Spring Symposium

Spring Symposium

May 16, 2024

In-Person, tbd Los Angeles or San Diego, CA

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Wrap-Up of the 2023 Spring Symposium: Pathways to a Clean Energy Grid

About:

The Council’s Spring Symposium was held in late May. California has set ambitious targets for decarbonized power supply, reliable delivery, affordable energy, system resilience, beneficial electrification, and consumer engagement. As cleaner, smarter, and more efficient technologies become cheaper and more broadly available, opportunities and interest from consumers and third parties to interact with the grid grows. The grid must evolve as technology and market capabilities change to improve and facilitate interactions between the grid, load-serving entities, consumers, and third parties – realizing and maximizing resilience and economic co-benefits.

The Council’s annual Spring Symposium brings together a broad cross-section of clean energy experts, industry and energy agency leaders and staff, Council Members, and other stakeholders to identify pathways and discuss practical solutions to deploy efficiency and demand management resources more effectively.

Speakers and panelists discussed critical issues impacting the future of EE, DR, and DERs. Topics include Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) Pilot Updates, Emerging Grid-Edge Technologies, Energy Data Usage to advance Demand Flexibility, Energy Equity, and other key issues. Multiple breaks throughout the day ensure plenty of time for networking.

By the end of the day, attendees walked away with new contacts and answers to: What’s New? What’s Working? What’s Not? And, How We Can Succeed!

Last Year’s Agenda and Speakers:

Keynote Address 1

• Gene Rodrigues, Assistant Secretary, Office of Electricity, U.S. Department of Energy

Keynote Address 2

• Minh Le, General Manager, Energy & Environmental Services, County of Los Angeles

Transportation Electrification

• Transportation Electrification: Update on PG&E Pilots
  • Rudi Halbright, VGI Expert Product Manager, PG&E
• Energy Efficiency & Charging Stations
  • David Krueger, President & CFO, IO Energy
• Democratizing the Electric Vehicle Revolution
  • Ariel Fan, Founder & CEO, GreenWealth Energy
• Moderator: Jeana Swedenburg, Director, Opinion Dynamics

CalFUSE Demand Flexibility

• Paul Phillips, Electric Retail Rates Section, CPUC Energy Division
• Amul Sathe, Director, Guidehouse

Lessons Learned: A Case Study of Denmark’s experience deploying solutions to support consumer meter data, information sharing, connectivity, and price-responsiveness

• Claus K. Ekman, Climate and Energy Attaché / Consul, Consulate General of Denmark, Silicon Valley

Grid Modernization Index Readiness Framework: A tool for states and utilities to evaluate grid modernization progress

• Michelle Fay, Partner, Energy, Sustainability, and Infrastructure, Gridwise Alliance & Director, Guidehouse

Data Access in the Context of Grid Modernization

• Michael Murray, President, Mission: Data (live via Zoom)
• Erik Hobbie, Product Management Director, Incubation Team, Oracle Utilities
• Moderator: Joe Desmond, Executive Director, CEDMC

Technology

• Bringing Artificial Intelligence (AI) to the Grid Edge
  • Yingchen (Y.C.) Zhang, VP of Product Solutions, Utilidata
• A Revolution in Air Conditioning – Ultra-Efficient, Packaged Rooftop HVAC for Commercial Buildings
  • Greg Tropsa, EVP, Business Development, Blue Frontier
• Cal-TF Integrative Data Analytics & Equity
  • Annette Beitel, President, Future Energy Enterprises
• Moderator: Clark McIsaac, Director of Policy & Strategy, CEDMC

Income-Graduated Fixed Charge (IGFC) Tariffs: A panel of experts share their views on the implementation challenges associated with the IGFC requirements through the lens of demand-side resource impacts and good rate design principles: understandability, public acceptability, freedom from controversy, fairness, stability, and feasibility of the application.

• Esperanza Vielma, Executive Director, Environmental Justice Coalition for Water (EJCW) & Co Founder, Coalition for Equity and Economics (CEEE)
• Ahmad Faruqui, Ph.D., Economist-at-Large
• Jim Lazar, Fellow, Institute for Energy Democracy, Pace Energy & Climate Center (via pre-recorded video)
• Richard McCann, Ph.D., MPP, Senior Consultant, Energy, Water & Environmental Policy & Economics. Founding Partner, M.Cubed (live via Zoom)
• Moderator: Greg Wikler, Senior Advisor, CEDMC

CEDMC Board Chair Closing Remarks

• Kimberly Rodriguez, Vice President, Resource Innovations

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