Sungrow Installs 20 MW Solar PV & Energy Storage Micro-grid Plant in Tibet

Puerto Rico Microgrid Regulations outline renewable energy, CHP, and storage standards, enabling islanded systems, PREPA interconnection, excess energy sales, and IRP alignment to boost resilience, distributed resources, and community power across the recovering grid.

Key Points

Rules defining microgrids, requiring 75 percent renewables or CHP, and setting interconnection and PREPA fee frameworks.

✅ 75 percent renewables or CHP; hybrids allowed

✅ Registration, engineer inspection, and annual generation reports

✅ PREPA interconnection fees; excess energy sales permitted

The Puerto Rico Energy Commission unveiled 29 pages of proposed regulations last week for future microgrid installations on the island.

The regulations, which are now open for 30 days of public comment, synthesized pages of responses received after a November 10 call for recommendations. Commission chair José Román Morales said it’s the most interest the not-yet four-year-old commission has received during a public rulemaking process.

The goal was to sketch a clearer outline for a tricky-to-define concept -- the term "microgrid" can refer to many types of generation islanded from the central grid -- as climate pressures on the U.S. grid mount and more developers eye installations on the recovering island.

“There’s not a standard definition of what a microgrid is, not even on the mainland,” said Román Morales.

According to the commission's regulation, “a microgrid shall consist, at a minimum, of generation assets, loads and distribution infrastructure. Microgrids shall include sufficient generation, storage assets and advanced distribution technologies, including advanced inverters, to serve load under normal operating and usage conditions.”

All microgrids must be renewable (with at least 75 percent of power from clean energy), combined heat and power (CHP) or hybrid CHP-and-renewable systems. The regulation applies to microgrids controlled and owned by individuals, customer cooperatives, nonprofit and for-profit companies, and cities, but not those owned by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA). Owners must submit a registration application for approval, including a certification of inspection from a licensed electric engineer, and an annual fuel, generation and sales report that details generation and fuel source, as well as any change in the number of customers served.

Microgrids, like the SDG&E microgrid in Ramona in California, can interconnect with the PREPA system, but if a microgrid will use PREPA infrastructure, owners will incur a monthly fee. That amounts to $25 per customer up to a cap of $250 per month for small cooperative microgrids. The cost for larger systems is calculated using a separate, more complex equation. Operators can also sell excess energy back to PREPA.

Big goals for the island's future grid

In total, 53 groups and companies, including Sunnova, AES, the Puerto Rico Solar Energy Industries Association (PR-SEIA), the Advanced Energy Management Alliance (AEMA), and the New York Smart Grid Consortium, submitted their thoughts about microgrids or, in many cases, broader goals for the island’s future energy system. It was a quick turnaround: The Puerto Rico Energy Commission offered a window of just 10 days to submit advice, although the commission continued to accept comments after the deadline.

“PREC wanted the input as fast as possible because of the urgency,” said AES CEO Chris Shelton.

AES’ plan includes a network of “mini-grids” that could range in size from several megawatts to one large enough to service the entire city of San Juan.

“The idea is, you connect those to each other with transmission so they can have a co-optimized portfolio effect and lower the overall cost,” said Shelton. “But they would be largely autonomous in a situation where the tie-lines between them were broken.”

According to estimates provided in AES’ filing, utility-scale solar installations over 50 megawatts on the island could cost between $40 and $50 per megawatt-hour. Those prices make solar located near load centers an economic alternative to the island’s fossil-fuel generating plants. The utility’s analysis showed that a 10,000-megawatt solar system could replace 12,000 gigawatt-hours of fossil generation, with 25 gigawatt-hours of battery storage leveling out load throughout the day. Puerto Rico’s peak load is 3,000 megawatts.

In other filings, PR-SEIA urged a restructuring of FEMA funds so they’re available for microgrid development. GridWise Alliance wrote that plans should consider cybersecurity, and AEMA recommended the commission develop an integrated resource plan (IRP) that includes distributed energy resources, microgrids and non-wires alternatives.

An air of optimism, though 1.5 million are still without power

After the commission completes the microgrid rulemaking, a new IRP is next on the commission’s to-do list. PREPA must file that plan in July, and regulators are working furiously to make sure it incorporates the recent flood of rebuilding recommendations from the energy industry.

Though the commission has the final say when it comes to approval of the plan, PREPA will lead the IRP process. The utility’s newly formed Transformation Advisory Council (TAC), a group of 11 energy experts, will contribute.

