Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration Project

Avista is an investor-owned utility based in Spokane, Washington. It has two subprojects. For the community of Pullman, Washington, Avista will use a variety of smart grid technologies, including voltage optimization, demand response, capacitor bank controls, and smart transformers to improve reliability and efficiency and contain costs. Avista will also work with Washington State University to procure and install controls for air handlers for campus buildings, chillers, and backup generators as opportunities for load shedding and energy reduction in both summer (up to 1.8MW) and winter (up to 0.4MW).

Benton PUD is a public utility district in south-central Washington with headquarters in Kennewick. Benton PUD will use four 1-kW storage devices to help with integration of wind resources, and will also procure software to develop an integrated distribution automation system. Benton PUD hopes to improve the ability of its staff to access and use data for increased reliability and customer service, improve wind integration, and keep rates low.

The City of Ellensburg is located in Kittitas County, central Washington, and has a population of over 17,000.It is the only municipal utility in the state with both electric and gas service. Ellensburg will demonstrate that, for a utility, a single interface for renewables provides quality control, crew safety, better load predictability, and higher customer satisfaction. For the customer, a centralized renewable project is less expensive and more accessible and economies of scale are achieved more quickly. Ellensburg will provide comparative data of various small renewable resources for university research and K-12 curricula development and show the ability of centralized small renewables to cost effectively act as a relief valve during periods of regional over-generation. Ellensburg's existing renewable energy park will expand to include 3-kW of concentrating solar, 40.5-kW of thin-film nanotechnology solar, and up to 70-kW of wind generation.

Peninsula Light Company is located in Gig Harbor, on Fox Island in the Puget Sound, and is the second largest cooperative electric utility in Washington. It serves 27,700 members and has 31,000 electric meters. Sales in 2009 were 68aMW (166 peak MW), mostly for residential service. Peninsula Light serves Fox Island in south Puget Sound via two feeders. These feeders are near capacity and are among the least reliable and most costly to improve. Voltage routinely runs above 120V, and load factor is poor since the service is primarily residential. The combination of deploying smart grid technologies and ongoing capital improvements projects will enhance overall reliability for the Fox Island community in the near future. To help improve service to its customers and defer expensive capital improvements as a means of containing costs, Peninsula Light will:

• Implement and evaluate SCADA/GIS model-based, real-time distribution automation (fault detection, isolation, optimal restoration)
• Implement and evaluate model-based, real-time CVR capability
• Integrate and evaluate capacity, resource, and regional based DSM

The University of Washington (UW) is one of the oldest public universities on the West Coast, founded in 1861. It serves more than 40,000 students, has over 29,000 faculty and staff, and covers a square mile site in Seattle. Energy usage is 34aMW and 55MW peak. UW is working with Seattle City Light (SCL) and is SCL's second largest customer. It has a diverse set of facilities: research, classroom, dormitory/residential, medical, and stadium, all of which will be used to explore smart grid technologies, behavior modification, efficiency gains and cost savings. It is unique among PNW-SGDP participants in that it is a university and customer-owned distribution system, with two 2MW standby generators and a 5MW turbine. They hope to use a facilities energy management system as a data warehouse and as a means to identify opportunities for energy savings as well as to assist with energy trend analysis. They also plan solar PV electric vehicle charging stations and acknowledge a need to develop parking policies. UW anticipates benefits of:

• Up to 5% reduction in electricity use based on building system optimization and awareness campaign
• Potential to improve how energy costs are allocated to actual end users
• Regional smart grid participation
• Providing information to students, faculty and facility operators on energy use in classrooms, dorms, etc.
• Providing smart grid infrastructure for follow-on research

Idaho Falls Power (IFP) located in Bonneville County of southeast Idaho, is the largest municipal utility in the state of Idaho. IFP serves 26,000 metered customers over a 17-square-mile service territory. It owns and operates five hydroelectric facilities on the Snake River with a peak generating capacity of 47MW. IFP will involve local schools, residential, commercial and industrial customers in its sub-project to explore benefits of smart grid technologies in seven key areas:

• Conservation Voltage Reduction
• Automated Power Factor Control
• Distribution Automation
• Energy Management
• PHEV
• Energy Storage and Automation
• Transmission System Automation

Milton-Freewater City Light & Power was established in 1889 and is the oldest municipal utility in Oregon. Its service area size is 65 square miles and it is served from two substations. Milton-Freewater's AMI Project will install 3,600 single-phase meters, 610 three-phase meters, and 2,400 water meters. The City also will install 700 demand response units, test conservation voltage reduction, and install 100 Grid Friendly Water Heaters using a rebate incentive. Their goals include:

• Peak reductions of 3-5MW
• Savings from remote reading of water and electric
• Meters and disconnect/reconnect electric meters
• Tamper and leak detection
• Assisting customers with bill complaints
• Increasing load management options
• Improving power quality
• Assisting with outage management

Portland General Electric (PGE), an investor-owned utility based in Portland, Oregon, serves the northern Willamette Valley. Their sub-project is located in a primarily industrial area of Salem, Oregon. Their objectives are to:

• Intentionally island a feeder segment with distributed resources
• Demonstrate self healing of a feeder after a transmission or major distribution outage
• Improve power reliability for customers in a high reliability zone
• Reduce peak demand using a battery/inverter storage system and DSG
• Develop battery controls to accept wind energy in offpeak hours

Flathead Electric Cooperative (FEC) is the largest member owned electric cooperative in Montana, serving 47,766 primarily northwestern members. Flathead will compare four different levels of technology in areas served by Libby and Haskill Substations, including:

• Residential AMI metering with real-time outage management and automated meter reads
• Residential AMI plus in-home displays
• Residential AMI plus water heater DRU Residential AMI plus wireless home area networks with options for smart appliances

In the Libby area, Flathead will install 5,582 TWACS (AMI) meters and recruit 100 volunteers who want to participate in increasing levels of smart grid technology. In the area served by the Haskill substation, Flathead will install 1,775 meters and recruit 50 volunteers. Flathead will explore the value and benefit to its members of the increasing levels of technology to determine the most cost effective approach for its membership to reduce "Peak Time" power supply costs in the future.

NorthWestern Energy is an investor-owned electric and gas utility serving communities in Montana and Yellowstone National Park. Its electricity service territory is 97,540 square miles - about two-thirds of the state - with 21,400 miles of distribution and 7,000 miles of transmission lines. Its gas service extends over 70,500 square miles. In urban Helena, NWE will use CVR and automation on three feeders, and will install Home Area Networks and AMI in 200 homes and five to seven government buildings. In rural Philipsburg, CVR and automation will be installed at one feeder, and AMI installed for 50 customers. NWE's objectives are to:

• Gain experience for better validation of many assumptions used to perform economic analysis of smart grid deployment
• Develop knowledge to better inform decision-making about potential future expansion of the smart grid
• Test the ability to deploy enhanced distribution system reliability, asset management and operating efficiencies
• Implement utility-imposed customer demand controls
• Monitor and measure customer acceptance and energy use behavior changes Provide customers with new and innovative ways to control usage