MTC Congestion Relief Pilots

The Renewable Energy Trust of the MTC is working with interested Distribution Companies and others to develop two or more Congestion Relief Pilots, each of which would include prototype installations of renewable DG and other distributed energy resources in a specific location on the distribution company’s T&D system.

The goal of these pilots is to test realistic, representative cases of customer-sited renewable energy generation combined with demand-response controls, load shedding, energy efficiency, storage and other distributed resources that provide benefits to the electric system as well as to host customers and other entities.

This initiative seeks to find new “win-win” opportunities for clean distributed energy resources (DER) and to collect meaningful data on all the net benefits and costs from such DER, and all the revenues on which a business model for DER could be built.

Concepts for Developing Pilots

The Trust is working with utility personnel and representatives of interested customers to customize the pilots to meet stakeholder needs, with the intent of developing a “win/win” vision of clean DER that will provide benefits to the end users that are willing to host renewable generation, to the utility, and to Massachusetts ratepayers generally.

MTC has awarded grants for pilot activities to two Massachusetts utilities to date, National Grid and NSTAR, and steps have begun to contact customers in two particular pilot locations to assess their potential interest in renewable or other on-site generation in conjunction with demand response and energy efficiency options.  The pilot areas include portions of Everett and Marshfield, Massachusetts.

For example, National Grid included the following summary its May 26, 2006 filing with the DTE on its Summer Load Relief Program for Everett, E. Longmeadow, and Brockton:


“The Everett area served by the Thorndike substation is new to the list of eligible areas. As load continues to grow in this area, an outage of one of the 23 kV cables in the area may require an additional 23 kV cable to be installed to back up the load. The Company wishes to determine whether there are sufficient customer side resources which can mitigate this future potential situation. In addition, the Massachusetts Renewable Trust recently awarded the Company funding to encourage Everett area customers to install renewable energy distributed generation in conjunction with the demand response efforts typically employed in the Company’s load relief programs. The grant will pay for the additional studies needed for siting the distributed generation as well as incentives for customers to install proposed systems. It will also help the Company in its efforts to automate parts of the Program, including some level of control over certain aspects of the customer’s internal processes.” (page 2)

NSTAR has selected a portion of Marshfield, Massachusetts for its Pilot, and Rocky Mountain Institute has prepared the following report for NSTAR and MTC:

This NSTAR Pilot has begun to attract the attention the press:

In addition, MTC staff have provided information on the Marshfield pilot at conferences:

These pilots may also include involvement by ISO-NE to assess potential applications useful in congestion management for the NEMA supply zone including market based participation to support transmission congestion concerns such as zonal pricing, non-spinning reserve support, reactive supply support and other related area supply issues.   Discussions have included ways to utilize customer generation capacity and demand response as reserve resources that can provide value in reducing both transmission and distribution-level costs. The pilots will test technical improvements in the metering, communication and control links between customer and utility and/or between utility and ISO-NE, and will test new agreements with customers to implement dependable dispatching and appropriate "win/win" financial arrangements.

Initial pilot discussions have also addressed the environmental benefits and concerns that may be relevant to the development of congestion relief pilots and applications. This may lead to consideration of environmental factors in selection of pilot areas and technologies, and coordination with the state’s Department of Environmental Protection and EPA’s Regional Office to assess the implications of potential air quality improvements or impacts from particular technologies or fuels (including the potential for use of biodiesel for standby generators).

Potential Pilot Strategies

There are a range of strategies that could become the basis of the planning of each of these pilots. The Trust engaged EPRI during the spring of 2005 to recommend approaches to Congestion Relief Pilot Projects. As part of the report “A Framework for Developing Win-Win Strategies for Distributed Energy Resources in Massachusetts” (Attachment C of the DG Collaborative’s 2005 Annual Report), EPRI identified the following potential strategies, depending on the primary goals set for each pilot:

• Goal: Demonstrate ways to overcome the challenges of incorporating DER in utility planning and operations

       Possible Strategies:

  • Achieve necessary scale by aggregating resources
  • Design a project schedule with milestones that will satisfy utility date-in-service requirements.

Goal: Demonstrate a way to achieve equivalent network reliability and availability using DER resources

       Possible Strategies:

  • Use utility-controlled demand limitation devices
  • Achieve resource diversity across many customers
  • Test the reliability of individual DER configurations.

• Goal: Secure the needed “utility grade” demand response/clean DG to defer one or more utility infrastructure investments.

       Possible Strategies:

  • Combine demand response and DG resources in the same project
  • Partner with developers/aggregators to maximize marketing channels within target area.

• Goal: Compare total costs and benefits of DER vs. utility investment approach

       Possible Strategies:

  • Demonstrate how to monetize several DER value streams in a single project
  • Demonstrate how to fairly allocate benefits among project participants.

The goals and strategies will be refined and further developed over the coming months.

Additional concepts are expected to emerge from the Distributed Energy Planning Workshops scheduled to begin in September 2006.  This workshop process is being designed to unlock the economic value of DG for utility distribution planners and customers by designing particular solutions to the technical and business “challenges” described in the Report of the Distribution Planning Working Group (DPWG) on DG and Distribution Deferral, and to identify particular technologies to interconnect customer-sited DG so it can be available to meet critical distribution needs (see details in Section 4.4 of the 2006 Report).

