EPIC welcomes Duke Energy’s Sam Holeman to PEDG 2018

Duke Energy Corp. Operations Director Sam Holeman says the utility expects to have 6,000 megawatts worth of solar power on its grid by 2024.

The challenge for the industry will be integrating generation, battery storage, transmission and distribution into a unified system that meets customers growing expectations and controls costs to make a stronger utility.

That will be easier to do with renewable energy that Duke owns and operates itself, he says. But, he says to get the most out of the opportunities, Charlotte-based Duke and independent solar developers must work together to develop models for the use and payment of those integration services.

And that, he says, will require a better relationship with developers, which generally find themselves at odds with Duke over regulatory issues.

EPIC conference

Holeman was the keynote speaker for Tuesday’s session of the 9th annual Power Electronics and Distributed Generation Conference. The conference, underway through Thursday at the Hilton Charlotte University Place, has attracted 185 attendees. It is presented by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and hosted by UNC Charlotte’s Energy Production and Infrastructure Center.

More than 90 of them were at the Tuesday morning session at which Holeman was the opening speaker.

Holeman started working at Duke (NYSE: DUK) 33 years ago. Duke — then called Duke Power — had just finished its Catawba Nuclear Station and had canceled plans for two other nuclear plants because the growth in demand for electricity was slowing and the company could not justify more nuclear generation, he said.

“Sound familiar?” he asked. “We were facing a lot of the same challenges then that we are today.”

https://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/news/2018/06/27/duke-energy-exec-renewable…