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PG&E told CPUC it is revamping distribution planning tools — ICA, GRIP portal and EIS Part 2
Summary
PG&E presented changes to distribution planning including a forward‑looking Integration Capacity Analysis (ICA 2), a revised GRIP public portal, and an Electrification Impact Study (EIS Part 2) that will feed planning and forecasting.
PG&E told a March 2025 CPUC workshop that it has retooled its distribution planning toolbox for an era of rapid electrification and high distributed energy resource (DER) adoption, with planned filings and pilots tied to the 2027 general rate case.
The utility said work in the current GRC cycle delivered three main customer‑facing tools: a distribution investment/referral framework (previously a deferral focus), an Integration Capacity Analysis (ICA) for hosting capacity, and a public Grid Resource Integration Portal (GRIP). Bill Peter, Senior Manager of PG&E’s Electric Planning Modernization Group, said the company is now pivoting ICA and related tools to be more forward‑looking and customer‑facing rather than solely historical.
Peter described changes to ICA methodology: earlier ICA runs produced many zero‑capacity results; PG&E performed “grid model management” and data cleanups that improved distribution‑level results and now is developing an ICA 2 that will incorporate forecast data, known loads and planned upgrades so results are more useful to customers seeking energization or interconnection.
PG&E also said it will expand a “load ICA” use case to surface potential capacity constraints earlier in the intake process so applicants know sooner whether upgrades will be required. The company aims to launch that intake‑stage tool by the end of 2025 and to report on its effect.
The utility said it will publish more robust scenario‑based forecasting in its Electrification Impact Study Part 2 (EIS Part 2). That study will include base, equity, flexibility and bottoms‑up scenarios for 2030 and 2040, with preliminary results expected in Q3 2025 and a final report in Q4 2025. PG&E said the study will be used to integrate scenario planning into its Distribution Planning and Execution Process (DPEP).
PG&E also described revisions to its public GRIP portal to make ICA and other planning outputs more accessible, add APIs for vendor use, and integrate the portal with interconnection and energization workflows. The company reported large growth in portal use in 2023–24 and said the new backend and API capabilities are necessary to support that demand.
In Q&A, PG&E said it expects ICA 2 to be comparable in computational scale to prior ICA runs and does not foresee needing large ongoing server expansions solely to maintain monthly refresh rates once the transition is complete, though it acknowledged some short‑term migration costs and warned new use cases (for example, very large numbers of limited‑profile interconnections) could increase costs.
PG&E said ICA costs and related IT/portal expenses will be documented in its GRC workpapers and in a DRP/GRIP memo account so parties can review them in the rate case process.
