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DOE OSTI2022

Enabling Regulatory and Business Models for Broad Microgrid Deployment (White Paper)

This white paper is one of seven being prepared for the Department of Energy (DOE) Microgrid Research & Development (R&D) program as part of a strategy development effort for the next 10 years. The seven white papers focus on the following areas: 1. Program vision, objectives, and R&D targets in 5 and 10 years, 2. T&D co-simulation of microgrid impacts and benefits, 3. Building blocks for microgrids, 4. Microgrids as a building block for the future grid, 5. Advanced microgrid control and protection, 6. Integrated models and tools for microgrid planning, designs, and operations, 7. Enabling regulatory and business models for broad microgrid deployment. This white paper is focused on Topic 7, as a sustainable regulatory and business environment for microgrid development is a foundational element for securing DOE's vision for the future role of microgrids in the U.S. electric sector. The objective of this white paper is to systematically characterize regulatory issues involved in microgrid deployment and microgrid business models, and from this evidence identify a robust and well-justified set of research recommendations for the Department of Energy Office of Electricity, informing programmatic vision, objectives and activities for the DOE Microgrid R&D Program.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2021

Demonstration of Wake Steering Through Yaw Control in a Wind Plant Field Experiment: Cooperative Research and Development Final Report, CRADA Number CRD-16-00629

Over the last few decades, wind energy has evolved into a large international industry involving major players in the manufacturing, construction, and utility sectors. Coinciding with the industry’s growth, significant innovation in the technology has resulted in larger turbines with lower associated costs of energy and more complex designs in all subsystems. However, as the deployment of the technology has grown and its role within the electricity sector become more prominent, so have the expectations of the technology in terms of performance, reliability, and cost. The industry currently partitions its efforts into separate paths for turbine design, plant design and development, finance, grid interaction and operation, mitigation of adverse community and environmental impacts, and other areas. One prominent area where this partition is evident is in wind turbine control. Traditionally, each wind turbine in a wind plant has been controlled separately – via its own internal controller using only its own sensors. However, wind turbines in a plant interact with each other through the plant-level fluid dynamics. Wake losses (due to upstream turbines extracting energy from the winds and “waking” downstream turbines) can be up to 10% or even 20% of the gross energy production (if each turbine experienced the free stream wind inflow to the plant). A series of studies and experiments have demonstrated that there is potential for improving energy output at existing plants through plant control methods which seek to optimize total wind plant energy production over the current “greedy” approach where each turbine maximizes its own production. Wake steering induced by yaw offsets (turning the turbine to be out of the plane perpendicular to wind inflow) for upstream turbines has shown significant promise in simulations and wind tunnel experiments. In simulation studies, annual energy production has been shown to increase by 2% or more depending on the particular aspects of the wind plant (turbine spacing, meteorological conditions, etc). This project seeks to demonstrate the potential of plant-level controls via wake steering at a commercial wind plant. This is an important step towards commercialization and industry adoption of this plant-level modeling and analysis capability.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Multiscale Effects Masked the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Electricity Demand in the United States

Shelter-in-place orders and business closures related to COVID-19 changed the hourly profile of electricity demand and created an unprecedented source of uncertainty for the grid. The potential for continued shifts in electricity profiles has implications for electricity sector investment and operating decisions that maintain reserve margins and provide grid reliability. This study reveals that understanding this uncertainty requires an understanding of the underlying drivers at the customer-class scale. This paper utilizes three datasets to compare the impacts of COVID-19 on electricity consumption across a range of spatiotemporal and customer scales. At the utility/customer-class scale, COVID-19-induced shutdowns in the spring of 2020 shifted weekday residential load profiles to resemble weekend profiles from previous years. Total commercial loads declined, but the commercial diurnal load profile was unchanged. With only total loads available at the balancing authority scale, the apparent impact of COVID-19 was smaller during the summer due in part to phased re-opening and spatial variability in re-opening, but there were still clear variations once total loads were broken down zonally. Monthly data at the state scale showed an increase in state-level residential electricity sales, a decrease in commercial sales, and a small net decrease in total sales in most states from April-August 2020. Analyses that focus on total load or a single scale may miss important changes that become apparent when the load is broken down regionally or by customer class.

