• Posted: April 17, 2023
• 2023 Chicago Auto Show, Bob Hattier, Brian Haug, Chicago Auto Show, ComEd, Continental Energy Solutions, Denise Munoz, Elbert Walters III, ev, EV infrastructure, IBEW Local 134, Illinois IBEW Renewable Energy Fund, renewable integration, solar infrastructure

 

Join Chicago’s renewable energy experts for a panel discussion that originally took place at the 2023 Chicago Auto Show. Executive Director of Powering Chicago, Elbert Walters moderates a discussion between Bob Hattier, IBEW Local 134 business representative and executive director at Illinois IBEW Renewable Energy Fund, Brian Haug, president of Continental Energy Solutions, and Denise Munoz, director of strategic planning and innovation at ComEd.

In the fourth and final panel discussion, Walters guides these renewable energy experts through a discussion about EV charging infrastructure considerations for commercial properties.

Hattier: What we’re talking about here today is essentially, if you’re interested in some of the other options that may be out there and I’m going to focus on residential solar power as one option. If you’re not familiar with solar power, it is generating electricity through the photovoltaic (PV) effect, with the sun and chemistry. And we’re able to harness that energy and utilize it for any purpose that we need to. We can design a system around one individual actual appliance, or we can tie it into the entire structure that we need.

We have lots of different reasons why people are choosing this. One is the environmental benefit, the fact that you’re doing your part to create clean electricity that is not harming your neighbors and future generations. There’s also another benefit associated with solar, which is energy independence, the ability to generate your own electricity for your own purposes. That could also, tying in with storage, provide you backup power when you need it.

But a lot of people are going solar and you’ve probably seen this a lot more in recent years due to the economic benefits. I like to say that solar hits all three and we need to focus on all three. But most people I know make decisions with their wallets and they’re focusing on the return on investment. And that’s the important thing. Solar can have a return on investment because everything you’re generating you’re not purchasing from the utility. So there is a value there.

One thing to keep in mind, what’s driving a lot of the financial benefits is incentive programs, whether that’s from the federal government or the state of Illinois. Hopefully soon with the utility, we’ll see. What we need to know about those incentive programs is that they are payable to the system owner and there are other ways of getting solar. If you lease a system, you do not own it so you will not receive any of the federal or state incentives. So it’s very important that when you’re pursuing your options that you look at purchasing these systems. I kind of look at it as when I walk into a store and someone’s coming up to me to try to sell me something or someone’s calling my phone to sell me something or sending an ad to my phone. It’s probably working out in their favor more than is working out in my favor.

Before I do that, tying this back to EVs, we do have to remember that an electric vehicle is really a mobile energy storage device. We do have the capability of using that energy stored for transportation for other purposes, whether it be backup power or in the future actual bi-directional energy flow with the utility and pairing that EV with solar, now we’re generating our own fuel. I don’t think we’re allowed to make gasoline in our garages, but we are able to make our own electrons. So this is a very important thing to pay attention to.

So going through the process here, what you always want to start with is meeting with a licensed, bonded and insured electrical contractor. The reason for that is these are electrical systems. Just like that, electric vehicle infrastructure is just like any other electrical appliance in your houses. And that electrical contractor has the capability of working on all of those different devices in your home. And it’s really the time to have that conversation about what you’re thinking about now, but also thinking about for the future.

Adding energy storage or solar or an EV to your current electrical service may require an upgrade. If you’re also considering a whole home, a luxury, whole home electrification, you’re removing natural gas for your property, that’s a conversation you want to have when your first meeting with your electrical contractor, so they can keep that in mind when they’re sizing their electrical service.

They could also provide examples on how to improve the efficiency of the electrical devices in your home. Whether it’s lighting retrofits, lighting upgrades, getting into other electrical appliances there. If you want to move forward after that consultation, that’s when you go through a site assessment process. You want to have your home evaluated not just on the electrical service side, but if you’re planning a rooftop solar, what is the structural integrity of that roof? How old is the roof? All these are things that have to be taken into account. I know I’ve seen companies that go through and just look online and look at your property online and say, that’s great for solar. But they haven’t gone out there and don’t know that your roof is 25 years old and it’s not going to be appropriate for solar. The electrical contractors are also going to know any codes or zoning requirements that are going to be unique to the municipality that you live in. Some of them are beneficial to the customer because they have a solar zoning ordinance that streamlines the permit. Others may have more strict requirements that may not be applicable in all locations. So that’s also very important.

