EPRI Internship - Summer 2022
Vivian Ogechi Nwadiaru
PhD Student, Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, ELEVATE fellow
August 8, 2022 —
My internship at Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) offers me an excellent opportunity to interact with industry stakeholders and learn from experts in the field of energy. EPRI’s research is diverse, spans the entire energy industry while providing support for state and country-wide policy making. Currently, I work on the dynamic rate pilot implemented by South California Edison (SCE) as part of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC)’s CalFUSE framework. CalFUSE, which stands for California Flexible Unified Signal for Energy, is a roadmap from the energy division staff at CPUC that consists of a three-pillar structure mapped into six key policy elements, all provided on an opt-in basis.
Figure 1 CalFUSE Framework (Link opens a PDF document)
Through this project, the state of California hopes to provide consumers with standardized access to real-time cost-reflective energy and capacity prices, and several subscription options.
As a Ph.D. student carrying out industry research, I am constantly thinking of how this relates to the collaborative storage model I am developing for my thesis. What does it mean to bring demand response programs to end-users? What equipment and level of automation are needed to integrate these new distributed energy resources and optimize them for a fair and equitable transition and the tools necessary?
The CalFUSE framework seeks to explore these questions and deliver significant benefits for the state of California. I am very fascinated with my work because it involves conducting research on the crucial implementation needs of this project at the cutting edge of energy research.
About ELEVATE
The ELEVATE program is a PhD training and research program focusing on technical, equity, and climate challenges in the energy transition. The program is situated within the Energy Transition Institute (ETI) and is supported by two grants totaling $6.3 million from the National Science Foundation.