The Health Pulse

[MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER 1: Hello, and welcome to a new episode of Electrifying AI. Our mission is to provide a venue for clean energy enthusiasts to gain up-to-date insights on the latest developments taking shape in the electricity sector. Along the way, we'll help demystify the connection between the greatest machine ever built, the electric grid, and the greatest enabler of our time, data analytics. To help us do that, we'll have a series of special guests this season who hold a variety of different roles throughout the electricity industry.

For today's episode, we're excited to welcome someone who is helping drive us toward the electricity system of the future. My friend, Ahad Esmaeilian, is the director of business development for Avangrid, which is a diversified energy and utility company that boasts about $30 billion in assets and operations in 25 US states and dozens of countries. He has earned a PhD from Texas A&M and a master's degree from universities in both the United States and his home country of Iran. And while Ahad's daily focus is to work across the industry to advance the clean energy cause through the interconnection of wind, solar, and other utility scale renewable energy resources, his academic and professional careers have largely focused on digital grids. That means we have plenty of things to talk about. Ahad, first of all, welcome to Electrifying AI

AHAD ESMAEILIAN : Hi Sal, thank you so much for inviting me. Thank you for the introduction. Appreciate that. I wanted to, first, say hi to all the audience here, and I am very happy to be part of this episode.

SPEAKER 1: Excellent, so let's get into it then Ahad. So I always think it is interesting to hear how folks find their way into the electricity industry. And Ahad, I understand that this is a family affair for you, so tell us more about what led you to where you are today.

AHAD ESMAEILIAN : I have an older brother. He is about 10, 11 years older than me. By the time I was in middle school, he was already in university, and he was pursuing a career in the power system. So once I get to high school, and I was starting to think about what future I'm going to pick, he was already in his job. And he used to work for an engineering company, designing and implementing substation and transmission lines. So whenever I was away from school I used to go visit him in Tehran, and many times it happened for me to go with him to substations, see on the spot, building and construction of equipment in the substation or transmission system, and so on.

I ended up liking it a lot. That when I got to University I already knew what I want, and fast forward about 15 years now, I am still in this industry. And I am happy with the decision that I made way before even I joined university.

SPEAKER 1: So it sounds like it's in your DNA then, right?

AHAD ESMAEILIAN : One may say.

SPEAKER 1: Excellent. So then after you finish your PhD, Ahad, you spent some time working at NYPA, and now you're with Avangrid. So give us some insights into, or an overview, of what Avangrid is doing in the areas of clean energy and digital grids, and before you do that, I also hear there is a story, a very interesting story, that you have to tell us about NYPA, as well. Our listeners are curious to hear that, as well

AHAD ESMAEILIAN : I don't know if they are but for sure. Before I turn into more serious stuff, I'll make that the story for you again. Sal, I know that you're already aware of it. When I first joined NYPA, very warm culture and environment to work with, great colleagues, great projects that I work along. But what we had during the time was that we had these Fridays to be more casual. People to start the day a little bit more chill, and I thought, OK, let's do something funny. People used to wear jeans, short sleeves, having more casual pretty much.

SPEAKER 1: So for our listeners this is pre pandemic, right, so now it's the norm.

AHAD ESMAEILIAN : Absolutely, Yeah, absolutely. It was back in 2017, for the reference. So what I did was let me do something a little bit more creative and bring a smile to a lot of faces. So what I did was I started thinking about maybe having a t-shirt, designing something creative on it. I started looking online, and I actually happened to find something, which I brought it now with me, too. This t-shirt, I found it online, I don't know if the audience can see it, but it says NYPA, which stands for New York Power Authority, supposedly.

But then on the bottom it says, "Not Your Personal Army." So that was my funny joke in those days, and it ended up being so famous that pretty much everyone in the organization knew about a person who wears this shirt. Maybe they didn't know me, but they knew that such a thing exists. And I ended up even being spotted by, Gil Quiniones, our CEO in NYPA. So I hope that Gil not ended up watching this video, or I'm a big problem.

SPEAKER 1: We'll make sure to tag him. How's that?

AHAD ESMAEILIAN : That's probably good. So That's about it. But if you want me to start, maybe, talking about what I did in Avangrid, in NYPA, or, maybe, I think your question was around what we are doing at Avangrid

SPEAKER 1: Yes. And the clean energy and digital space. So I would love to get your insights on that.

AHAD ESMAEILIAN : Absolutely. Avangrid, as you might know, is a clean energy, sustainable leader across us. We are the third largest renewable generator and operator. We have more than 7 and 1/2 gigawatts of solar and wind operational in us. And we are the leader in offshore industry. The first large-scale offshore project that is happening now in us belongs to Avindgrid that's part of a joint venture with another company. And the project is called Vineyard Wind.