With that group, along with New York’s Resiliency Working Group, lessons from California's grid transition, the Energy Commission, the utility itself, and the dozens of other clean energy experts and entrepreneurs who want to offer their two cents, the energy planning process has a lot of moving parts. But according to Julia Hamm, CEO of the Smart Electric Power Alliance and a member of both the Energy Resiliency Working Group and the TAC, those working to establish standards for Puerto Rico’s future are hitting their stride.

“Certainly over the past three months, it has been a bit of a challenge to ensure that everybody has been coordinating efforts. Just over the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen some good progress on that front. We’re starting to see a lot more communication,” she said, adding that an air of optimism has settled on the process. “The key stakeholders all have a very common vision for Puerto Rico when it comes to the power sector.”

Nisha Desai, a PREPA board member who is liaising with the TAC, affirmed that collaborators are on the same page. “Everyone is violently in agreement that the future of Puerto Rico involves renewables, microgrids and distributed generation,” she said.

The TAC will hold its first in-person meeting in mid-January, and has already consulted with the utility on its formal fiscal plan submission, due January 10.

Though many taking part in the process feel the once-harried recovery is beginning to adopt a more organized approach, Desai acknowledges that “there are a lot of people in Puerto Rico who feel forgotten.”

Puerto Rico’s current generation sits at just 72.6 percent, in a nation facing longer, more frequent outages due to extreme weather. The government recently offered its first estimate that about half the island, 1.5 million residents, remains without power.

In late December and into January, 1,500 more crewmembers from 18 utilities in states as far flung as Minnesota, Missouri and Arizona will land on the island to aid further restoration through mutual aid agreements.

“The system is getting up to speed, getting to 100 percent, but there’s still some instability,” said Román Morales. “Right now it’s a matter of time.”

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ComEd Hosting Capacity Map helps Illinois communities assess photovoltaic capacity, distributed energy resources, interconnection limits, and grid planning needs, guiding developers and policymakers on siting solar, net metering feasibility, and RPS-aligned deployment by circuit.

Key Points

An online tool showing circuit-level DER capacity, PV limits, and interconnection readiness across ComEd.

✅ Circuit-level estimates of solar hosting capacity

✅ Guides siting, interconnection, and net metering

✅ Supports RPS goals with grid planning insights

As the Illinois solar market grows from the Future Energy Jobs Act, the largest utility in the state has posted a planning tool to identify potential PV capacity in their service territory. ComEd, a Northern Illinois subsidiary of Exelon, has a hosting capacity website for its communities indicating how much photovoltaic capacity can be sited in given areas, based on the existing electrical infrastructure, as utilities pilot virtual power plant programs that leverage distributed resources.

According to ComEd’s description, “Hosting Capacity is an estimate of the amount of DER [distributed energy resources] that may be accommodated under current configurations at the overall circuit level without significant system upgrades to address adverse impacts to power quality or reliability.” This website will enable developers and local decision makers to estimate how much solar could be installed by township, sections and fractions of sections as small as ½ mile by ½ mile and to gauge EV charging impacts with NREL's projection tool for distribution planning. The map sections indicate potential capacity by AC kilowatts with a link to to ComEd’s recently upgraded Interconnection and Net Metering homepage.

The Hosting Map can provide insight into how much solar can be installed in which locations in order to help solar reach a significant portion of the Illinois Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) of 25% electricity from renewable sources by 2025, and to plan for transportation electrification as EV charging infrastructure scales across utility territories. For example, the 18 sections of Oak Park Township capacity range from 612 to 909 kW, and total 13,260 kW of photovoltaic power. That could potentially generate around 20 million kWh, and policy actions such as the CPUC-approved PG&E EV program illustrate how electrification initiatives may influence future demand. Oak Park, according to the PlanItGreen Report Card, a joint project of the Oak Park River Forest Community Foundation and Seven Generations Ahead, uses about 325 million kWh.

Based on ComEd’s Hosting Capacity, Oak Park could generate about 6% of its electricity from solar power located within its borders. Going significantly beyond this amount would likely require a combination of upgrades by ComEd’s infrastructure, potentially higher interconnection costs and deployment of technologies like energy storage solutions. What this does indicate is that a densely populated community like Oak Park would most likely have to get the majority of its solar and renewable electricity from outside its boundaries to reach the statewide RPS goal of 25%. The Hosting Capacity Map shows a considerable disparity among communities in ½ mile by ½ mile sections with some able to host only 100-200 kWs to some with capacities of over 3,000 kW.

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Hong Kong Electricity Tariff Increase reflects a projected 1-2% rise as HK Electric and CLP Power shift to cleaner fuel and natural gas, expand gas-fired units and LNG terminals, and adjust the fuel clause charge.

