Building Baselines: Alicia Noriega
At the time of this interview, Alicia Noriega was the product owner for Utility Solutions at Edo, with expertise in sustainability, energy management, and urban energy analysis. Most recently, Alicia has moved on to a role with the Port Authority of NY/NJ in a resilience and decarbonization role.
Passionate about addressing climate change and environmental protection, she focuses on creating healthier, more sustainable built environments and supporting a clean, carbon-free grid. Before Edo, Alicia led the Real Time Energy Management (RTEM) program at NYSERDA, expanding it to include tenant spaces and industrial settings. She holds a master’s degree from MIT, a bachelor’s degree from William and Mary, and is a certified energy manager.
Can you tell us a little bit about Edo?
Edo provides virtual power plant services and technology to utility partners and their customers. We empower utilities and buildings to optimize energy use and reduce carbon emissions. Edo distinguishes itself from other VPP solution providers through our comprehensive suite of services and technology, which help utilities create demand flexibility programs, often for the first time. Our flagship VPP project, Connected Communities, has been nationally recognized.
What led you to joining Edo?
Before Edo, I worked at NYSERDA on a program that helped building owners make the case for EMIS (energy management information system) investment and paired them with vetted service providers. The program (RTEM – Real Time Energy Management) capitalized on the value of near real-time BAS (building automation system) data from to inform operational efficiency improvements.
With climate change-induced weather events increasing in lockstep with supply-side renewable energy targets, I became increasingly interested in how building technology could provide more value to a modernizing grid. Energy efficiency is and will always be an important first step, but it reduces energy use statically and not necessarily at times when the grid ‘needs’ it. Being based out of NYC also brings another supply side issue to immediate attention – the use of peaker plants, often sited in historically disadvantaged communities, being used for local capacity constraints.
The ability of EMIS or other real-time data streaming operational systems in buildings to contribute to this issue via dynamic peak reduction and load shifting seemed huge, especially given the market saturation of this type of building controls technology. I championed grid-interactive buildings and demand flexibility programs at NYSERDA but there was a persistent lack of NY markets to make it scale; utilities were focused primarily on BESS as a solution to load flex needs. Edo was a brand-new company with one of the first operational grid-interactive campuses in South Landing Eco-District in Spokane, WA. Their mission was to expand their grid-interactive building offerings to utilities, and they were looking for teammates to help them do that – and I knew I had to make the jump.
You were previously with NYSERDA, can you highlight the differences you’ve experienced working between a government agency and a for profit company?
In the climate tech space, you need to be able to pivot quickly and strategically target the markets where your solution has the greatest need and potential for uptake. At a for-profit early-stage startup, pivoting and adjusting to find the right market fit is what teams are built to do, which allows for national scale in ways that NYSERDA cannot and was not designed to do. NYSERDA excels at designing programs specific to the New York state market context and is really in the long game of local (to NYS) market transformation whereas companies like Edo are the first to participate in those markets when and where they become available.
Edo’s values: At Edo, we are fueled by a commitment to address the urgent crises of climate change, affordability, and equity—recognizing that immediate action is essential to mitigate escalating impacts. How do you see these values playing out within the energy sector? Do you have any examples you would highlight as “best in class”?
We try to address worsening climate change in the energy sector by cleaning up the fuel supply that powers our everyday lives. Transitioning fuel supply to something clean and renewable requires massive investment and capital. Traditionally, the utility has made decisions about supply and corresponding investment with a healthy guaranteed rate of return. Addressing climate change in a more affordable and equitable manner means locating some of that energy transition activity and capital on the demand side, where building owners and communities can derive value from participating.
To illustrate this with an example, take the Edo development of South Landing. The land South Landing is built on was designated for a substation, a traditional distribution infrastructure investment where the utility makes a significant capital investment and receives a healthy return on said investment while rate-basing the cost. Instead, Avista and a development company spun up an innovative ownership model to build and lease commercial space on the property, with state-of-the-art energy storage and load control assets, partially owned by Avista and operated by Edo. The development houses several offices, a living lab, a café, and a university building that provide productive services to the community and local economy. Avista has the visibility into SL’s energy assets needed to balance onsite energy generation and demand with overarching grid operations. If the grid needs more supply, energy consumption from the buildings within South Landing decreases, freeing up any renewable energy generation and stored electrical and thermal energy supply. If the grid can’t absorb more supply, excess energy from the grid is moved to the on-site electrical and thermal storage systems.
Let’s dream a bit. Tomorrow, you wake up and every utility has a complete data set for the built world. Utility program owners can use it to empower and inform their programs. Customers and building owners can use it to make smarter decisions for their buildings. What are you most excited about and why? What else do you think is possible with this whole building data access?
- I think about the incredible utility program design and targeting advancements that could be made by having complete building data – you would know which retrofits or load shed measures have the most value, where they have the most value, and have accurate data to back up payback calculations.
