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At least 325 records · Page 18

M&V in ESPC: The U.S. Federal Experience and Implications for Developing ESPC Markets

The United States Federal Government has been conducting guaranteed savings energy savings performance contracts for over 20 years and now relies on ESPC for the majority of its energy efficiency work. Along with a related financed project type, these deals resulted in $4.2 billion of project investment in the five years ending in 2016, a pace that has even accelerated since. Measurement and verification (M&V) on the projects is the key to assuring savings realization and persistence. Perceived as a weakness or burdensome added cost in the early years of the program, M&V has become a strength. All energy conservation measures (ECMs) have some form of measurement – defined as a measured baseline establishment followed by at least one measurement of the main energy-saving parameter taken in the performance period for each ECM. The government’s in-house energy consulting office, the Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP), now recommends measurement of these “Option A” M&V ECMs throughout the contract term, usually annually. Moreover, a significantly higher percentage of projects are now characterized by more ambitious M&V, including Option B (all parameter measurement) for most generation (including renewable) and some efficiency measures, and more frequent Option C (whole facility utility bill analysis) for “deep retrofit” projects with multiple, interactive ECMs. Coincident with this progress in M&V has been a much greater embracing of ESPC by the federal agencies, resulting in the enormous rate of projects now executed. This paper traces the evolution of M&V in federal ESPC and argues that the heightened credibility of the savings has contributed significantly to the procurement vehicle’s long-term viability. This focus on savings integrity via M&V has been learned over two decades for U.S. federal ESPC, but countries with developing ESPC markets would be wise to emphasize it as their markets emerge, allowing them to avoid some of the “growing pains” experienced in the U.S.

Coleman, Philip↗

M&V in ESPC: The U.S. Federal Experience and Implications for Developing ESPC Markets

The United States Federal Government has been conducting guaranteed savings energy savings performance contracts for over 20 years and now relies on ESPC for the majority of its energy efficiency work. Along with a related financed project type, these deals resulted in $4.2 billion of project investment in the five years ending in 2016, a pace that has even accelerated since.Measurement and verification (M&V) on the projects is the key to assuring savings realization and persistence. Perceived as a weakness or burdensome added cost in the early years of the program, M&V has become a strength. All energy conservation measures (ECMs) have some form of measurement – defined as a measured baseline establishment followed by at least one measurement of the main energy-saving parameter for a given ECM taken in the performance period. The government’s in-house energy consulting office, the Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP), now recommends measurement of these “Option A” M&V ECMs throughout the contract term, usually annually. Moreover, a significantly higher percentage of projects are now characterized by more ambitious M&V, including Option B (all parameter measurement) for most generation (including renewable) and some efficiency measures, and more frequent Option C (whole facility utility bill analysis) for “deep retrofit” projects with multiple, interactive ECMs. Coincident with this progress in M&V has been a much greater embracing of ESPC by the federal agencies, resulting in the enormous rate of projects now executed. This paper traces the evolution of M&V in federal ESPC and argues that the heightened credibility of the estimated (and guaranteed) savings has contributed significantly to the procurement vehicle’s long-term viability. This focus on savings integrity via M&V has been learned over two decades for U.S. federal ESPC, but countries with developing ESPC markets would be wise to emphasize it as their markets emerge, allowing them to avoid some of the “growing pains” experienced in the U.S.

Coleman, Philip↗

Role of sustainable biomass markets in forest conservation

When properly implemented, the production of bioenergy using wood pellets can play a role in addressing threats related to biodiversity and climate change. Reduction in forest loss and degradation is fostered by the integration of sustainable pellet production with other forest markets and strategies to implement nature-based solutions. Local stakeholders should be engaged to devise management practices appropriate for the location and context. Market incentives for sustainable biomass production help conserve forests.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗

2022 Project Commercialization and Market Development Awardee: Eocycle America Corporation

Annually, agriculture and related industries contribute approximately $1.2 trillion to the U.S. gross domestic product and 11% of the nation's output of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. At the same time, agribusiness operations account for about 30% of energy use worldwide. Distributed wind energy produced on site can power large-scale agricultural, industrial, and commercial operations in windy rural areas, offering cost savings, GHG emissions reductions, and the potential to supply excess electricity to the grid. Despite these benefits, agribusinesses have been slow to embrace the technology. Eocycle America Corporation (Eocycle) plans to develop partnerships with agriculture and related industries and implement a marketing strategy to educate corporate customers about the benefits of distributed wind. Through the CIP initiative, Eocycle will create a marketing plan to raise interest in distributed wind energy among large American and European corporations with operations in rural areas. Campaign goals are to encourage rapid deployment of distributed wind energy on a large scale, as well as to create high-paying energy sector jobs through increased manufacturing, sales, maintenance, and related services. Eocycle plans to identify 15 agriculture-related corporations with the potential for at least 25 turbine sales each.

