Agilitas Energy executive discusses interconnection challenges in ISO-NE and SMART's declining incentives

In an interview with NPM, Agilitas Energy Director of Interconnection and Utility Affairs, Rick Labrecque, explained how interconnection challenges and declining incentives with the Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target (SMART) program are causing problems for developers.

Prior to joining Agilitas Energy about a year ago, Labrecque worked at a New England utility where he focused on interconnection to accommodate solar and other sources of distributed clean energy. Now, he streamlines Agilitas interactions with utilities tasked with studying their projects to determine their impact to the distribution system and ensure safe, reliable operations of their projects, he said. Labrecque is also co-chair of the Energy Storage Interconnection Review Group (ESIRG) for Massachusetts.

Agilitas Energy has recently activated or are preparing to activate a few projects that are part of the SMART program.

Last month, the company’s 9.6 MW solar energy and storage system project went live in Rochester, Massachusetts, and last May, they activated a 7.3 MW solar energy system in Auburn.

Upcoming projects include partnering with Green Mountain Power, the largest utility in Vermont, for a utility-scale energy storage system in the town of Bristol. They’ve also recently begun work on a combined solar and storage SMART project in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, which will serve Eversource with a 5.8 MW DC solar array with 3 MW storage capacity.

Interconnection Challenges

Developers entering the interconnection queue proceed through various levels of data exchange with the utilities where multiple layers of studies are needed. More recently, ISO New England is also getting involved in studying the impact of the project on the transmission system, Labrecque said.

“There’s a great amount of uncertainty when you enter the queue as to how quickly you’re going to proceed through it and lately it hasn’t been quick at all,” he said. “The trend has been increasingly negative.”

Labrecque said that projects entering the queue can expect to spend between two-to-four years in the study queue.

“It’s a systemic issue,” he said. “It’s a problem that the entire industry has to work on solving.”

“You can only push so much stuff through the same size pipe, and we’re trying to stuff so many more projects through a process that is limited in its ability to accelerate,” he said.

There are a limited number of people qualified to conduct the studies and the studies are important, so shortcuts can’t be taken, he said.

A big problem with the long wait for an interconnection agreement is to identify interconnection costs—which is a huge consideration in the profitability or economic feasibility of developing a project.

There are some things you can model with relative certainty, such as capital cost of land, labor, and equipment, although that is becoming a challenge as of late with supply chain issues and inflation, Labrecque said.

“With that said, that’s a more accurate exercise than trying to estimate what the utilities are going to charge you to interconnect,” he said. “It can be wildly variable.”

Labrecque said that it can range anywhere between a few hundred thousand dollars to millions of dollars.

In addition, developers can’t fully lock in SMART incentive rates without meeting certain milestones in the interconnection process, so the program could go down a block while their application sits in the queue.

That can leave developers waiting years to find out that their projects are no longer economically feasible.

“That’s where it can get really frustrating,” Labrecque said.

Using data from a reports submitted to the Department of Energy (DOE) from the Massachusetts utilities over the last two years, Labrecque noticed a trend.

“I was shocked to see that from the time from application to when they were given the okay to operate has trended up over the last five years from two years—now it’s up to four years as an average,” he said.

Over the last few years, the number of projects that were given permission to operate was increasing until last year. Massachusetts interconnected 130 MW of projects in 2019, 190 MW in 2020, and 250 MW in 2021. In 2022, that number dropped to 95 MW, Labrecque said.

“To me it speaks to the fact that Massachusetts and New England in general, in many areas, have reached a level of saturation of projects that is resulting in more in-depth studies being needed and specifically studies on the transmission system that are performed by the ISO New England,” he said. “Those studies are a major source of the delay.”

Whether it’s the study methods or the amount of staff or consulting engineers available to perform these studies, “they’re just not keeping up,” he said.

Utilities have an obligation to interconnect clean energy projects, but it’s not a profit center to them, he pointed out. It’s not easy for them to get the internal attention and resources added to their budget because it’s a non-profit element of their business.

Improved methods like data models of the distribution network, or advanced flow software implementation across all the utilities or qualified engineers performing these studies, were suggested by Labrecque.

He also suggested the state consider changing the SMART program model to reflect that dilemma. He also suggested that developers speak up when there are investigative proceedings on interconnection.

“Just do whatever they can to raise awareness to the issue and try and seek out solutions,” he said.

Last year, the Massachusetts legislature passed H5060: An Act Driving Clean Energy and Offshore Wind. The bill directs utilities to do long-range integrated planning of their systems with 10-to-20-year forecasts, and include growth of DER, electric vehicles, heat pumps, and other forms of electrification, so utilities can put forth long range plans for infrastructure improvements that will lead to a grid that can handle what’s coming.

“What this law is attempting to do is to require the utilities to look way out into the future and not reacting bit by bit as things approach,” he said.

Agilitas Energy

Agilitas Energy is the largest developer, builder, owner and operator of energy storage and solar PV systems in the northeastern U.S. and has a pipeline of more than 1 GW of solar PV and energy storage projects, according to a company spokesperson.

Agilitas Energy also invests and acquires projects in operation or in mid-development. They have a fleet of operating assets in Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island, and a few that will come online in New York later this year, according to Labrecque.

They are currently developing several solar energy and energy storage projects in the northeast, including Massachusetts, New York, Maine and Vermont, while expanding into new markets nationwide.

Agilitas Energy is also responsible for developing and operating Rhode Island’s first utility-scale standalone energy storage project--a 3 MW facility in Pascoag.

*This story was originally published exclusively for NPM subscribers last month.


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