After months of careful planning and listening to residents, businesses and important community business organizations throughout the Fitchburg area, we submitted our Electric Sector Modernization Plan (ESMP) to the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities (DPU) in late January. This was a significant milestone in what has been a very important process in planning for the future electric infrastructure in Massachusetts that supports the Commonwealth’s energy climate goals.
The plan compliments the ongoing decarbonization efforts that the Commonwealth has worked hard to formalize, and provides a roadmap for how we can ensure all needed infrastructure is built in an equitable fashion.
Historically, system planning was first and foremost focused on ensuring electric service remained safe, reliable and able to affordably manage the capacity needs of the region. However, any transition to a cleaner energy future requires the current system to increase its capacity by as much as three to four times to meet the level of electrification load. This expected increase in load adds an entirely new dimension to planning: we need to build out new electric infrastructure in a manner which maintains safety, reliability, and affordability, but we must also pace this work appropriately alongside the expected load growth to avoid building investments before they are needed.
At the same time we increase capacity, we are focused on continuous improvement to grid reliability, communications, and resiliency. For us, it is not just about building up our system, but also about creating and enabling benefits in a way that’s not disruptive to our customer’s day-to-day energy needs. We are working to enable the increased, timely adoption of renewable energy and distributed energy resources (DER). We support energy storage and electrification technologies necessary to decarbonize the environment and economy. There’s a significant increase in the complexity of how our customers will use the electric system and our system needs the flexibility to seamlessly adapt.
Of course, some of this work is already ongoing. Programs like “make ready” initiatives for electric vehicles, which will help businesses who want to add charging stations are already approved and available. We are enabling DER interconnections, or small-scale power generation projects like rooftop solar arrays that operate locally and are connected to the larger power grid. The energy a DER produces is often consumed close to the source, meaning our system must manage the two-way flow of electricity in real time in ways that simply didn’t exist even 15 years ago.
One of the largest projects in the works is replacing our Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) system, designed to provide more detailed and granular usage data in support of innovative rate structures such as electric vehicle rates or time of use rates. Currently, our metering provides customers information about daily use, but this change will create smaller intervals within the metering data to allow us to provide customers information on a granular level. Behind the scenes we’re also working on an efficiency project, Volt-Var Optimization, designed to operate the system more efficiently and reduce customer bills passively without relying on customers to change their usage habits.
One of the most exciting opportunities we found as a part of developing our ESMP has been the ability to engage with stakeholders, from customers to business owners to community leaders. We held a series of public information sessions last fall and worked to reach all who may wish to be engaged in this process. A significant portion of our service territory in Massachusetts is designated as environmental justice communities, and we took strides to make this process as inclusive as possible, with both in-person and virtual meetings at different times of days to accommodate different work schedules. We offered translation services for Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese-speaking customers to lower the barrier for participation and promote accessibility.
We took these steps because it is important for customers to understand our collective role in making sure the region is prepared for grid modernization and all that will come with that. We hope our customers understand that we want them to have a role in this process, and to understand that as time passes our plan will evolve and grow based on their input. At our stakeholder meetings, we encouraged people to engage with us, tell us what they are thinking, what they are going to need, and what they are focused on in terms of energy planning. We’ve added a portal on our website where they can leave feedback at any time.
So, what’s next for our Electric Sector Modernization Plan?
The filed plan is being reviewed and discussed through public hearings and technical sessions with the DPU. But that isn’t the end of the conversation; in fact it’s just the beginning. There will be additional revisions to the plan over time, and we recognize that planning for the future is a holistic and iterative process. The process isn’t just us telling our stakeholders what’s happening but seeking a genuine dialogue. Through that, we feel that our plan will continue to evolve and improve, especially as our stakeholders become more educated on the benefits of the future grid so they can provide additional input.
We’d like to thank everyone in the community who has participated in the process thus far. If you are not yet aware or familiar with our plan, I encourage you to learn more by visiting unitil.com/esmp. It is crucial our plan achieves the correct balance for Fitchburg and the surrounding communities as we collectively navigate this transition to clean energy in an equitable fashion, and the shared voices of many can only aid us as we work to find the best solution for all.
Kevin Sprague is the Unitil vice president of engineering.