APPROACH DESIGN
APS has a business challenge and opportunity, where benefits and costs will be linked to the strategic decisions that must be made. Our approach to this project focuses on three success factors that we believe are critical to meeting APS’s goals: Using the power of collaboration to forge support for the solar DE study; Combining technical expertise with business acumen to develop a credible methodology for evaluating the impacts, costs and benefits of solar DE; and, presenting the results to stakeholders as a winning business case for APS and the solar DE stakeholders.
- The study begins with key steps that build a strong common understanding of the business goals, project milestones and resource assignments.
- Task 1 leverages numerous technol- ogy experts and APS expertise to develop a defensible and well-vetted solar characterization and well considered deployment scenarios.
- The solar deployment scenarios serve as the foundation for assessing benefits and costs on distribution, transmission and resource planning. Any solar DE deployment scenario will create an interrelated impact on these three utility functions. We will address Tasks 2, 3 and 4 in an integrated fashion, while addressing the specifics of each individually. The study plan provides additional explanation.
- A separate task has been included to address rate implications and regulatory strategy. This will facilitate insightful decision making by APS and provide a means to assess customer adoption and interaction through various incentive programs.
- Throughout the study, a separate, highly skilled team will continuously oversee a stakeholder involvement process to garner input, facilitate reviews and manage schedule needs.
Stakeholder Involvement
A broad stakeholder engagement will be the key to the successful completion and implementation of the APS DE Study.
By aligning a broad cross-section of stakeholders representing business, government, consumers, Tribes, scientific community, environmental organizations and commercial interests, the goals of the utility and market can be met.
This stakeholder process needs to include, but also move beyond, the “traditional” audiences. The process will create an essential mechanism for building mutual understanding and trust, forging support for the APS DE Program. This inclusive process will bring the participants in the Solar Electric Roadmap Study and Arizona Energy Assessment together with facility managers and high power quality sensitivity customers, as well as those with special power quality and reliability needs.
We will deploy four well-established and practiced techniques: Workshops and Forums, Web-based tools and Working Groups. Our team will use our own nationally recognized experts in the field as well as local Arizona experts known to the solar and energy community as facilitators of the process. We will closely coordinate with our partners at APS to both align with APS goals and to impart our experience and knowledge base in the field of stakeholder engagement.
While most stakeholders will participate freely in the Working Groups, Workshops and Forums, we believe there may be a need to compensate participants for their activities. By using the web, we believe this will significantly reduce costs for both APS and the interested parties. The additional benefit of this approach is the creation of a permanent record of activities.
