March 6, 2019
It’s about load. In our long-term reliability assessments, we tend to think of peak demand as a fixed quantity. We adjust it up for new loads such as EV growth, or down for demand response and DER growth, and we adjust it for weather. We consider the variability from wind, solar and hydro during that high demand period, perhaps assigning a capacity value to different weather-related resources. And when we consider adding a gas peaker to the mix to ensure we can meet peak demand, we may use a planning reserve margin (eg 15%) to give us a cushion of safety. Utilities planning for high penetrations of wind and solar may…
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