38^th PLMA Conference Agenda

Evolution Training & Interest Group Breakfast

Demand Response Fundamentals and Evolution
This one-day course explains how today's demand response initiatives are evolving to interact with an emerging future with distributed energy resources for peak load management and much more. The course content expands on the Evolution of Demand Response whitepaper and discussion.

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Course Agenda & Instructors Here 

Co-Chair Mark Martinez Southern California Edison

Co-Chair Christine Riker Energy Solutions

Interest Group Activities
Join the PLMA Interest Groups for candid, interactive roundtables among practitioners from utilities, consultancies, and technology providers who are actively engaged in the load management industry. Don't miss the opportunity to learn from and share with your peers' successes and challenges in these areas of interest.

Women in DM

Co-Chair Melissa Knous Duke Energy

Co-Chair Erika Diamond EnergyHub

Co-Chair Lenore Zeuthen Zeuthen Management Solutions

Demand Response Participation in Energy Markets Across the U.S.
Moderator Erika Diamond
Learn about growth opportunities for utilities and third parties in markets today, the barriers to entering and/or staying in those markets and what the future looks likes.

Panelists:

Susan Marinelli Pepco

Beth Reid Olivine

Damei Jack Con Edison

Breakout discussions on Demand Response and Demand Side Management topics.

Who Should Attend? Women and men attending the conference are encouraged to join us for this dynamic conversation.

• Women – Gain knowledge and perspective on how to develop and further your career in DSM — an industry in which we still see few women in leadership positions. Enhance your network by getting to know other women in the field.
• Men – Increase your understanding of the issues women face in our industry to: improve your team’s development and synergy, enhance your recruiting and management approach, and learn how to leverage the benefits of greater organizational diversity.

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Evolution Training & Interest Group Lunch

Shared Evolution Training & Interest Group Refreshment Break

DER Integration

Co-Chair Rich Barone Hawaiian Electric Company	Co-Chair Matt Carlson Aquanta
Co-Chair John Powers Extensible Energy

Lisa Martin Austin Energy

Workshop: Bridging the Operations/Program Divide in DER Planning
Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) pose unique opportunities and challenges for distribution system planners and operators, emerging technology teams, and program managers alike.  Often lacking a common nomenclature, all parties struggle to understand and define the benefits delivered and costs imposed by the increasing assortment of DERs being deployed on both sides of the meter. This workshop will start with a framing discussion by Lisa Martin of Austin Energy, followed by breakout sessions where Interest Group participants will identify the top challenges, opportunities and forward-looking concepts on DER technology, communications and control, and customer engagement.

Breakout Sessions
Based on the problem framing discussion, the interest group will then break out into three working groups, each facilitated by a Subject Matter Expert. In the context of the problem framing discussion, each working group will identify the top challenges, opportunities and forward-looking concepts relative to each breakout topic. The hour-long breakout will include 20-25 minutes of topic-specific problem definition, 20-25 minutes of solution ideas, and 10-20 minutes of preparation for reporting out to the larger group. The breakout sessions will address:

A. Technology
This breakout group will examine customer resources – and combinations of these resources that could be leveraged to address the emerging problems discussed in the Problem Framing session. This could include existing, known assets, or look into the future as new asset types become more prevalent. Operating constraints and interdependencies will also be explored.

B. Communications & Control
This breakout group will take a hard look at communications and control needs and challenges. The groups will look at both communications pathways and protocols, examine telemetry requirements and data integration and assimilation needs that may result from leveraging customer-sited assets to solve circuit-level issues.

C. Market Solutions
This breakout group will explore options for engaging the market. The discussion will range from the tried-and-true programmatic approach, to new and emergent market models including the role of aggregators and transactive energy business models. Opportunities to engage and incentivize the end consumer will also be considered. For example, would Alexa or Google Home play a role in facilitating this type of engagement? How about intermediaries?

Recap & Conclusions
Following the two rounds of breakout sessions, the SMEs will each present the top three challenges, opportunities and concepts identified in their respective breakout sessions.

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Customer Engagement

Co-Chair Andrea Simmonsen Idaho Power Company

Co-Chair Sharyn Barata Opinion Dynamics

Gamification: is DR in the Game?
Gamification is a hot method for engaging customers, but do you know why it works, and more importantly, can it work for your DR program? This session will look at recent research related to gamification initiatives in the Energy Efficiency sector and explore ways that Demand Response programs can begin to "play".

