With over 13 million Americans experiencing dangerous heat levels this week, we are reminded of how the cracks in our infrastructure begin to show as the mercury rises, like distribution transformers failing at sustained 110F temperatures, as happened in Spokane, WA during a previous “heat dome” event.
Energy data is infrastructure, too – and just because it’s digital doesn’t mean it’s immune from strain during a heat wave. Here are four ways our data infrastructure is crumbling, showing us that investments are sorely needed:
1. Poor energy data exchanges can lead to blackouts during heatwaves
In California’s August, 2020 heat wave, poor information flows contributed to rotating blackouts. In California, Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs) are responsible for capacity obligations, and they use electric usage data from advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) in order to forecast their demand. The problem is that the usage data is bottlenecked by the incumbent utilities, leading to delays and poor quality data transmission to CCAs. The utilities’ systems often don’t transmit usage data to CCAs until days or weeks has passed; without up-to-date load data, many CCAs under-estimated demand by assuming that previous heat waves would be similar to this one. But it wasn’t, because the heat persisted for an unusually long time. California state agencies issued a joint “root cause analysis” report that concluded:
Load serving entities reported that their primary goal was to develop the most accurate forecast possible to bid into the CAISO’s day-ahead market. However, they reported several challenges in meeting this goal that included: data quality and availability….
Timeliness, quality and reliability of usage data are critical to managing power demands during the heat waves of the future. For more detail on this issue, read these comments from the Utility Consumers’ Action Network.
2. Virtual Power Plants, regulators and grid operators are impaired by utility data failures
It’s not just load-serving entities like CCAs that are affected by poor-quality energy data. Virtual power plants such as Renew Home (formerly OhmConnect) have been treated like guinea pigs, with utilities experimenting with their APIs a hundred different ways. Worse, regulators and grid operators are often victims of the same shoddy information flows from utilities, leading to impaired decision-making. One source emailed us to say that “CPUC couldn’t get correct data from CAISO for this report because CAISO’s data is a mess…. She said CAISO’s data indicated 50% less curtailed MWs than actually occurred (!!!).” If you’re making operational decisions on the power grid with poor information, then inevitably “garbage in, garbage out” problems will result.
3. Too many ISOs/RTOs rely on Microsoft Excel and manual processes, impairing demand response
Demand response can be a savior for grid reliability during heatwaves, but only if demand response resources are able to participate. Our forthcoming “Energy Data Landscape Analysis” shows that registering demand response sites is painfully non-automated. How are we supposed to register millions of homes in virtual power plants when NYISO and MISO both require spreadsheets sent via email?
4. Data quality disclaimers must go away
Finally, virtually every utility we have evaluated has a disclaimer that says “The data we provide might be wrong. We have no liability for errors.” As we detailed in our recent Green Button Scorecard, 15 out of 15 utilities in Ontario, Canada do not provide a commitment for accurate energy data. It’s time for this “no liability” policy to change. As more and more consumers make decisions based upon their energy data and bills — including investing in energy efficiency to mitigate high indoor temperatures during heat waves — it is increasingly absurd for utilities to claim that they cannot provide accurate and timely information.