All right. So thank you all for attending today’s webinar. My name is Nicole Liebov, and I’m a fellow at off and a fellow at the Department of Energy’s Federal and Energy Management Program, or FEMP. And I’d like to welcome you to the fourth installment of our Working with You Utility Series on Advanced Interconnection Topics, and the second part focused on that topic. Next slide, please. And so before we begin, I want to quickly introduce today’s agenda and learning objectives.
So first we’ll have an introduction which will include some information about FEMP’s distributed energy program and the interconnection process as an overview. Then we’ll get into some distributed energy project impacts on the distribution system standards related to solar, PV, and batteries, as well as other interconnection considerations like cyber security. We will also and then touch on key takeaways and lessons learned before moving into the resources and Q&A section. And again so if you could please enter any questions throughout the webinar, that would really be helpful as we move forward.
Our primary learning objectives today focus on learning more about the distribution system configuration, and studies identifying common solar PV and battery standards, understanding cybersecurity impacts on interconnection and some other technical interconnection requirements. Next slide, please. So now I’d like introduce our webinar team for today. I introduced myself at the beginning, but if you’re just joining us, my name is Nicole Liebov, and I’m a fellow at the Federal Energy Management Program within DOE. I’m joined today by my colleagues from NREL, Doug Gagne, Mike Coddington, and Chandra Shah. And they’ll each be presenting later in today’s agenda. Next slide, please.
And I would also like to provide a little bit of background information regarding FEMP’s Distributed Energy Program. It’s focused on facilitating the planning and implementation of cost effective onsite renewable energy which includes energy storage and combined heat and power technologies, as well as onsite renewable energy. This slide has a few links I think might be of interest to you all, but it’s really a small sample of what’s available on our website, and I’d really encourage you to explore what’s available online. Next slide, please.
So this slide highlights our Working With your Utility webinar series overall. And I’d like to point out that our first webinar from June is now available on-demand at the link on the slide. So if you’re interested in either reviewing that material or seeing it for the first time, you’re able to register on-demand to your Whole Building Design Guide, where you registered for this course. And we’ll be posting webinars two through four on-demand as they become available.
Moving on, I’m just going to provide a brief interconnection process overview for everyone. Next slide. So when you’re starting to consider a distributed energy project, you should first realize that there’s no one-size-fits all interconnection process in the United States. Every utility has a slightly different process tailored to their regional circumstances meaning that although this process that’s shown here is generally applicable, certain steps may vary by utility territory. After determining some basic information about your project, such as the generation type, size, and location, you should reach out to your utilities interconnection department and discuss the process with them directly.
Be sure that your interconnecting and discussing with their interconnection engineers and experts, and not just your utility account rep. They can help you determine what the most expeditious interconnection process will be and give you guidance on how to proceed. After getting initial input, you’ll submit a preliminary interconnection application if available. Where offered, this is a great way to get into a deeper dialogue with your utility about what the best interconnection process will be for your project, and help you avoid potentially costly design mistakes such as attempting to interconnect too large of a project.
After that you submit an interconnection application and an accompanying fee to the utility. Utility requirements for how far along design needs to typically be when the interconnection application is submitted can vary. Some utilities will require fairly advanced design drawings which can create schedule challenges. So this is another important topic to discuss early on. After the application is submitted, the utility will then review your application and determine whether additional study of your project’s impacts on their system is needed. If so, they may come back to you with a revised timeline and request that you provide payment for the study.
Then after the studies are completed, the interconnection agreement will typically outline all the utilities requirements for operating the system, any upgrades identified from study, and provide a guarantee for the agency to be able to interconnect their system after it’s installed. After signature of the interconnection agreement by both parties, the agency can proceed to install the system and ensure that it’s built to meet all system requirements. After the system is constructed, the utility will evaluate the system to ensure it meets their requirements and then issue permission to operate, or PTO, and the project can begin operating. The agency will still interact with their utility after interconnection to ensure that the system continues to operate as intended. With that quick overview, I’m gonna pass it over to Mike to discuss some of the distribution system impacts on distributed energy projects. Thanks, Mike.