Key Points

An expected 1-2% 2018 rise from cleaner fuel, natural gas projects, asset growth, and shrinking fuel cost surpluses.

✅ Expected 1-2% rise amid cleaner fuel and gas shift

✅ Fuel clause charge and asset expansion pressure prices

✅ HK Electric and CLP Power urged to use surpluses prudently

Hong Kong customers have been asked to expect higher electricity bills next year, as seen with BC Hydro rate increases in Canada, with a member of a government panel on energy policy anticipating an increase in tariffs of one or two per cent.

The environment minister, Wong Kam-sing, also hinted they should be prepared to dig deeper into their pockets for electricity, as debates over California electric bills illustrate, in the wake of power companies needing to use more expensive but cleaner fuel to generate power in the future.

HK Electric supplies power to Hong Kong Island, Lamma Island and Ap Lei Chau. Photo: David Wong

The city’s two power companies, HK Electric and CLP Power, are to brief lawmakers on their respective annual tariff adjustments for 2018, amid Ontario electricity price pressures drawing international attention, at a Legislative Council economic development panel meeting on Tuesday.

HK Electric supplies electricity to Hong Kong Island and neighbouring Lamma Island and Ap Lei Chau, while CLP Power serves Kowloon and the New Territories, including Lantau Island.

Wong said on Monday: “We have to appreciate that when we use cleaner fuel, there is a need for electricity tariffs to keep pace. I believe it is the hope of mainstream society to see a low-carbon and healthier environment.”

Secretary for the Environment Wong Kam-sing believes most people desire a low-carbon environment. Photo: Sam Tsang

But he declined to comment on how much the tariffs might rise.

World Green Organisation chief executive William Yu Yuen-ping, also a member of the Energy Advisory Committee, urged the companies to better use their “overflowing” surpluses in their fuel cost recovery accounts.

Tariffs are comprised of two components: a basic amount reflecting a company’s operating costs and investments, and the fuel clause charge, which is based on what the company projects it will pay for fuel for the year.

William Yu of World Green Organisation says the companies should use their surpluses more carefully. Photo: May Tse

Critics have claimed the local power suppliers routinely overestimate their fuel costs and amass huge surpluses.

In recent years, the two managed to freeze or cut their tariffs thanks to savings from lower fuel costs. Last year, HK Electric offered special rebates to its customers, which saw its tariff drop by 17.2 per cent. CLP Power froze its own charge for 2017.

Yu said the two companies should use the surpluses “more carefully” to stabilise tariffs.

Rise after fall in Hong Kong electricity use linked to subsidies

“We estimate a big share of the surplus has been used up and so the honeymoon period is over.”

Based on his group’s research, Yu believed the tariffs would increase by one or two per cent.

Economist and fellow committee member Billy Mak Sui-choi said the expansion of the power companies’ fixed asset bases, such as building new gas-fired units and offshore liquefied natural gas terminals, a pattern reflected in Nova Scotia's 14% rate hike recently approved by regulators, would also cause tariffs to rise.

To fight climate change and improve air quality, the government has pledged to cut carbon intensity by between 50 and 60 per cent by 2020. Officials set a target of boosting the use of natural gas for electricity generation to half the total fuel mix from 2020.

Both power companies are privately owned and monitored by the government through a mutually agreed scheme of control agreements, akin to oversight seen under the UK energy price cap in other jurisdictions. These require the firms to seek government approval for their development plans, including their projected basic tariff levels.

At present, the permitted rate of return on their net fixed assets is 9.99 per cent. The deals are due to expire late next year.

Earlier this year, officials reached a deal with the two companies on the post-2018 scheme, settling on a 15-year term. The new agreements slash their permitted rate of return to 8 per cent.

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Crouching Yeti APT targets energy infrastructure with watering-hole attacks, compromising servers to steal credentials and stage intrusions; Kaspersky Lab links the Energetic Bear group to ICS threats across Russia, US, Europe, and Turkey.

Key Points

Crouching Yeti APT, aka Energetic Bear, is a threat group that targets energy firms using watering-hole attacks.

✅ Targets energy infrastructure via watering-hole compromises

✅ Uses open-source tools and backdoored sshd for persistence

✅ Scans global servers to stage intrusions and steal credentials

A hacker collective known for attacking industrial companies around the world have had some of their infrastructure identified by Russian security specialists.

Kaspersky Lab said that it has discovered a number of servers compromised by the group, belonging to different organisations based in Russia, the US, and Turkey, as well as European countries.

