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Energy Systems Integration Group

The Energy Systems Integration Group (ESIG), previously known as the Utility Wind Integration Group (UWIG), was established in 1989 to provide a forum for the critical analysis of wind for utility applications. Initially focused on wind power, UWIG expanded its focus to include solar power and distributed generation and become known as the Utility Variable-Generation Integration Group in 2011. In 2018, driven by the economics and growth of renewable energy and the interdependent nature of the global energy industry, the association expanded its focus beyond the electricity system of today. These expanding perspectives around energy, and the growing need for coordination across the ways that we produce, convert, deliver and use energy, are the reasons we have become the Energy Systems Integration Group (ESIG).

Energy Systems Integration Group
June 4, 2026: Deep Dive PRC-029 Implementation Process Updates This session will discuss experience and practices pertaining to IBR plant ride-through design evaluations. The standard’s effective date is 10/1/2026, so this will be aligned with that compliance deadline to hear industry experience in this area. The discussion will also focus on learnings regarding the need for exemptions and the documentation associated with this for legacy resources. The session will also discuss updates from Project 2025-05 following FERC Order 909 MEETING AGENDA Meeting Introduction: Julia Matevosyan, ESIG Project 2025-05 Ride-Through Revisions: Eugen Starschich, Siemens Energy How can PRC-029-01 compliance be assessed, using IEEE2800.2 tools: Jens Boemer, EPRI Guidance on PRC-029-01 implementation, Tim Taylor, SEIA and Ryan Quint, Elevate Energy Consulting Developer / Generator Owner Perspective on Challenges and Solutions with PRC-029 Compliance Assessment: Katie Iversen, AES Audience Q&A and Structured Discussion
i2X FIRST Season 3 Meeting 1: Deep Dive NERC PRC 029 Implementation Updates
Featured Speaker: Jinye Zhao, Technical Manager, ISO New England Moderator: Erik Ela, Director of System Operation and Electricity Markets, ESIG About the Webinar: As the New England power system increasingly depends on renewable and energy-limited resources, assessing reliability during extreme conditions has become critically important. ISO New England has introduced the Regional Energy Shortfall Threshold (REST), the first metric in the United States designed specifically to measure energy adequacy under extremes. REST offers a transparent, probabilistic standard for evaluating the likelihood and severity of tail-end energy shortfall risks that traditional metrics cannot capture. This presentation will provide an overview of the REST framework and highlight the Probabilistic Energy Adequacy Tool (PEAT), the analytical engine used to quantify the metric. About the Speaker: Jinye Zhao is a Technical Manager in the Advanced Technology Solutions Department at ISO New England. She leads projects involving multidisciplinary teams, applying advanced analytics to address complex challenges in power systems. With more than 15 years of experience in the energy industry, she has extensive expertise in risk management, market design and the integration of emerging technologies. Jinye has played a key role in developing the Regional Energy Shortfall Threshold (REST) and Probabilistic Energy Adequacy Tool (PEAT), advancing New England’s capability to assess energy adequacy under extreme conditions. Jinye holds a Ph.D. degree in Mathematics and actively collaborates with academic and industry partners. She is committed to using innovative approaches to help power systems adapt to a rapidly evolving energy landscape.
Webinar: Evaluating Extreme Energy Adequacy Risk using REST
ESIG in collaboration with Berkeley Lab, is facilitating Studies, Tools and Interconnection Consistency and Harmonization Meetings (STITCH) as part of the DOE’s Interconnection Innovation e-Xchange (i2X) initiative. The i2X STITCH initiative is intended to explore interconnection studies across the US and identify ways where harmonization and automations can help improve the speed and reliability of new generation resource interconnections. The effort will consist of a sequence of collaboration meetings with industry stakeholders and subject matter experts to dive into each region and explore their practices, which will serve as a reference for a technical report on this topic that will lay out areas for harmonization improvements. The format of the meetings will include presentations followed by structured discussions around differences and harmonization opportunities. Presenters will be asked to cover a similar set of topics to ensure they cover interconnection process milestones, study methods and assumptions, pre-interconnection and study tools and automations, etc. KICK-OFF MEETING AGENDA Introduction to i2x STITCH: Will Gorman, LBNL LBNL Queued Up – Relevant Trends: Joe Rand, LBNL Developer Perspective on Interconnection Studies and Tools: Ajay Pappu, Invenergy Interconnection Studies Whitepaper – Introduction: Sirisha Tanneeru, Elevate Energy Consulting Audience Q&A and Discussion
i2X STITCH Meeting 1 Introduction Meeting: May 26, 2026
Featured Speakers: Beth Garza, Senior Fellow, R Street Institute; Erik Ela, Director of System Operation and Electricity Markets, ESIG About the Webinar: The United States and other regions are witnessing rapid growth of large loads including GW-size data centers. Many regions are also evolving their wholesale electricity markets, by introducing new products, expanding offerings and technology participation models, and growing geographically. Large loads, which can be configured to have flexibility and/or with co-located supply, require efficient and reliable integration into these wholesale market designs. Due to possible impacts from large unanticipated large load losses or ramps, balancing operation must also prepare to meet these new conditions through changes to or new products and standards. The ESIG Large Loads Task Force Markets and Operations Project Team examined these issues over the last 12 months, bringing in experts, following closely the stakeholder initiatives at RTOs/ISOs and FERC, and fostering dialogue across a diverse set of stakeholders involved in the task force. The group developed twenty recommendations for