Utilize Coalition proposes two grid-utilization metrics before Dominion and Appalachian Power's Oct. 15 filings

Utilize Coalition, an industry-led group whose members include Google, Tesla, Carrier, SPAN and Renew Home, has published a white paper proposing that grid utilization be reported two ways: nominal utilization, based on a fixed reference rating, and operational utilization, based on usable capacity under defined operating and reliability conditions. Founding executive director Ian Magruder laid out the case in an Oct. 1 Utility Dive op-ed, presenting the pair of metrics as a transparent benchmark that travels alongside the system context regulators need for planning and investment decisions.

The proposal arrives with a deadline attached: under Virginia legislation enacted in April, which the coalition describes as the first of its kind, Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power must submit proposed utilization metrics to the Virginia State Corporation Commission by Oct. 15. Magruder says that would make them the first utilities in the country to begin the process with their regulator.

The coalition supplies the arithmetic for looking past peak: by various measures, roughly half of the grid's total capacity goes unused, and research cited in the white paper indicates that a 10% increase in utilization could save Americans more than $100 billion over the next decade. The op-ed does not identify that research or the measures behind it, which is worth remembering before the figure is quoted back in a rate case. Lawmakers, regulators and utilities in red, blue and purple states have begun advancing utilization policy, according to the op-ed.

Utilities have always built to peak, and for good reason: power has to stay on during the hottest summer days and the coldest winter mornings. Magruder's argument is that peak performance, however necessary, obscures the available capacity sitting unused during off-peak hours, and that a decade ago the country lacked good flexibility tools to do much with it.

That last point is why the member list runs from Tesla and Google to LineVision, Sparkfund and Verrus, none of them committing capital here; the white paper is a bid to define the denominator against which future capacity claims, interconnection requests and rate cases get measured. Google's membership connects to a trade already covered on this desk: its funding of a virtual power plant for PG&E paid for coordination rather than construction, capacity assembled from hardware already in homes.

At grid scale, the same trade would let a utility argue that off-peak headroom can absorb new load without new steel, and in Virginia the load has been arriving quickly. In September this publication argued that grid access is becoming a customer class, with the sorting done through tariff design — the same level of technical detail the Virginia filings will turn on.

The coalition also notes that the sitting Secretary of Energy and the one immediately before agree on the idea, a rarity in energy policy right now. The immediate test is narrower: two utilities, one regulator, a set of definitions due Oct. 15 — and whatever gets measured after that becomes the number that decides who pays for the next increment of capacity.