Webinar: Freeing the Grid: Ranking U.S. States’ Interconnection Policies
This webinar features a presentation and panel discussion exploring key findings from IREC’s newly released Freeing the Grid report, which graded U.S. states on the quality of their interconnection policies.
This webinar features a presentation and panel discussion exploring key findings from IREC’s newly released Freeing the Grid report, which graded U.S. states on the quality of their interconnection policies. Freeing the Grid is a joint initiative of IREC and Vote Solar that evaluates states on specific policies that help to increase clean energy adoption and access to the grid.
The state grades are intended to assist policymakers and other stakeholders with identifying policy best practices for safely and reliably enabling the growth of distributed energy resources (DERs), such as solar and energy storage. They also provide a basis for states to benchmark their existing policies against those adopted in other states. In this 2023 release, IREC graded all 50 U.S. states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, using updated scoring criteria reflecting on best practices for connecting DERs to the electric grid that have emerged in the last five years.
The webinar covers:
- An overview of the Freeing the Grid interconnection scoring criteria and methodology;
- Key takeaways from the 2023 interconnection grades; and
- A discussion of how states can improve their interconnection rules.
Speakers:
- Moderator: Radina Valova – Regulatory Program Vice President, IREC
- Mari Hernandez – Regulatory Program Assistant Director, IREC
- Dave Golembeski – Senior Program Manager, IREC
- Midhat Mafazy – Regulatory Program Engineer, IREC
- Sky Stanfield – Partner, Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger LLP
- Nathan Phelps – Managing Director, Regulatory Advocacy Hub, Vote Solar
This webinar is intended for anyone interested in improving interconnection rules for DERs. The focus of the interconnection grades is on procedures that govern state-jurisdictional interconnections (i.e. interconnections to the distribution grid), so this will not address transmission interconnection policies adopted by regional transmission entities, such as Independent System Operators (ISOs) or Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs).