We also have a bunch of other offshore projects in different stages. We have Parkman city. We have Kitty Hawk. They are extremely, I would say, active In the offshore industry. And as you might be familiar, we are also tied up with Iberdrola as our parent company, the Spanish giant. The are among the top few utilities across the world. And many times the combination of the work that they help and we do together is going to even end up in something better.

I also wanted to discuss a little bit about our networks. We also have another branch of our company. One is Renewables the other one is Networks, which is pretty much the traditional utility space. We have territories across North East US. We have New York. NYSEG and RG&E are two of our operating companies over there. We have Central Maine Power in Maine, and we have United Illuminating in Connecticut and we also have four additional gas companies in those regions.

In addition, as you might have heard the news over the past couple of months, we are in the process to acquire PNM Resources, which is in New Mexico and part of Texas. And the merger is ongoing, pending some of the regulatory approvals and so on. And when it comes to the networks, which I am part of that team. We have done a lot of work in the distribution side, with the automation, with different smart grid initiatives, which I will explain, I guess, as we go through the conversation.

SPEAKER 1: Absolutely. I just on the offshore wind part for the audience here in the United States, we hear a lot of action around what's going on in the space in the Northeast of the United States. Do you see offshore wind becoming active In the West Coast as well?

AHAD ESMAEILIAN : What a great question. Yes. The answer is yes. Because it is slightly different nature, It's probably going to be slightly later in time. But it is already ongoing. As a matter of fact, just today, I was reading news on the Boem website that says the Biden Administration has resolved some of the issues. There was an issue with one of the potential call areas that has some overlap with Department of Defense and naval territory, which that has been resolved. And based on the news, it seems like next year, around this time, we would have the first auction for the lease areas, both in the central region in California and also in the north part of the Pacific, on the north side of the California coast.

So it is going to happen. And the reason why I said it is it's slightly different is because of the depth of the ocean, the Pacific Ocean, which dramatically increases if you go 10 miles off of the shore. You would have about 2,000 feet or even more depth, and the traditional, the fixed-bottom offshore, turbines are not designed for such an implementation. Those are going to be much shallower waters that's going to be for them. So here you're going to have the floating offshore.

While I am not a floating offshore expert, I know there are a couple of issues over there with the floating offshore. Not issues, but elements that made it being slightly-- First of all, the technologies is newer, compared to fixed offshore. Second, maybe some issues with the logistics, with the global supply chain. And, overall, there are much less examples out there. And maybe another reason is California has started a couple of years later because of all these reasons. So maybe within the next two to five years, we are going to start seeing much more developments on that space. Hopefully, next year after the auction is started, you're going to see major players and, hopefully, us being in that space trying to start our assessment of the region and moving forward with the requirements that Boem has in place for this area.

SPEAKER 1: Excellent, Excellent, yes. And folks who are listening or tuning into this Boem is actually the Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management. That's the organization Ahad was referring to there. So, Ahad, it sounds very exciting to hear about the work you're doing and also how the grid is evolving. But many of our listeners who work at electric utilities might have concerns about grid inertia, as this transition continues forward. How should the industry address that? And especially in light of the fact that more and more of these renewables are coming online. And, perhaps, even for those that do not know grid inertia, maybe if you can even give just a brief introduction into what grid inertia is and why that matters.

AHAD ESMAEILIAN : Sure. Great question Sal. It's absolutely an important topic, and that industry is now facing and trying to answer to it. Grid inertia has been-- once you look into the traditional system, you have these giant synchronous machines, which are, regardless of the type of generation and all the different type of fossil fuel generation, they rely on synchronous machine. And these synchronous machines, given their size, given they were within nature, they provide stability to the system, or inertia to the system. And that inertia is extremely important when you were talking about fault or oscillations or different natures, like power swing type of oscillations happening in the system. And that inertia helps to damp those type of oscillations.

So now that you're replacing the traditional generation units and synchronous machines with solar and wind, which rely on inverter-based generation, you are losing that inertia. You are losing the elements that provide inertia. So all of a sudden, if for any given reason, whether it is fault or whether it is an outage or something that changes the supply and demand balance, In extreme scenario where you don't have enough inertia in the system, that oscillation may turn into a blackout. So experts are now facing this challenge, and there are solutions to it. There are these facts device that can provide-- Beside other benefits and, now with maybe even the modular fact's device on top of the traditional ones, beside adding additional benefits and flexibility to transmission operation, they could also provide sort of a VAr support to the system and also help with the damping of those situations.

