This working group convenes ESIG members to recommend, analyze, and report on energy system planning topics. The SPWG sponsors Task Forces that conduct targeted economic and engineering analysis on the transition to a decarbonized energy future. Topics include: transmission planning, generation planning, interconnection, electrification, resource adequacy, and long term market design.
Members of the System Planning Working Group are encouraged to interact with one another via Groups.IO, an online discussion platform and community network. The ESIG Resource Library is also a valuable tool for those seeking information on System Planning, as well as other topics.
Links to both can be found below:
(Please note: only members of ESIG may participate in the Working/Users Groups. If you are interested in membership, please email us at info@esig.energy.)
Resilience Benefit Quantification for Transmission Planning
This task force is evaluating the benefits of transmission during extreme grid events. The work of the task force has started with an assessment of the diversity of customer demand, renewable generation output, and thermal unit outages across the nation during normal and extreme grid conditions. This diversity of resource availability will be compared to available inter-regional transmission capacity. Phase II will include a detailed look at a specific region, building off of a recent resource adequacy study, evaluating specific extreme events to quantify the benefits that additional transmission capacity could provide.
Recently Completed Work
Interregional Transmission for Resilience: Using Regional Diversity to Prioritize Additional Interregional Transmission
Task Force Lead: Warren Lasher, Lasher Energy Consulting
Warren Lasher is President of Lasher Energy Consulting, a firm he founded in October, 2021, focused on providing specialized analysis and insight designed to help clients meet their strategic energy goals. Prior to this role, he spent seventeen years in the System Planning organization at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, serving as Director and then Senior Director of System Planning from 2012 to 2021. Prior to his work at ERCOT, Lasher was employed by the Southern Company in Birmingham, Alabama, where he worked in the Engineering and the Generation Planning organizations.
Long-term Load Forecasting
The Long-term Load Forecasting task force follows on ESIG’s Long-term Load Forecasting Workshop in Denver. This task force examines how demand will evolve in the next 10-25 years, due to climate change, electrification of buildings/transportation/industry, and new loads such as hydrogen. The summary findings of the June workshop will be used to describe the state of the art, and the initial activities are planned to be focused around identifying use-cases, best practices and gaps.
Task Force Lead: Julieta Giraldez, Director of Integrated Grid Planning, Electric Power Engineers
Julieta Giraldez is a nationally and internationally recognized subject matter expert in distributed energy resource (DER) grid integration with extensive expertise in grid modeling. She currently works at Electric Power Engineers (EPE) as a Director of Integrated Grid Planning where she implements holistic approaches to meet customers’ needs through the optimized planning and operation of generation, transmission, distribution, and distributed resources. She is also the chair of the Energy Systems Integration (ESIG) Long-Term Load and DER Forecasting Task force. Prior to joining EPE, she served as a Director of Grid Planning at Kevala Inc., where she focused on implementing proactive capacity planning and electrification impact studies for utilities and regulators, and worked for a decade at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) where she led Smart Grid and Grid Integration related projects to manage emerging technologies such as PV, energy storage and microgrids in distribution systems.
Integrated System Planning
The Integrated System Planning (ISP) Task Force provides a platform for planners, system operators, researchers, and consultants to discuss, work through, and advance the integration of electric system planning for generation, transmission, distribution, and load. The task force also reviews and provides feedback on draft work product for the integrated planning guidebook that is under development.
Integrated System Planning Forum
The ISP Forum provides an opportunity for all who are interested to learn about best practices, tools, and data for integrated electric system planning. The forum organizes presentations covering recent examples of integrated planning, examples of tools that can link together to provide integrations, and industry needs and research gaps.
ISP Lead: Matt Schuerger, Senior Fellow, ESIG
Matt Schuerger is ESIG’s Senior Fellow. Matt has 40 years of experience in the energy industry, as an engineer, a senior manager, and a regulator, focused on reliability, integrated planning, and distributed energy resources.