Your Customer Engagement Co-Chairs will lead a lively session that provide take-aways on what gamification can and can't do, and some of the pitfalls to avoid. Ward Eames of NTC will share why gaming and engagement tie together using specific examples and results from a current project. Get a chance to play for yourself and experience engagement firsthand. Even if you aren't a Gamer, you will enjoy interacting with your fellow Interest Group members and sharing customer engagement strategies. So, plan to attend and find out the secrets to making gamification work for you — come ready to play!

Ward Eames NTC

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PLMA Evolution Training and Interest Group Networking Meetup
All interest group and training registrants are welcome to attend to network and learn how to make the most of the Conference activities.

Board of Directors Meeting
Business meeting with working dinner only for Board members and At-Large Representatives listed at www.peakload.org/plma-leadership.

Welcome Reception in the Big Bend Ballroom and Foyer
Join your fellow PLMA members for great networking and refreshing beverages. Open to all conference attendees at no additional fee, compliments of PLMA members. Not a member? Join us anyway and see what you're missing.

Conference Co-Chairs

Scott Jarman Austin Energy

Ricardo Luna CPS Energy

Teague Douglas CLEAResult

Breakfast Buffet in Sponsor Lounge

Morning General Session 1

Co-Chair Andrea Simmonsen Idaho Power Company

Co-Chair Teague Douglas CLEAResult

Opening Remarks
PLMA Chair Michael Brown, Berkshire Hathaway, NV Energy

Welcoming Remarks
Lucia Athens, City of Austin
Lucia Athens is the City of Austin's first Chief Sustainability Officer, working as a champion for many ground-breaking achievements that support Austin's reputation as a leading green city. With more than two decades of green building and public service experience, Lucia is recognized internationally as an authority on sustainability. She describes herself as a "spark plug for positive change" and a "practical idealist." Lucia is also author of the Island Press book Building an Emerald City: A Guide to Creating Green Building Policies and Programs.

Reinventing Demand Response with DERs
The industry today is bringing on more renewable and distributed energy resources. As technology advances and more renewable and distributed energy resources continue to come online, there are more options like EV chargers and interactive water heaters, as well as new market drivers to balance supply and demand on the grid to support reliability and capture operational efficiencies. Demand response practitioners are exploring the ability of demand response to fill valleys and clip peaks to respond to fluctuations and overgeneration along the grid.

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Moderator Derek Kirchner DTE Energy

Brenda Chew Smart Electric Power Alliance

Rich Barone Hawaiian Electric

Troy Eichenberger Tennessee Valley Authority

Save or Shift? How to Successfully Transition from EE to DSM/DER
Balancing energy supply and demand is becoming more complex as more intermittent distributed resources are added to the grid. In this environment, DSM planners need to re-examine portfolios to determine how DER technologies fit with existing EE/DSM programs. It requires a granular planning process that considers the hourly load shape of each EE/DSM/DER technology to prioritize program opportunities based on alignment with resource needs. This session discusses an innovative approach to DSM/DER planning used to prepare Tucson Electric Power’s 2019 DSM Plan. TEP created a resource-needs heat map and used technology-specific load shapes to rank all existing EE programs and potential new DER technologies according to their fit with the utility’s marginal generation costs. This enabled TEP to propose a modernized portfolio that realigns existing programs and introduces new DER technologies using an objective method for determining whether to increase, decrease, maintain, modify, or eliminate each existing or potential program.

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Ray Martinez Tucson Electric Power

Tom Hines Tierra Resource Consultants, LLC

Refreshment Break in Sponsor Lounge

Morning General Session 2

Co-Chair Ricardo Luna CPS Energy

Co-Chair Ruth Kiselewich ICF

Practitioners' Perspectives on The Future of Distributed Energy Resources
Where do the current DR/EE/Renewables activities of utilities fit in a DER future of iDSM, NWA, storage and more. This roundtable discussion will offer utility practitioner perspectives on how Distributed Energy Resources, as an umbrella term, is evolving from a program focus on Peak Load Emergencies to Market/System Economics to Operational Management. This roundtable will include structured dialogue on topics such as:

• Repositioning for system-wide deployment to be targeted/locational
• Business Process Changes Necessary to Evolve DERS from Emergency to Operations
• Where DR fits in a DER construct relative to utilities that are long on generation with weak market/regulatory signals and potentially-stranded infrastructure costs
• What is a DERMS and what’s the path to get there
• What are individual utility DR Potential Studies not telling senior executives
• Balancing customer satisfaction and customer acquisition issues

Moderator Jason Cigarran Itron

Jim Musilek North Carolina Electric Membership Corporation

Rich Philip Duke Energy

Michael Brown Berkshire Hathaway, NV Energy

Lessons Learned from Six Years of BYOT at Austin Energy
Bring Your Own Thermostat (BYOT) was a new concept when Austin Energy rolled out the Power Partner Thermostat Program in 2012. Six years later, the program is going strong and many of the largest utilities in the country have launched BYOT programs. Scott and Chris will provide an in-depth retrospective and share data from the life of the program. They will discuss the genesis of this innovative concept in 2012 and Austin Energy’s initial configuration and introduction of the program concept; approaches to manufacturers and vendors engagement; and how the structure of program has evolved over the past six years.

