CEO Audrey Zibelman is featured in today’s Intelligent Utility by editor Kate Rowland.

A behind-the-meter revolution in the making?

By Kate Rowland

Intelligent Utility Daily

February 16, 2010

Demand response, energy efficiency, conservation, shifting load – whatever you call it, it’s all behind the meter, and it all requires consumer buy-in to work. The mechanics behind all of these types of programs are sound. Their common goal: to reduce the need to build more expensive electricity generation. Used effectively, they may also reduce a customer’s electricity usage costs.

In December, I spoke with Audrey Zibelman, president and chief executive officer of year-old Viridity Energy, about the concept of microgrids and “virtual power plants” for large commercial/industrial customers (such as office parks, college campuses, neighborhoods, etc.), by which those customers can maximize the economic value of the power they produce or consume. Since our discussion, the behind-the-meter landscape has moved to the front lines, as utilities and their consumers face the issues, and opportunities, that the evolving smart grid is offering up.

Zibelman, the former chief operating officer of PJM Interconnection, is no stranger to the utility side of the equation. In an interview with Bart Thielbar for the January/February issue of Intelligent Utility magazine, she noted that utilities can more easily view vendors as “partners” when they have a good understanding of the issues faced by the industry. As well, she told him, vendor companies are better positioned to pursue innovation for the utility industry, as they can move more quickly than utilities can, because they are so heavily regulated.

But I digress.

Self-contained microgrids are gaining more traction with large users of electricity, such as college campuses and office and industrial parks. There are numerous options for these large consumers to be better able to optimize their electricity use, and even to generate, through solar panels or wind turbines, power to use or to sell back to the grid. But to aggregate this, and to optimize it, requires a transformational shift in thought.

We’ve largely ignored what’s beyond the meter, Zibelman told me, in our focus on the system grid side. But the lessons in energy efficiency that consumers take home from work end up powering their electricity usage decisions at home, as well. “In terms of public education, we learn where we work,” she said. “We all started with PCs at work before we bought them for home.”

Viridity Energy has built a technology platform that transforms a large customer’s portfolio of buildings, as well as its optimized supply and demand-side energy resources, into a virtual power plant, using load forecasting, generation forecasting and price forecasting alongside resource optimization. Further, it allows large customers the opportunity to play in power markets, with the ability to sell their extra power and storage capacity back to the grid.

The microgrid concept is gaining traction. And what starts with industrial/commercial customers will filter down, over time, into neighborhoods, as well. We’ve already seen new neighborhoods across the country being built that incorporate large-scale solar generation. It’s only a matter of time before this becomes the norm, rather than the exception. It’s a new game board, and the rules are still being written while the players are jostling for position.