GLOW: Helping California to a Brighter Future Using Clean Energy

Better Access to Information

To understand how GLOW can improve energy resources, consider the typical day of a utility engineer who works on the grid. The moment the engineer arrives at work, there might be hundreds of new energy requests to address. The engineer must quickly determine how a new energy resource will impact the reliability, stability, and sustainability of grid operations. To get the necessary information to do the analysis, the engineer usually needs to speak with many different members of their team and various stakeholders throughout the organization.

In contrast to this often laborious, manual process, GLOW automatically obtains the necessary information, reducing the time and expense of conducting grid analysis. For example, the engineer can quickly determine how installation of the new energy resources will impact the reliability and resilience of utility circuits when voltages suddenly change.

For grid planners, the GLOW platform offers visual, graphical insights that allow them to determine where to make critical investments to expand and enhance the capabilities of the grid.

“It takes a whole village to estimate the impact of new energy sources and to collaborate to achieve carbon neutrality,” says Bo Yang, Senior Director of the Energy Solution Lab, Hitachi America, Ltd., a global provider of sustainable technology solutions that led the development of the GLOW platform. “GLOW offers an excellent environment so that stakeholders from one power company or even from other organizations can come together and collaborate.”

Oscar Tillberg, Head of Global Sales, Network Control, Hitachi Energy, says GLOW could have an important impact in the key area of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs). This energy industry acronym refers to small-scale power generation and storage technologies that are located close to where the electricity is used. One popular example is rooftop solar, which can generate energy for a house or building, and then send excess capacity back to the grid. California has embraced the adoption of DERs as an important strategy to increase renewable and zero-carbon resources and support transportation and building electrification. California leads the nation in distributed generation, with nearly 1.9 million solar projects², which puts the state at the forefront of navigating the complex technological challenges.

“There’s a lot of discussion about how to optimize DERs,” Tillberg says. “It’s not just where you put them physically, but how you monetize them.” In addition, as the use of solar units increases, it could lead to issues like congestion, a condition where the lowest-price electricity can’t flow freely to a specific area. He also underscored the need to reach agreement on how DERs should be treated, modeled, and then provisioned by regulatory agencies.

Planning for Carbon Neutrality

GLOW assists utilities in addressing the complicated issues they face today and in the future. Making wise energy decisions is a paramount topic for California, as the state focuses on achieving carbon neutrality by 2045. Consider:

• In electricity, California is focused on providing 100% clean electricity by 2045.³ The state met its 2020 renewable electricity goal ahead of schedule and clean electricity currently represents about 60%⁴ of the state’s retail electricity sales.
• In transportation, the state has a goal of 100% zero emission vehicle sales by 2035 in the light-duty segment, and by 2045 in the medium and heavy-duty segment.⁵ Today, more than a quarter of new vehicle sales in California are electric.⁶ As of early 2024, more than 100,000 public and shared private chargers had been installed across the state to enable this growth.⁷

The California Energy Commission sees collaboration with private sector partners as fundamental to its progress toward carbon neutrality.

Under the EPIC program, the state has invested $1.1 billion in hundreds of projects to accelerate the transformation of the electricity sector to meet the state’s energy and climate goals. The state’s investments have catalyzed $10.5 billion in follow-on private investments and led to the commercialization of more than 70 technologies and services.⁸

Partnership with Hitachi Energy

GLOW was developed in partnership with Hitachi Energy; the California Energy Commission; Stanford's National Accelerator Lab, a federally funded R&D laboratory; and Gridworks, a nonprofit organization facilitating the adoption of clean energy.

Yang says GLOW demonstrates how Hitachi collaborates with public, private, and nonprofit institutions to enable a carbon-neutral future. “The traditional tools that utilities now use are more than 20 and 30 years old,” she says. “GLOW was designed with an open architecture in mind, so it can be easily expanded and future-proofed with the latest advances in artificial intelligence and operational technology.”

New tools and new ideas will be critical as California looks for solutions and successes that will not only benefit the state’s residents but become models that other states and countries around the world can adopt.

As the state makes investments in clean energy innovation, it seeks to deliver a wide range of benefits both in the near- and long-term, according to Steinbuck. “As we advance new energy technologies and tools, we want to see benefits delivered to communities in air quality and health, affordable and equitable access to clean energy technology, and new jobs and industries that can power a sustainable economy.”