PSO exec sees rise in renewable energy
TULSA — Several trends guiding the energy industry seem to set a path toward modernizing infrastructure and increasing the amount of renewable resources used to provide power, a Public Service Co. of Oklahoma executive said Wednesday.
These trends include a reduction in costs for certain technologies, the onset of data analytics, the threat of physical and cyber attacks on infrastructure and the increasing demand and supply of renewable energy sources.
“The energy industry is in the midst of a transformation, and we are prepared at PSO to meet that challenge,” said Peggy Simmons, PSO's president and chief operating officer.
Simmons shared where she believes the industry is heading at a Friends of Finance luncheon Wednesday on the University of Tulsa campus.
One of the biggest changes on the horizon is the change in the energy mix that is used to provide power to customers.
The reliance on coal has started to wane as more power is generated from natural gas and renewable sources.
About 22% of the power provided by PSO comes from natural gas, 22% comes from renewables, 17% from coal and the rest is purchased from the marketplace — a growing percentage of marketplace energy is made up of renewables.
“The sustainable and environmental stewardship that our customers are requesting of us is causing us to add more and more renewables to our system,” Simmons said. “The price point for renewables is also coming down.”
Changes at the distribution level will also change the way the power grid operates. The grid was originally designed to operate in one-way power flow.
More energy at the distribution level will necessitate a two-way flow.
PSO has already deployed advanced metering infrastructure that allows for increased data collection and an increase in reliability. It is also looking at introducing additional technological advances in distribution automation.
“I term this as self-healing in that we don't have to manually go out if there is a fault or an interruption and have to manually switch to another theater. We can just go ahead, and the system selfheals itself,” Simmons said. “We have about 56 of those in our system, and in the next 10 years, we're hoping for that to make up about 50% of our system.”