And then we get into the installation process and we want to make sure that when we’re getting these systems installed that we’re utilizing a qualified workforce, one that not only understands the components that are being installed at that moment, but how the entire system all ties together. So you want to make sure when you’re working with your electrical contractor that that workforce truly understands the work.

Finding a contractor through Powering Chicago is a great way to do that. They’ll also go through any material specifications of the electrical equipment and then they’ll lead into the inspection. You want to have that electrical contractor there for the inspection, and that’s really public safety. That’s your municipality saying, ‘hey, we want to have another set of eyes on this to make sure that that system was installed properly’.

That seems like the end. But it’s not. What’s next? All the filing for the incentive programs. You need to work with the contractor that truly understands the tax credits and how that can benefit you and also the SREC program, which is our state incentives and any future incentives that may be down the line. And that’s still not the last point.

We have to consider that these systems last 25 years. The energy storage systems are maybe a little bit less than that. Solar is 25. We need to make sure that there are visual inspections, operations and maintenance, warranty issues, all that should be discussed as well. And that’s really where a contractor isn’t just handing this over to you. It’s and it’s really a partnership you’re entering into because they want to make sure that that system operates well. I have a few more points here, but I think I’ll pass it down and we’ll come back to questions.

Munoz: Good evening, everyone. My name is Denise Munoz. I’m the director of strategic planning and innovation for ComEd. And I actually was the director of energy efficiency, so I’m going to work a lot of the energy efficiency conversation into this topic, because I do believe it’s very, very crucial to customers who are considering solar.

But before I get into that, our job is to be a trusted energy advisor for our customers. You know, we encourage folks to come to ComEd, when they want to talk to us about clean energy options. So if any of you were here earlier this morning, I talked about EVs and, you know, our EV tool calculator. But what I also want to talk to this group about today is our solar calculator, since that’s the conversation we’re having.

But before I do go there, as I mentioned, energy efficiency is very, very important. It’s an investment to go solar, energy efficiency can be done, you know, pretty cost effectively. And we do have a number of rebates for those available today. So, you know, very much going to the store, looking at lighting on the shelves. We work with a number of contractors to provide incentives. If you’re looking at new HVAC equipment in your home, we can also, you know, you can come in and schedule a home energy assessment. So again, we’re coming in to talk to see what you have in your opportunities, the dollars that are available for you to make that investment more cost effective.

Once you’ve done that, then yes, definitely go to our website. We have a solar calculator as well. And even though I can’t tell you the age of your roof, our tool does look at and you can put in your address, if you’re tied to your MyAccount through ComEd, we can also load the usage in your home. But it will look at the aerial view of your home to see if it’s in a good orientation, if you have a lot of shading. So it can just kind of even tell you from an aerial perspective, is my home a good candidate for solar? If you’ve got a lot of trees and probably not, I would say stick with the trees because that helps cool your house.

But the one point that Bob mentioned is, you know, if you are going to make a private investment in solar, we do highly encourage the use of qualified electricians. And then if you’re planning to interconnect your system, it’s very, very important that you fill out an interconnection agreement. Contractors can advise you as such because we are very concerned about the safety of our workers as well. Like if there are outages, these are you know, you’re a generator essentially. And, you know, we want to make sure that our linemen, you know, are safe and we know where these projects are at. But we’re very, very invested in delivering reliable service to our customers and operating a very reliable grid for everyone.

Going back to the solar tool, you can go on the tool, find out what’s eligible for your project and if you know, for some reason solar is not right for you because you maybe you live in an apartment or multi-family dwelling units, we also offer what is called community solar. So we’re working with larger developers for solar farms. And you can actually offset and purchase some kilowatt hours that are being produced by those solar installations. So in a sense, you are receiving solar to your home, it’s just coming from a larger community solar project. Our customers are saving with that as well. My understanding is we’ve just completed our 75th community solar project and we’re continuing to work on that more. So we’re really excited about that.

Haug: My name is Brian Haug and I’m the president of Continental Energy Solutions. Continental is a full service electrical contractor. We are an IBEW signatory contractor and affiliated with NECA as well, the National Electrical Contractors Association. But our focus for what Continental does is on the commercial side. But I will tell you, even if you’re thinking about doing solar on the commercial side, what Denise said about energy efficiency is the first step to take. That’s where you’re going to get the best bang for your buck is switching your fluorescent lights or incandescent lights to LED and taking care of some of the other big loads that are in your facility before you start investing in a solar array.

