2.5 What Could or Should Other Jurisdictions Do?

2.5.1 “My jurisdiction is much simpler than California’s. Why should I pay any attention?”

Some jurisdictions have very limited numbers of DER systems already installed and there are few incentives to encourage more DER installations. The idea of including mandates for smart inverters or distribution resource plans seems unnecessary and excessively complicated. However, some possible issues to explore in this situation are:

• Maybe regulatory mandates are not important at this time, but possibly some of the “smart inverters” functionality could be useful in special situations. Since the DER manufacturers will soon have products that will be certified for many of these smart inverter functions, a requirement to include such functionality could be part of those special utility-customer agreements.
• Utilities and regulators could use some of the financial and technical data that are being discussed during the development of the California Distribution Resource Plans. The actual data would be different for different jurisdictions and some may not be relevant, but using the types of data as a checklist (see 2.4.2) could help utilities provide good arguments for their plans while regulators could use the checklist in their assessments of the utility distribution plans.
• Given that the advanced DER technology is available, some commercial or industrial customers may feel it could be in their best interest to offer certain ancillary services to the utility if the incentives were right. They might pressure the utility and/or regulators to allow them to either establish a customer agreement or develop a special tariff. Seeing what California or Hawaii or other States could provide guidelines for such discussions.
• The utility might become interested in providing some DER-based services, including owning and operating DER systems in “rent-a-roof” schemes. The utility could learn from these other States on both the challenges and the benefits of such efforts.