COVID-19, electricity demand, multiscale, Commonwe↗
DOE OSTI2022

Charting Hydropower's Role in the Next-Generation Grid

To build a 100% clean energy power sector, the United States is adding more energy storage and variable renewable energy sources, like solar power and wind energy, to the grid. Hydropower and pumped storage hydropower (PSH) can help with both. These technologies already play a key role in providing flexible, low-carbon electricity to the U.S. power grid, and this role will become even more valuable as that grid evolves. That's why researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are analyzing how the U.S. electricity sector could invest in hydropower and PSH using new data and modeling capabilities.

HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Scenarios of Nuclear Energy Use in the United States for the 21st Century

The uncertainty in the cost of nuclear energy coinciding with efforts to address climate change are contributing to the uncertainty in the future role of nuclear energy in the US electricity system and the response to addressing global climate change. Sensitivity cases of alternative nuclear capital costs, ranging from 2600 to 6600 $\$ $/kW, were investigated with scenarios of alternative carbon mitigation policies, including 50, 100, and 150 $\$ $/tCO 2 carbon tax cases and economy-wide net-zero goals by 2050, 2060, and 2070 for the US. The resulting US nuclear power capacity ranged from 130 to 240 GW in 2050 and 90 to 450 GW in 2100 from nuclear cost sensitivity cases without carbon mitigation policies. Imposing policies to achieve the decarbonization of electricity and net-zero emission goals increased the range of nuclear power capacity from 190 to 460 GW in 2050 and 210 to 850 GW by 2100, where the range is from the low and high nuclear cost cases. Carbon penalties beyond 100 $\$ $/tCO 2 had a diminishing role on the expansion of nuclear power as the electricity sector becomes fully decarbonized. The 50 $\$ $/tCO 2 tax had the nuclear capital cost equivalency of 1000 $\$ $/kW reduction, while the 100 $\$ $/tCO 2 tax had the equivalency of 2000 $\$ $/kW reduction. Net-zero goals increased the contribution of nuclear power due to the increase in total electricity demand, but the delay in the timing of net-zero did not significantly affect the role of nuclear in the long-term. All net-zero goals were similar in their energy system impact with resulting carbon tax levels reaching 300 $\$ $/tCO 2 . Electricity is fully decarbonized in the net-zero scenarios and carbon pricing beyond 100 to 150 $\$ $/tCO 2 had little influence on the additional deployment of nuclear power. Regardless of the carbon policy, however, nuclear capital cost reductions had a clear and pronounced impact on the expanded deployment of nuclear power under all scenarios.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Application of a Prize Mechanism to Address Data Utilization Challenges at Utilities

The electric industry sector is facing an “explosion” of data from a variety of sources. Electric sector stakeholders need to define how to capitalize on large datasets, both those they create and those from other sources (like data on weather, buildings, electric vehicles, etc.), to improve reliability and resilience and meet the changing system dynamics from renewable integration. For the electricity sector to fully utilize these vast new datasets, it must undergo a transformation in how it manages data quality, storage, and processing. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Electricity (OE) is committed to accelerating research, development, and demonstration of new technologies and tools within the electricity sector to advance reliability, resilience, and affordable operation of the power system. Through the prize mechanism, OE identified two widespread data-related challenges for utilities—load modeling and data analysis automation—and offered an opportunity for utilities and teams of software engineers to identify additional challenges faced by utilities. After completing one round of the American-Made Digitizing Utilities Prize, OE, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) as the prize administrator, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) as the domain experts have compiled the results and lessons learned to feed into the second round of the prize.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems Cyber Range

As digital technologies expand to meet the needs of a more autonomous, interconnected, and advanced power system, new cybersecurity complexities and vulnerabilities arise. The ARIES Cyber Range enables the energy sector to evaluate these evolutions and validate cybersecurity solutions without impacting live systems. Combining power grid-scale hardware with emulation and simulation approaches, the ARIES Cyber Range can faithfully replicate modern energy systems - from grid physics to communication networks, and everything in between - with real-world fidelity. At NLR, researchers and partners are answering complex power system cybersecurity questions, examining emerging threats to the electric sector, and de risking new security technologies, all at a mission-relevant speed that keeps pace with rapidly evolving systems and hazards.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Solar Photovoltaics: Supply Chain Deep Dive Assessment

