SEAS Events

Dear SEAS Graduate Student,

Curious about how distributed energy resources (DERs) connect to the grid? The Energy Club at Ross (ECR) invites you to a special talk with Brian Lydic, Chief Regulatory Engineer at the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC). He will break down the basics, pitfalls, and evolution of distribution interconnection—a critical process shaping the clean energy transition.

📅 Date: Thursday, March 13

🕛 Time: 12:00 – 1:00 PM

📍 Location: Ross 0210

Topic: Distribution Interconnection – Basics, Pitfalls, and Evolution

What You’ll Learn: We’ll cover the basic processes and pathways a proposed DER would undertake to get interconnected to a distribution utility in the US and what can go wrong. We’ll touch on the relevant standards and attributes necessary for streamlined interconnection review, discuss the evaluations that a utility undertakes to ensure the system can be interconnected safely and reliably, and how they would determine the need for any costly distribution system upgrades. Then we’ll see how these practices are evolving, touching on energy storage, export-limiting, flexible interconnection, hosting capacity analyses and other responses to high penetration of DER.

About the Speaker: Brian Lydic, Chief Regulatory Engineer for IREC, has been active in renewable energy since 2005, starting out in installation and then working on standards and regulatory issues for PV inverter manufacturer Fronius. At IREC since 2017, he works with regulatory stakeholders to further the organization's mission to increase access to sustainable energy and energy efficiency, particularly through interconnection rule proceedings. He is a member of UL 1741, UL 3141 and IEEE 1547 standards working groups, helping to improve the grid integration of PV and energy storage systems. Brian is a founding member and chair of the Forum on Inverter Grid Integration Issues (FIGII), an ad-hoc consortium of DER experts which seeks to address emerging high penetration issues through research and standardization. Working with utilities, manufacturers and experts, Brian helps to craft and revise technical requirements and processes for grid interconnection in states across the country.

📩 Questions? Contact ECR’s VP of Careers Jaya Uppal at [email protected].

Best regards,

Energy Club at Ross (ECR)