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Scott Jarman Austin Energy

Chris Ashley EnergyHub

Lunch Buffet in Sponsor Lounge hosted by Tendril

Afternoon General Session 1

Co-Chair Brian Doyle Xcel Energy

Co-Chair Lynn Stein E Source

Moving Mountains: Systems Integration to Support 2-Way Switches @ PG&E
When PG&E set out to leverage their AMI network to support the deployment of central AC 2-way direct load control switches, a harsh reality set in: Could we actually move the many mountains of IT systems? Standing up more reliable smart grid technology involved complex internal IT projects; multi-year lab tests and a field test; penetration testing; and coordination with vendors associated with device development, AMI network and head-end system, program implementation, IT and the DRMS. This presentation offers a glimpse into what a major U.S. utility had to go through in order to step into the future of a more flexible smart grid technology and make it operationally advanced.

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Wendy Brummer Pacific Gas & Electric Co.	David Fleming GoodCents/Franklin Energy	Darren Gronewold Energate/Tantalus
Paul Notti Itron	Paul Wyman Lockheed Martin Energy

This is Getting Complicated… Planning DR Resources in a World of DERs
Utility planners used to have just one customer-side resource to worry about: EE. Then, the world expanded to DR. Now we have too many acronym’d resources to say without taking a breath and customers adoption of DER technologies in some jurisdictions is significant enough to move the needle in system planning. This is one of the cruxes of the DER evolution—how can utilities predict the location and timing of thousands of distributed customer adoption decisions that are increasingly occurring outside of the utility’s influence? Potential studies typically have provided the starting point for planning, but now utility planners need to go a step further and forecast the actual adoption of DER, often at highly granular levels. This presentation will discuss the methods and learnings from a utility case study and across the country in the shift towards DER forecasting to feed IRP, distribution planning, and customer engagement.

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Shauna Jensen PGE

Robin Maslowski Navigant

Utility DR Auctions: A Practical Guide
In many ISO/RTOs demand response is primarily procured via capacity auctions, there has been much discussion recently about using market-based mechanisms, such as auctions for DR procurement at the utility level, however there is little practical experience with such auctions. This presentation will talk about theoretical and practical aspects of utility level DR auctions, based on Con Ed’s experience with DR and Demand Management auctions.

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Shira Horowitz Con Edison

Refreshment Break in Sponsor Lounge

Afternoon General Session 2

Co-Chair Scott Jarman Austin Energy

Co-Chair Dave Hyland Zen Ecosystems

Non-Wires Alternatives Projects Worth Watching: Key Insights from SEPA & PLMA Joint Research
Discover key considerations from leading non-wires-alternatives (NWA) projects that are deferring the need for traditional electric grid infrastructure upgrades. Hear results from an industry-wide call for project nominations that led a peer group to select 10 NWA projects that have compelling stories and lessons-learned to share back to the industry. Since 2016, National Grid has identified more than 20 NWA opportunities through its capital investment planning process. This presentation will share some of our learnings regarding project identification, procurement processes, benefit cost analysis tool development and rate case incentives. Con Edison has had many key takeaways and lessons learned from the first large program we are implementing, to the streamlined approach of identifying and implementing newer projects. They have also found different ways to communicate these projects to the market and are working to continuously improve our approach to non-wires solutions, with our customers and market partners in mind.

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Steve Cowell E4TheFuture	Brenda Chew Smart Electric Power Alliance	Tiger Adolf PLMA
Marie Schnitzer National Grid	Damei Jack Con Edison	Sarah Arison Bonneville Power Administration

Sponsor Showcase Lightning Round
In this 30-minute session you will hear from several of our sponsors about the essence of their solutions. Our Co-chairs have vetted the presentations and helped the sponsors get their key messages compressed down to no more than 3 minutes. This is not a marketing pitch, but an educational statement from the sponsors on what they do with specific examples of how they provide value.