Competitiveness Improvement Project↗

Prime Time for Model-Predictive Control? Assessing the Technical and Market Readiness of Advanced Controls in Buildings

Despite three decades of extensive research and field testing that have consistently validated the benefits of Model Predictive Control (MPC) in building applications, the technology has seen limited market adoption. This paper evaluates the readiness of MPC for widespread deployment, showcases recent demonstrations and field tests across diverse building types, including residential, small commercial, large commercial, and campus settings. Our results demonstrate that MPC can optimize system operations to achieve load shifting, minimize curtailment of on-site generation, and reduce energy costs by up to 80 %, while maintaining or improving occupant comfort. We also show that MPC can effectively control large assets, such as MW-sized thermal storage systems, and respond to dynamic pricing signals. However, achieving scale remains difficult due to labor-intensive workflows, reliance on a “PhD-in-the-loop” for MPC design and maintenance, susceptibility to fragile data infrastructure, and persistent workforce education and acceptance barriers. To bridge this gap, we outline a transition from bespoke, labor intensive prototypes toward streamlined, segment-targeted deployment strategies that leverage model templates, semantic tools, and generative AI. By automating control configuration and reducing engineering effort, these recommendations provide a pathway for transforming successful research demonstrations into scalable, market ready solutions for MPC-based controls.

Pritoni, Marco↗

Status and Trends in the Voluntary Market (2019 Data)

Green power refers to renewable electricity voluntarily purchased by retail electricity customers. Renewable energy sources for green power include solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, and small-scale hydropower. This report summarizes data on the various ways in which voluntary purchasers - including residential, commercial, and institutional customers - purchase green power. We summarize key historic trends in U.S. voluntary green power markets and the current status of green power sales through seven products: utility green pricing programs, utility renewable contracts, competitive suppliers, unbundled renewable energy certificates, community choice aggregations, power purchase agreements, and community solar.

42 ENGINEERING↗

The effect of price-based demand response on carbon emissions in European electricity markets: The importance of adequate carbon prices

Price-based demand response (PBDR) has recently been attributed great economic but also environmental potential. However, the determination of its short-term effects on carbon emissions requires the knowledge of marginal emission factors (MEFs), which compared to grid mix emission factors (XEFs), are cumbersome to calculate due to the complex characteristics of national electricity markets. This study, therefore, proposes two merit order-based methods to approximate hourly MEFs and applies them to readily available datasets from 20 European countries for the years 2017–2019. Based on the calculated electricity prices, standardized daily load shifts were simulated which indicated that carbon emissions increased for 8 of the 20 countries and by 2.1% on average. Thus, under specific circumstances, PBDR leads to carbon emissions increases, mainly due to the economic advantage fuel sources such as lignite and coal have in the merit order. MEF-based load shifts reduced the mean resulting carbon emissions by 35%, albeit with 56% lower monetary cost savings compared to price-based load shifts. Finally, by repeating the load shift simulations for different carbon price levels, the impact of the carbon price on the resulting carbon emissions was analyzed. The Spearman correlation coefficient between carbon intensity and marginal cost along the German merit order substantially increased with increasing carbon price. The coefficients were -0.13 for the 2019 carbon price of 24.9 €/t, 0 for 42.6 €/t, and 0.4 for 100.0 €/t. Therefore, with adequate carbon prices, PBDR can be an effective tool for both economical and environmental improvement.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

Coordinated operation of electricity and natural gas systems from day-ahead to real-time markets

Power systems worldwide are becoming more reliant on energy from natural gas, wind, and solar, posing possible reliability and coordination challenges from the tighter coupling of these infrastructure systems. This paper proposes a framework for the market-based coordination of electricity and natural gas system operations. The proposed framework includes a power system model that accounts for flexibility in the commitment of power plants with short start-up and shut-down times, coupled with a dynamic gas model that simulates when gas cannot be delivered to generators. The capabilities of the framework are illustrated using real-world electric power and gas systems, including scenarios around wind and solar penetrations and the analysis of time-variant, “shaped flow” gas nominations. Our results indicate that coordination between power and gas systems improves total gas delivery and reduces out-of-merit order dispatch in the electricity system, and that shaped flows may reduce unserved gas in systems with high penetrations of wind and solar. Coordination can have mixed effects on carbon-dioxide emissions, with emissions increasing with coordination for current systems during high load weeks but decreasing for systems with high renewable penetrations, particularly during periods of high variability.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Taming the wild edge of smart grid – Lessons from transactive energy market deployments

For two decades, the idea of using market-based approaches in field deployments that coordinate the flexible operation of electricity customer assets has occupied the efforts of transactive energy practitioners. While the purported benefits of this distributed decision-making approach have been well explored, the practical aspects of implementing such a system to address real-world problems are just beginning to emerge. This report surveyed 24 field-deployed programs and interviewed experts instrumental in these deployments. The results of the survey and interviews reveal the diversity of designs and applications. They highlight the technical promise of the approaches as well as challenges with system integration, sustainable business strategy, and regulatory policy obstacles. Insights from the survey offer considerations to direct future effort and investment.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

A Peer-to-Peer Market-Based Control Strategy for a Smart Residential Community with Behind-the-Meter Distributed Energy Resources