Great. Thanks, Doug, and thanks Nicole for the introduction. And good afternoon or good morning to all of you. Happy to have you here and talking about maybe a deeper dive on interconnection and what that’s all about. And just maybe uncover some of the maybe not so transparent issues that utilities might bring to the table. I spent almost 20 years myself working a large, and then a couple years at a smaller utility, so I’ve got that background. And I know it can be daunting at times. But interconnection is a utility process that it’s really important you work through this process we’re going to talk about, and you know, get the ball rolling early. And hopefully the utility has got experience and can make things move along quickly. So next slide, please
I’m gonna really cover, well, I guess primarily three things here in the next few minutes. I want to just talk about the different types of distribution systems because everybody is served differently from their local utility, and that’s just the nature of the system. But I want to talk about different types of distribution systems pretty quickly. I’ll pass through the slides a little faster than I generally like to, so you can always go back and take a look at those. So along with types of distribution systems, I want to look at the, kind of the modeling tools that utilities use. There’s a number of them and there’s different types of studies they might conduct with those tools.
And along with those tools, we’ll just barely touch on GIS systems, the data in which the utilities often get their information from these tools. And then finally we’re gonna talk about one of the most important topics, and that’s the codes and standards around all of this. And I just want you to be aware of the codes and standards. There’s literally thousands of codes and standards out there, but you just need to be familiar with a handful to know what it’s about and kind of where they apply. And then you’ll have a lot of good tools to have those discussions with your utility.
So that being said, sorry about that graphic on the bottom part of this, but it just to point out that traditional utility systems, we’ve got generation, transmission lines, sometimes sub transmission lines, and distribution lines, and transformers and equipment. And that’s typically where we’re gonna see distributed energy connect to that distribution system. So if we could go to the next slide. I just want to show you that there are a number of different types of distribution systems out there. We see, we all generally have got electric service to our own residential location, whether it’s kind of a higher density or maybe it’s a single home. That’s pretty common, and is served by what we call a radial distribution system, which there’s kind of a graphic on the side.
It’s like there’s a substation, a feeder transformer, and that customer is tied to that. Very simple. If anything fails, typically the lights go out. And the same kind of goes with office buildings. Office buildings are typically tied to a distribution remedial system, but often higher voltages. And the same issue that you have an outage problem, you know, typically the lights are until the utility can respond. On the upper right of this, you can see that the hospital, and many hospitals, not all, but many have like dual services from utilities, often from more than one substation. And that’s a really good thing to have especially if you’re a patient and you’re undergoing any surgery or procedures, having multiple service points is very helpful. And then of course customers, like hospitals, have backup generation. So they have multiple sources of power.
And kind of shown on the bottom, the downtown areas, typically downtown areas have some, you know, some cities have what’s known as area, or street networks, or spot networks. Those are a bigger challenge than your radial systems to interconnect to. You should be aware of that, but you may have one of these more challenging types of distribution system, and it may take a few more, a bit more heavy lifting to study the application that you’re proposing if you are on a sensitive area. If we could go to the next slide, please.
This is, again, a bit of information for you for a radial distribution system. And I think most of you, I think we’re all aware that there’s both overhead and underground systems. And you know, there’s challenges with overhead systems in terms of weather events, and wildlife, or lightning can get into the systems and cause disruptions. But it’s by far the lowest cost-type system, and it’s traditional so you see a lot of this out there. And just a show a pad mount transformer on the bottom photo which is common. It’s more common with newer construction today, but it is quite a bit more expensive. But there’s benefits to that, to these underground systems, but again it’s a big investment for utilities replacing systems in underground.
And if you operate it, and you’re a facility person at a large government facility, you probably have, there’s a good chance you have underground facilities at least in part. So I just want to give you a little background. Again, you’ll be able to go back and look at the slides. And if you have follow-up questions, feel free to follow up with a number of us that are listed on this presentation. Next slide, please. So this is just a set of drawings I put together, you know, showing kind of these specialized secondary networks that often serve downtown areas. Like the city of Manhattan in New York, that’s 100 percent secondary network. It’s a very expensive, very reliable, and it’s much more challenging to interconnect, distribute the energy systems.
