A Unique Window of Opportunity: Capturing the Reliability Benefits of Grid-Forming Batteries
March 2023
Brief for Decisionmakers: Implementing grid-forming (GFM) controls on new battery storage systems has the potential to increase grid reliability at low cost. In the absence of incentives or requirements for GFM controls, batteries currently in interconnection queues will be built with conventional controls, leading to a need for additional stabilizing equipment in some areas with high levels of renewables. However, batteries equipped with GFM controls can provide stability to the system at low or zero additional cost. We have a unique window of opportunity to procure, test, and gain experience with GFM technology now, before the need for wind, solar, and battery storage to contribute to grid stability becomes acute. Areas that take advantage of this opportunity will be able to maintain grid reliability through the less expensive, more efficient means of having GFM batteries and renewables provide stability advantages themselves.
Click here to download this brief for decisionmakers.
Click here for the Grid-Forming Technology in Energy Systems Integration report and other accompanying materials.
Ensuring Efficient Reliability: New Design Principles for Capacity Accreditation
February 2023
This report discusses key considerations for capacity accreditation for the next phase of the energy transition in which solar, wind, and battery storage will be increasingly relied on to ensure grid reliability. The key considerations highlighted in this report are to ensure that capacity accreditation methods are applied to all resources, not just wind, solar, and battery storage, in a consistent, non-discriminatory manner; and to ensure there is a linkage between resource accreditation and real-world operations.
Click here to visit the report page for a downloadable copy along with accompanying materials.
White Paper Series: Aligning Retail Pricing with Grid Needs
January 2023
The ESIG Aligning Retail Pricing with Grid Needs Task Force examined ways that retail pricing may be used more widely and more efficiently to allow flexible demand to respond to grid needs as the role of demand becomes increasingly important for the reliability of the grid. The task force brought together experts in rate design and electricity markets, transmission and distribution planning and operations, consumer advocates, and others to explore current issues, potential solutions, and practical implementation challenges involved in utilizing the flexibility in price-sensitive loads.
Seven papers were drafted by key members of the task force that highlighted important challenges and in some cases solutions to the potential misalignment that exists today between grid needs and retail pricing structures.
Click here for links to each of the papers.
Proactive Planning for Generation Interconnection: A Case Study of SPP and MISO
September 2022
This study examined three levels of proactiveness and calculated the average cost of interconnection for each. Using the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) and Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) regions as a case study, the study assessed (1) a lower level represented by common practices today of studying generation interconnection on an annual or semi-annual basis, (2) a medium level represented by a three-year study window, and (1) a higher level represented by the five-year window used by the SPP/MISO Joint Targeted Interconnection Queue (JTIQ) study.
Click here to visit the study page for a downloadable copy.
Lessons Learned for the U.S. Context: An Assessment of UK and Australian Open Networks Initiatives
September 2022
This report provides an assessment of recent DER integration initiatives in the UK and Australia, distilling insights that would be instructive for the development of a national initiative around DER integration in the United States.
It is the second in a series of three reports on DER integration. See also the first report, DER Integration into Wholesale Markets and Operations, and the third report, The Transition to a High-DER Electricity System: Creating a National Initiative on DER Integration for the United States.
Click here to visit the report page for a downloadable copy along with accompanying materials.
The Transition to a High-DER Electricity System: Creating a National Initiative on DER Integration for the United States
September 2022
This report proposes a U.S. national initiative around DER integration that would create common concepts and vocabulary, more standardized solutions to nearer-term DER integration challenges, and more alignment across the industry on how to resolve longer-term challenges addressing a range of planning, operations, interconnection, and regulatory issues. It describes three tracks that a U.S. national initiative could pursue: technical foundations, least-regrets strategies, and dialogue on longer-term issues.
It is the third in a series of three reports on DER integration. See also the first report, DER Integration into Wholesale Markets and Operations, and the second report, Lessons Learned for the U.S. Context: An Assessment of UK and Australian Open Networks Initiatives.
Click here to visit the report page for a downloadable copy along with accompanying materials.
Joint Generator Interconnection Workshop (Virtual)
August 2022
This major online workshop covers the important relationships between interconnection process reforms and new capability and performance standards for inverter-based resources. The workshop provides education on both topics and how they interact for potentially expediting the large generator interconnection process while also supporting a more economic, sustainable, and reliable future power system.
Click here to visit the event page for a downloadable summary as well as recordings and presentations from the event.
Multi-Value Transmission Planning for a Clean Energy Future
June 2022
This report demonstrates a methodology for evaluating a broad range of benefits from large-scale transmission expansion.
