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.)
Capacity Accreditation
This task force seeks to evaluate the state of the art practice for capacity accreditation. It will evaluate novel capacity accreditation methods and procurement mechanisms necessary for system planning and reliability with a changing energy mix, new technologies, and decarbonization goals.
Current work underway includes:
- Summaries of ongoing capacity accreditation reform at ISO/RTO markets
- An evaluation of capacity accreditation for all resources, including thermal generation, transmission, and hybrid resources
- Consideration of alternative market designs for reliability and firm capacity
Task Force Lead: Derek Stenclik, Telos Energy
Best Practices for Modeling Weather, Extreme Events, and Climate Trends
The energy transition is shifting the impact of weather on grid planning and operations, from one where weather (chiefly temperature) plays a primary role in modulating peak load and its timing, to one where weather is instrumental in driving system risks across multiple interconnected dimensions. Impacts include: wind and solar generation, load shape and magnitude, storage charge/discharge, and drivers of traditional system outages. This task force seeks to convene a cross-disciplinary group of system engineers and atmospheric scientists to advance the application of weather data in power systems planning and operations. The focus will be on better use of existing weather inputs in resource adequacy analysis, including for capacity expansion and production cost modeling, and upon determining what is needed from a “next generation” dataset that will serve the needs of the sector throughout the energy transition.
Our main objectives are:
- To establish best practices for using currently available weather data which typically imperfect and not applied in scientifically defensible ways.
- Developing a detailed description of what is needed from a national power systems weather database in a format that can be translated into a request to DOE, FERC, or other entity for funding.
- To provide recommendations on how high-impact, low-probability (HILP) events are likely to evolve and what planning should be done to prepare for such events.
- To consider to what extent power systems modeling should endogenously simulate weather impacts with concurrent weather timeseries data, versus the current generally approach of managing weather impacts exogenously using typical or specific weather scenarios.
Task Force Lead: Justin Sharp, Sharply Focused