Task Forces

The following task forces currently have a variety of activities and projects underway within our member-driven working groups, including the development of topical reports, white papers, fact sheets, technical and policy briefs, tutorials, webinars and blogs, etc.

Capacity Expansion Modeling for Transmission Planning – As we continue to add large amounts of wind and solar to the system and exhaust existing transmission capacity to bring those resources to load centers, it becomes increasingly important to consider resource and transmission expansion as an integrated process. For many utilities and ISOs, transmission planning is a separate, siloed process.

ESIG, supported by DOE, examined the use of capacity expansion models for transmission planning. This project examined capacity expansion model capabilities and culminated in a half-day public workshop preceding the 2022 ESIG Fall Technical Workshop. The group convened both model vendors and transmission planners for a dialogue on how capacity expansion models can be used in transmission planning and what improvements can be made to the models or the processes.

Aligning Retail Pricing and Grid Needs – The goal of this task force is to explore how we can align price signals and incentives for customers with grid needs to maintain reliability. Our future grid will need flexibility and retail pricing is a powerful way to get flexibility from demand. The task force will bring together retail pricing experts and grid experts to see what types of solutions make sense in a future that is highly decarbonized, as well as a nearer term transition to that future.

Completed white papers include:

“Tapping the Mother Lode: Employing Price-Responsive Demand to Reduce the Investment Challenge,” by Michael Hogan

“Why Is the Smart Grid So Dumb?: Missing Incentives in Regulatory Policy for an Active Demand Side in the Electricity Sector,” by Travis Kavulla

“Heat Pump–Friendly Cost-Based Rate Designs,” by Sanem Sergici, Akhilesh Ramakrishnan, Goksin Kavlak, Adam Bigelow, and Megan Diehl

Task Force Lead: Carl Linvill, Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP)

Redefining Resource Adequacy (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.

Completed work includes:

Task Force Lead: Derek Stenclik, Telos Energy

Grid Planning for Vehicle Electrification – This task force seeks to evaluate the state of the art practice for electrification impacts, particularly electric vehicles on grid planning. It will evaluate novel planning methods and identify, develop, and evolve best practices and next steps for planning and operations. Topics of particular interest include dynamic charging behavior, and the impacts of heavy, medium, and light duty vehicles on planning.

Current work underway includes:

Identification of best practices in planning across multiple considerations
Evolution of tools needed to assess EV impacts, driving/charging behaviors, and charging uncertainty
Sequencing of next steps for the industry and research communities for electrification

Task Force Lead: Sean Morash, Telos Energy

Flexibility Resources – Emerging flexibility resources such as hydrogen and industrial electrification will become important as we look to meet decarbonization goals. In this task force, the focus is on understanding the role of and integration of future flexibility resources (including industrial electrification, hydrogen and low/zero-carbon fuels), and to reach a common understanding of how to assess and integrate these new flexibility resources. The TF is reviewing international experiences, and identifying gaps and challenges in integration of new flexibility resources.

Current work underway includes:

Developing policy brief
Developing blog post

Completed work includes:

Task Force Lead: Aidan Tuohy, EPRI

High Share of Inverter-Based Generation – The objective of this task force is to develop an understanding of system need and the options for stable operation of future power systems with a very high share of inverter-based generation like wind, solar and storage, and a roadmap for making the transition from the power system of today to a future one dominated by inverter-based generation, working with research organizations, OEMs, and system operators to build a consensus.

Current work underway includes:

Next Step: Exploring needs and capabilities for integration of planning processes and studies

Completed work includes:

Task Force Lead: Julia Matevosyan, ESIG

Hybrids and Emerging Flexible Resources (HyFlex) – The purpose of this task force is to create a working community to develop concepts around emerging co-located, hybrid and highly flexible resources. These approaches are rapidly growing for digitally-controlled, integrated technologies such as PV solar with battery storage, but the concepts may apply broadly to combined technologies, aggregated distributed energy resources, and hierarchies of devices on both transmission and distribution systems.

Completed work includes:

Task Force Lead: Derek Stenclik, Telos Energy

Services Project Team

Objective: The objective of this PT is to identify new services needed in a power system with high IBR.

Approach: This work will combine learnings from two previous reports; the first is the G-PST Pilar 1 System Needs and Services for Systems with High IBR Penetration report; the second is ESIG’s Grid Forming Technology in Energy Systems Integration. The former work identified how system needs are changing with increasing penetration of IBRs and declining amounts of synchronous generation; ESIG’s report developed a framework for solving a “chicken and egg” problem involving deployment of new inverters with advance controls termed grid forming.

The framework will identify a target system (in terms of target IBR penetration) with target reliability, and operating parameters; determining needs of such systems, and formulating these needs as services that are either procured through markets or required through interconnection codes. Definitions of services and methodologies to identify amounts of each service that are needed will be developed. A test system(s) will be used to conduct a number of case studies to understand when existing services become insufficient and new services are needed, and how to specify these new services.

Deliverables: A report summarizing the findings of this work and providing recommendations for the specification of new services and methodologies around determining service amounts will be prepared. A Policy Brief summarizing the results for policy makers will be prepared, and a webinar summarizing the results for a technical audience will be presented.

Project Team Lead: Deepak Ramasubramanian, EPRI

Stability Project Team

Objective: The objective of this PT is to identify stability issues related to major grids reaching high levels of IBR penetration. The effort is centered on stability issues that are substantively altered or aggravated by the differences between IBR and synchronous resources. The project team will investigate oscillations that have been observed or are anticipated in grids with IBR, and identify gaps in our understanding that should be addressed in future R&D efforts.

Approach: There are broad systemic stability issues, such as small signal stability, first swing transient stability and voltage stability. The PT will start with consideration of the latest IEEE stability definitions, but not be unduly constrained by them. The participants will refine the current understanding with respect to high IBR systems. The PT will focus on the stability issues that are most impacted by high levels of IBR and of highest importance to the industry and FSOs.

Efforts will include investigation of stability margins, metrics and indicators of approach to stability limits. The G-PST Pillar 1 Tool Inventory will be used as a starting point in the identification of tools for analysis, root cause assessment, and planning functions.

Deliverables: Deliverable will include a report summarizing the current experience, state-of-the-art understanding and gaps, and synopsis of available tools and techniques as a basis for future R&D. A Policy Brief summarizing the results for policy makers will be prepared, and a webinar summarizing the results for a technical audience will be presented.

Project Team Lead: Nick Miller, HickoryLedge LLC

Weather Datasets Project Team – 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.

Project Team Lead: Justin Sharp, Sharply Focused