In addition to that, energy storage is now getting more and more cost effective. Again on top of their original usage for the system, which everyone is now concerned about having energy storage coupled with solar and then to provide-- to remove that intermittency nature of these renewable resources, they can also be deployed with the proper control algorithm on top of them could provide a sort of a inertial replication to the system. Another way of dealing with it could be using more and more HVDC lines, especially the voltage source controlled ones, which could provide a lot of benefit. Among all of that besides being more providing the black star type of services and ancillary services, you could also deploy them, such that, in this kind of situation, help with the damping of those oscillations.

So there are ways to deal with it. But if they don't pay attention and if-- which we do. I'm not saying that we don't. You would have probably ended up having problems. So it is good that we are now trying to leverage the existing technology and the new technologies to answer this problem. And also providing additional benefits to other functionalities that the grid system requires.

SPEAKER 1: Thank you, Ahad, for that very well defined explanation of that phenomenon that exists. And it sounds like what's exciting is that it sounds like even energy storage can somehow replicate or provide that artificial inertia that may be lacking because of the deployment of inverter based renewable technologies. So very, very interesting stuff, and we're excited to keep following up on it. Now, Ahad we recently talked with the CEO from SEPA, the Smart Electric Power Alliance, Julia Hamm, about how consumers have more options than they've had ever before.

And we also spoke with Duke University's Fuqua School of Business Dean, Bill Boulding, who told us why the business community is taking decarbonization seriously. Now as a result of all that, how can utilities address everything that is happening behind the meter today.

AHAD ESMAEILIAN : It's a great question, and it probably requires three hours of conversation. I we don't have that luxury here. I try to be brief. And I would start with a good example. I have been lucky to be part of it. Back in 2016 time frame, as part of New York REV Initiative, utilities in New York has formed something they call it as a joint utility. And one of the tasks that they have been asked by the commission in New York was to develop something called distribution system implementation plan. DSIP as an abbreviation for it. And that was pretty much putting the structure and defining what the grid of future going to look like.

And what you see today many of the even detail elements that have been identified in the first draft of DSIP by each of these investor owned utilities in New York. And me being part of the smart grid team in Avangrid and in New York, I have the luxury of working on this and being part of the joint venture team. And a lot of elements of it is kind of what we are now, today, talking about. What at the end going to turn a utility into a DSP, distribution system platform. And that's the ultimate goal that has been identified through this DSIP process.

So I'm going to discuss some of the details of it, but, again, it's going to be very time consuming. So within the DSIP, we identified three main functionalities for the utility. And if they can build that functionalities, they are going to be able to transform themselves to a DSP, to be operator of grid of future. These three are namely the interconnection planning pillar, the grid operation pillar, and the customer service pillar. The first pillar, the planning, is going to be a bunch of software and tools that are being developed to deal with the forecasting of the load, to deal with the control, and also having DERMS functionality for elements, like solar, behind the meter storage, front the meter storage, utility scale solar, DRs, or even for understanding what is happening behind the meter with solar arrays and energy storage and also, now, with EV chargers.

So one element is going to be this planning. The other elements is more into the distribution system. The grid operation where you have all the AMIs across the system. You would have your distribution system elements, like transformers, like switches, and so on, all being automated and being able to control them from a distribution control center with ADMS software tools.

And then the third pillar is the customer engagement and customer service Pillar. You need to communicate properly all these changes with customers. You have to provide proper means to connect customers with third parties, like example could be a third-party customers wants to participate in a demand response. If you have a platform, set it up, which, in this case, we did provide this platform and also like a phone app doing exactly the same thing that the website provides to connect that customer with the third party demand response aggregator who provides that service. And that is the same for energy storage if given a commercial customer wants to have an energy storage, which shaved their peak. But also use it for other times not just for the peak shaving, and then they can connect it with an aggregator. An aggregator helps them to generate some revenue from market participation and so on.

So these are the three pillars. A lot of smaller elements are within each of these parts. And I would be happy to specifically address if you have questions about any item within what I described

SPEAKER 1: Definitely. New York has been very active in this and, definitely, California. Could you see this happening in other parts in the US, and, for that matter, around the world where utilities are looking at how to turn their existing distribution networks into these platforms of the future, where so much happens than what may be happening today?

AHAD ESMAEILIAN : My answer is, yes, I think it's going to happen. Obviously, some of the states like you mentioned, New York and California, might be ahead of the game, given their nature and a lot of other reasons. But I have been seeing over the past couple of years that different utilities across the United States are starting to establish renewable goals within their IRP planning documents. So that tells me that they are in the path to also achieve at least some level of DSP functionality, because it is almost impossible to have 50%, 70%, 100% of renewable energy without actually adopting some, or maybe a lot, of the functionalities, which a distribution system platform provides.

So I would say definitely, yes, in the United States. Different parts of countries, different parts of the world, I believe Europe is now even a little bit ahead of US, in that sense, even though US started earlier and had the upper hand. But, again, at least both sides are moving shoulder to shoulder, and you are seeing that the type of conversation here in US, also in Europe and different parts of the world. I assume they are also going to, eventually, get to this point.

