As kids, Constantine Spanos, Jasvinder Blah, Deepak Khubani, and AnnMarie Foglio were like a lot of future engineers: video gamers who couldn't resist a challenge.
In many ways, their brains still work the same way. But they're no longer focused on quests like the Legend of Zelda.
Today, through their work with Con Edison's G.R.I.D. (Generating Resources Interconnecting at the Distribution) Edge and High-Tension Interconnections teams, their mission is to integrate customer generation, such as solar installations, with the grid without compromising its stability and reliability.
Left to right, Constantine Spanos, AnnMarie Foglio, Deepak Khubani, Jasvinder Blah, and Richard Vitolo play a critical role in helping customers connect their clean energy generation (solar and battery storage projects) to the grid to support stability and reliability.
The Challenge of Integrating Clean Energy
It's a complex and highly technical problem," says Spanos, who, along with Brittany Allerdings, manages the Distributed Grid Ombudsman team in Distribution Planning, which oversees the interconnection process.
This is an intellectually stimulating issue," explains Spanos. But it's also a huge collaboration across the company that's really kind of unique. It pushes us to think differently and innovate with a lot of different stakeholders developers, customers, and policymakers.
To date, Con Edison has connected more than 76,000 customer solar installations and 750 battery storage systems to the grid, generating more than 770 megawatts combined.
Overcoming Barriers
The G.R.I.D. Edge and High Tension Interconnections teams are two of the groups that makes the interconnection process as smooth as possible for customers and our system operators, with the goal of adding more clean renewable power into New York's energy mix.
Some interconnections can be very cost-prohibitive and that plays a role in projects not coming to fruition," says Blah, section manager, System Design, Distributed Generation & High Tension. "Part of what we do is come up with innovative designs and ways to mitigate the cost impact, so we can have [clean customer generation] interconnect to our systems."
For instance, if many customers are installing battery storage, we might need to put bigger cables underground to handle a larger volume of energy. The grid-upgrade costs would be borne by the customers. To help reduce those costs, the G.R.I.D. Edge team might make suggestions such as reducing how much energy can be exported back to the grid under certain system conditions.
Grid Modernization for Customer Energy Exports
Another component of their work is to investigate problems inherent in working with systems originally designed as one-way highways, with energy moving from our centralized grid to customers. But today, energy flows bidirectionally, as customers also push energy back to the grid.
Redefining Normal
Since traditionally power feeding back to the grid would indicate an abnormal condition, the G.R.I.D. Edge team comes up with ways to identify problems on the system.
"Part of what we've had to wrangle with is this change in the paradigm: How do we differentiate between reverse power flow and a fault condition?" asks Spanos.
One approach we've devised involves modifying our relays, which monitor the flow or pace of energy moving back to the grid, so they can learn the difference between a normal power export and an anomaly.
Enhancing Relay Protection for Grid Stability
One place where we're studying reverse power flow is Staten Island. Here, developers are creating solar farms on large swaths of empty land for residential customers.
"We have collaborated closely internally and with our vendors to develop and program various relay protection schemes. By utilizing these relay programs or modifying existing ones, our customers have been able to increase their grid exports while minimizing cost impacts," says Khubani, manager, System Design High-Tension.
Another complication the G.R.I.D. Edge team tackles is the unpredictable output from renewable energy sources. Using modeling tools and actual use cases, the group analyzes how fluctuations in energy flow and voltage level affect the grid and overall reliability.
Preparing for the Future of Renewable Energy
"This team goes above and beyond their normal responsibilities by not only addressing immediate technical challenges, but also by innovating for future scenarios," says Foglio, manager, System Design G.R.I.D. Edge.
The team works with departments across Con Edison to standardize processes that allow the company to process applications more efficiently. The group regularly communicates with regulatory bodies to understand and meet their needs.
Standardizing Processes
"The electric grid is changing rapidly, and the team has really done an incredible job staying in line with technology and supporting advancements to make interconnection easier for our customers," says Richard Vitolo, department manager, Distributed Energy Services, whose team works directly with customers interconnecting solar and battery systems as well as electric vehicles to the grid. For Khubani, Blah, Foglio, and Spanos, figuring out how to optimize the grid for more clean energy is a thrill, and in some ways harkens back to their childhoods spent playing video games.
"It's problem solving," says Spanos. "Kind of like the mission of the clean energy story."
