Enabling Non-Residential Electrification and Efficiency with Fault Managed Power Systems (FMPS)

This project will explore market potential and assess how Fault Managed Power Systems (FMPS) can reduce the barriers to electrification efforts by reducing the complexity and cost of electrical infrastructure upgrades across non-residential (commercial, industrial, and agricultural) customer segments. This project will explore the FMPS market potential and associated individual technologies to better understand the landscape and program impacts with an interest to scale the market for commercial, industrial, and agricultural systems. With the rising need for widespread electrification of buildings in California, innovative solutions are needed to support broad decarbonization efforts. FMPS technology capitalizes on providing direct current (DC) power to DC-powered devices, reducing line losses over long distances via efficient power delivery. This then provides simpler, lower-cost electrical infrastructure that enables the electrification of space heating, water heating, foodservice, and electric vehicle charging infrastructure. This also provides energy savings through high-efficiency power distribution and flexible demand management. FMPS reduces barriers to installing new electrical distribution by lowering cost and complexity of installing new power distribution. FMPS uses an entirely separate power distribution pathway (communication cable) to overcome physical space constraints within cities. The project team will investigate the percentage of buildings currently using FMPS, market penetration of technology, and energy savings potential for increased adoption of FMP technology. The assessment will leverage existing literature reviews, surveys, interviews with experienced practitioners, and site visits to assess the potential for energy efficiency (EE) technologies that can achieve significant energy savings in new and existing buildings with FMP technology. The project team will conduct a demonstration to identify FMP technology ability to generate demand reductions, energy savings, and to support new measures eligible for EE programs. Based on the data collected, the project team will create a technology roadmap that will assess FMPS technologies for further field assessments, pilots, work paper development, and go-to-market strategies for existing program channels. The roadmap will be produced based on an in-depth analysis of the highest potential technologies to identify market barriers and intervention strategies to address these barriers.