EnergyBiz - November/December 2007 - (Page 50)

» GuIDe&souRCeBook facilities. For example, Dennis Klinger, vice president and CIO, Florida Power and Light Co., in Juno Beach, says FPL “doesn’t have much live experience with distributed generation. You will need proper monitoring equipment to alarms and alerts and be able to dispatch help as needed.” Klinger says his responsibility would be to come up with structures that are friendly to existing information technology structures, but he doesn’t anticipate that being a serious problem. Mike Carlson, CIO of Xcel Energy, in Minneapolis, sees three issues. One is how to control distributed generation remotely to turn units on and off, assuming thousands of generation points in a real-world model. Another is establishing a billing model for two-way sales. A third is supporting outage management and field activities systems to include inventory control and safety management. All of these systems are well within the expertise of utilities because most of them constitute engineering issues. Utilities are good at engineering. City Water, Light & Power of Springfield, Ill., already is developing a set of standards to deal with distributed generation. In Springfield’s model, the information technology issues include: • Net metering and reverse flows. The company will need to modify its billing system to accommodate net metering, which will result in some expense. However, making possibly 10 changes needed to existing (GENEraTION TEchNOlOGIES) systems versus one change at a time will result in a relatively smooth and economical transition. • Issues with more advantageous rates to solar distributed generation than to wind. The company believes that solar power is more coincident with its peak issues and more practical in an urban environment. Any solar generation supplied to its system will be paid at the full retail rate, while wind would be paid at cost of generation. IT issues with implementation of two-tier and four-tier rates must be addressed. • Interconnect standards for distributed generation may have IT implications. Springfield was developing specifications for software changes this year and expects to have them implemented by August 2008, in accordance with requirements of the 2005 energy act. Whether distributed generation ever replaces, or even heavily supplements, the existing large-plant-transmission-distribution model remains to be seen. The answers lie with political, regulatory, economic and other forces in society. But if instead of 1,500-to-3,000 new large plants the industry is forced to deal with 150,000 or more small-scale distributed generation sites, the technology to do so already is pretty much in place and it shouldn’t be a major problem. The Energy Industry Changes Fast. 50 E n E rgyB i z Energy Central’s Topic Centers keep you up to speed. http://topics.energycentral.com Your source for up-to-the-minute news, intelligent views, upcoming industry events and insightful commentary. November/December 2007 Asset Management Billing & Bill Payment Customer Care & Business Operation Generation Technologies Metering, AMR & Data Management Mobile Workforce Management T&D Automation Wind Power http://topics.energycentral.com http://topics.energycentral.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EnergyBiz - November/December 2007

EnergyBiz - November/December 2007 Contents Continental Grid Vision Needed Readers’ Views and Opinions Next for National Grid Clearing the Air The Need for Nuclear Energy Trade Status Report The Innovators California On The Leading Edge FERC Sparks Change Getting Coal Right Leadership in Times of Turmoil Innovation Delivers Return A Tale of Two IPOs LNGs Bright Prospects Generation Techologies The Age of Superconductors Leaders with Vision Get Ready for Plug-in Hybrids Betting on Batteries Cost of Decarbonizing Nuclear Helmsman – A chat with Dale Klein, Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Global Energy Snapshot; Low-Income Energy Help; IT Spending Robust; The Greening of State Regulators; Generating Support Simplifying Offshore Wind Regs Chasing Construction Costs Energy Agency Sets New Course Deregulation Means Higher Rates Go-To Staffer Nightmare in Manhatten

EnergyBiz - November/December 2007

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