e^-Lab Accelerator

A bootcamp for electricity innovation

What Is e^-Lab Accelerator?

e^-Lab Accelerator is an invitation-only four-day working meeting bringing together teams throughout North America that are working on high-impact and innovative projects at the electricity system’s distribution edge.

Why It Matters

e^-Lab Accelerator helps unlock opportunities to drive projects forward more effectively and collaboratively. Trained facilitators and technical experts provide customized content, training, and tailored feedback for each team’s unique project.

Who’s Involved

Accelerator teams comprise 5–7 people representing multiple project stakeholders and partners. A team’s project must be actively under development, although it may range from an idea just brought into existence to a project well under way.

What We’re Doing

Distributed Grid Infrastructure
Initiatives deploying least-cost portfolios of DERs and utility scale renewables that can complement, defer, or avoid traditional infrastructure investments (e.g., T&D assets, generators). Examples: deferring installation of a gas peaker plant through a competitive procurement of energy efficiency, renewable energy, and/or battery storage; utility or regulatory efforts to identify integrated resource planning (IRP) best practices to accommodate services and value streams of DERs; efforts related to virtual power plants.

Business Models and Rate Design
Projects advancing the implementation of new business models and pricing mechanisms that accelerate the transformation to a low-carbon energy system and enable cost-effective customer adoption of DERs. Examples: rate design; compensation mechanisms (e.g. net metering reform, value of DER pricing); alternative revenue opportunities (e.g., electrification, platform fees); customer engagement programs focused on capturing value streams from DERs (e.g. integrated DERs, energy efficiency, electric vehicles); new utility programs and initiatives.

Low- and Moderate-Income Community Engagement
Projects creating solutions that empower and improve the lives of low-income households and communities through integrated DER solutions. Examples: utility partnerships with low-income communities to create new DER projects or mutually beneficial business models; new business models that enable partial and/or shared community control and ownership of DERs; new financing solutions for low-income customers.

DER Adoption Acceleration
Other projects to accelerate the adoption of cost-competitive DERs. Examples: community-scale DER solutions; microgrid programs; planning or innovation districts; resilient infrastructure pricing and planning; wholesale market reform; 100% renewable energy commitments and action plans; transactive energy and new market platforms (e.g., blockchain).

What We’ve Accomplished

e^-Lab Accelerator 2017 brought together cutting-edge projects from across the country to catalyze real proof points of how the electricity system is rapidly evolving, and how these changes can benefit communities. Thirteen teams brought a mix of decision makers—ranging from city government officials to utility executives to technology providers—to apply their collective brainpower to solve complex problems in a high-energy, focused, and collaborative environment. Topics included mitigating against future risk, national security, and improving people’s access to clean energy.

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Behind the Scenes at e^-Lab Accelerator

Each year, teams from across the U.S. and around the world join experts from RMI to develop, test, and scale solutions to meet the unprecedented challenges we face as the electricity grid transforms.