This is one of a series of reports and deep dive assessments produced in response to Executive Order 14017 “America’s Supply Chains,” which directs the Secretary of Energy to submit a report on supply chains for the energy sector industrial base. The Executive Order is helping the federal government to build more secure and diverse U.S. supply chains, including energy supply chains. Over the past decade, solar power has gone from an emerging, niche technology to a mature energy industry. By 2035, solar power could supply 40% or more of U.S. electricity demand, dramatically accelerating the decarbonization of buildings, transportation, and industry; and, if current technology trends continue, it could do so without increasing the price of electricity. The rapid expansion of solar energy has the potential to yield broad benefits in the form of economic activity and workforce development. The solar industry already employs roughly 230,000 people in the United States, at an average wage that is higher than the national average for most comparable positions. By decarbonizing the electricity sector by 2035, the U.S. solar industry could employ 500,000–1,500,000 people by 2030. The components that are assembled to install a photovoltaic power system are produced by a global supply chain. Photovoltaic (PV) modules (also called panels) are made of cells that use a variety of technologies. There are two leading types of solar modules used in the United States, with crystalline silicon (c-Si) modules representing 84% of the market and cadmium telluride (CdTe) modules representing 16% of the market. Modules of either type require mounting structures to provide mechanical support (racking), which may be configured to follow the sun (tracking). The output of any PV module is direct current (dc), which is almost always converted to alternating current (ac) by an inverter.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Nuclear Energy in Long-Term System Models: A Multi-Model Perspective

Long-term energy system models–including electric sector capacity expansion models–are widely used tools for informing planning, technology assessment, and policy analysis. Recent decarbonization goals and rapid technological change have increased the need to appropriately represent economic characteristics and technical details of energy system resources, including variable renewable energy, energy storage technologies, carbon-capture-equipped capacity, and nuclear energy. Nuclear power represents about 20% of electricity generation and 50% of carbon-free electricity in the United States as of 2021. However, there are many perspectives on the role of existing and new nuclear in the future U.S. energy system, which is reflected in the broad range of potential contributions reported in the literature. This project aims to understand how issues central to nuclear energy are represented in long-term energy models. Building on earlier collaborations that focused on variable renewable energy and energy storage, this project convenes four modeling teams that use national-scale long-term energy system models from the Electric Power Research Institute, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to share methods and data, update models, run coordinated scenarios, and identify research needs. Improving tools can provide more insightful analyses and ensure that methods are more transparent.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Insights for Canadian electricity generation planning from an integrated assessment model: Should we be more cautious about hydropower cost overruns?

Hydropower accounts for approximately 60% of electricity generation in Canada, with growth expected in the coming decades as part of renewable energy transitions; however, frequent cost overruns threaten the viability of this growth. Here, using the integrated assessment model GCAM, we develop an endogenous representation of hydropower for Canada that accounts for market dynamics, thus permitting analysis of hydropower competition with other electricity generation technologies, both with and without cost overruns. Results show that modelling hydropower resources endogenously increases Canadian hydropower deployment relative to an assumption of fixed hydropower production, from 417 to 495 TWh annually by 2050. In scenarios that apply cost overruns at historical levels, hydropower loses market share to more easily scalable technologies like wind power. When including high cost overrun assumptions, the model determines that hydropower falls from about 73% to 65% of Canadian electricity generation by 2050, while wind power increases from about 8% to 11%. Countries may be better able to achieve electrification and renewable energy targets at lower cost by avoiding large-scale, overrun-prone hydropower and nuclear generation projects. Model results support that cost overruns are important considerations for policy decisions related to electricity sector development in Canada and elsewhere.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Korean Power System Challenges and Opportunities, Priorities for Swift and Successful Clean Energy Deployment at Scale

With South Korea’s electricity demand expected to grow 30% by 2035, transitioning to clean energy resources will be critical in reducing the electric sector emissions and achieving national climate goals. Rapid technological improvements can help keep costs low and maintain grid reliability, if Korea’s government takes a coordinated approach to the clean energy transition. This policy brief identifies key barriers to Korea’s shift toward clean energy, based on the authors’ companion report (A Clean Energy Korea by 2035: Transitioning to 80% Carbon-Free Electricity Generation ), interviews with experts, and the most recent data and literature. It then explores policy solutions for overcoming these technological, economic, and institutional barriers, and suggests market transformation strategies to speed the adoption of clean energy technologies. Amid ongoing cost and technological improvements in wind, solar, and energy storage, advancing this report’s recommended policy actions with maximum coordination among government officials can meaningfully accelerate Korea’s clean energy transition.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Future Electric Power Industry and Grids—Now What Again is Our Destination?

