REDUCE peaks
The key point of this graph is: a combination of electrification and efficiency decreases peak demand. This is super important because the grid is sized to peak demand… meaning, if we do BOTH electrification AND energy efficiency work, we lower overall energy use (earlier chart) and we can build a more reasonably sized grid. Source: Barry Hooper’s presentation slides here.
Regulators are working on setting up new rules that improve flexibility by paying people to use less energy during emergencies, and setting rates that make it cheaper to use electricity when there is a lot of clean electricity available – more specifics around time of use stuff
Grid scale energy storage helps: 6GW built in SoCal helped contribute to saving us from a grid failure in 2022 (out of a 70GW total peak on the hottest day) – big batteries (or other storage methods) can help prevent the need for new power plants
Building decarb / going all electric is important, feasible, and will not stress the grid, with the caveats that we are still working on improving the grid and demand side/load flexibility and getting people to use energy at better times and that they can save money by being flexible on the time they use electricity, and that flexing can be automated
Utilities need to know about big building projects in advance/at the CEQA or EIR stage, not when someone applies to get electricity to a new giant bunch of buildings. Planning for transformer, substation, and transmission upgrades takes years! Need good project management.
Building Resilience: Keeping the Lights on in an All-Electric Future
Summary of public event held September 20, 2023
“Electricity is the more resilient energy source” – PG&E estimates it would take 6 months to fully restore gas distribution throughout the whole city and 6 days to restore electricity service in the event of an earthquake
Better insulation means less need for batteries and fewer solar panels – reducing the need for mining rare minerals and associated impacts (efficiency + storage matter – having the building store its heating/cooling)
Retrofitting a home to passive house standards apparently doesn’t take more time, compared to a “regular” retrofit, although the scope expands and cost is 10-15% more depending on what you compare to and architects involved
Vehicle-to-anything charging is actually good for your battery if you charge/discharge it between 20-80% (rather than fully charge or fully discharge, or letting the battery sit idle)
TECH Clean CA is implementing new heat pump water heater incentives where customers can pay less for hot water, by signing up for demand response/time of use pricing and “charge” hot water midday/on solar power on the grid, and use less power in 4-9 pm peak hours when dirty fossil fuel peaker plants are providing electricity on the grid. (Note as of Feb 2024, the heat pump water heater incentives are “sold out” for single family market rate homes, but still available for equity (low income) and multi-family units.)
Energy equity: MCE and City of Richmond are using a social impact bond and other grants to buy homes, set them up as distributed energy resources (DERs) with green tech, and sell at below market rate to low income first-time home buyers! And paying people for participating in the virtual power plant (with solar/storage on their home).
BayREN is working with libraries to establish pilot community resilience centers; libraries are some of the most welcoming city buildings (compared to other locations)
Residential Electrification in the Real World: Navigating Panels and Permits
Summary of public event held December 7, 2023
We need to prioritize smart usage of electrical panels, not incentivizing/prioritizing service upgrades and panel upgrades that can be slow and sometimes expensive
6M California homes have 100 amp panels
If we upgrade everyone to 200 amps, that will make interconnection queues even longer than they already are
If too many people put in oversized electric vehicle chargers, that can trigger a transformer upgrade, which is a real hassle for a whole neighborhood
Would be smart to provide contractors with heat pump water heaters themselves so they can then recommend them to customers
There is a desire for recommendations on low-decibel rating (quiet) heat pumps e.g. list that in product spec sheets
Multiple people really wanted a concierge service to help people figure out a personal electrification plan; QuitCarbon was on the BayREN call and said they could help
Note that multiple organizations are offering a variety of things from data sources to concierge service
The Switch is On has an ambassador program for people to share personal stories, although SIO Ambassadors are not contractors; Rewiring America has Electrification Ambassadors, who are also volunteers (not contractors)
The U.S. could do some permitting reform – one person noted “I’m from France, we do have safe building, less fatality rates than in the US and very little to no residential building inspections” – “we don’t have dentists have inspections for all their work” – why not random inspections vs. all inspections required for every permit?
Abhijeet Pande at TRC had some helpful slides on Panel Optimization for Electrification (aka the “watt diet” approach – to avoid unnecessary panel and/or service upgrades); video here from his talk.
He explained the difference between upsizing and upgrading with this slide:
His suggestions for avoiding electrical panel upsizing are:
Last but not least, this wasn’t at the BayREN event, but I want to give a shout-out to Redwood Energy for their excellent Pocket Guide (really an extensive e-book) on Retrofits of Single-Family Homes. Their sample circuit diagrams on how to electrify on 100 amps are super useful!
Still want more?
If you’d like several dozen pages of my notes from these excellent events, feel free to email me at katharinebmarketing at gmail. You can also download slides and get video recordings for each event linked above.