It illustrates how different types of transmission may have different benefits. This study showed the different sets of benefits from transmission that delivers energy from remote, high-quality resource zones and leads to fuel savings, and transmission that links diverse regions, resulting in less need to build generation capacity and thus capital cost savings.
Click here to visit the report page for a downloadable copy along with accompanying materials.
Grid-Forming Technology in Energy Systems Integration
March 2022
Grid-Forming Technology in Energy Systems Integration provides a comprehensive view of advanced inverter controls needed to run stable power systems with high shares of renewable energy.
The report presents a nine-step approach to breaking the chicken-and-egg cycle, starting from the perspective of evolving system needs. It explores the types of engineering and economic studies required to define and deploy new system services, and discusses the evolution of stability, analytical, and economic tools necessary to ensure stable power systems with high levels of renewables.
Click here to visit the report page for a downloadable copy along with accompanying materials.
Unlocking the Flexibility of Hybrid Resources
March 2022
Unlocking the Flexibility of Hybrid Resources discusses the rapid increase in hybrid resources across technology types, the ways these resources interconnect to the grid, and what they mean for system operations and markets.
The report offers initial recommendations for system planners, market designers, and policymakers as they define market rules and requirements that govern hybrids’ use, with the goal of encouraging flexibility and creativity in the design and implementation of new technologies and capturing the range of benefits they offer.
Click here to visit the report page for a downloadable copy along with accompanying materials.
Design Study Requirements for a U.S. Macrogrid: A Path to Achieving the Nation’s Energy System Transformation Goals
February 2022
The report articulates a set of recommendations for the next stage of proactive transmission planning of a national-scale HVDC macrogrid, which could be built over and interconnected into the existing AC grid. It draws from several comprehensive studies of a clean energy future for the United States and a series of workshops hosted by ESIG that brought together experts from across the industry, and delves into the reliability, resilience, economic, and operational aspects of the design.
Click here to visit the report page for a downloadable copy along with accompanying materials.
Increasing Electric Power System Flexibility: The Role of Industrial Electrification and Green Hydrogen Production
January 2022
This report lays out viable ways that industrial electrification and hydrogen production may provide flexibility and grid services in the future electric power system.
It discusses how electrified industrial loads and the production of hydrogen could be important sources of demand-shifting, in which hydrogen production and other industrial processes are timed to coincide with periods of low demand. These new sources of flexibility may also provide grid services; help to balance supply and demand over hours, days, and weeks; or, in the case of hydrogen, directly provide capacity and energy.
Click here to visit the report page for a downloadable copy along with accompanying materials.
DER Integration Into Wholesale Markets
January 2022
This report examines the changes in regulation, market rules, planning, and operating practices needed to better integrate distributed energy resources into U.S. wholesale markets and operations.
The report covers the nearer-term implementation of FERC Order 2222, the order’s implications for electricity distribution systems, and higher-level needs for DER integration in wholesale markets and distribution systems more broadly.
Click here to visit the report page for a downloadable copy along with accompanying materials.
Redefining Resource Adequacy for Modern Power Systems
August 2021
Redefining Resource Adequacy for Modern Power Systems outlines six principles for the redesign of resource adequacy analysis—a central element of long-term reliability planning—to ensure that tomorrow’s power systems have the right resources to reliably serve load.
To reliably balance supply and demand on our future high-renewables grid, power system planners will need to analyze system needs not just during periods of peak load but hour-by-hour over the course of a year and do long-term resource planning that includes not only renewable energy, batteries, and some conventional generation, but also dynamic loads and transmission which allows electricity to be shared among neighboring grids.
Click here to visit the report page for a downloadable copy along with accompanying materials.
Transmission Planning for 100% Clean Electricity
February 2021
Interregional transmission dramatically lowers the cost of achieving 100 percent clean electricity by reducing the amount of wind, solar, storage, and other capacity that must be built. This white paper reviews key research studies that assessed different pathways to achieving a low-carbon electricity grid, and presents the three components of the ESIG macro grid concept:
National transmission planning: The United States should establish a national transmission planning authority and initiate an ongoing national transmission planning process.
Renewable energy zones: Apart from energy efficiency, wind and solar energy are currently the lowest-cost sources of zero-carbon energy. The United States should designate renewable energy zones for large-scale wind and solar resource development and build large-scale transmission to those regions to expedite coordinated generation and transmission expansion.
Macro grid concept: The United States should develop and implement a national transmission network (the macro grid) of multi-regional high-voltage transmission that unites the country’s power systems.
The white paper outlines the characteristics of a well-designed macro grid, describes its three stages of development, and offers clear recommendations to guide a diverse group of stakeholders in designing and building an interregional macro grid for the United States.
Click here to visit the report page for a downloadable copy along with accompanying materials.