And there’s also other systems that we call spot networks that typically serve a single customer or a single building. These are very common with larger buildings. So you may, your facility may be served by a spot network or one of these street networks. We’re working on the four stall building, the home of the Department of Energy. They have a spot network serving that building. Again, it creates greater challenges for interconnecting work with utility. So you know, again, just be aware that there’s different types of distribution systems, and some are more challenging than others to work with the utility to interconnect. The next slide, please.
This shows kind of again, this a little different view of the slide that Doug showed, but it’s kind of the traditional typical approach. And you know start typically means you fill in an application for interconnection. And if you’re a small home residential homeowner with just 5KW portable tech on your rooftop, this typically goes through a very fast track approval process. But with the larger systems when we’re talking about federal facilities, you’re probably not going to go through any fast track system, you’re probably gonna be jumping into kind of an impact study mode. And we’ll talk more about some of the studies on the next slide that may be, you know, utilized by the utility, and may be deemed necessary.
But again, you know, you’re talking about large facilities. These are typically larger distributed energy systems, and so they require modeling. And that generally means, which I’ll talk about in a couple of slides, that, you know, it’s a computerized type set of models that are run to make sure that there are not going to be a problems. Or if there would be potential problems, they can identify those up front and mitigate. And that’s kind of the circle, the two circle with kind of the arrows pointing back. You kind of run the model. If there’s potential problems, then you run a mitigation strategy in the modeling system, and try to find a way to make these systems work. I’ll say a bit more about that again in a couple slides. If you could go to the next slide.
This slide really shows, you know, some of the types of models that might be run. You know, these tools are very powerful and useful, and they’ve come a long way, and they’re continuing to evolve for the utilities. But the utility people may or may not use a model though to run things like a feasibility study. And maybe something they want to sit down with when you say, “Hey, we’re looking at putting a megawatt of PD at our location,” whatever that may be. “Can we sit down and talk to you, Mr. Utility Rep, and find out what, you know, what limitations we may have, if any?”
And so that kind of feasibility study. And that may include like the facility, another facility study looking at the buildings or the utility facilities, how far away are they? Are they close by? Is there plenty of capacity? So you know, each system or each interconnection application that you might come across may have a different set of models that may need to be looked at, or studies that may not even include models. Those that do, these are some of the most common on this third bullet, this kind of voltage or power flow, short circuit clicker studies. The utility may have a number of different studies they wanna run using their modeling software.
So it’s kind of part of the process and it can be time consuming. And yeah, it can cost thousands of dollars to run these models. So again, you want to get the ball rolling by talking with your utility representatives sooner than later. I worked in a large investor-owned utility in Colorado. And we have dedicated key account managers that would be at the beckoning call of the federal customers agencies. So you may have someone like that who is there to facilitate and get you connected, to sit down in the room with the right people at the utility. So you may be lucky enough to have that person available. Next slide, please.
Many utilities to utilize a GIS system. And not only utilities, but, boy, most cities that I’ve worked with around the country now use some form of GIS to create layers and planning. But the utilities use GIS to kind of track all of their assets, their distribution lines, their substations, etcetera. There’s lots of information. They take that data, which is electronic, and they import this GIS data into one of these model platforms, and they utilize that to kind of run those studies I mentioned in the previous diagram.
And some utilities, as noted in the third bullet here, may provide hosting capacity maps telling you at what location, pull them up and look at them, and see, you know, how many megawatts of distributed energy can I interconnect at this place more than likely without any kind of problem? So those maps are, and many utilities, not just couple in California, but many hosting capacity information available on their website. So keep that in mind. You may be able to utilize that. Next slide, please.
So again, sorry to throw so many bullets at you. I just want to point out that each location is unique. You may be right across the street from substation or you may have the substation right on your, you know, your facility land like the, you know, federal, Denver federal site has got a substation right on their property. But you may be a few miles away from the utility system so you really do have to take a look at, you know, kind of equipment, where the utility systems are. And you know, again, these are details that might help inform you for a meeting you may have with the utility person to talk about interconnection, what kind of limitations they may have, what kind of voltages you’re looking at.
