Who has the 32?

The proliferation of Distributed Energy Resources (DER) has led to an increased number of utility interconnection requests. Utility interconnection agreements can be confusing to DER developers and are often misunderstood, not only in scope, but in spirit. In the case of co-ops and municipalities without a full engineering staff, these documents may not be well-understood internally. Still, once established, these guidelines must be followed or negotiated in an intelligent manner. One topic that is routinely questioned by DER developers and frequently required by the interconnection agreement is Directional Power (ANSI device number 32) protection. Therefore, it begs the question, “Who has the power?”