The Role of Utilities in Enabling Technology Innovation: The BC Hydro Alternative Emerging Energy Strategy

摘要

In order for renewable energy to play a dominant role in the global electricity supply mix, emerging renewable energy technologies - such as wave, tidal, enhanced geothermal, and 3rd generation photovoltaic technologies - must prove their technical merits and achieve cost parity with conventional sources of supply. For early stage technologies, this process of innovation and commercialization is referred to as "Crossing the Chasm of Death". The relatively high technical and market risks inherent with emerging technologies coupled with the scarcity of financing sources capable of managing those risks, means that many promising technologies are unable to cross the chasm towards commercial viability. BC Hydro, a government-owned electric utility in British Columbia, Canada, launched an Alternative and Emerging Energy Strategy that describes its role as an enabler of technology innovation and a progressive utility working to facilitate promising technologies to cross the chasm. The strategy calls on BC Hydro to work in concert with funding agencies, regulatory authorities, technology developers, and early technology adopters to achieve four objectives. Objective one: demonstrate early stage technologies in controlled grid-connected environments. Second, streamline internal utility processes around planning, interconnection and integration. Third, bring leadership to the development of supportive regulatory environments and highly qualified personnel. And finally, develop new business processes to acquire energy from technologies at the market entry stage. This paper describes BC Hydro's goal, objectives and actions to accelerate the commercialization of emerging renewable energy technologies that will yield a diversity of supply options and a growing, local clean-tech cluster.