consideration. These explored (1) the ideal participation model for both inflexible and flexible large loads and how short-term operational forecasts can benefit reliability, (2) assessing impact of different large load configurations, particularly those that co-locate and share the same meter as similar sized generation resources, on different grid services to quantify their appropriate allocation of those grid service costs, (3) designing capacity markets that adequately capture large load characteristics and meet resource adequacy requirements efficiently, and (4) explore the ways in which reserve and balancing functions must adapt to maintain system frequency and area control error with the potential volatility and unanticipated loss of large load facilities. This webcast will share the main findings of this workstream of the task force including the major recommendations for market operators, balancing authorities, and other decision makers to consider in their region. About the Speakers: Beth Garza is a senior fellow with R Street’s Energy & Environmental Policy Team. Prior to joining R Street, Beth served as the director of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas Independent Market Monitor from 2014 through 2019 after serving as the deputy director since 2008. In this role, she was responsible for monitoring market participant activity, evaluating wholesale market operations and recommending improvements to the wholesale market design. Over the course of her 35-year career in the electric utility industry, Beth has held a variety of leadership roles in generation and transmission planning, system operations, regulatory affairs and market design for both regulated and competitive entities. Her previous employers include NextEra and Austin Energy. Beth is a graduate of the University of Missouri and is a registered professional engineer in the State of Texas. Erik Ela, ESIG’s Director of System Operation and Electricity Markets, has worked across the power industry for 20 years, specializing in electricity market design and operations, renewable energy and emerging technology integration, bulk power system operations, essential reliability services, resource planning, and electricity policy. Prior to joining ESIG, Ela was a Program Manager with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). Additionally, he worked for several years with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) as a senior research engineer and before that for the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO).
Webinar: Integrating Large Loads into Wholesale Electricity Markets & Balancing Operations
Featured Speakers: Jing Wang, Principal Engineer, National Laboratory of the Rockies; Yaswanth Nag Velaga, Senior Research Engineer, National Laboratory of the Rockies Moderator: Julia Matevosyan, Associate Director, Chief Engineer, ESIG About the Webinar: The National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) collaborates with Florida Power & Light (FPL) and GE to investigate power system stability and protection reliability challenges in a weak-grid region with high penetration of inverter-based resources (IBRs). This presentation will primarily focus on the protection aspects of the study. We will share key insights from this real-world project, including best practices for developing high-fidelity fault study models, establishing a controller-hardware-in-the-loop (CHIL) platform for testing physical relays, identifying system-level protection challenges, and designing enhanced protection schemes to address those issues. Through this discussion, the audience will gain practical understanding of protection studies in IBR-dominated systems, the emerging challenges associated with reduced fault current and altered transient behavior, and effective mitigation strategies. In particular, we will highlight the critical importance of IBR compliance with IEEE 2800-2022 to ensure dependable and secure protection relay operation in modern transmission systems. About the Speakers: Jing Wang is a Principal Engineer in the Energy System Control and Optimization Group within PSEC. She earned her Ph.D. in electrical engineering from RWTH Aachen University in 2015. Between 2015 and 2017, she served as a lead power system engineer at GE Grid Solutions in Stafford, UK, where she spearheaded multiple microgrid automation and HVDC system validation projects. At NLR, she leads several multi-million-dollar projects, delivering significant industry impact. Her research focuses on power electronics control of inverter-based resources (IBRs), power system protection, the co-design of IBR control and power system protection, and hardware-in-the-loop. Yaswanth Nag Velaga is a senior research engineer in the Power Systems Engineering Center at the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR), where he focuses on modeling, control, and experimental validation of inverter-based resources—including photovoltaic and battery inverters—as well as controller-hardware-in-the-loop (CHIL) studies for system protection and advanced grid integration.
Webinar: Study of the Protection Improvements for a Weak Grid Area with High Inverter Based Resource
Featured Speakers: Mohit Joshi, Senior Analyst at National Energy System Operator; Lisa Flatley, Senior Analyst at National Energy System Operator; Tim Price, Senior Analyst at National Energy System Operator Moderator: James Okullo, Director of System Planning, ESIG Webinar Abstract: Decarbonizing the power system in Great Britain over the next decade is essential to meet the country’s legally binding obligations on climate change. This means the future decarbonized power system in Great Britain will be very different, with a large share of weather-dependent renewables and supported by higher levels of flexible resources such as storage, interconnection and demand-side flexibility. A study was published by the National Energy System Operator (NESO) in July 2025 to understand potential risks to resource adequacy in the future, so that actions can be taken ahead of time to give confidence that future consumers can continue to benefit from reliable energy supplies. This webinar will explore the details of the modeling approach adopted for this study and key messages covering the role of weather patterns, energy storage, demand side flexibility, interconnection and adequacy metrics.