But what we focus on is, think of commercial, large scale, big box Wal-Marts, Target stores, Home Depots and other large-scale commercial and industrial solar solutions Continental designs and installs those and maintains them for years to come. But one thing many people don’t know about solar is that if this if the grid goes down, which it doesn’t very often, our grid is very steady here in the Chicagoland area. But if the grid were to go down for a storm or something, you might think, ‘well, I still have power because I’ve got a solar array’. And the fact is that the solar shuts down, too. It’s a requirement that it does that, so you don’t generate electricity and put it back out on the grid and hurt the guy that’s outside trying to fix the power outage. So solar goes down.

The only way to bring a solar array back to life if the grid is down, is to have some sort of a generation source inside your facility. And that’s where large scale batteries come in. And we are doing a lot of work here in Illinois. There are fantastic incentives for solar and storage here in Illinois. There’s even federal incentives for solar and storage that just came possible through the Inflation Reduction Act. But what a solar solution paired with a battery can do is one, it can provide a microgrid for your facility to keep it up and running if the grid does go down. And when the grid is up and running, the batteries can be used for a couple of other things. One is reducing some of the charges on your electric bill. This is on the commercial side again. It can be used to reduce some of the charges on your electric bill by participating in some of the wholesale energy markets. And it can also generate a revenue stream for your business by allowing the utility to use the energy in your battery to help stabilize the grid. It’s called frequency regulation, and there’s a few other uses that are out there that the utility can use and pay you a revenue stream.

So with these large scale batteries and what I’m saying, large scale batteries, think about, it’s not something that’s going to fit in your garage. These are basically the size of the semi containers that are sitting right here behind me. Think of Tesla and Samsung, there’s a few other names that we use, but they are in the megawatt size, so they’re very large. But great solutions for a company when you’re trying to meet some of your ESG goals, your environmental goals.

A lot of companies now are trying to reduce their carbon footprint. Right. That’s a big focus, reducing your carbon footprint. So solar, of course, does because you’re using energy from the sun to utilize in your facility instead of using energy that’s being generated from coal or natural gas power plants. But the batteries also help offset some of the emissions that are taking place from some of the peaker plants and such that are used in the electric grid that we have here in the United States. So companies can utilize solar and storage to help their scorecard for environmental emissions.

Now, how does car charging play into this? You know. The second, maybe it’s the first largest producer of emissions is the automotive industry. So not only can we reduce our carbon footprint with solar and storage, but of course driving EVs. And I was an early EV adopter. I’ve been driving an electric vehicle since 2013 and I have one of the first versions of the Blink charger in my garage and it’s still working, thank you very much. But, you know, parlaying the solar and storage and and electric vehicles into this entire footprint of a Wal-Mart or a Target or Abt Electronics, for example. Perhaps you’ve bought electronics from them, up in Glenview they have a 500-kilowatt Tesla battery storage solution. They have three megawatts of solar on their roof, and they have a whole bunch of Tesla chargers and a few Chargepoint chargers out in front of their facility as well. And they collect their rainwater and use that for other purposes as well. So there is a lot that can be done with solar storage and EVs.

Walters: How would renewable energy and battery storage benefit a community critical facility, your school, the hospital and some of those large spaces? How would that be able to benefit those spaces?

Haug: One of the things about batteries is they are not yet listed to provide emergency backup power for hospitals and other places that have critical needs. But there are several clinics that we’re working with right now in the Chicagoland area that don’t have the surgical needs and the backup power requirements that you’d get from a diesel generator. And they’re switching their diesel generators out to battery storage to provide them the microgrid solutions and reducing their carbon footprint. This particular hospital group’s board took an internal look at themselves and thought, you know, we’re all about health. Health of people and health of the environment. Why do we have these diesel generators sitting out here that are belching out emissions? Let’s see if we can find a better solution. And that’s one perfect solution that they’ve found to switch over to batteries.

Walters: And as a follow up, because we are here from EVs, how might battery storage play a role with the nation’s transition to electric vehicles and the demand for fast charging stations?