You know, does new equipment need to be built to service your new megawatt-level PD system or whatever it may be? So having those discussions and understanding kind of your site, and also with the utility service points look like. That’s very important. Again, apologize for kind of keeping at a high level. We can dive really deeply into the details. And so feel free to submit your questions in the chat. But you can always follow up with more detailed questions later on. Next slide, please. So interconnecting on to the distribution system as I mentioned, that typically happens kind of the load side of the distribution substation. Terminology is typically kind of the point of common coupling. That’s often the meter. But if you’re on a larger campus, it may not be so cut and dry.
I know there’s other issues. There’s new technology like grid forming inverters that are being kind of required in some places. And frankly grid forming inverters are a technology that are really just trying to emulate. The traditional rotating machines that utilities have leaned on all these, you know, 100+ years. And so again, technology is changing, and much of this is kind of thrown into this lump term “smart inverters”. And in many states, these smart inverters are required. In fact, a lot of distributors, that’s all they’re sending out are smart inverters. But you have to kind of turn on certain functions, and we’ll talk more about that in just a couple of slides when we get into the codes and standards, which is kind of the next section. If you want to go onto the next slide, and the next slide.
So just you know, as I mentioned early on, there’s many, many codes and standards, but I really want to point to just a handful that you should be cognizant of. And I’ll point on the next slide. But this is just goes to show you on this slide that there’s a number of them. UL standards. There’s IEC standards, which the IEC are very common around the world. Not always so much in the United States. And National Electrical Code, the big one at the upper left corner, NFPA 70. That’s such an important code of how you build a system, how you operate a system. That’s one of the most important.
And let me just point to the codes and standards that I think all of you should at least be familiar with, what are they, where they apply, and at least understand what they are. And if you do, you’ll have a, you know, you’ll gain the respect of the people you’re working with at the utility because you’ll have some understanding. So if you could go to the next slide, please. And this shows a kind of – just a way for me to kind of point out where the different codes and standards apply, and which are important. So the ones listed here are pretty important. You’ve got the National Electrical Safety Code, NESC, and that’s the utility’s bread and butter of how they design their system. And they may also have a manual of state practices to go with that.
But also on the utility side, you got this ANSI C84.1, and it’s just a voltage standard. It’s very important, but the standard, you know, helps guide utilities and users on keeping the voltage within the proper boundaries. If voltage gets outside of those boundaries, damage can occur so keeping voltage in range is very important, and I’ll show that ranger in just another couple slides. The point of common coupling, you typically have this IEEE 1547. This is the National Interconnection Standards. So be familiar with IEEE 1547. I mean if nothing more than just reading a little bit about it, you’ll do yourself a great service.
And over on the right kind of showing the building structure. You’ve got the National Electrical Code. That generally applies really everywhere in your buildings, in your home, where you build an electrical system. It needs to follow the NEC. And the UL 1741 is kind of the standard. And there’s a set of those standards. There’s new smart inverter versions of UL 1741, but those apply to the inverters that change DC power into AC power they could use. So anyway, be familiar with these codes and standards on this page, and I’ll get into a little bit more detail that you can go back and review. If you go to the next slide, please.
You’re slightly over time.
Okay. I’ll pick it up. IEE 1547, very important. Be familiar with this. Onto the next slide, please. And ANS C84.1, again, this is voltage. It shows kind of that range A or range B. Getting outside of range A isn’t the end of the world. It’s kind of plus or minus of five percent of nominal. Range B is acceptable for longer periods of time, but you don’t want to get outside of range B for any duration really. So it’s a very important standard. Next slide, please. And I just have a couple of more of these and I’ll hand it back over to Doug. So the National Electrical Code, it’s a very good, very specific, you know, code, and its revised every three years. And it’s got specific articles on PV systems and batteries. Anyway, it’s a very document to have. You don’t have to be an electrician to look at this, but that’s typically who utilizes the NEC, the National Electrical Code. Next slide, please.
