Michaela worked with the Burlington Electric Department (BED) to identify opportunities and models to improve its future Integrated Resource Plans (IRP), which detail how the utility plans to meet the future energy needs of its customers at the lowest economic and environmental cost. Michaela’s work focused on identifying replicable models to evaluate technologies/measures to remotely control customer loads, assess lessons learned from pilot projects, analyze the cost of energy transformation projects and incentive structures, and analyze the continued operations and economics of the McNeil Power Plant. In addition, Michaela identified strategies to improve BED’s IRP process through better integration, more robust uncertainty analyses, and comprehensive societal cost evaluations. Michaela also evaluated the demand response potential of City of Burlington customers to reduce load during peak energy events. This work involved quantifying the size of the “virtual battery” that could be leveraged by working with commercial customers to enable load shifting and developing a spreadsheet tool to evaluate the financial savings. Michaela has a B.A. in geoscience with a concentration in environmental studies from Williams College. Prior to the Fellowship, she was a Research Analyst at Industrial Economics, Inc, an environmental consulting firm. Michaela began her master’s in civil and environmental engineering in the Atmosphere/Energy program at Stanford University after completing the Fellowship.
