The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) launched an initiative to support a cohort of state public utility commissions to better understand utility distributed energy resource (DER) interconnection practices and advance solutions that improve transparency, speed, affordability, security, and reliability. Participating commissions learned practical information and helped inform templates, frameworks, and model language developed by NARUC and LBNL for jurisdictions to adapt to their specific circumstances.
Berkeley Lab provides informational webinars for Energy Innovator Fellows at utilities, state agencies, and Tribes, with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy. View the recordings and presentation slides from past webinars.
Please reach out to Jeff Loiter at jloiter@naruc.org or Sydney Forrester at spforrester@lbl.gov with questions.
- Kick Off Meeting, March 5, 2026: The initial meeting of the cohort included a presentation by Hawaiian Electric about their Customer Energy Resources program and interconnection policies; an overview of the planned cohort activities by Berkeley Labs; and a questionnaire to help set the direction for subsequent cohort meetings.
- Interconnection Queues, Timelines, and Costs - Data Transparency, Wednesday, May 27, 2026: Explore how utility commissions can create a foundation for managing high interconnection costs by collecting data to better understand interconnection-related costs for distribution upgrades and how they impact interconnection customers, as well as other data that support implementation of interconnection solutions.
- Managing Interconnection Costs Part 1 - Cost Allocation, Tuesday, June 23, 2026: This webinar provided information on how various cost allocation methodologies and approaches affect interconnection costs and timelines and included a discussion among states with experience implementing new cost allocation approaches.
- Managing Interconnection Costs Part 2 - Distribution System Planning and Capacity Expansion Modeling, Wednesday, July 29, 2026: This webinar provided information on how DSP (including capacity expansion modeling) can support efficient interconnection, shared example practices for coordinating interconnection and DSP, and identified concrete actions participants can take to start or improve coordination of DSP with interconnection-related upgrades. Berkeley Lab speakers: Guillermo Pereira, Greg Leventis, and Miguel Heleno.
- DER Interconnection Model Guidelines and Flexible Interconnection, Wednesday, August 26, 2026: This webinar covered model interconnection guidelines and explained flexible interconnection approaches. Expert presentations by Brian Lydic, IREC, and Cody Davis, Electric Power Engineers.
- Interconnection Data Template and Guidelines, Wednesday, September 23, 2026: This webinar featured two speakers. The first shared information about VPPs with particular attention paid to the role of interconnection in VPPs and how VPPs can support interconnection of other DERs. The second described data transparency and presented a reporting template and guide resulting from cohort and LBNL work. The cohort concluded with a summary of the suite of resources developed from this series.