The always-on grid asset hiding in the attic

Summer is officially here, and utility operators across the country are watching power systems strain under extreme heat and air conditioning demand.

While much of the industry is focused on the latest digital solutions and demand response programs to keep the lights on, Seth Little has a different take: your attic insulation might be just as important as any new tech.

Little, who directs market development and partnerships at CLEAResult, one of North America’s largest energy efficiency firms, makes a compelling case for recognizing traditional efficiency measures as legitimate grid assets.

“If your attic is well insulated, then in that moment of system peak, your air conditioner isn’t working as hard to manage that thermostat set point,” Little explained during a recent interview on the With Great Power podcast. “I can’t opt out of a demand response event with my insulated attic. It is always providing that benefit.”

That “always on” aspect is the crux of Little’s argument. While utilities are racing to deploy smart thermostats and automated demand response systems, they’re dealing with the reality that digital solutions can fail, lose internet connections, or require customer participation. A well-insulated attic, meanwhile, just keeps doing its job.

“The internet doesn’t need to be connected for that resource to be provided,” Little said. “And then maybe even more importantly, my utility doesn’t have to hit me with a demand response request to get the benefit to the grid from my insulated attic.”

It’s a convincing argument. With data centers, AI, and cryptocurrency mining driving unprecedented electricity growth, utilities need every tool in the toolbox.

That doesn’t mean Little’s stuck in the past. His work at CLEAResult sits right at the intersection of old-school efficiency and cutting-edge data analytics. The company uses advanced metering infrastructure and AI to figure out which homes and businesses will benefit most from efficiency upgrades. It’s a far cry from the “printed PDF applications in the mail” that Little remembers from when he started in the industry.

“Even with a 30-day read, we can identify electric heat customers and electric water heat, and once we get higher resolution with the data, we can get much closer,” Little explained. “We can get down to individual homes and ways that they are impacting the way the grid is functioning.”

This kind of granular targeting represents a major shift from the industry’s traditional, more disperse approach. Instead of spending years on market studies, utilities can now dig into meter data to “identify the top 10%of homes that have an energy intensity above Y and go treat those homes.”

But there’s a catch: utilities are often reluctant to share the customer usage data that would make these targeted programs really powerful.

And although Little gets why utilities are protective of customer information, he thinks they’re being overly cautious about usage patterns. “I am grateful that my utility keeps my banking and billing and transactional data very private and secure, but is the same requirement as valuable when it comes to my monthly, hourly, minute by minute usage data?” he asked. “I think that the potential for what we could do ultimately far outweighs the risk associated with that data being used in an unskillful way.”

The data access issue also highlights a broader challenge Little sees in the industry: the tendency to get caught up in either traditional or high-tech solutions instead of using both.

“I genuinely believe that the energy transition is the defining moment of our time,” he said. “I don’t think we can afford to be overly selective. No one specific solution is going to get the grid responsiveness that we need.”

That philosophy extends to how Little thinks about scaling up successful programs. Rather than getting stuck in pilot purgatory, he advocates for building scalability right into the initial design.

“Most utilities still don’t want to go first, and the pilot does seem to be the way to help mitigate the risk,” Little observed. “But I think if you can provide a confident way to scale a program from the very beginning, you’re far more likely to get pilot adoption and then that scale into a full program.”

As utilities continue wrestling with extreme summer heat and unprecedented demand growth, Little’s message is pretty straightforward: the grid of the future needs both innovation and common sense. While smart devices and demand response programs grab the headlines, that humble attic insulation might end up being just as valuable for keeping the lights on and bills affordable.

For the full conversation with Seth Little, listen to his interview on With Great Power here.

With Great Power is a show about the people building the future grid, today. It’s a co-production of GridX and Latitude Studios. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get your shows.

Read the original article from Latitude Media here.