Just a little bit more for you. You can go back and look at this. But this is a bit more information on the inverter standard UL 1741, which is harmonized with IEEE 1547. And these are some of the new functions that are available. And this does not include the grid forming inverter function I mentioned earlier. And one more slide, and I think I’m gonna throw this over to Doug. And again, happy to have you follow up with questions in the chat box or questions via e-mail in the future to any number of us. So I’ll just point out, NEC is listed here and it’s great. It’s got a section article on batteries. But Doug, do you want to take it from here?
Yeah, certainly. Great overview. And yeah, as far as these battery codes and standards, this is certainly not exhaustive list, but these are several of the most common and important standards for stationary battery energy storage that we’ve come across. These standards cover important topics such as fire prevention and mitigation at all levels of the battery system, such as the cell, the module, and the unit level. Although various authorities having jurisdiction or AHJs will have different requirements concerning the battery standards that they may need. Your agency can always specify more stringent codes and standards to ensure you’re receiving a quality system.
For example, an AHJ may not require UL 9540, but you could require 9540 and 9540A if needed. These requirements can be specified through a technical specification document or attachment included in your solicitation, whether that be an RFP or later in a ESPC development process as part of a PORFP. So there’s a mix of ways that you could include this. FEMP has been developing technical specifications specifically for batteries, and will be publishing them in the next few months for your use. If you need them sooner, however, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us for support, and we can provide the technical specifications for batteries that we’ve been developing and help tailor them to your project. Next slide.
So I’m just gonna cover a few high-level interconnection topics. The cyber security and site access, and emergency shutdown. Next slide. So starting with cyber security, here are a few common challenges we’ve heard agencies run into. First if your project requires authority to operate for a system, this can be time-consuming and expensive depending on your agency’s existing options and cyber security requirements. So make sure to discuss your agency’s cybersecurity requirements upfront with the contractor, and make sure that you have clearly spelled out what processes will be required. If you’re unsure, make sure to consult your cybersecurity points of contact early on as many of their review processes can be lengthy and can even take months to resolve.
Similarly, your utility may have connectivity requirements as part of their interconnection agreement. Try to get a template version of the interconnection agreement early on to identify any of these problematic clauses for cybersecurity, and start negotiating solutions early. For example, if you had a larger project connecting in California at more of a distribution system level, this may encounter types of telemetry requirements which could also trigger agency cybersecurity concerns given the connectivity of that telemetry equipment. Finally, utilities may require the use of certain systems or equipment as part of their required interconnection upgrades that may not conform to agency cybersecurity requirements and standards.
So in short, including your agency’s cybersecurity experts early on in the process is one of the most important risk mitigation steps you can take to avoid unforeseen costs and delays later in development. Next slide. So some other potential concerns with cybersecurity that we’ve encountered are the interaction of the system with existing utility information systems. The existing agreements of agencies between the agency and the utility. The division of risk for failures and data breaches in the event of a, you know, a system being hacked. Protection of proprietary information. And then supply chain and external dependency risks from the interconnection to the utility. And finally, third party connectivity risks between, you know, either, you know, vulnerability at the manufacturer or vendor cloud communication level. Next slide.
Another common interconnection requirements that can cause issues is site access for utility and emergency person personnel, and conforming to all requirements to ensure that an emergency system shutdown system instructions are clearly labeled. Many federal sites are highly-secure, so ensuring that the utility and any fire marshal or fire protection staff have a clear procedure for accessing this equipment is critical. For batteries specifically, additional focus should be placed on training of firefighting personnel so that they understand that there’s a separate battery disconnect, as well as what the safest fire suppression plan is for various types of battery incidents. Mike, did you have anything else you wanted to add on this slide?
Yeah, thanks, Jeff. Just a real quick comment is that each system’s going to be a bit different, and some utilities may have different requirements for the disconnect switches for the very small systems. But yeah, you’ll end up seeing a lot number of devices like this on them all pretty commonly. Thanks, Doug.
Thanks, Mike. So now I’m going to turn it over to Chandra to wrap up the content section of our webinar, and she’s going to cover a few key takeaways and other lessons learned surrounding advanced interconnection.
