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Webinar: An Empirical Assessment of Regional and Interregional Transmission Congestion Value
August 25, 2022 @ 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm EDT
Download D. Millstein Presentation
Download J. Pfeifenberger Presentation
Featured Speakers: Dev Millstein, Research Scientist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Johannes (Hannes) Pfeifenberger, Principal, The Brattle Group; Michael Goggin, Vice President, Grid Strategies
Dev Millstein
About the Webinar: In this webinar we will examine recent trends and characteristics of one important benefit of transmission infrastructure—congestion relief. Specifically, we examine the marginal value of potential transmission links as indicated by nodal pricing (LMPs) from 2012 through the first half of 2022. We find, for example, that many links have hourly average pricing differences in 2021 that exceed $15/MWh—equivalent to $130 million per year for a 1000 MW link. We will examine trends in the transmission value over the past decade. We will explore how extreme conditions and high-value periods play an outsized role in the value of transmission. For example, we find that 50% of transmission’s congestion value comes from only 5% of hours. These high value transmission hours are only partially attributable to designated extreme weather or grid-stress events identified by NERC, with the remainder of the high-value hours representing periods that are natural features of actual market operations (possible causes include uncertain generation or other infrastructure outages, fuel price volatility, forecast errors, and electric demand volatility). We will discuss the broad implications of these findings, key limitations, and importantly, the challenge of adequately representing transmission congestion value in transmission planning studies.
Hannes Pfeifenberger
About the Speakers: Dev Millstein is a Research Scientist in the Electricity Markets and Policy department at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Dr. Millstein leads research across a diverse range of topics, including the assessment of wind and solar value, wind resource variability, renewable power and grid-integration topics, and air quality topics. Dev Millstein received a BA in economics from Vassar College in 2002 and a PhD in environmental engineering from UC Berkeley in 2009.
Johannes (Hannes) Pfeifenberger, a Principal at The Brattle Group, is an economist with a background in electrical engineering and over twenty-five years of experience in wholesale power market design, renewable energy, electricity storage, and transmission. He also is a Visiting Scholar at MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR), a Senior Fellow at Boston University’s Institute of Sustainable Energy (BU-ISE), a IEEE Senior Member, and currently serves as an advisor to research initiatives by the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Labs, and the Energy Systems Integration Group (ESIG).
Michael Goggin
Michael Goggin is Vice President at Grid Strategies LLC. He has been at Grid Strategies for nearly 5 years, and previously worked at the American Wind Energy Association for 10 years. Grid Strategies offers consulting on electric grid and market issues for clean energy sector clients.
Moderator: Debbie Lew, Associate Director, ESIG
Registration Cost: FREE
Q&A Session: We will be using the slido platform for Q&A. Please submit your questions and follow-along during the event at this link.
