Public Power Entities Encouraged To Participate In APPA Energy Transition Group

The American Public Power Association (APPA) is encouraging public power entities to participate in the Energy Transition Community (ETC), a working group that is addressing grid operations, reliability, resiliency and recovery in a future low emission electricity delivery system, including advising APPA’s work on its Department of Energy (DOE) cooperative agreements.

The ETC will include representatives from public power utilities, joint action agencies, and state/regional associations who inform program activities to provide technical understanding of how individual public power utilities can achieve low emission goals and continue to deliver safe, reliable, and cost-effective electricity to their communities.

“We want to hear from leading public power utilities on their achievements, strategies for success, and the challenges they have faced and overcome on their journey,” said Nathan Mitchell, Senior Director for Operations Programs at APPA. “At the same time, a key goal of the ETC is to hear from those who have not started on the journey to understand the barriers and possible knowledge gaps or challenges on integrating low emission resources,” he said.

DOE funds will help APPA enhance certain existing programs such as APPA’s Moving Public Power Forward strategic initiative.

The ETC is expected to enhance APPA’s Smart Energy Provider (SEP) program by identifying leading practices in a wide range of areas including community solar, storage, distributed energy resources, demand response and electric vehicles. Findings of initial research will be utilized to identify gaps for further research.

The SEP designation program has identified those with leading practices in these areas.

The SEP applicants “will give us a forum of nearly 100 industry leaders who are on the leading edge with successful programs,” Mitchell said.

The SEP program is a best practices designation for utilities that show commitment to and proficiency in energy efficiency, distributed generation, renewable energy, and environmental initiatives. Additional information about the SEP program is available here.

Under a recently unveiled cooperative agreement with DOE, APPA will bring together public power utilities to facilitate discussion, evaluate opportunities, and define barriers to integrating energy storage technologies with power plants. APPA will also work with DOE and other stakeholders to mitigate these barriers. DOE will provide $100,000 per year for five years, while APPA will provide $25,000 of in-kind cost share per year for five years, for a total value of $625,000.

APPA is actively looking for members to join the ETC. Specifically, APPA is looking for subject matter experts from public power who work on low emission resource integration, resilience and customer side supply.

In terms of time commitment, full participants will be expected to devote approximately four to six hours per month for meeting and guidance review. Observers will be expected to commit to approximately two hours per month for awareness and some meetings.

To volunteer to participate in the ETC, send an email to: EnergyTransition@publicpower.org.