This paper presents a distributed peer-to-peer market control strategy to manage and to enable resource sharing of behind-the-meter distributed energy resources in a residential community. In the proposed strategy, each consumer or prosumer determines the flexibility of their point of connection to the power network such that the obtained flexibility is network-feasible. Based on the feasible flexibility, the consumers and the prosumers trade power among each other at each time instance to fulfill their preferred load requirements while maximizing their payoffs and helping to regulate node voltages inside the community. Because the problem to be solved is non-convex, a distributed particle swarm optimization algorithm is used to coordinate the consumers/prosumers in a fully autonomous manner without any centralized or hierarchical coordination. Numerical simulations performed on a community of 48 homes demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approach.

behind-the-meter↗

Markets and Economics for Thermal Power Extraction from Nuclear Power Plants Aiding the Decarbonization of Industrial Processes

This report analyzes the domestic industrial heat markets which may be plausible for using heat extracted from existing LWRs, contributing to the decarbonization of industry. It conceptualizes ideas for a future energy park centered around an LWR with various participating synergistic industries with extensive heat and material integrations with the LWR. It also presents comparison calculations for energy storage options and the levelized cost of heat from an LWR versus the levelized cost of heat from a conventional natural gas boiler and shows under what circumstances heat from LWRs is competitive with and beats natural gas.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Research Priorities and Opportunities in United States Wholesale Electricity Markets

The power system is currently undergoing a number of changes, including a rapidly evolving resource mix, growth of distributed energy resources (DERs), more active consumer participation, increased deployment of energy storage and hybrid resources, and more advanced communication and control requirements. These changes in the power system present numerous technical, economic, implementation, and policy challenges and research opportunities for power system operators. To help address these challenges, a collaboration among five research institutions—Argonne National Laboratory, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Electric Power Research Institute, and Johns Hopkins University—has been established to provide technical assistance to the seven U.S. Independent System Operators (ISOs) and Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs). The 3-year project aims to leverage the advanced methods, tools, datasets, and resources of the collaborators to provide robust analytical support to address the high-priority market challenges that will be faced in the 2- to 10-year time horizon.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

Integrating Hydrogen Production and Electricity Markets: Analytical Insights from California

This report compares the cost of different pathways for producing hydrogen in California. In addition to capturing the current cost of electrolyzers and other equipment, the pathways apply current retail electricity tariff options offered by utilities Southern California Edison (SCE), Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), and San Diego Gas & Electric Company (SDG&E). The analysis also tests the cost of combining hydrogen production with utility-scale wind or solar generation in California. Scenarios examine current costs as well as projections for 2030. The cost benchmark - a relatively low electrolytic hydrogen production cost - is based on the wholesale price of electricity used by a theoretical hydrogen production plant connected directly to the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) transmission system. California law currently prohibits this approach in CAISO, but it is permissible in other organized wholesale electricity markets. The cost for producing hydrogen under 2019 conditions in this theoretical case was approximately $3/kg. Different scenarios are used to examine current costs, e.g., 2019, as well as projections for 2030.

08 HYDROGEN↗

Status and Trends in the U.S. Voluntary Green Power Market (2021 Data)

Voluntary green power, for the purposes of this report, refers to renewable energy procurement by retail electricity customers above state renewable energy mandates. In this report, we present data and key trends for voluntary green power markets, except for a small portion of voluntary purchasing where no data are available. In 2021, about 8 million retail electricity customers procured about 244 million megawatt-hours (MWh) of voluntary green power (Figure ES-1), representing about 27% of all U.S. renewable energy sales, about 39% of non-hydro renewable energy sales, and about 6% of all U.S. retail electricity sales. Most of the remainder of U.S. renewable energy sales reflects renewable energy procured by load-serving entities to comply with state renewable energy mandates, also known as compliance-based procurement.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

Uncovering hidden market opportunities for advanced nuclear reactors

Decarbonizing to meet aggressive climate change mitigation targets requires energy transition within all sectors. In the industrial sector, global emissions will need to decrease by 65–90% by 2050 to avert warming greater than 1.5°C (Pörtner et al., 2022). Recent U.S. laws, including the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), Defense Production Act, Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (or CHIPS), state programs, and other recent laws, have clean energy requirements and provide financial incentives to accelerate the use of clean energy technologies in the industrial sector. These new laws include supporting mechanisms with direct financial support for nuclear power (e.g., advanced reactor development and hydrogen production). However, advanced nuclear could also gain these financial benefits by coupling with low-carbon industrial projects. For example, microreactors could supply low-carbon energy to producers of critical metals that (1) are eligible to receive investment and production tax credits and favorable loans, and (2) the low-carbon product could gain preference in emerging markets for green products.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Status and Trends in the U.S. Voluntary Green Power Market: 2022 Data

Voluntary green power, for the purposes of this report, refers to renewable energy procurement by retail electricity customers above what is otherwise provided by load-serving entities. This report is part of an annual series of reports synthesizing trends in the United States voluntary green power market. In 2022, about 9.6 million retail electricity customers procured about 272 million megawatt-hours (MWh) of voluntary green power, representing about 38% of non-hydro renewable energy sales and about 6% of all U.S. retail electricity sales. Most of the remainder of U.S. renewable energy sales reflects renewable energy procured by load-serving entities to comply with state renewable energy mandates, also known as compliance-based procurement.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