Webinar: Resource Adequacy in the 2030s in Great Britain
Featured Speaker: Dr. Lijun Cai, Professor and Chair of Electrical Power Systems, University of Rostock Moderator: Debbie Lew, Executive Director, ESIG Webinar Abstract: The rapid growth of inverter-based renewable generation is fundamentally changing power system dynamics and creating new challenges for system stability and secure operation. On April 28, 2025, the Spanish and Portuguese power systems were disconnected from continental Europe, providing a critical real-world case for examining these challenges. This work combines system-level disturbance analysis with control-oriented studies to assess the role of grid-forming (GFM) renewable generation in providing effective damping to the system oscillations. The analysis of the Iberian power system prior to the blackout reveals increasing local and inter-area oscillations, rising tie-line stress, and reduced damping margins. In addition, the generation performance following the blackout is investigated to evaluate system behavior under stressed and recovery conditions. Complementary studies on virtual synchronous generator (VSG) control demonstrate that GFM-controls actively participate in the oscillations and can provide stabilizing effects comparable to, or even exceeding, those of conventional synchronous generators, particularly when traditional power system stabilizers (PSS) are unavailable. The results indicate that GFM control can serve as a practical and scalable stability resource for future power systems. For utilities, the findings support integrating GFM-based damping services into grid codes, operational planning, and dynamic security assessment. Furthermore, coordinated deployment of GFM control, damping-oriented controller tuning, and enhanced blackstart and restoration strategies are identified as key measures to ensure secure and resilient operation of future renewable-dominated power systems. About the Speaker: Since 2018, Dr. Lijun Cai has been a Professor and Chair of Electrical Power Systems at the University of Rostock, Germany. His current research interests include large-scale power system stability analysis and control, renewable energy integration, HVDC system design (LCC and VSC), and large-scale energy storage technologies.
Webinar: Grid Forming Control for Power System Oscillation Damping Insights from Angle Stability
2026 Spring Technical Workshop Tutorial: Increasing DER Hosting Capacity with Flexible Interconnections and Flow Control Tutorial Chair: Leo Jiang, Engineering Fellow, ESIG Presentation file available at: https://www.esig.energy/event/2026-spring-technical-workshop/ This tutorial focuses on two proven, low-cost advanced grid technologies – flexible interconnections and power-electronics-based flow controllers – that can significantly increase hosting capacity for distributed energy resources (DERs). These can be faster and more cost-effective than traditional grid reinforcements, by maximizing the utilization of existing network assets, accelerating DER interconnections, reducing costs and environmental impacts, and providing the operational flexibility needed for future grids. While conventional reinforcements remain essential for long-term firm capacity, advanced technologies can defer or reduce the size of infrastructure upgrades and/or provide a transition while long-term firm capacity is being constructed. The tutorial features innovative solutions and guides participants through the full adoption lifecycle of these advanced applications, illustrated with real-world utility-scale demonstration projects and key lessons learned. Speakers: Jon Grooters, Director of the US Market, EnerNex Zach Pollock, Director of Grid Strategy & Emerging Technology, Xcel Energy Mike Hanestad, Principal Power System Engineer and Team Lead, RLC Engineering Mark Szewczuk, Power Systems Engineer, EnerNex
2026 Tutorial: Increasing DER Hosting Capacity with Flexible Interconnections and Flow Control
Presentation available at: https://www.esig.energy/event/2026-spring-technical-workshop/ Session 6A: Advanced Technologies for Distribution Grid Optimization and Resource Integration Session Chair: Murali Baggu, Laboratory Program Manager, National Lab of the Rockies This panel will share advanced technologies for utility applications in breaking down data silos for distributed resource integration, implementing DERMS for distributed resource dispatch, and adopting emerging technologies, such as dynamic line rating (DLR) and dynamic operating envelope (DOE), to optimize grid operations with distributed resources. HECO’s Experience with High Distributed Resources Ken Aramaki, Director for Integrated Grid Planning, Hawaiian Electric (HECO) Turning Constraint Insight into Capacity: Accelerating Interconnection with Advanced Grid Analytics Alvina Brieff, Senior Manager, Envelio CHARGED and Utility Partnerships for Flexible Grid Connection Shikhar Pandey, Founder & Managing Partner, GridCo Group Implementing DERMS at PG&E Ajit Renjit, Principal Architect, Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) Dynamic Operating Envelopes – Experiences from Australia Professor Frederik Geth, UQ-Springfield City Chair of Energy, The University of Queensland, Brisbane (Australia)
Session 6A: Advanced Technologies for Distribution Grid Optimization and Resource Integration
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