From Standby to Strategy: Central Electric Repositions Commercial Generators

Central Electric Power Cooperative is piloting a new approach to grid resilience by tapping an often overlooked asset already sitting behind the meter: commercial backup generators. The program provides flexible capacity during pre-emergency events while giving participating businesses a way to put existing equipment to work.

Central, a generation and transmission cooperative based in Columbia, South Carolina, provides power to 19 distribution cooperatives. Central and its members serve more than 940,000 meters and over 2 million residents across 79,000 miles of power lines, reaching consumer-members in all 46 counties and more than 70% of the state’s land mass.

Scott Hammond, director of member programs at Central, said the idea emerged as the cooperative evaluated how to meet long-term resource needs.

“We have a goal of adding 25 megawatts of new distributed energy resources on the Central system as part of our diversified resource plan,” Hammond said. “As we started looking at options, our co-ops raised the idea of using existing commercial generators that are already installed at businesses.”

Rather than treating generators as a traditional demand-response or peak-shaving resource, Central’s program focuses on reliability and resilience. The generators would be dispatched only during limited pre-emergency situations, typically before outages occur.

Read the full original article on CFC’s website here.