EPRI recognizes ISO-NE with Technology Transfer Awards

EPRI, a global, nonprofit energy research and development organization, recently recognized ISO New England staff for projects that will help support the region’s reliable clean energy transition.

Each year, EPRI’s Energy Delivery & Customer Solutions (ED&CS) sector presents Technology Transfer Awards to power industry professionals who’ve implemented EPRI technologies and processes to benefit their companies and the industry at large. The people and companies honored exemplify the collaboration and leadership that drive progress in the industry and benefit society.

“As we see extreme weather increase in frequency and our dependence on electricity grows, it’s imperative that reliability and resilience is a priority. Seeing leading companies like ISO New England focus on these issues will help the industry proactively tackle today’s challenges and tomorrow’s opportunities,” said Rob Chapman, senior vice president of Energy Delivery and Customer Solutions at EPRI. “Congratulations to ISO New England for winning two of EPRI’s Technology Transfer awards, recognizing leaders and innovators who have applied research to produce significant results.”

This year, eight ISO employees were recognized for their work on two projects selected for the award:

Weather conditions and energy adequacy

Three ISO employees were honored for Systematic Approach to Determine Risk of Extreme Weather Conditions on Energy Adequacy. Stephen George, director, Operational Performance, Training, and Integration; Ke Ma, lead analyst, Advanced Technology Solutions; and Jinye Zhao, technical manager, Advanced Technology Solutions collaborated on the project, which provided critical inputs to Operational Impacts of Extreme Weather, a probabilistic study of energy shortfall risks undertaken two years ago by the ISO and EPRI.  

EPRI recognized the recipients for “providing an innovative, systematic, and repeatable approach that reliability coordinators can use to identify the most challenging operating conditions that they can expect in future.” The study’s results are being used to quantify and qualify the types of risk the region will face, providing context for decision-making and “a baseline risk assessment which can be tracked over time.”

“Ke, Jinye, and Stephen did a fantastic job, as did the entire team,” said Vamsi Chadalavada, the ISO’s executive vice president and Chief Operating Officer. “To see what began as a concept in a brainstorming session realized in the form of a product that has incredible value to our region is very gratifying.” 

Learn more about the project and its next steps.

Grid stability and inverter-based resources

The second project cited for a Technology Transfer Award builds on earlier work by the ISO focused on safely incorporating inverter-based resources to the grid. That earlier project helped the ISO better understand the challenges of studying the future power system, while the project recognized by EPRI—Maintaining Grid Stability with Inverter-Based Resources—focuses on how the ISO can perform the studies more efficiently through technical innovation. The results will help “showcase to the industry how different screening metrics can be used to help identify regions where detailed studies are required, and more importantly, where detailed studies may not be required.”

The ISO New England employees honored for their work on this project are Qiang “Frankie” Zhang, principal analyst, Power System Technology; Xiaochuan Luo, manager, Power System Technology; Xinghao Fang, supervisor, Operational Technical Studies; Faheem Ibrahim, lead engineer, Transmission Service Studies; and Jason Ploof, senior engineer, Operations Technical Studies. Employees from American Electric Power, Florida Power and Light, and the New York Power Authority were also part of the project team.

“This is a great day for the ISO,” Chadalavada said of the awards. “Grid reliability is our top priority, and we’re very pleased to be recognized for two key projects aimed at supporting it, now and throughout the transition to clean energy.”