Kevin Sprague is vice president for engineering at Lunenburg-based utility Unitil, which provides gas and electric service in north Worcester County, along with Maine and New Hampshire.
Updated: July 22, 2024
Advice
Modernizing the electric grid
By Kevin Sprague
After months of careful planning and listening to residents, businesses, and community organizations throughout the Fitchburg area, Unitil submitted our Electric Sector Modernization Plan to the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities in late January. This was a significant milestone in what has been a very important process in planning for the future electric infrastructure in Massachusetts that supports the state’s energy climate goals.
The plan complements Massachusetts’ ongoing decarbonization efforts and provides a roadmap for how we can ensure all needed infrastructure is built in an equitable fashion.
Historically, system planning was first and foremost focused on ensuring electric service remained safe, reliable, and able to affordably manage the capacity needs of the region. However, any transition to a cleaner energy future requires the system to increase its capacity by as much as three to four times to meet the level of electrification load. This expected increase in load adds an entirely new dimension to planning: we need to build out new electric infrastructure in a manner which maintains safety, reliability, and affordability, but we must also pace this work appropriately alongside the expected load growth to avoid building investments before they are needed.
At the same time we increase capacity, we are focused on continuous improvement to grid reliability, communications, and resiliency. For us, it is not just about building up our system, but also about creating and enabling benefits in a way not disruptive to our customers’ energy needs. We are working to enable the increased, timely adoption of renewable energy and distributed energy resources (DER). We support energy storage and electrification technologies necessary to decarbonize the environment and economy.
Of course, some of this work is already ongoing. Programs like make-ready initiatives for electric vehicles, which will help businesses who want to add charging stations are already approved and available. We are enabling DER interconnections, or small-scale power generation projects like rooftop solar arrays.
One of the largest projects is replacing our Advanced Metering Infrastructure system, designed to provide more detailed and granular usage data in support of innovative rate structures such as electric vehicle rates or time of use rates. Currently, our metering provides customers information about daily use, but this change will create smaller intervals within the metering data to allow us to provide customers information on a granular level.
A significant portion of our Massachusetts service territory is designated in environmental justice communities, and we took strides to make this process as inclusive as possible. We offered translation services for Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese-speaking customers. We took these steps because it is important for customers to understand our collective roles in making the region prepared for grid modernization.
So, what’s next for our Electric Sector Modernization Plan? The filed plan is being reviewed and discussed through public hearings and technical sessions with the DPU. But that isn't the end of the conversation; in fact it’s just the beginning. There will be additional revisions to the plan over time, and we recognize that planning for the future is a holistic and iterative process. The process isn’t just us telling our stakeholders what’s happening but seeking a genuine dialogue.
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