Snohomish County PUD and Burns & McDonnell are designing and building a microgrid that will demonstrate the multiple uses of battery energy storage with a focus on disaster recovery and renewable energy integration. In addition, the microgrid will explore using V2G (Vehicle to Grid) capable charging stations to experiment with using electric fleet vehicles to support the microgrid as just another form of energy storage. The project will look at the technical and financial challenges and reports will be completed to detail the economics of microgrids, battery storage and solar on the northwest grid. Our speaker is Scott Gibson who is a Principal Engineer with Snohomish County PUD in the Generation Department. Scott is a graduate from the University of Wyoming where he received a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering in 1987.  After graduation, Scott worked for Boeing, designing electrical power systems for airplanes, in addition to an engineering firm where he designed electrical systems for commercial buildings.  In 2000, Scott joined Snohomish County PUD and started in the Power Quality and Energy Efficiency group, then moved to Distribution and finally to the Generation Department, where he’s been for seven years.  Scott is now the Principal Engineer on all new electrical generation projects. Scott worked on the development of a Tidal Generation Project, is helping to design and construct two new “run of the river” Hydroelectric Projects and will now get to be the Project Manager for the PUD’s new Microgrid. https://www.snopud.com/reliability/ar-microgrid.ashx?p=3326 Location: Bldg: Brown & Caldwell 701 Pike St Suite 1200 Seattle, Washington 98101

  Cybersecurity of the electric power grid has become a significant challenge due to expanding threats and a growing attack surface. Once only a theoretical threat, real-world attacks have now been identified that resulted in regional power outages. This cyber landscape is only expanding as the integration of Distributed Energy Resources (DER) and Internet of Things (IoT) devices introduce new risk and security challenges. This talk will provide an introduction to the cybersecurity of the electric power grid, including current threats and key challenges that are being faced by the industry. It will discuss both approaches to traditional grid control systems security, and novel risks from DER. At WSU, the Attack Surface Host Analysis tool has been develop to help industry manage the growing exposure of software platforms and the complexity of managing legacy software that must support critical grid operations, along with case studies on various grid software platforms within the WSU Smart City Testbed and other industry systems. Furthermore, the talk will highlight the need for new risk assessment approaches and perspectives to understand the interconnectivity of DER as ownership of energy resources shifts from the utility to consumers or third parties.   Speaker(s): Adam, Location: Seattle, Washington