Meeting Load Growth in the Digital Economy

The future energy demand forecasts are focused on anticipated energy demands and the limitations of current generation assets on the grid and bulk power transmission infrastructure to meet the projected loads.  This session will discuss a paradigm shift in how we address those challenges by relying more on distributed energy resources (DERs), microgrids, and virtual power plants (VPPs) at the distribution level. These solutions can open up capacity on local grids, deliver power close to the demand centers, and avoid costly transmission upgrades and delayed retirement of old fossil generation.

While Hawai'i is a leader in implementing renewable DERs and energy storage as tools in the generation tool kit, VPPs have been challenging to implement. Panelists will discuss Hawai'i’s role as the living laboratory for using DERs to meet load growth and lessons learned from previous projects.