Integrating Distributed Energy Resilience Solutions with Arushi Sharma Frank

There aren't many grid strategies that increase reliability, resiliency, affordability, and sustainability. While many strategies may address one or two of these factors – perhaps even three – distributed energy resources uniquely check all four boxes. After Hurricane Beryl, Texans, including policymakers, were left questioning how such a disaster could happen again, especially so soon after Winter Storm Uri. The pain, suffering, and even loss of life were profound and, tragically, avoidable.

My guest this week is Arushi Sharma Frank. Arushi is one of the smartest people on energy and energy policy, with a particularly deep expertise in distributed energy resources and virtual power plants. She brings a holistic view of energy systems, energy law, and how distributed solutions fit in with the whole.

Arushi is the founder of Luminary Strategies, a DC-based firm advising US and international electric service companies and energy system technology providers. Beyond her national work, Arushi has deep ties to Texas over several energy career positions. She led Tesla's strategic market entry in Texas, when the company launched its first  US wholesale and retail energy businesses here from 2020 to 2024. She pioneered various ERCOT frameworks for grid integrated virtual power plants and Tesla Megapack. And she was a key architect in the creation of the PUC’s Texas ADER or Aggregated Distributed Energy Resource pilot in her former role as Task Force Vice Chair. 

In this episode, Arushi and I explored the rapidly changing landscape of energy storage and its impact on the ERCOT grid. We dove into the nuances of regulatory work and discussed how to meet the resiliency challenges caused by severe storms. Arushi shared her thoughts on how different regulatory structures shape the deployment of distributed solar and energy solutions. And we also got into the expanding role of community solar and storage. 

I hope you enjoy the episode. Timestamps, show notes, details on events where you can find Arushi this fall, and the transcript are below.

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Timestamps

3:00 - Arushi’s background and her connection to Texas

6:00 - Arushi’s mindset for working in regulatory spaces

10:00 - How is storage changing the dynamic in the ERCOT grid

14:00 - CenterPoint’s response to Beryl; Storm Protection Plans and cross state comparisons

21:00 - Vertically integrated utilities vs competitive energy-only market and their relationship to distributed storage and energy being deployed

25:30 - Purpose of different plans and their different goals; importance of integrated, grid modernization and distribution infrastructure investment plans

34:00 - Continuity of service and passive survivability; top priorities in disaster planning

37:30 - How mobile solar and batteries are being implemented as resilience solutions in other places in the US

40:20 - Community solar and storage; retail wheeling; PUNs

44:00 - Effectiveness of solar plus storage vs diesel or gas generator backups

48:30 - Texas Power Promise and the efficacy of requiring a mix of solar, storage, and natural gas for microgrids

52:00 - Economic value of resilience and the work of Texas’ ADER Task Force

58:00 - Texas is way behind on DERs but there is hope; how underinvestment in distribution grids can be overcome

Show Notes

ADER filing from Arushi Sharma Frank

Craig Moreau, Chief of Emergency Management and Homeland Security, Fayette County, speaking at Clean Energy States Alliance, speaking on his experience with mobile resilient power systems.

Teaching Substack:

Luminary Strategies Substack:

Luminary Strategies: Powering Everywhere with DERs Newsletter; Powering Texas with DERs Newsletter 

@ArushiSF on Twitter / X 

Places Arushi will be speaking this fall: 

Houston Energy & Climate Week 2024 - Sponsored by Greentown Labs: Climatetech Innovation Festival (September 11, 2024 9:30a - Register Here).  

Houston Energy & Climate Week 2024 - Sponsored by Abundance Institute, Edge Zero:  Cleantech Office Hours: VPPs & Distribution Grids (September 11, 2 pm, Register Here). 

University of Texas: Kay Bailey Hutchinson Energy Center: Power Up Series, Seminar 1, Behind the Scenes at ERCOT, Sept. 17, 2024, Register Here (UT Students).  

New York Climate Week 2024 -  Sponsored by EcoSuite and Mission:Data: Overcoming Clean Energy Friction September 26, 2024 5 pm - Request to Join Here.) 

DERVOS 2024:

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Transcript:

Doug Lewin

Arushi Sharma Frank, welcome to the Energy Capital Podcast. So great to have you. 

Arushi Sharma Frank

Thank you, thrilled to be here.

Doug Lewin

We've been talking about this for a while. Glad we made it happen. You have such a great perspective on the things going on in Texas. You've been deeply involved in a lot of the good things happening in Texas. Why don't we just start, just share with our audience just briefly, if you would, kind of who you are, background, your career, your work in advocacy, and specifically the connection to Texas.

Arushi Sharma Frank

Yeah, absolutely. So I started my energy career right out of law school, actually during law school at the American Gas Association (AGA) in Washington, DC. And one of the most important and fabulous elements of starting your energy career in a trade association is that instead of inheriting the knowledge base for one company, you inherit the capacity from that experience of learning a whole system. You learn the production, the distribution, the transmission, the rate design, the cost recovery, the safety, the regulation, all of those aspects. And doing so for instead of one or two companies, but for a couple hundred companies. It really opens your mind and it opened my mind to be very intentional about having a diverse career so that I could be the best at anything I could possibly do to create sustainable and positive change and innovation for our industry. 

So I've been coming to Texas since that job. I was in charge at AGA among other things for creating the Knowledge Center and DC, Washington DC advocacy platform for responsible horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, which are the two technologies that enabled the shale gas boom. And I started coming to Texas at that point. Spent a lot of time in Fort Worth, Dallas, and moving on in my career, moving from representing gas utilities to the IPPs, the independent power producers, the generators. And then going in-house to Exelon. This is before the spin-off in 2016 to 2019. And working very directly with generation operations providers. So the folks who actually operate the nuclear and the conventional thermal power fleet, the folks who actually are out there on the wind operation sites, the folks trying to figure out net power in Texas. I'm actually the person that filed Net Power's, power generation company, filing at the PUC. It's my name on the bottom. So I've got a weird connection to a lot of things in Texas. 

All of that really set me up for the job that I most recently did before starting my own firm. And that was to create an energy advocacy presence for Tesla when they moved their headquarters to Texas in 2020. So that's the cycle. And it's taken me through what I like to call the chakra of energy systems. And all the advocacy work that goes on top of that is very, very much fundamentally grounded in figuring out, these are the first principles of how the technologies work in our life. How do you build the solutions on top of them that enable us to get the best value out of them?

Doug Lewin

So your work at Tesla, when we'll talk about this in the course of the conversation, led to some really groundbreaking work at the PUC with the Aggregated Distributed Energy Resource Task Force. So we'll get into that. You and Tesla really played a very leading role there along with a lot of other folks in the market.

But before we get into those kinds of details, I just want to kind of start though with a little bit of what sort of forms your mindset