How Solar Companies Can Get Ahead of Interconnection Challenges

Across the country, many solar companies are following the same pattern. They build their interconnection processes around current conditions, assuming approvals will keep flowing seamlessly. The challenges start when saturation hits their local circuits and delays start to become more frequent. The next thing they know, they’re installing systems that haven’t been approved to connect to the grid. HeatSpring instructor Vaughan Woodruff has watched this cycle repeat in more than one market. 

In this clip, Vaughan outlines practical strategies for companies to get ahead of interconnection issues. The companies that thrive won’t be the ones reacting to rejections and delays; they’ll be the ones who saw them coming and built their operations accordingly.

Want to turn interconnection from a bottleneck into a competitive advantage? Start with Vaughan’s free course “How We Got Here: A (Riveting!) History of DER Interconnection in the U.S.” to understand how we got to today’s process – and where it’s headed next.

Transcript below.

I think there are a couple ways that companies can get ahead of it. One is to operate under the assumption that interconnection will be challenging if it isn’t already. And this goes for companies that are even just working with small rooftop systems. Just because you’re not having issues today doesn’t mean that they will not come. They’re going to come.

It’s very easy to build this habit of operating processes under the assumption that things are going to keep going that way. Companies need to realize right away—you can’t operate under that assumption. It’s really important to build processes based on an understanding of how interconnection rules work and to build in the process for when things fail. When an application goes in and the utility says, “We have too much solar on that circuit already, so we can’t interconnect this,” a company that’s planning sees that rejection and has time to figure it out.

A company that’s not planning may have an opening in their schedule and just installs systems as they come. They might say, “Hey, we had this project we were planning to build six weeks from now, but we had another project that got postponed. Let’s move this one up.” And they may not be checking to see whether it has utility approval. There have been a number of companies around the country that have been in that situation where they relied on older processes, put in a system, and then were told that it couldn’t be connected. That becomes a financial problem. It becomes a customer expectation problem. So some of it starts internally—making sure that processes are built and durable, and there’s really clear understanding of the rules.

When the rules are bad, there’s also a ton of other opportunity. The utilities struggle when the rules aren’t done well either, because really good rules actually drive the type of process that’s needed. I think about it like if somebody gives me all the options in the world, that’s overwhelming. And that’s sometimes what happens with utilities. The state has chosen not to regulate a certain set of projects, so the rules didn’t envision what community solar projects might look like. Now a utility just had several hundred applications for megawatt-scale projects, and all of a sudden it’s got to cut it from whole cloth versus having really strong interconnection regulations that help to guide that.

So building really strong relationships—person-to-person relationships with utilities—is another way to be involved in this. As utilities are struggling with how to deal with these processes, you’ve got someone there who you can talk through the various issues with. What are the utilities struggling with? What’s the solar industry struggling with? Having those conversations to figure out where the common ground is—because good interconnection procedures actually serve both parties, even though at times they’re at odds.

And then, if a company’s big enough, there are working groups that go on surrounding interconnection in various states. There are regulatory proceedings, and the voice of practitioners who are on the ground dealing with these issues can be extremely powerful. Otherwise this is just a big abstract conversation between utility lawyers, sometimes utility engineers, and utility commission staff—who often are themselves lawyers and maybe don’t have technical backgrounds. Bringing those stories of how these things actually impact the day-to-day work of integrating clean energy into the grid is really, really powerful.

It’s hard because it’s different than going out and selling to customers. It’s different than building things, designing things, servicing them. But folks that are able to bridge that gap between the technical on-the-ground reality and be able to be in the room and have the conversation in a way that is diplomatic can have an enormous amount of influence.