The Sunrun policy director stated that states do not need to reinvent the wheel when evaluating smart inverter requirements, and pointed out that delays in setting the requirements may lead to "waste of infrastructure."
Thanks to Hawaii’s smart inverter settings, even though there is already a large amount of solar energy on the distribution lines, most customers can still "instantly interconnect" the new solar energy. This is according to Steven Rymsha, Sunrun Grid Solutions Policy Director.
He said that other states considering the use of smart inverters "need to understand what Hawaii has achieved with smart inverter features," including increased hosting capacity, postponement of new infrastructure and consumer protection.
Rymsha said in an interview, "People still don't believe in the degree of saturation of distributed solar in Hawaii." He said that distributed solar power accounts for about 18% of the power generation in Hawaii's power service area and about half of the utility's renewable energy generation.
In addition to Hawaii and California, there are twelve states that are evaluating smart inverter standards. Hawaii has achieved this with all new distributed solar smart inverter settings (called volts and reactive power). Customers can also choose to activate the volts setting. If not, the utility will require research and circuit upgrades. As more solar power increases, each setting can keep the voltage on the power distribution circuit stable.
In addition to Hawaii and California, twelve states are evaluating smart inverter standards.
The Hawaiian Solar Energy Association, the utility company Hawaiian Electric Company, and other agencies have proposed to fully activate volts-watts at the same time as volts-reactive power, combined with consumer protection measures against rare cases where volts-watts cause excessive cuts. California has used both Volt and Volt Watts.
In addition to Hawaii and California, there are twelve states that are evaluating smart inverter standards: Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, Kentucky, North Carolina, Maryland, New York and Massachusetts, and Washington, DC
After working for a Hawaiian utility company for 10 years and now formulating state policies for Sunrun, Rymsha said that when a state started discussing smart inverter settings, the utility company said, “'We can’t have a common Settings, that doesn’t work for us. They seem to be stuck in this analysis mode." He said that in one state, discussions on smart inverters have been going on for two years, "We have nothing to show."
He said that in one state, the discussion of smart inverters has been going on for two years, "We have nothing to show." Rymsha cited Hawaii Electric’s interconnection convenience, infrastructure delays and consumer protection as saying, "Once you With it you really solve this problem. The utility company is in a proactive position, you have satisfied customers, you have satisfied regulators, everyone wins, and Hawaiian Electric will not complain about all these problems", Because the smart inverter function is "fixing" the voltage problem.
He said that in one state, the discussion of smart inverters has been going on for two years, "We have nothing to show."
Rymsha stated that he is concerned that other states will "waste much infrastructure" due to the delay in choosing smart inverter settings. He said that he sympathized with the utility staff he was dealing with, and said that “everyone is racing against time and everyone is procrastinating.” Even so, “they put demands on interconnection, which only makes the process more awkward. , More difficult and longer."
Rymsha said that ten years ago, when he was working at a utility company in Kauai, "we tried to figure out" how the smart inverter function would work. When he left Hawaiian Electric six years ago, “interconnection is really challenging because we are just a regulatory threshold.” Now, he says that smart inverters “work very well and work incredible.”
The leaders of the solar energy associations in Hawaii and California have recently expressed this view, saying that the new distributed solar energy requires smart inverters, and they no longer hear about the restrictions on the new distributed solar energy due to voltage problems.
The consulting company GridLab produced a short report on the use of smart inverters to set and regulate voltage, aimed at general audiences. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has released a longer document on the same subject, which contains more technical details.
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