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What is PEER?

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What is PEER?

PEER (Performance Excellence in Electricity Renewal) is the first-ever rating system to assess power system performance and improve the overall reliability, resilience, and power quality of electricity infrastructure. PEER provides a framework to ensure grid resilience for critical infrastructure and includes guidance for cities, utilities, campuses, renewable energy installations, and transit systems. Through project certification, PEER recognizes industry leaders for advancing grid modernization efforts globally. PEER certification is a tool to demonstrate project value to investors, identify opportunities for improvement and drive larger market change.

What are the benefits of PEER certification?

PEER encourages the adoption of sustainable power system best practices, and helps utilities and facility owners improve aging infrastructure, ensure resiliency, reliability, and power quality, improve energy efficiency, reduce environmental impacts, generate profits for grid services, increase competitiveness, and empower customers.

Certifying projects using the PEER rating system framework enables organizations to:

  • Reduce climate risk with resilient design and ensure access to reliable power
  • Improve energy system performance and mitigate climate change
  • Identify cost savings, reduce operational costs, and demonstrate value to investors
  • Enhance tracking to identify deficiencies and prevent power system failures

Why is GBCI interested in power system performance?

Increasing access to reliable, clean, and affordable electricity is an essential component of quality of life. When power systems fail lives are immediately interrupted and put at risk.

The highly digitalized modern world demands a reliable grid that can power our everyday lives and ensure quality power to critical infrastructure and facilities. Unfortunately, our global energy grid is badly in need of investments, often unreliable, and currently incapable of taking us to a new energy future. As climate change continues to result in more severe weather events, this challenge will only increase. Our grid systems must be built to adapt to and withstand severe shocks to the electrical system and ensure our safety, security, and wellbeing are not compromised. To grow in a way that is both sustainable and resilient, modernizing our electricity grid and ensuring reliability is essential.

How does PEER apply to building owners?

Roughly 50% of the cost being paid for electricity goes to waste. Power outages cause lost productivity and put building owners at risk. Poor power quality, which costs US facilities over $200 billion a year, can damage sensitive electronics, lights, and motors and raise maintenance requirements.

PEER can be leveraged to address issues with reliability and power quality, lower electricity costs, minimize risks, and pursue revenue from ancillary services to the grid. Building owners can also use PEER to improve their electricity procurement specifications and building designs, and begin to integrate distributed energy and load response into their buildings.

Who is using PEER?

PEER is used by leading universities, hospitals, airports, and more to lower costs, generate revenue, minimize risks, improve electricity procurement specifications, and make facilities more responsive to emerging distributed generation, microgrid, demand response and islanding technologies.

PEER is used by power system designers in search of competitive advantage through enhanced performance and demonstrated, meaningful outcomes.

PEER is used by power industry professionals and utilities seeking to define processes and programs that meet best-in-class standards and increase the capability of buildings to address peak load, reliability, efficiency, and safety challenges.

Early adopters of PEER include University of Texas at Austin, NYU Langone Health, EPB Chattanooga, Bangalore International Airport, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, and Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. See more PEER projects.

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