The New Mexico Public Regulation Fee is updating and enhancing the state’s interconnection guidelines. The modifications will likely be a aid for photo voltaic and storage installers and builders as they take away frequent ache factors, permit for speedier (extra knowledgeable) critiques and take extra benefit of superior know-how.
“New Mexico’s guidelines had not been up to date in over a decade and interconnection was turning into a serious obstacle to deployment of group photo voltaic, vitality storage, and different tasks within the state,” stated Sky Stanfield, legal professional for the Interstate Renewable Power Council (IREC). “The brand new guidelines are clear, sturdy, and monitor nationwide greatest practices in a variety of areas. This determination will allow the usage of new applied sciences and can facilitate environment friendly and secure interconnection of tasks going ahead.”
Some of the essential developments within the new rules, in keeping with IREC, is that they now acknowledge a category of tasks referred to as non- and limited-export tasks, by which controls are used to restrict whether or not or how a lot electrical energy is distributed from the DER system to the grid.
Recognizing and enabling this functionality is a key a part of capturing the advantages of vitality storage specifically. As applied sciences like vitality storage have outpaced DER interconnection guidelines, many export limiting tasks have confronted boundaries to interconnection as a result of the evaluate processes that utilities use are primarily based on inaccurate assumptions about how these methods will function.
The brand new guidelines acknowledge export limiting capabilities and set up applicable evaluate processes that safely and reliably evaluate these tasks in accordance with how they function. As a part of this, New Mexico turned the primary state within the nation to undertake a display screen to guage the impacts of the “inadvertent export,” that may happen in export managed methods beneath sure circumstances.
The brand new guidelines additionally set up a timeline and pathway for the usage of sensible inverters in New Mexico.
Sensible inverters are superior inverters that may sense circumstances on the grid and modify a DER system’s operation to help the steadiness of the grid (amongst different capabilities). The Fee dominated that beginning on March 28, 2023. all new inverters on DER methods will likely be required to be sensible inverters that adjust to the necessities of IEEE
Using sensible inverters can allow the grid to accommodate considerably increased ranges of DERs with much less want for pricey upgrades.
“These modifications are a serious milestone in adopting sensible inverter settings realized within the new IEEE 1547-2018 commonplace and transparently implementing them in New Mexico,” stated IREC Regulatory Program Engineer Midhat Mafazy, who offered technical steering on greatest practices on this space. “IREC applauds the NM PRC’s efforts to acknowledge and set up minimal necessities for producing amenities assembly IEEE 1547-2018, and to require oversight (by way of stakeholder engagement and Fee approval) of any remaining IEEE 1547-2018 settings.”
The brand new interconnection guidelines additionally embrace modifications to the screening processes that utilities use to guage the potential impacts {that a} proposed mission might have on the grid when deciding whether or not to approve it for interconnection.
Bigger tasks can now qualify for simplified and quick monitor evaluate processes, significantly in the event that they make the most of export limiting. Moreover, a typical however imprecise rule of thumb that’s used within the interconnection course of (“15% of peak load”) was changed with a extra exact display screen primarily based on extra related grid circumstances (“100% of minimal load”).
Utilities at the moment are required to trace information on the standing of interconnection requests and report on that information twice per 12 months.
Throughout the nation, even supposing interconnection delays are a typical problem for renewable vitality tasks, lack of knowledge and required reporting is a serious barrier to elevated accountability that might enhance the method. This monitoring requirement will permit the Fee to evaluate compliance with established interconnection processes and timelines.
Within the occasion that the interconnection evaluate course of determines {that a} mission can not interconnect with out pricey upgrades to gear on the grid, mission builders will now have a pathway to change their tasks in sure situations to deal with the system constraints recognized. This pathway might allow tasks to interconnect that in any other case would have needed to withdraw and reapply for interconnection evaluate, a course of that may add months or years to the event timeline.
Lastly, the brand new interconnection guidelines additionally open the door to extra equitable distribution of grid improve prices.
Traditionally in New Mexico, and most different states, if a proposed mission requires upgrades to the grid to soundly interconnect, the developer should pay the total price of these upgrades, despite the fact that subsequent tasks will profit from them. The Fee adopted new rule language that enables it “to think about, on a case by case foundation, whether or not a selected state of affairs could also be eligible for cost-sharing (whether or not amongst equally located candidates or in charges).”
Though the main points of such price sharing insurance policies will likely be developed in a future ruling, the choice to create a pathway for price sharing is notable and according to rising greatest practices across the nation.
Many of those practices are primarily based on suggestions developed by IREC and a team of expert partners beneath a multi-year project called “BATRIES,” which goals to cut back price and time boundaries to the secure and dependable interconnection of vitality storage with help from the U.S. Division of Power Photo voltaic Power Applied sciences Workplace.
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