A diverse group of national nonprofit organizations and industry thought leaders announced a new initiative to help evolve state regulatory processes for the power sector to keep pace with the dynamic energy needs of customers and develop more effective ways of working together to identify and deliver new solutions to those needs.
Renovate is convened by the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) and launched in partnership with the National Association of State Energy Officials and other leading electric industry and stakeholder groups (see the full list below).
The initiative’s vision is to enable the evolution of state regulatory processes and practices in order to address the scalable deployment of innovative technologies and business operating models that support the transition to a clean and modern energy grid.
“This groundbreaking initiative will help address the challenges in meeting customer needs and increased expectations for a modern grid enabled by new technologies, while continuing to provide clean, affordable, safe, and reliable electric service,” said Janet Gail Besser, Managing Director of Regulatory Innovation & Utility Business Models at SEPA.
“We are a partner of the Renovate Initiative because electricity system innovation must be accelerated in order to meet the many states’ policy objectives of bringing cost efficient, resilient and clean energy technologies to scale,” said National Association of State Energy Officials’ senior program director, Rodney Sobin. “We are excited to contribute to this important effort with our partners.”
To begin Renovate, a task force including commissioners, consumer and environmental advocates, legislators, and leaders from utilities, solution providers and state energy offices alongside initiative partners identified problem statements to guide the initiative’s focus. The problem statements include issues on the steep learning curve for all industry participants, managing system risk and uncertainty, managing increased rate of change and the balancing and cross-coordination of multiple priority sets.
Working with a task force of stakeholder representatives and partners, the next phase of the initiative entails identifying a set of solutions to designated problem statements, and identifying, assessing and benchmarking existing regulatory innovations—both domestically and globally—which will include the development and publication of key illustrative case studies.
For more information on the Renovate Initiative and to view the full list of partners and task force members, click here. To view the full press release, click here.