The Russian-speaking hackers, known as Crouching Yeti or Energetic Bear, mostly focus on energy facilities, as seen in reports of infiltration of the U.S. power grid targeting critical infrastructure, for the main purpose of stealing valuable data from victim systems.

Hacked servers

Crouching Yeti is described as an advanced persistent threat (APT) group that Kaspersky Lab has been tracking since 2010.

#google#

Kaspersky Lab said that the servers it has compromised are not just limited to industrial companies. The servers were hit in 2016 and 2017 with different intentions. Some were compromised to gain access to other resources or to be used as intermediaries to conduct attacks on other resources.

Others, including those hosting Russian websites, were used as watering holes.

It is a common tactic for Crouching Yeti to utilise watering hole attacks where the attackers inject websites with a link redirecting visitors to a malicious server.

“In the process of analysing infected servers, researchers identified numerous websites and servers used by organisations in Russia, US, Europe, Asia and Latin America that the attackers had scanned with various tools, possibly to find a server that could be used to establish a foothold for hosting the attackers’ tools and to subsequently develop an attack,” said the security specialists in a blog posting.

“The range of websites and servers that captured the attention of the intruders is extensive,” the firm said. “Kaspersky Lab researchers found that the attackers had scanned numerous websites of different types, including online stores and services, public organisations, NGOs, manufacturing, etc.

Kaspersky Lab said that the hackers used publicly available malicious tools, designed for analysing servers, and for seeking out and collecting information. The researchers also found a modified sshd file with a preinstalled backdoor. This was used to replace the original file and could be authorised with a ‘master password’.

“Crouching Yeti is a notorious Russian-speaking group that has been active for many years and is still successfully targeting industrial organisations through watering hole attacks, among other techniques,” explained Vladimir Dashchenko, head of vulnerability research group at Kaspersky Lab ICS CERT.

Russian government?

“Our findings show that the group compromised servers not only for establishing watering holes, but also for further scanning, and they actively used open-sourced tools that made it much harder to identify them afterwards,” he said.

“The group’s activities, such as initial data collection, the theft of authentication data, and the scanning of resources, are used to launch further attacks,” said Dashchenko. “The diversity of infected servers and scanned resources suggests the group may operate in the interests of the third parties.”

This may well tie into a similar conclusion from a rival security vendor.

In 2014 CrowdStrike claimed that the ‘Energetic Bear’ group was also tracked in Symantec's Dragonfly research and had been hacking foreign companies on behalf of the Russian state.

The security vendor had said the group had been carrying out attacks on foreign companies since 2012, with reports of breaches at U.S. power plants that underscored the campaign, and there was evidence that these operations were sanctioned by the Russian government.

Last month the United States for the first time publicly accused Russia in a condemnation of Russian grid hacking of attacks against the American power grid.

Symantec meanwhile warned last year of a resurgence in cyber attacks on European and US energy companies, including reports of access to U.S. utility control rooms that could result in widespread power outages.

And last July the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) acknowledged it was investigating a broad wave of attacks on companies in the British energy and manufacturing sectors.

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Sault Ste. Marie Smart Grid Investment upgrades PUC Distribution infrastructure with federal funding, clean energy tech, outage reduction, customer insights, and reliability gains, creating 140 jobs and attracting industry to a resilient, efficient grid.

Key Points

A federally funded PUC Distribution project to modernize the citywide grid, cut outages, boost efficiency, and create jobs.

✅ $11.8M federal funding to PUC Distribution

✅ Citywide smart grid cuts outages and energy loss

✅ 140 jobs; attracts clean tech and industry

PUC Distribution Inc. in Sault Ste. Marie is receiving $11.8 million from the federal government to invest in infrastructure, as utilities nationwide have faced pandemic-related losses that underscore the need for resilient systems.

The MP for the riding, Terry Sheehan, made the announcement on Monday.

The money will go to the utility's smart grid project, where technologies like a centralized SCADA system can enhance situational awareness and control.

"This smart grid project offers a glimpse into our clean energy future and represents a new wave of economic activity for the region," Sheehan said.

"Along with job creation, new industries will be attracted to a modern grid, supported by stable electricity pricing that helps competitiveness, all while helping the environment."

His office says the investment will allow the utility to reduce outages, provide more information to customers to help make smarter electricity use choices, aligned with Ontario's energy-efficiency programs that encourage conservation, and offer more services.

"This is an innovative project that makes Sault Ste. Marie a leader," mayor Christian Provenzano said.

"We will be the first city in our country to implement a community-wide smart grid. Once it is complete, the smart grid will make our energy infrastructure more reliable, reduce energy loss and lead to a more innovative economy for our community."