Hello, everybody. So yeah, I’m going to cover key takeaways from this one webinar, as well as other lessons learned related to interconnection. Next slide. One the most important lessons learned is to talk to utility early in the project development process. You want to make sure you fully understand all of the interconnection requirements, the process that will apply for your specific project, and what fees will apply for the application study, and then there’s the unknown upgrade costs, which are a key consideration. I’ll talk a little bit about that as well.
As mentioned, we recommend that you talk to the interconnection technical experts. And if you have a federal account rep, they can help connect you with those folks. As Mike mentioned that there might be screening options. So while the study typically requires a design, some level of design, a screening option could use earlier in the project development process to determine if the project that you’re proposing is likely to result in a lot of expensive upgrades. And then you can modify the project early in the project development process rather than further along. And again as Mike mentioned, there might be some Web-based resources that publicly available that you can use. So ask your utility about those resources because those can be very helpful.
You want to make sure you fully understand the technical equipment requirements that the utility might have, such as metering, inverter requirements, etcetera, and then also understand how the utility will be involved in terms of inspection, commissioning, testing of the equipment, and system acceptance requirements. Often the utility will want to be there to visually inspect and attend the testing of the system acceptance. Interconnection requirements can be impacted by the distributed energy project type, and the size, and the types that’s more complicated. Like a microgrid, or just even PV and battery is going to impact the interconnection requirements that apply to your project.
The amount of electricity that going to be exported into the system will also impact the requirements. And then as Mike mentioned, there are different distribution systems that utilities use to serve various areas, and that will impact what may be allowed in the interconnection requirements. So export may not be allowed at all. Or if it is, certain equipment may be required, so you want to keep that in mind. It’s also important to consider where the distributed energy project is compared to like the powerlines, nearby loads, and sensitive circuit.
And the combination of the total load, distributed energy project at your site also impact what might be required. So it’s not just the proposed project. It’s also what other projects are already there. So that’s important to communicate with utility as well to make sure they fully understand what’s going on at your site in terms of onsite resources. Next slide.
Again as mentioned, there might be a study required for your site distribution system. The utility is primarily interested in their own system when they do their interconnection studies, but you might also want to do something for your site distribution system. And as was mentioned or actually came up in the poll, your system is privatized, the term the DOD uses are owned by a third party. Then you want to make sure you talk to that third party owner early in the project development process to understand what interconnection issues, as well as other issues that might apply because of that privately-owned system and the contract applies for that privately-owned system.
You want to think about ways to mitigate risk because there are these unknown upgrade costs. One potential option is to sign the contract after the interconnection study is complete. That way you know what the costs are. You could issue a notice of intent to award beforehand so that at least there’s something that contractual that’s being – that has been signed. But that Notice of Intent to Award would say the contract signing would be contingent upon certain steps being finished such as the interconnection study. I want to talk about how the cost risk for the upgrades will be allocated between the agency and the contractor, and make sure the contractor is really clear about what cost assumptions are being used and what will happen if the costs are higher or lower than expected.
It’s also important to keep in mind the timeline impacts because interconnection process could be a time-consuming process. So there might be a queue before the interconnection study even starts, or the interconnection study itself can take some time, and there might be mitigation going back in and redoing the study if interconnection costs upgrades are pretty expensive. And then the upgrade themselves can take time to order the equipment and for the utility to actually make the upgrades are required. So it’s really important to keep that in mind and let the contractor know so that they can plan accordingly. And the utility can provide guidance before an RFP is issued related to all these topics. Next slide, please.
So it may be beneficial to modify your distributed energy project size or export plans depending on what upgrades are required based on the study. So you can either reduce the size, or reduce the export, or potentially add batteries, or add more batteries to mitigate high cost upgrades. But you do want to weigh the export benefits against the upgrade costs. So you want to make sure project is still cost-effective considering all those upgrades that may be required after the study is complete. You also want to make sure you’re paying attention, again, to the other onsite generation at your site, and make sure to go through the interconnection process. The utility is going to want to know the entire picture.
