Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Grid Resilience topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Roseville Electric outlines summer-preparedness plan and pilots PowerFlex demand-response
Summary
Roseville Electric presented its summer preparedness plan, including vegetation management above CPUC requirements, contingency plans for EEA levels 1–3, staffing and communications protocols, and a PowerFlex pilot that reduced load by 6–8 MW in tests.
Tom Pontes, assistant director for Roseville Electric operations, presented the city's annual summer preparedness plan and described steps to mitigate heat-season risks to the grid.
Pontes outlined four plan objectives: identifying risks before peak heat, ensuring staff readiness and safety, coordinating wildfire-mitigation and vegetation management (he said Roseville trims to 10 feet where CPUC requires 18 inches), and maintaining robust communications during energy emergency alerts. He described EEA 1 as an early warning, EEA 2 as activation of demand response, and EEA 3 as severe conditions that could require planned curtailment of noncritical feeders.
Pontes also summarized a demand-response pilot called PowerFlex. In tests, enrolled customers' thermostats were lowered about four degrees and the program produced roughly 6–8 megawatts of load reduction. "We were in the 6 to 8 megawatts just for that program, which is pretty big for us," Pontes said. Staff said the program is being fine-tuned before full deployment.
Commissioners asked about past EEA activations; staff noted a near-miss in 2022 when the system moved close to EEA 3. Pontes said the utility has never reached EEA 3 in his 24 years with the organization and emphasized the importance of pre-season planning and a reserve dispatcher program to staff dispatch centers if needed.