Haug: Sure. As an EV driver, fast charging is critical for getting over range anxiety. When you’re driving long distances, you have to be able to charge quickly and keep on going. So you’re not sitting there for hours, but the grid is ever expanding and ever growing. When you’re driving cross-country, there are going to be places that aren’t well-served by public utilities. And there are solutions out there, though, that we have worked on that utilize energy storage for that purpose. They have, instead of spending millions of dollars to do grid upgrades, say out in the middle of nowhere to get fast charging. You can use energy storage to supplement the grid until the adoption of EV continues to grow and the grids can expand to support those chargers. So large scale energy storage, like I said, having containers like the one behind me full of batteries can certainly support fast charging as the EV adoption continues to grow.

Hattier: I’ll just add one thing. Another benefit of storage with EV charging is when we get into fleet charging. So if we think about delivery fleets like the Amazon EVs that are out there now or school busses as they go electric, the postal service is going electric, when all these vehicles come back from the route and they’re plugging at the same time, that’s going to be a very large demand on that facility and the electrical service and in some cases could lead to demand charges, which would be increased cost associated with that energy. So having the energy storage on site can help supplement that added draw, plugging all these vehicles in at the same time.

Walters: I do have another question before we get to questions from the audience. When it comes to home insulations, do we have a model of a solar installation that incorporates EV charging? Is that something that consumers should be considering if they have certain limitations and what would that look like for them?

Hattier: That’s a great point. If you didn’t get a chance, definitely go into our truck after this and you can see the device we’re talking about. There’s one manufacturer that has a solar inverter, so it’s sized a 40 amp solar inverter for a 200 amp panel. It has a built-in Level 2 EVSE into the disconnect. So what that does is, if you’re integrating two different technologies into the same electrical service, it allows you to use one two pole 40 amp circuit breaker for both devices. So if the solar is generating and the car is not being charged, it operates just like a solar inverter, but as soon as you plug the connector into the vehicle, now it operates as EVSE or supply equipment.

The other thing it does is if you are charging during the day, it’s the only way you’re going to get solar power kind of directly into your vehicle. Now, the inverter is going to be taking DC energy from solar, turning it into AC power. The car is going to take that AC and turn it back into DC to store it in the vehicle. But if it’s plugged in during the day while the sun is shining, you are getting solar energy directly into your vehicle.

Walters: All of that sounds kind of technical, and I’ve been an electrician for 23 years. So for the customers and the individuals that are sitting here in the audience, who should they be considering and what kind of accreditations should they be looking for, for someone who’s looking to install these technologies in their home?

Hattier: You want to start with your licensed, bonded and insured electrical contractor. The workforce that they’re going to employ, the qualified workforce that we offer through IBEW Local 134, you’re going to be working with electricians that have gone through training in all aspects of electrical work and electrical safety.

In the second year of their apprenticeship, they’re actually learning solar power. They’re getting experience on the rooftops. They’re doing this work pretty much right from the beginning, which is great. We also have partnerships with high schools where we’re actually offering that training before they get in the apprenticeship as well, which is also good.

But when it comes to looking into getting this work done, the qualifications beyond the contractor is that they have to be registered with the Illinois Commerce Commission. So with the state of Illinois, there is a certification as a Distributed Generation Installer that’s required completion of a Department of Labor electrical apprenticeship program is one of the pathways to achieve that certification. So all of our contractors will meet that, and that’s one thing you’d look for that’s also required by the utility for interconnection and by the state incentive programs. So that’s a big one.

For electric vehicle charging, we have EVITP which is the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Training Program. That’s another certification specific to EVs. You can find a list of our contractors that meet that if you go to the Powering Chicago website or if you go to evitp.org, you can find a list of approved contractors all across the country.

Walters: Denise, I have a question. Can you give us an idea of what the impact will be on the grid with all of this new technology that we’re looking at? And is ComEd’s grid resilient enough to take that?

Munoz: We are one of the most reliable, reliable grids in the country. And we’ve been investing in it for over 10 years. With the evolution of smart meters and a smart infrastructure, we’ve got smart substations, you know, so we are just prepared for this evolving energy market. And one thing I didn’t really focus on in this conversation was the EVs. It’s new and exciting work. And we’re definitely monitoring the usage patterns and such. But yes, I can’t stress enough, though, if you are considering any type of interconnection of a generation system in your home, please talk with your contractors who are doing your installation. They can help guide you.

We also have a lot of information on our website about how to safely interconnect your system. I really appreciate you reinforcing the point about the safety of our linemen. It’s very critical. If there should be a storm or an outage that we’re again aware of where these systems are because it could put what we call back feet on the line. And that’s very much a concern for the safety of the linemen.