在过去的一个月里，我路过高速公路边上的两起野火。这就是现在加州夏天的生活。
随着流感大流行的肆虐，人们的行动受到限制，下一年的公共安全断电的前景令人担忧。去年夏天，公用事业公司为避免野火而提前关闭了加州居民的电力供应。
Many smart people have been working hard on this problem. Energy providers across California — from local utilities to massive investor-owned utilities (IOUs) — have been tasked with cracking the energy resilience code.
As the west begins to burn, how are those efforts going?
地方公用事业启动恢复计划
社区选择聚合器（CCA）是一个让城市或县为居民购买能源的项目，是能源弹性产品的一个亮点。
Last week, three San Francisco Bay Area CCAs — East Bay Community Energy (EBCE), Peninsula Clean Energy and Silicon Valley Clean Energy (SVCE) —宣布与Sunrun合作在6000户家庭中安装大约20兆瓦的太阳能电池，否则会有断电的危险。CCA都为低收入客户设立了分公司，以确保该计划服务于所有社区。
The announcement comes two months after马林清洁能源加州北部的一家CCA公司启动了一项计划，安装15兆瓦时的客户现场储能装置。圣何塞清洁能源和半岛清洁能源发布邀请函for similar energy-plus-storage programs to serve their customers.
The CCA advantage
While both California utilities and CCAs are tasked with finding resilience solutions, the CCAs are the first to offer solar-plus-storage programs to their customers.
根据CCAs的说法，这是因为当地的公用事业为社区服务。
"SVCE is a community-based organization," Aimee Gotway Bailey, director of decarbonization and grid innovation at SVCE wrote in an email. "Our community formed us and governs us. That means we’re well-positioned to be responsive to what our community needs. The resilience program we just launched is a testament to that."
Our community formed us and governs us. That means we’re well-positioned to be responsive to what our community needs.
EBCE地方发展、电气化和创新主管JP Ross在电话交谈中也表达了这种观点。”我们不回应股东；我们回应我们的社区。”。
CCAs are also in a better position to aggregate behind-the-meter resources as part of a procurement plan for resource adequacy — in other words, they can better monetize the new energy resources when there aren’t outages to shave peak loads.
"Local utilities are leading because there aren't other organizations in as natural position to lead," Mark Dyson, principal of Rocky Mountain Institute’s electricity practice, wrote in an email. "[They] are the ones that can enable the ‘blue sky’ benefits of [distributed energy resources, or DERs], and most effectively integrate DERs' ‘black sky’ benefits with existing resilience planning activities."
How community energy aggregators and utilities work together
California’s IOU and community energy providers have different competitive advantages when providing resilient solutions, according to Wood Mackenzie microgrid analyst Isaac Maze-Rothstein.
梅兹·罗斯坦在一封电子邮件中写道：“在最高层面上，我认为中央结算机构正在利用其客户关系和购买力，以增强个人客户的弹性，而公用事业公司则从电网的系统优势来看待问题。”。
That is, while CCAs are poised to deploy DERs to individual customers, utilities such as Pacific Gas and Electric are looking at处理完整的电气gid.
From the technology provider’s standpoint, forging these partnerships is a new avenue to accelerate deployment of systems. The work of the CCAs to develop the new product could clear the way for utility partnerships down the line.
"We see this [Sunrun/CCA partnership] program as a good model for how we can work with all energy providers to be part of the solution for further enabling energy consumers to keep their lights on in the face of this new reality," wrote Nick Smallwood, vice president of business development and grid services at Sunrun, in an email.
Why isn’t this happening faster?
In a perfect world, California’s energy resilience strategy would be further along as we enter this year’s fire season.
But from a regulatory standpoint, developing a new clean energy product in nine months is quite fast. In the example of the CCA and Sunrun partnership, Ross pointed out that it takes time to write a solicitation, run a competitive application process (required for public procurements), select a winner and enter contract negotiations — all while working with the California Energy Commission to develop a new product it could offer to customers.
Six to nine months roll by pretty quickly as you're trying to launch something to deliver a new product and a new technology to customers.
罗斯说：“当你试图推出新产品和新技术时，6到9个月很快就会过去。”。
Now that this specific product is created, other energy providers likely will be able to move faster.
梅兹·罗斯坦写道：“我怀疑，通过这项协议和其他项目，这种协议将变得更加标准化。”如果未来6至12个月内其他中央结算机构不跟进，我会感到惊讶。”
Sunrun已经在类似的项目工作other IOUs, including南加州爱迪生公司,Orange and Rockland和Hawaii Electric Company.
一旦这些计划建立起来，还有另一个等待的游戏：新能源需要等待公用事业的互联，这可能需要三到六个月的时间。
罗斯说：“无论是住宅、商业还是工业，太阳能和存储设备的互联时间过长。”。