Co-Moderator: Mark Martinez Southern California Edison

Co-Moderator: Christine Riker Energy Solutions

Showcase Presenters:

Shane O’Quinn AutoGrid Systems	Joseph Childs Eaton	Tiffany McCann EFI
Emilie Stone Tendril	Rolf Bienert OpenADR Alliance

Networking Reception in Sponsor Lounge hosted by AutoGrid Systems
A key value to PLMA events is the opportunity to network with conference participants. Join us for a cocktails and appetizers. Come and share what you learned and get additional details about your topics of interest.

Breakfast Buffet in Sponsor Lounge

Concurrent Breakout Sessions

Track 1 Co-Chair Brian Solsbee TEMPA Co-Chair Debyani Ghosh Navigant Co-Chair Paul Wassink National Grid 8:30 am Smart Charging of EVs to Serve Grid Needs In this session, you will hear how Olivine is helping multiple agencies in California to aggregate EVs into a grid resource through smart charging technologies and implementation of charging optimization strategies. Olivine will share learning about EV charging patterns and explore implications for program design to engage customers, with lessons learned and best practices based on experience to date. Along with this, you will hear from ConEd and FleetCarma about ConEd’s innovative Smart Charge program that help customers reduce the cost of EV charging and automatically earn rewards through FleetCarma’s SmartCharge platform. It is one-of-a-kind EV program because the monitoring occurs at the vehicle rather than the station, and customers can track EV stats in real time at the vehicle. The program has helped realize quantifiable load shifts. Click to Read More Learning Objectives: Where and when are people charging electric vehicles and what are the implications for aggregating into a grid resource? What challenges and opportunities do electric vehicle charging patterns present for energy companies and grid operators? What are the most effective program design approaches to engage EV owners and to shape usage patterns? Learn how to maintain customer satisfaction in the face of complex technology. Understand the advantages of monitoring at the vehicle, rather than the station. Take away tips for tracking stats and incentivizing customers. Valerie Nibler Olivine Sherry Login Con Edison Eric Mallia FleetCarma 9:00 am Beneficial Electrification and Role of Innovative Rates to Manage Growth in Electricity Use Robin Lisowski from the Wisconsin Energy Conservation Corporation (WECC) will talk about the electric slide and movement toward beneficial electrification and programmatic synergies with energy efficiency, possible shift in measurement that accounts for both energy efficiency and emissions efficiency (“emiciency”), and opportunities to use rate designs to influence energy use. EVs are one of the primary drivers for beneficial electrification that help build load and increase load factors. In this session, Allison Hamilton, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) will discuss cooperative experiences and case studies on what coops are doing to implement innovative rate structures to encourage EV adoption and manage EV charging loads. Click to Read More Learning Objectives: Learn how to prepare for increased penetration of EVs. Understand what rate structures are best suited for encouraging EV adoption. Take home case study examples of what cooperatives are doing. Allison Hamilton NRECA Robin Lisowski Wisconsin Energy Conservation Corporation 9:30 am Lessons from Residential Customer Experiences with Time Varying Rates Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), with Research into Action, will present research findings on how residential customers reacted to marketing, education, and outreach (ME&O) approaches for Time-Of-Use rates and customer experience with these rates. The effort included ~3,500 residential customer surveys, qualitative focus groups, in-depth interviews, and online bulletin boards with customers. This presentation will cover initial findings on the impact of automatic TOU transition on customer awareness, understanding, satisfaction, engagement, opt-out rates, and more. Next, you will hear from Cadmus Group evaluation findings from PGE’s Flex Pricing Pilot that tested 12 different residential retail rates and behavioral DR on approximately 16,000 customers from 2016 to 2018. The evaluation involved collection and regression analysis of customer interval consumption data, interviews with utility and implementation contractor managers, and surveys with pilot customers. The evaluation provides many interesting findings, including several that standard economic theory does not predict and that support behavior-based models of customer decision-making. Click to Read More Learning Objectives: Take home the best ways to inform residential customers of automatic TOU transition. Understand various ways to effectively evaluate the effectiveness of your TOU default ME&O efforts. Learn which ME&O strategies increase and which ones decrease TOU opt-out rates. Learn why framing the participation decision as an opt-out choice by defaulting customers into treatment has large and lasting effects on customer participation. Understand why larger rebates did not yield more savings. Merlyn Xavier Pacific Gas & Electric Company Jordan Folks Research Into Action Jim Stewart Cadmus Carrie Lawrence Pacific Gas & Electric Company

