After the Glendale City Council passed a city-wide goal of achieving 10% adoption of customer solar and storage technologies by 2027 and additional 100 MW peak dispatchable and peak load-reducing capacity, Glendale Water and Power (GWP), the municipal utility, enlisted E3 to help it devise a strategy to reach that goal equitably and cost-effectively. E3 employed the IDSM tool to assess the predicted adoption of distributed solar and storage according to several different scenarios with varying utility incentives and rate designs. The scenarios were evaluated not only on whether they reached the 10% target but also on their ability to attribute the benefits of DERs equitably among more than a dozen different customer segments. System-wide impacts on emissions, ratepayer impacts, and utility avoided costs were calculated with the outputs of the IDSM tool.

The balance between affordability and adoption impact is a careful consideration when selecting program portfolios to ensure equitable growth. IDSM modeling results enable the E3 team to reveal the feasibility of achieving the 10% adoption target through a strategic combination of robust community outreach, utility incentives, and a rate design that encourages adoption while also mitigating ratepayer impacts.