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Webinar: ESIG Large Loads Task Force: Background Information, Data and Flexibility Needs
November 6 @ 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm EST
Featured Speakers: Julia Matevosyan, Associate Director, Chief Engineer, ESIG; Trieu Mai, Visiting Fellow, ESIG
About the Webinar: Large electrical loads, such as data centers, hydrogen production facilities, and EV fleet charging facilities, present significant new challenges for the electric power industry.
These new challenges include:
- Difficulties in accurately forecasting demand without a public and transparent interconnection queue; reliable information about energy use patterns, limited financial or other firm commitments from large load developers; and project completion data
- Lack of thorough understanding from industry stakeholders of the performance of different types of large loads, how this performance will affect the power system, and how large loads could potentially provide essential power system reliability services
- Lack of large load-specific interconnection requirements that would enable interconnection planning engineers to thoroughly study the effects of these large loads on the power system before energization
- Challenges in modeling large loads and their type-dependent and varied performance characteristics in the reliability studies
- Systemic procedural and regulatory impediments to plan and build transmission infrastructure at the pace necessary to reliably deliver energy to these rapidly interconnecting large electrical loads
- Difficulties in ensuring resource adequacy due to uncertainty in load forecast
- Difficulties across all topic areas in securing the needed data, whether it be for forecasts, electrical models, or flexibility potential
Meanwhile, large load developers are also left to grapple with the challenges summarized above, and more. Addressing these challenges in a timely manner is critical to the further growth of large load industries, reliability of the bulk power system, and electricity affordability.
It’s against this background that the Energy Systems Integration Group (ESIG) has launched a Large Loads Task Force (LLTF) to convene stakeholders, identify challenges and practical solutions, and develop harmonized best practices that help ensure reliable and efficient grid integration while supporting industry growth. The LLTF kicked off with an introductory webinar on December 17th, 2024, outlining the scope, format, and deliverables of the task force.
This webinar will cover the first deliverable of the ESIG Large Load Taskforce, namely the Introduction Report that is currently being finalized. The webinar will cover background information on large load growth and identify gaps with large load integration into power systems. Specifically, we’ll focus on data needs and availability as well as large load flexibility considerations.
About the Speakers: Julia Matevosyan is ESIG’s Associate Director and Chief Engineer and has more than 25 years of experience in the power industry. Prior to joining ESIG, Matevosyan was the Lead Planning Engineer of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). Her interests include reliability of power systems with high shares of inverter-based generation and large loads, with specific focus on inverter-based resource capabilities and performance, changing system needs and services. Julia also leads several industry working groups and task forces on these topics at NERC, ESIG, ERCOT, CIGRE and IEEE. Julia received her BSc from Riga Technical University in Latvia, and her MSc and PhD from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Sweden.
Trieu Mai is ESIG’s Visiting Fellow, covering bulk power system planning, integrated planning, and DERs. Prior to joining ESIG, Mai spent 16 years at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), where he most recently served as a Senior Energy Researcher for NREL’s Grid Planning and Analysis Center. At NREL he was a principal investigator for major studies on renewable energy grid integration, energy policy, electrification, technology innovation and power and energy systems transformation. His work included the development and application of state of the art power systems planning tools, data, and capabilities. Additionally, he served as a Supervisor in NREL’s Strategic Analysis Center. Mai holds a Ph.D. and a M.S. in Physics from the University of California, Santa Cruz
Moderator: Erik Ela, Director of System Operations and Electricity Markets, 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.
