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Q: What is Versant Power doing to support integration of more renewable energy to the grid, including solar?
Versant Power’s Distributed Generation team employs more than 20 people to guide developers and customers through the process of interconnecting solar arrays to the grid. This team of coordinators, engineers and project managers has three important roles. First, they evaluate each project to ensure it can be interconnected safely, for the good of that customer and their electrical equipment as well as that of their neighbors. Second, they assist customers in meeting interconnection requirements established by the Maine Public Utilities Commission. Finally, they design and build equipment to connect the projects to the grid, allowing customers to safely export energy to the local distribution system.
Since the Maine Legislature expanded distribution-level solar energy incentives in 2019, more than 1,800 solar projects of various sizes have been built within Versant Power’s footprint. This represents 166 megawatts of additional capacity across the 10,400 square miles of our service territory, with 350 megawatts of additional proposed solar energy in the interconnection queue.
Before 2020, Versant Power received a few dozen applications each year. This year, we’re receiving nearly three applications per day.
Our utility’s Maine Public District, which comprises most of Aroostook County, has a greater percentage of current and proposed solar projects than Hawaii and California – perhaps the highest penetration in the nation. For four hours on May 1, 2 and 3, 2024, our Fort Kent district was powered entirely by locally generated solar energy. The excess energy was exported to Canada.
The grid connects generation facilities to electricity users through transmission lines, substations and distribution lines. Utility distribution systems were designed to deliver energy one way, not to facilitate relatively large loads flowing from users back to the transmission system. However, individual rooftop or household-level solar facilities are generally designed to produce seven times the customer’s average annual load in order to generate enough energy for customers to financially make up for the fact that the sun does not shine all the time. Excess energy is exported back to the grid.
At Versant Power, our job is to ensure the grid can support that kind of power flow. Not surprisingly, there are places that it can’t accommodate bidirectional energy flows without significant upgrades. Our engineers identify these areas and determine the type of upgrades needed to ensure adjacent customers continue to have a reliable system.
Utilities are essential partners in enabling Maine’s energy future. We need engineers to study electrical system impacts, project managers to oversee necessary upgrades allowing interconnection, line workers to install new electrical lines connecting projects, electricians to upgrade controls, specialists to validate metering and billing, and coordinators to oversee the whole process and pull everyone together on behalf of customers.
The best first step to reducing your carbon footprint is maximizing your energy efficiency. Along with your electric utility, the Efficiency Maine Trust, the Public Utilities Commission, the Office of the Public Advocate are all resources that can help you understand different steps to take to use energy more wisely.
The electric grid is widely considered the most complicated machine ever built because we are all physically connected together through the electrical lines. Similarly, the interconnection process can be complicated to understand and navigate. To reduce our carbon footprint, we all have to understand the impact we have on one another.