And if for some reason there’s some onsite generation that didn’t go through the interconnection process, it’s possible the utility will make those projects go through the process as well. And this may happen because maybe the project was smaller or the utility didn’t have a very expensive interconnection process at the time those projects were installed. So that’s something to keep in mind. Another topic that might come up if they might Utility Commission requirements, and so you want to understand what those requirements might be.
For example, in Maryland, certain projects have to go through a certificate of public convenience and necessity, or obtain a certificate. And in some cases, especially for the smaller projects, there will be an exemption to that requirement. But it’s important to know about that ahead of time. But generally, PUCs are going to have requirements related to interconnection in terms of, you know, cost that the utilities can charge, the timing of the review, how fast they have to get the work done, and dispute resolution processes, etcetera. So that’s always there to provide more information. Next slide.
So you want to make sure that the roles and responsibilities are clearly-defined. What is the agency going to do, what is the contractor responsible for, and what is the utility going to do? It’s very important to make that very clear so the expectations are known, and determine who’s going to be paying for different parts of the process and the project interconnection aspects. Many utilities do set up tracking systems, and this allows customers to track the interconnection process so that can be very beneficial.
And then finally Mike mentioned the standards and codes. You wanna be paying attention to those codes. And of course cybersecurity is crucial so you want to be talking to the agency and utility experts as needed so you’re clear on what the requirements will be. And you want to make sure that the distributed energy equipment that is installed meets the UL and all the other codes that apply. And your design engineers will be very helpful with that. You want to understand all the access and emergency shutdown requirement, and then also keep in mind the utilities have information on their websites that you can reference. But do keep in mind that sometimes websites become outdated, and they’re not always, they don’t always have the most up-to-date information. So it’s helpful to verify anything you find on the Web with an actual staff at the utility. And I think that’s the end of my section, so I’ll pass it back over to Doug.
Thanks, Chandra. So I think Nicole is gonna cover some resources, and then we’ll do some poll question and Q&A next. Thanks.
All right. Great. Yes, thank you. We can touch on some resources and hopefully get to the polling activity shortly. Next slide, please. So here I just wanted to highlight some interconnection resources. First and foremost, I would really encourage everyone to other utilities website. They’re also some other helpful links on this slide, including some information from desire. FEMP recently published an interconnection checklist, and you can see a portion of that to the right. Each phase within the interconnection process has kind of a step-by-step checklist with more information on each step specifically targeted toward federal stakeholders
There’s also links to an overview of our distributed energy interconnection, and practices and costs particularly in the western states. If you could go to the next slide, please. Here we have some contact information for the federal product executives, as well as FEMP’s distributed energy team. Rachel Shepherd is the program lead. Contact information is there, as well as Doug and some other members of our team. So please reach out if you have any questions about today’s material or any project that you would like to discuss. Next slide, please.
And on that note, we also have FEMP’s technical assistance portal. This one is particularly for distributed energy projects, but there are other areas where if you would like to see FEMP support. There’s also a more general and technical assistance page. So if you have specific questions about your project and would like to see technical assistance, please fill out that brief form, and we’ll get back to you shortly. We have also an overview of this webinar series. Today is webinar number four. Webinar number one is currently available on demand. And the following webinars will be made available in the future. So I encourage you to check back on the Whole Building Design Guide for when those are posted. Next slide, please.
So in order to get the continuing education unit credit for today’s webinar, you’ll need to go to the Whole Building Design Guide where you registered for this webinar, and take the quiz. So if you can go to the next slide, we’ll show what that looks like from a user perspective. So once you go to your continuing education, after you log in to the Whole Building Design Guide website and go to the continuing education section, there should be a portion like at the bottom of this slide to see the courses that you’ve enrolled in and completed. Until you complete the quiz, it will be in your enrolled section.
So you should see the link for today’s webinar. And if you click the green procedure to course button, there should be a link to take the examination. You need to receive a score of at least 80 percent to pass. And with that, if you go to the next slide, please. This is just our disclaimer. So I’d like to thank everyone for joining us today, and please reach out with any additional questions that you might have. We really appreciate your time and participation in today’s webinar. And thank you very much to all the speakers.