SPEAKER 1: OK. OK. So thanks Ahad for your perspectives on the DSP side of the story. Now, let's shift into an area I'm very excited about, and you know that we love analytics and data here at SAS and Electrifying AI. So how can the electricity industry harness the power of data analytics and AI to adapt to all the changes that are happening? Some of which you, rightly so, discussed in our episode already today. And more importantly, if you can also share with us how these advances in AI and machine learning could be applied, especially in relevance to wind and solar technologies, which is so close to the heart of what you do at work. So please, any insights that you can share there.

AHAD ESMAEILIAN : I think this is probably one of the most exciting times that folks within the realm of AI could have expected or electric industry. I think there are a lot of different areas that AI can help with. I mean I just have touched on the load forecasting, as an example, in my previous conversation. I'm just going to go a little bit more detail on that. Think about now all these behind the meter devices. Energy storage might be there. Solar generation. Rooftop electric.

SPEAKER 1: Electric vehicles.

AHAD ESMAEILIAN : Someone might have electric vehicle and have a charging behind the meter. So with all of that, now you assume even if you have an AMI installed at the customer location with all these behind the meter elements, you don't have visibility into the behind the meter on what's happening. And that's important for utility to know why, because all of a sudden, if you replicate that one customer to a significant amount of customers within a feeder, you have no idea how much generation that feeder needs.

So, for example, if an event like having a week of cloudy weather, you lose you behind the meter solar. All of a sudden, you realize that, so far, you would have thought that this load and this feeder has not grown by 5%. But now all of a sudden, you see with the lack of those solars you see 30% increase. So you're probably going to have to have a load shedding on that feeder, or you probably, if you are not on top of the job, you may actually lose your transformer or something because of that.

So it's very important for planning purposes that you know what's happening behind the meter. An AI is the tool for you. So if you have data coming in from AMI, imagine that you have a lot of AMIs across the system, a lot of data already you have in place. You would be able to understand what is exactly happening behind the meter. What is the base load. What is the solar generation. What is the characteristics of the EV charger load and segregate those and have a better understanding of this base load over this next 10 years is going to grow by 20%, not just by 5%. The reason why I say 5% because there are these solars behind the meter.

So you plan properly. That's an example of AI being helpful. Obviously, a ton of other areas that you can use AI, like you can use AI for control of the energy storage, for example, to maximize the benefit of an energy storage. One of the arguments at this point, while energy storage is a still costly, so to speak and relatively, is that you have to maximize the benefits of how can you do it. You can have energy storage that shave your peak, reduce the customer bill, but at the same time, that storage alongside many other storage together as aggregation, they can be built into the market in different fashions to help with the capacity, with the ancillary services, voltage and frequency of it energy arbitrage, and so on.

AI can help you to optimize that revenue generation. Another example could be location of energy storage within the system. So you can use AI to understand with all these different elements of system moving around all at the same time having concerned about load growth, having concern about where the energy storage make more sense from the revenue generation from market, and then determine the optimal locations for the energy storage. Same story for location of EV Chargers. Where to put the Chargers that you could minimize the upgrades that you'd need for your distribution system.

So I would think there are tens and tens of use case scenarios where the AI can help the distribution system, and, overall, the grid in today's modern world with the renewable energies and energy storage and EVs in the horizon.

SPEAKER 1: So be careful what you wish for because that means we're going to have to invite you back to discuss all the remaining use cases. Because the ones you have shared are very, very interesting and very fascinating. Ahad this has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much for your insights and your time and, in particular, helping bridge that connection, or connecting the dots between our grid, the greatest machine, and also the greatest enabler of our time, analytics. So thank you again. Here's a reminder for our listeners that they, too, can join the large community Ahad has created on LinkedIn. We'll include a link to his profile in the show notes to make it easy for everyone to find him.

OK, Ahad. So here is one last final question for you. I promise this will not be a hard one. We're building an Electrifying AI playlist on Spotify during the season two, and you get to pick a song. So we're curious to know what is it going to be.

AHAD ESMAEILIAN : I know you asked me to look into this. I forgot. So I'm going to go with the songs that I'm listening to these days in my car. So I'm going to go with the song by Adele "A Million Years Ago."

SPEAKER 1: Wow. Wow. That has to be a really interesting pick so far on our season. So thank you for sharing that. So, listeners, what songs would you like us to include. We've gotten some great suggestions recently, including from Ahad today with Adele. So we would love to hear your music suggestions in the comments, or you can tweet them to me @TheElectricSal. We might just include your pick on our playlist and send you some cool Electrifying AI swag to say thank you. So that is all the time we have for this episode. We'll see you again soon. Be safe and we'll be back.