Potential Implementation Mechanisms

Specific sources and uses of funds for each pilot project will be negotiated between the Trust and each participating utility company. Allowable uses will include generating, metering, control and other hardware, software, outreach and customer service, project administration, interconnection and other engineering, instrumentation, research and analysis. Potential recipients of Trust funding may include the distribution company, its customers, and contractors/suppliers.

It is expected that Trust funds will be supplemented by additional financial resources. For example, some of the cost of the prototype installations may be covered through the energy efficiency programs administered by the utilities, from customer co-funding of installations, from energy service companies that may invest private capital in some installations, from demand-response payments, and from other grants that may be made in response to specific project opportunities.

The success of these Pilots will depend significantly on the active participation of end-use customers as hosts for distributed resources that are integrated with the T&D system in innovative ways.  The Pilots will involve outreach to particular customers in the Pilot areas.  MTC will also work with organizations representing energy customers to address their needs and interests throughout thie Pilot process. 

MTC plans to coordinate the Congestion Relief Pilots with The "Modern Grid" Initiative (see www.themoderngrid.org), which may offer federal funding for regional pilots that would include technologies to “accommodate renewables and other new ways of generating power” that are being addressed by the DOE and several other organizations.  MTC co-sponsored the June 26-27 Northeast Regional Modern Grid Summit in Lenox, MA. 

In addition to coordinating with relevant technology commercialization activities at the national level, MTC hopes to coordinate with Massachusetts corporate and university-based sources of technical, financial and regulatory expertise.  For example, many universities are increasing their focus on energy technologies and research and Massachusetts has a substantial cluster of energy technology expertise.  There may also be related opportunities to explicitly link a campus with substantial DER capacity, at a university or other institution, with a particular Pilot area, or to collect equivalent data on T&D impacts of such large-scale customer resources.  For example, MIT is one energy user with potential plans to systematically increase on-site generation, as outlined in its "proposed MIT sustainable campus energy initiative" in section 5.3 of the May 3, 2006 Report of the Energy Research Council.

The Trust also plans to engage contractor(s) through competitive procurement(s) to provide analysis, documentation, modeling, replication plans and other technical and management support for the Pilots.

Anticipated Results

This initiative may also develop and test new planning methodologies to value and achieve the potential congestion relief and other benefits that DER may offer, and develop business and regulatory models under which the distribution companies and non-participating ratepayers can benefit from new DER and/or be appropriately protected while cost-effective distributed resources can be developed by energy users or others.

Identifying and quantifying many of the costs and benefits of DG and providing experience with potential business models will help determine the extent to which DG can contribute value to distribution planning and meet customer needs. This information may help policy makers develop ways to achieve an equitable allocation of costs and benefits among distribution companies, DG customers, other ratepayers, and society, leading to "win/win/win" outcomes with net benefits greater than costs for all these stakeholders.


The interim results of these pilots will provide an important input into the work of the Massachusetts DG Collaborative to recommend a role for DG in utility distribution planning, and may contribute to approval of such a role by the DTE. For the design of the pilots, the Trust will consult the Distribution Planning Working Group of the Massachusetts DG Collaborative and seek the input of the Massachusetts DTE on an ongoing basis.

Energy users in the pilot areas who are interested in participating in this project may be able to obtain some or all of the following benefits:

  • Reduced electricity costs,
  • Increased reliability from onsite generation,
  • Subsidies for installation of renewable and other resources ,
  • Payments from ISO-NE and/or the distribution company for load reduction.

These pilots will also play a critical role in a project of the EPRI DER Public/Private Partnership, of which MTC is a sponsor: "Creating and Demonstrating Incentives for Electricity Providers to Integrate Distributed Energy Resources (DER)." To supplement the existing funding for this project, a proposal was submitted on July 11, 2005 by Massachusetts DOER to the State Technologies Advancement Collaborative (STAC).  More information on the EPRI-STAC project is available at:

At the same time, this EPRI project will provide input to the Massachusetts pilots from selected stakeholders, including utilities, agencies and other stakeholders in New York, California and other states, including:

  • California Energy Commission
  • Electric Power Research Institute
  • EnerNOC, Inc.
  • Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Energy
  • National Grid
  • New Jersey Board of Public Utilities
  • New York Energy Research and Development Authority
  • Northern Power Systems
  • Pacific Gas & Electric
  • RealEnergy
  • San Diego Gas & Electric
  • Solar Turbines
  • Southern California Edison
  • TVA
  • UTC Power.

If successful, these pilot tests will demonstrate the potential of clean DER resources to relieve the pressure of load growth on local capacity limits. This work will also assess the technical and economic feasibility of these technologies and applications. If these pilots lead to widespread distribution of such resources in Massachusetts markets, the outcome may be new opportunities for renewable-energy implementation and multiple benefts for electricity generation, transmission and distribution.

Other Pilots

Return to the Distribution Planning Working Group Page

If you have any questions or comments about the MTC Congestion Relief Pilot Projects, please contact Fran Cummings, Policy Director of the Renewable Energy Trust.