Guidebook Lead: Carlo Brancucci, encoord
Carlo Brancucci is the CEO and co-founder of encoord, a software company helping energy utilities plan for the energy transition with an integrated planning solution. Carlo has been working in energy modeling for planning in the US and Europe since 2010.
Integrating Across Siloes of Transmission Planning
The task force is exploring how the industry can adopt more holistic and coordinated transmission planning processes that lead to the most efficient and effective expansion of the grid of the future. The goal is to identify best practices and highlight current innovative work in the industry to enhance traditional planning, which has often been done in a siloed manner with limited coordination across planning functions.
Project Team Lead: Tim Kopp, Electric Power Engineers
Tim Kopp is Vice President of T&D Planning & Operations with Electric Power Engineers. Tim Kopp has over 14 years of experience in transmission system planning. His experience includes performing technical studies, including dynamic stability analysis, steady state load flow analysis, generation interconnection studies, PV and QV analysis, capacity planning, and energy market analysis. He has a strong background in programming, process improvement, and transmission advisory services. Tim is currently responsible for leading the Transmission Planning line of business at EPE including developing growth strategies, meeting business development goals, achieving revenue requirements, developing and managing annual budgets, overseeing hiring/growth, and providing technical support and guidance.
Planning for 100% Clean Energy
The task force is exploring the design and use of 100% clean energy studies. Topics of interest include: modeling innovations needed to develop and explore 100% clean energy scenarios, clean energy planning analysis under technological uncertainty, interactions between the electricity sector and other energy sectors under 100% clean energy policies, and best practices for framing and interpretating 100% clean energy studies to inform near-term decision making.
Project Team Lead: Elaine Hart, Moment Energy Insights
Elaine Hart is Founding Principal at Moment Energy Insights LLC and brings fifteen years of experience in designing and analyzing low carbon electricity systems. Her expertise spans Integrated Resource Planning, resource adequacy, resource valuation, and clean energy policy design and implementation. She has driven innovation in resource planning and decarbonization strategy from within a major investor-owned utility and has assisted regulatory agencies, utilities, advocates, and developers in understanding the challenges and opportunities presented by the transition to cleaner energy systems.
Large Load Task Force
*Led by Reliability Working Group with support from the System Planning Working Group and System Operation and Market Design Working Group
The Large Load Task Force will focus on large loads (also called step loads) and the challenges and solutions associated with ensuring these loads are planned efficiently and operated in ways that are economically efficient and support grid reliability. These new loads include data centers, hydrogen production, industrial heat electrification, EV fleet charging and others. This is a hot issue for utility planners who are struggling to forecast future load, for transmission planners who are struggling to build infrastructure in a timely fashion, for system operators who are seeing large loads disconnecting during a fault and potentially causing instabilities, for large load owners struggling through the interconnection and transmission planning process or who want access real-time prices, etc. This Task Force will address load forecasting, interconnection processes, interconnection performance requirements, modeling requirements, transmission planning, market participation models and resource adequacy.
Recently Completed Work
Modeling the Effects of Distributed Generation on Transmission Infrastructure Investment: A Western Case Study
This project team seeks to understand how distributed resources versus utility-scale resources affect transmission infrastructure investments. It seeks to understand whether distributed resources can reduce, defer, or eliminate transmission needs. It examines how transmission flows change and whether there are common transmission paths for other utility-scale and distributed futures.
Completed work includes:
- Modeling the Effects of Distributed Generation on Transmission Infrastructure Investment: A Western Case Study (Full Report, Updated May 2024)
- Modeling the Effects of Distributed Generation on Transmission Infrastructure Investment: A Western Case Study (Executive Summary)
Project Team Lead: Keegan Moyer, Energy Strategies
Keegan Moyer joined Energy Strategies in 2014 and directs the firm’s transmission and market analyses. His project teams combine grid simulation tools, complex industry datasets, and economic analyses to help clients identify and evaluate generation and transmission investments, market strategies, and energy policies. Keegan is also responsible for the firm’s client services related to interconnections and transmission service.
Transmission Benefits Valuation