Why is Grid Planning So Important in Today's Energy System
Electric utilities face a once in a generation opportunity to expand their role in the energy system—to become the provider of the majority of energy used by society.
The problem
Electric utilities face a once in a generation opportunity to expand their role in the energy system—to become the provider of the majority of energy used by society. The reasons for this opportunity are varied and known:
- Revolutions in electro-technologies enabling more efficient and effective vehicles, furnaces, and assemblies powered by electrons instead of combustion,
- Governments, corporations, and individuals setting ambitious decarbonization targets which critically rely on these more efficient electro-technologies,
- New computing frontiers that can only be powered by enormous amounts of electricity
- Widespread availability and cost competitiveness of photovoltaics and batteries, enabling energy to be created and stored at the edge for the same or similar costs as producing it from dams or nuclear sites, without the costs or bottlenecks of the transmission system,
- Increasing recognition that our economy is capped by the growth of the energy system, and an emerging consensus that now is a time to build and grow it.
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At the same time, electric utilities are operating in an environment of immense uncertainty. No one knows what the degree or speed of electrification will be, nor the amount of grid modernization that is required or feasible. But the change is happening rapidly, ranging from EVs reaching XX% of adoption in Norway, PV and storage providing XX% of power to Texas’s grid, XX-year congestion queues for new XXMW connections in the Netherlands, and a single DelFasco electric arc steel furnace in Canada coming online at XX MW power requirements.
Amid this uncertainty, planners, engineers, and electric system leaders thinking about the future need new analytical tools to plan and approve no regrets investments that protect reliability, manage affordability, and prepare the grid of the future.
The solution
Expanding planning requirements for the energy system, both regionally and continentally, are limited by a lack of consistency in the data, analytics, and other capabilities of sector participants. The unprecedented increase in energy demand is already creating unforeseen impacts. As a result, planning periods that would typically look at system requirements and solutions in multi-year cycles are beginning to reach a state of continuous planning.
Historically, DSOs operating in an environment of relatively flat and predictable demand, have neither possessed nor required the capabilities to rapidly assess and provide varying demand scenarios or pathways for meeting local energy needs.
Meeting this opportunity requires a new approach across the asset planning lifecycle:
#1
From Static Planning...
Traditional grid planning processes design for a predictable and centralized grid – a ‘fit-and-forget’ approach. Some utilities assess low-base-high simulations and take dozens to hundreds of engineering hours to incorporate new projections on how demand is changing or what the impact of non-wires alternatives could be.
To Rapid Scenario Planning
With unpredictable load growth and the pace of decentralization / DER integration, utilities must be able to conduct rapid scenario planning on their grid across a spectrum of plausible futures. By creating data-driven scenarios with energy-economic and physical system modelling, utilities can simulate grid conditions and required investments under a range of possible futures and identify no-regrets investments in a matter of minutes.
#2
From Bulk System or Sub-station Level Forecasting...
Traditional planning processes assess load growth at the sub-station or bulk system level based on residential, commercial, and industrial developments and population growth.
To Bottom-up Demand Forecasting with a Focus on Your Customers
Meter-level load forecasts that are based on a deep understanding of customers (demographic, existing adoption of EVs, heat pumps, etc) and system context (e.g., weather) reveal temporal and geospatial load patterns and asset-level system constraints that are missed by system-level models. By identifying the drivers of load evolution at the meter, feeder, transformer, or substation level, utilities can identify which and when assets are becoming congested and deploy more targeted demand-side management solutions and physical upgrades. Below is an example of how leading utilities model long-term system peaks.
The Result
With new analytical tools that enable the future of planning, what can be achieved?
A blueprint for the future could look like…
In a week…
- Establish your base state view of the future, across population growth, new development, and existing constraints on assets into your bottom-up digital twin of the grid, taking input from meter, SCADA, GIS, EAM, and customer data systems
- Solicit perspectives on the forces that impact the grid, and the range of potential futures that are worthwhile to stress test
- These perspectives can be generated internally—teams across planning, regulatory, operations, customer, and strategy
- And also externally—gas system operators, electric system operators, policymakers, regulators, and independent forecasters
Other Use Cases
Electrified Grid: Driving Change in Energy Management
Electric utilities face a once in a generation opportunity to expand their role in the energy system—to become the provider of the majority of energy used by society.
Electrified Grid: A Case Study in Innovation
Electric utilities face a once in a generation opportunity to expand their role in the energy system—to become the provider of the majority of energy used by society.
Electrified Grid: Enhancing Operational Efficiency
Electric utilities face a once in a generation opportunity to expand their role in the energy system—to become the provider of the majority of energy used by society.