The project will also create 140 new jobs.

"As a community-focused utility, we are always looking for innovative ways to help our customers save money amid concerns about hydro disconnections during winter, and reduce their carbon footprint," Rob Brewster, president and CEO of PUC Distribution said.

"The investment the government has made in our community will not only help modernize our city's electrical distribution system [as] once the project is complete, Sault Ste. Marie will have access to an electricity grid that can handle the growing demands of a city in the 21st century."

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Australian Rooftop Solar Grid Constraints are driving debates over voltage rise, export limits, inverter curtailment, DER integration, and network reliability, amid concerns about localized blackouts, infrastructure protection, tariff reform, and battery storage adoption.

Key Points

Limits on solar exports to curb voltage rise, protect equipment, and keep the distribution grid reliable.

✅ Voltage rise triggers transformer protection and local outages.

✅ Export limits and smart inverter curtailment manage midday backfeed.

✅ Tariff reform and DER orchestration defer costly network upgrades.

With almost 1.8 million Australian homes and businesses relying on power from rooftop solar panels, there is a fight brewing over the impact of solar energy on the national electricity grid.

Electricity distributors are warning that as solar uptake continues to increase, there is a risk excess solar power could flow into the network, elevating power outage risks, causing blackouts and damaging infrastructure.

But is it the network businesses that are actually at risk, as customers turn away from centrally produced electricity?

This is what three different parties have to say:

Andrew Dillon of the network industry peak body, Energy Networks Australia (ENA), told 7.30 the way customers are charged for electricity has to change, or expensive grid upgrades to poles and wires will be needed to keep solar customers on the grid.

"The engineering reality is once we get too much solar in a certain space it does start to cause technical issues," he said.

"If there is too much energy coming back up the system in the middle of the day, it can cause frequency voltage disturbances in the system, which can lead to transformers tripping off to protect themselves from being damaged and that will cause localised blackouts.

"There are pockets of the grid already where we have significant penetration and we are starting to see technical issues."

However, he acknowledges that excess solar power has yet to cause any blackouts, or damage electricity infrastructure.

"I don't buy that at all," he said.

"It can be that in some suburbs or parts of suburbs a high penetration of solar on the point of use can raise voltage, these issues generally can be dealt with quickly.

"The critical issue is think where you are getting that perspective from. It is from an industry whose underlying market is threatened by customers doing it for themselves through peer-to-peer energy models. So, think with some critical insight to these claims."

He said when too many people rely on solar it threatens the very business model of the companies that own Australia's poles and wires.

"When the customers use the network less to buy centrally produced electricity, they ship less product," he said.

"When they ship less product, their underlying business is undermined, they need to charge more to the customers left and that leads to what has been called a death spiral.

"We are seeing rapid reductions in consumption at the point of use per household."

But Mr Dillon denies the distributors are acting out of self-interest.

"I absolutely reject that claim," he said.

"[What] we, as networks, have an interest in is running a safe network, running a reliable network, enabling the transition to a low carbon future and doing all that while keeping costs down as much as possible."

Solar installers say the networks are holding back business

Around Australia the poles and wires companies can decide which solar systems can connect to the grid.

Small systems can connect automatically, but in some areas, those wanting a larger system can find themselves caught up in red tape.

The vice-president of the Australian Solar Council, Glen Morris, said these limitations were holding back solar installation businesses and preventing the take-up of new battery storage technology.

"If you've already got a five kilowatt system, your house is full as far as the network is concerned," Mr Morris said.

"You go to add a battery, that's another five kilowatts and so they say no you're already full … so you can't add storage to your solar system."

The powers that be are stumbling in the dark to prevent a looming energy crisis, as the grid seeks to balance renewables' hidden challenges and competing demands.

Mr Morris also said the networks had the capacity to solve the problem of any excess solar flows into the grid, and infrastructure upgrades were not necessary.

"They already have the capability to turn off your solar invertor whenever they feel like it," he said.

"If they choose to connect that functionality, it's there in the inverter. The customer already has it."

ENA has acknowledged there is frustration with rooftop system size limits in the solar industry.

"What we are seeing is solar installers and others slightly frustrated at different requirements for different networks and sometimes they are unclear on the reasons for that," Mr Dillon said.

"Limitations are in place across the country to keep the lights on and make sure the network stays safe and we don't have sudden rushes of people connecting to the grid that causes outage issues."

But Mr Mountain is unconvinced, calling the limitations "somewhat spurious".

"The published, documented, critically reviewed analyses are few and far between, so it is very easy for engineers to make these arguments and those in policy circles only have so much tolerance for the detail," he said.

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