Eighth annual awards honor new and inspiring
solutions to the most daunting challenges of today
OAKLAND,
Calif., May 14, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The winners
of Fast Company's 2024 World Changing Ideas Awards were announced
today, highlighting fresh sustainability initiatives, cutting-edge
AI developments, and other creative projects that are helping mold
the world.
Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) and its remote grid
program received an honorable mention in the award's Energy
category.
PG&E is one of the first energy companies in North America to deploy Standalone Power
Systems as an alternative customer service offering to electricity
provided through traditional grid infrastructure. Throughout
PG&E's 70,000-square-mile Northern and Central California service area, pockets of
remote customers are served via long electric distribution lines
that in many cases traverse high fire-risk areas. Replacing these
overhead powerlines with a reliable and low-carbon local energy
source is an innovative option that, in many cases, is preferred
for serving customers at the edges of the grid.
Remote grids operate independently from the larger electric grid
that delivers energy throughout the state, and they allow PG&E
to remove overhead powerlines, significantly reducing wildfire risk
and service interruptions.
This year's World Changing Ideas Awards showcase 50 winners, 127
finalists, and 172 honorable mentions—with health, education,
energy, and AI among the most popular categories. A panel of Fast
Company editors and reporters selected winners from a pool of more
than 1,300 entries from across the globe, including the Republic of
Korea, Brazil, and Madagascar.
"Recognition of PG&E's remote grid program as a Fast
Company 2024 World Changing Idea validates our commitment to
deploy energy innovations at greater speed and deliver the best
possible customer experiences," said Mike
Delaney, Vice President, Utility Partnerships and
Innovation, PG&E. "PG&E is where innovation goes to scale
and where innovators come to grow, and I want to thank our program
collaborators, our regulators and state agencies, our customers and
our co-workers who made the idea of widely deployed remote grids a
reality through breakthrough thinking and swift execution."
"I was struck this year by the global sweep of the honorees,"
says Fast Company editor-in-chief Brendan
Vaughan. "It's endlessly inspiring to see how the world is
coming together to devise inventive solutions to our most
challenging problems. We need ideas from everywhere, and this
year's World Changing Ideas Awards are an extraordinary
encapsulation of the innovation and creativity that is so abundant
around the globe."
Scaling Remote Grids - From Briceburg to Pepperwood and Beyond
PG&E deployed its first remote grid in 2021 in Briceburg,
Calif. located near Yosemite National
Park.
The Briceburg remote grid has been a testament to
resilience, maintaining superior power reliability with almost no
downtime for the five customers it has served since June 2021. The standalone power system, which
replaced 1.3 miles of overhead distribution lines, has generated
more than 90% of its power from solar energy. Backup generators
support redundancy and power generation during winter months when
solar generation is lower due to shorter days and cloudier weather.
The Briceburg system has remained operational throughout several
severe weather events over the last few years when nearby customers
lost power during fires and winter storms.
In November 2023, PG&E
deployed its fifth—and first fully renewable—remote grid at
Pepperwood Preserve outside Santa Rosa,
Calif. The Pepperwood
system is comprised of solar and battery energy storage and
includes energy efficiency upgrades to the property it serves to
keep from draining the batteries during periods of no or low solar
generation, minimizing the likelihood of a power outage. The new
system replaces 0.7 miles of overhead distribution line,
eliminating the associated wildfire risk, and complementing
Pepperwood's own initiatives in
wildfire resilience.
Today, PG&E celebrates the continued expansion of its remote
grid program, with a half dozen new systems being built in 2024,
allowing PG&E to remove an additional six miles of overhead
power lines while enabling six customers to continue receiving
safe, reliable, affordable, low-carbon, and wireless energy.
PG&E has worked with Potelco, Inc and Grass Valley,
Calif.-based BoxPower to design and build its
growing remote grid fleet. Richmond,
Calif.-based New Sun Road provides the remote
monitoring and control platform for managing PG&E's remote
grids. These companies represent a growing ecosystem of microgrid
vendors working alongside PG&E to design, deploy and scale
standalone power systems as a service offering.
Including the new systems to be deployed in the coming months,
PG&E will soon reach up to 12 total remote grids powering 18
customers while removing nearly 13 miles of overhead electric
distribution lines at the grid edge in high fire-threat areas.
PG&E has identified many additional locations where remote
grids may be the most effective way of reducing wildfire risk and
improving electric reliability, with additional sites either in
development or being assessed in Butte, Glenn,
and Tehama counties, among
others.
Remote grids are primarily identified, designed, and deployed as
part of PG&E's system hardening work, which prioritizes
hardening powerlines based on elevated wildfire risk and geographic
considerations. In addition to remote grids, PG&E's system
hardening efforts include undergrounding, installing stronger and
more resilient poles, and replacing bare powerlines with larger,
covered lines.
Visit fastcompany.com to read the full list of 2024 World
Changing Ideas Awards honorees and visit
http://www.pge.com/remotegrids to learn more about PG&E's
remote grid program.
About PG&E
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a
subsidiary of PG&E Corporation (NYSE: PCG), is a combined
natural gas and electric utility serving more than sixteen million
people across 70,000 square miles in Northern and Central California. For more information,
visit pge.com and pge.com/news.
About the World Changing Ideas Awards
World Changing
Ideas is one of Fast Company's major annual awards programs and is
focused on social good, seeking to elevate finished products and
bold concepts that make the world better. Judges choose winners,
finalists, and honorable mentions based on feasibility and the
potential for impact. With the goals of awarding ingenuity and
fostering innovation, Fast Company draws attention to ideas with
great potential and helps them expand their reach to inspire more
people to work on solving the problems that affect us all.
About Fast Company
Fast Company is the only media
brand fully dedicated to the vital intersection of business,
innovation, and design, engaging the most influential leaders,
companies, and thinkers on the future of business. Headquartered in
New York City, Fast Company is
published by Mansueto Ventures LLC, along with our sister
publication Inc., and can be found online at
www.fastcompany.com.
View original content to download
multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pge-named-in-fast-companys-2024-world-changing-ideas-awards-302145162.html
SOURCE Pacific Gas and Electric Company