Track 2 Co-Chair Nick Corsetti National Grid Co-Chair Dain Nestel ecobee 8:30 am Voice for Utilities By the end of 2017, 16 percent of adults in the U.S. owned voice assistant devices such as Amazon Echo and Google Home, a remarkable adoption rate considering the short history of the technology. Embedded voice assistant technologies like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant transform a speaker device into a smart home hub. Voice assistant devices provide a channel for utilities to interact with customers in addition to creating new value stream opportunities for utilities to expand beyond their traditional business. Click to Read More Learning Objectives: Learn about use cases for utilities (regulated and retail). Explore innovative opportunities for energy retailers and regulated utilities with the advent of voice assistance. Fei Wang GTM Research 9:00 am The Smart Home Study: Strategies for Distributed Energy Resource Management and Control Single-family residences are the front line in the proliferation of DERs) such as solar roofs, smart thermostats, EV charging stations and storage. However, most DERs operate independently, causing adverse impacts on the distribution grid such as two-way power flows and steep late-day increases in system load. The Smart Home Study shows customers, utilities, and energy service companies how to optimize the operation of DERs to maximize customer and grid benefits. Click to Read More Learning Objectives: Learn most effective utility and customer technology for managing DER. Understand how different tariffs impact customer DER load shapes. Take home best practices for orchestrating a variety of DER. Hunter Richards Alternative Energy Systems Consulting Stephan Barsun Itron Tapping the Potential of the Smart Home Over the next five years, the number of smart devices in our homes is expected to increase tenfold. AEP Ohio and Powerley will explore how utilities are tapping into the potential of the smart home, providing their customers greater convenience while generating more demand savings in the process by looking beyond HVAC. The presentation will detail the DR potential that exists across the smart home and outline the components of a “self-sustaining ecosystem". Click to Read More Learning Objectives: Take away case studies for driving deeper engagement in demand management utilizing the smart home. Learn practical steps to tap into the potential of the smart home today. David Tabata AEP Ohio Paul Wezner Powerley 9:30 am Using Residential HVAC-Load Control as a Flexible Physical Hedge Learn how Retail Electric Providers reduced their exposure to high wholesale-electricity prices in ERCOT last summer. Utilizing connected thermostats in the provider’s participating customer homes, they were able to automatically reduce the customers’ HVAC load in response to 5-minute real-time LMPs and strike prices based on the providers’ locational supply positions without impacting customer comfort. Using a rolling load forecast, based on hyper-local weather data and perpetual thermodynamic modeling, the providers were able to optimize day ahead purchases. This approach is more than demand response, it is a way for electricity providers to increase optimization of day ahead purchasing decisions, reduce real-time price risk, and increase opportunities to physically arbitrage price differences between day-ahead and real-time markets, while delivering comfort to customers and increased profitability to providers. Click to Read More Learning Objectives: Learn how Retail Electric Providers (REPs) can team with DER practitioners to mitigate price risk while adding value for their customers; Understand how to quickly respond to locational supply positions without affecting customer comfort. Rich Philip Duke Energy John Smith Crius Energy Jaden Crawford Whisker Labs

Refreshment Break in Sponsor Lounge

Lunch Buffet in Sponsor Lounge

Closing General Session

Co-Chair Laurie Duhan Baltimore Gas & Electric

Co-Chair Joseph Childs Eaton

Three Utility Approaches to Gas Demand Response
Utilities are just starting to use Demand Response to manage gas system constraints; Con Edison, National Grid, and Southern California Gas Company have all recently launched Natural Gas Demand Response Programs and Pilots. The three utilities will each give an overview of their Gas DR programs and discuss the different approaches they have taken, including the reasons for launching, an overview of the program design, results to date, as well as challenges they face and questions they are looking to answer in the early stages of these programs.

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Moderator Brett Feldman Navigant

Charles Umberger Con Edison

Owen Brady National Grid

Andrew Nih Southern California Gas Company

Treating the “Death by 1,000 Pilots Syndrome”: A Discussion
The pace of change in the utility ecosystem continues unabated, yet the processes and practices for validating new technologies and business models that will ostensibly help manage this change remain frustratingly stagnated; This phenomenon challenges vendors, who struggle to introduce new technologies in the face of persistent uncertainty, utilities, who are tasked with understanding how new developments will work at scale, and regulators, who must balance the pace of change with grid costs and reliability, alike; This panel will leverage RMI’s recent work on “Pathways for Innovation” that surfaced best practices in utility pilots, and include a strong dose of audience participation to further the industry-wide dialogue on overcoming the “Death by 1,000 Pilots Syndrome”.

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Moderator Mike Henchen Rocky Mountain Institute

Matt Carlson Aquanta

Roger Gray eSmart Systems

Chris Walls Baltimore Gas and Electric

Welcome to Minneapolis

Closing Remarks
Paul Miles, PECO an Exelon Corporation

Ice Cream Social with Utility Load Management Exchange