Comments of Steven Greenberg
COO, Intergy Solstice Group Inc.
Before the California Senate Committee on Energy, Utilities and Communications
5/17/2000
Thank you, for the opportunity to represent the views of Intergy before this Committee. My name is Steven Greenberg, I am the Chief Operating Officer of the Intergy Solstice Group.
Background
Intergy is an industry leader in the implementation of clean distributed energy resources and the creation of micro-grids to power commercial real estate and provide the reliability that the new economy demands. Intergy's clients and investors are primarily institutional real estate owners and developers. This base of investor clients represents over 50 million square feet of commercial real estate in California and several hundred million square feet nation wide. Intergy is the developer of Pleasanton PowerPark, which represents the cutting edge for the Department of Energy's 21st century model of energy related commercial and industrial real estate projects.
Intergy's comprehensive services include onsite generation, building systems optimization, and aggregated energy purchasing integrated by the application of web-based active energy management software. Through the web-based software, Intergy is able to optimize the economic performance of individual facilities' energy consumption and combine the load and generation characteristics of hundreds of disparate sites into a virtual power plant capable of participating in wholesale grid reliability and ancillary services markets.
"Having solved the equation of making environmentally friendly technologies profitable, Intergy makes green (as in dollars) from green technologies."
Comments
The energy regulatory and physical infrastructure developed over the past 50+ years and based on the vertically integrated monopoly utility model is no longer adequate to serve the needs of the information economy.
The existing physical infrastructure is not designed to supply the unique power reliability and power quality needs that many commercial and industrial processes today require.
Yet for many small business and residential energy users the existing grid is adequate.
All users should have the ability to choose the type and level of service that meets their needs.
In many areas, due either to regulatory uncertainty or environmental/permitting considerations or both, deploying new transmission and distribution lines has not occurred and probably will not occur for several years.
The lack of a reliable energy infrastructure can have severe consequences on California's economy.
There are companies like Intergy that are emerging and bringing to users the ability to solve their reliability and power quality problems using environmentally friendly technologies. These companies are using private money to solve a public problem. This is a good thing! The growth of this emerging industry is a direct result of the good work this body instituted with AB 1890.
DER solutions should not be viewed as a threat by the UDC's as DER provides solutions that the UDC's are not able to provide. In fact, in many cases the deployment of DER can offset or postpone the need of the UDCs to invest in additional resources to meet the demands of new growth, without a negative impact on ratepayers.
As evidence, at Pleasanton PowerPark, PG&E is a partner in the development and has demonstrated a cautious but willing approach in their desire to support the project and better understand the issues.
There are relatively no technological barriers to deploying DER solutions.
There are substantial regulatory and legislative barriers as well as competitive barriers imposed by the UDC's that perceive non-UDC owned DER as a competitive threat.
A new regulatory model needs to be created that allows for the deployment of DER solutions free of artificial constraints and barriers and unhampered by the unfair market power that the UDC's can bring to bear if and when they so choose.
Our industry does not seek any special privileges. We are not looking to avoid and in fact support the continued provision of public goods programs.
In closing, private industry can and will step forward to provide solutions when and if there is a means to achieve the ends profitably. Intergy and our brethren in the manufacture and supply of DER technologies have found solutions. The solutions are true win-wins for the end user, the supplier, the environment and the economy. I would ask that this body, that has already blazed the path to the beginning of a new energy paradigm, continue its work by insuring that the competitive marketplace be allowed to serve the energy needs of the new information economy.