- Consider all these cities that are rolling out their local building performance standards, and building owners are having to scramble to figure out where they line up and what they could do to avoid fees. Having this data available would make tracking and compliance so much easier and more accessible.
- It would also allow for faster time to value and cost savings that trickle down to customers and end users from considerable building optimization and control space advancements. There are so many innovative companies out there with building optimization experts who have to use simulated data to test their control theories, and it just will never truly represent the unique and diverse nature of every building and equipment set you encounter. Having more real, building data readily available would propel our industry forward in a mutually beneficial way.
Can you give us your definition of a Grid Interactive Efficient Building (GEB)?
A grid-interactive efficient building is a connected building that can dynamically modulate load to support grid service use cases. The two most prominent use cases for GEBs I always think of are supporting renewable energy supply (i.e. load shaping to align with when cleanest resources are available) and localized congestion relief. These buildings use communication and control technologies paired with “smart,” often AI-powered, algorithms to shift electricity usage to align with when supply is abundant and/or clean in a reliable and repeatable manner, with minimal impact on building occupants.
Given “grid” is a part of “GEB” and your title includes DSM, what’s your take on how these buildings can/should/will fit into utility programming?
When talking to utilities about a demand flexibility pilot, we typically talk to the DSM team (efficiency and demand response). We think GEBs should be valued for both their ongoing efficiency benefits and their grid services. The latter is usually the more difficult case to make within the DSM groups. Efficiency teams can easily see how our technology provides ongoing operational efficiency benefits and helps building operators identify faults and opportunities for conservation. However, these teams are usually siloed from Demand Response or Distribution Operations groups. Services provided by GEBs are meant to mirror a supply side resource in their availability and predictability but since the capacity does not come from peaker plants, it is a much cleaner alternative. This transcends the typical EE or DR group and goes into distribution operations and any teams working on NWAs. It has been hard to find the right fit in traditional utility structures.
In the future, perhaps GEBs will be the joining force between these siloed groups and even provide a true example of what we mean by “Integrated Demand Side Management” (IDSM), a term that came into vogue several years ago but has not gotten enough traction in practice.
What are the biggest barriers to getting from where we are today to a reality where GEBs are deployed at scale?
Markets and building operator trust. Demand flexibility (from GEBs) must be adequately valued as a key tool in keeping power on as we transition to a clean energy future. There was press the second week of August that said the RTO my utility is part of (PJM) has capacity prices for the 2025/26 delivery year at $269.92/MW-day, up from $28.92/MW-day in the last auction. They also have a significant amount of coal and oil generation, which is still powering the grid on high load days. The distribution utility that serves my area doesn’t even have a demand response program! Driving around, you see generators in most homes in the area. This all breaks my brain. There is clearly such a robust value to GEBs and VPPs, to both lower capacity prices and make power delivery more reliable, but it is not being acted on by creating appropriate markets.
On building operator trust, our solution and others like ours relies on owners, operators, and tenants seeing the value of working with us as a participant in a demand flexibility or virtual power plant program. This means feeling totally confident that they will not have uncomfortable temperature impacts, that they can opt out when needed, and trust us to not mess up any equipment with our adjustments during events. This will continue to be a barrier until deployments scale and there is a larger number of case studies to point to.
What role do we need utility regulators to play in this type of market evolution?
Regulators need to push pilots and then lay the groundwork for markets to support the ongoing operation of flexible assets in the built environment. There are also some innovative forms of performance-based regulation that support this type of programming. It is currently more lucrative to utilities and their shareholders to build supply side assets or turn on fossil fuel based peaker plants than utilizing demand side resources. But this is not more lucrative to customers!
You’ve had the opportunity to work on both the east and west coasts of the United States. What do you see as the major differences in terms of programs, customers, electric prices, and rate structures between both coasts?
They are very different, a lot of that is the makeup of the areas they serve (large, dense cities versus more sprawling urban areas). I would generalize that the two biggest differences are on the west coast you’ll find the lack of density of big commercial buildings and the utilities are generally vertically integrated – which in my opinion makes a VPP program more streamlined and efficient.
In Conclusion
In this chat, Alicia Noriega reflects on her career journey and the evolving energy sector. Now working with the Port Authority of NY/NJ in resilience and decarbonization, Alicia remains committed to tackling climate change through smarter, more sustainable buildings and grid solutions. From her time at NYSERDA to her work at Edo, she’s been driven by the need to create healthier environments that help support a carbon-free future. Alicia’s blend of experience in urban planning, energy management, and policy gives her a unique perspective, and she’s excited to keep pushing for more innovative solutions that bridge technology and real-world impact. Calico sends a big thank you to Alicia for taking the time to chat with us and we look forward to learning more about Alicia’s work in her new role.
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