Grid Event Messaging in Markets with Abundant Wind and Solar Power

For our October 2022 event, the NorCal AEE Chapter was pleased to present our distinguished speaker Scott Hoppe. Scott is a geologist with a background in environmental reporting for hazardous waste sites, and the founder of Sabreez, PBC.

The recent critical peak demand event in California presents an opportunity to discuss the need for better messaging. The event was a success, albeit with room for improvement, but most consumers think the system is broken. The Clean Energy Factor- A consumer-facing proxy for grid conditions in markets with abundant wind and solar power – presents a more balanced messaging year-round showing people that California’s grid is meeting consumers’ need for clean energy to counterbalance the emergency messaging that people fear and dislike.

Sabreez uses real-time balancing-authority-level data (i.e. CAISO, PJM and ERCOT) to report grid conditions in a consumer-friendly format known as the Clean Energy Factor (CEF), which is a proxy for emissions data based on generation data for solar and wind power relative to power generation from fossil-fuel-burning plants. Through week-ahead hourly forecasting, it can be combined with smart-meter data to produce a monthly report for normative reporting and gamification. It is grid event messaging that informs people when energy is cleaner and may be used for marketing and project management purposes as well as to optimize distributed energy resources.