Having a vision that others agree to support and work toward is highly desirable but hard to achieve. We seem to lack a common and shared understanding of the vision—or worse, multiple visions (vivid mental images or documented statements) with varying areas of focus and details: • some appear to be similar but have differing underlying goals and characteristics, or • some reflect differing viewpoints as to effects on various stakeholders. These desirable and undesirable situations apply to realizing visions for enterprise and industry, including the electricity sector. Multiple industry stakeholder groups have developed goals, industry vision statements, and characterizations of the future. The viewpoints are promoted, discussed, refined by their stakeholder group, and often published to promote broad understanding and to inform or influence others. The GridWise Architecture Council asked itself how well-aligned these characterizations of the future are. If these publications collectively set the overall direction for the industry, it is useful to identify their answers to questions such as, where is the electric industry headed, guided by what objectives, and with what role(s) for the customers, electric utilities, and other stakeholders? Are these goals, visions, and future states moving toward a common vision, do they provide value for the stakeholders, and are they likely to meet the objective stated? This paper addresses these questions via an assessment and characterization of a sampling of stakeholder groups’ publicly available vision and future state reports for the electricity industry. Identified electric power grid architectural topic areas needing further work are described, along with GridWise Architecture Council analysis and observation, potential collaborative work efforts, and suggested next steps.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2020

Factors Impacting Nuclear Energy Share in U.S. Energy Markets

The purpose of this report is to collate information and findings from recent studies conducted by national and international bodies/institutes to identify approaches for maintaining/enhancing the role of nuclear energy in the current and future energy mix of the United States. This report shows how nuclear generation grew quickly to provide 20% of U.S. electricity, sustaining that level for three decades without the benefit of new construction, but is now projected to decline going forward. Nuclear construction costs in the U.S. spiraled out of control, ending construction for two decades and the recent resumption of construction has continued the pattern of schedule delays and cost overruns. However, nuclear operations exhibited strong learning, achieving and sustaining the highest capacity factor of any electricity generation technology and license extensions and uprates have sustained nuclear market share. The share of nuclear energy in the U.S. electricity market is projected to decline by ~1/3rd over the next 30 years The report provides an overview of how the markets work in theory and in practice. It indicates how market deregulation and clean energy policies have created conditions where nuclear plants are being retired for economic rather than technical reasons. The report also shows how many of the markets do not in practice have free competition but instead have outcomes that are being determined more and more by policy instead of market forces. While electricity costs from existing nuclear plants are low, electricity from new builds is projected to be too expensive to be competitive head-to-head with natural gas, even for nth-of-a-kind costs. Wind and solar energy have enjoyed an extended period of sustained subsidy. This protected environment has resulted in a sustained reduction in plant level costs to the point that some of these Variable Renewable Energy (VRE) technologies are becoming competitive even if their direct subsidies are removed. But plant level costs underestimate total VRE costs which include a number of system-level externalities. The incremental system value of additional VRE capacity was shown to decline as market share increases, with solar value declining more quickly than wind. The report closes with examination of a possible future for nuclear generation as part of deep decarbonization of the electricity sector. This approach avoids direct competition with natural gas. The two options for achieving 100% decarbonization are to use only renewables or to use all zero emissions technologies, and the report shows the second approach is much less expensive than the first.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Measuring Climate and Water Risk across the Bulk Power System

As climate impacts increase and power systems transition to renewables, planners and operators need insights into climate risks to power generation and infrastructure to ensure reliable decision-making in the short and long-term. We present a standardized, consistent mechanism for utilities and system operators to evaluate the climate- and water-related risks of their current and future grid assets. Using a risk-based approach on the combined outcomes of high-fidelity climate drivers together with water and power system models, we examine the temperature and water availability impacts within the contiguous United States to power system assets at the water basin level in three different time periods and report resulting outcomes on lost capacity across different expansion scenarios and climate models. The results indicate that air temperature has the highest effect on derating. Changes in streamflow do not have a large impact on generation capacity at the national level. Electric sector buildout scenarios each have a unique regional risk profile, depending on the technology mix and total capacity, although risks from high temperatures are significant for both traditional and renewable energy generation. Stakeholders can use this approach to monitor effects of generation capacity losses and potential impacts as climate, generation mix, and infrastructure change.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2022

Mini Guide on Transportation Electrification: State-Level Roles and Collaboration among Public Utility Commissions, State Energy Offices, and Departments of Transportation

About the NCEP Mini Guide Series: The National Council on Electricity Policy (NCEP) is a platform for all state-level electricity decision makers to share and learn from diverse perspectives on the evolving electricity sector. The NCEP mini guide series promotes this dialogue by highlighting examples of successful engagement across its members. Each mini guide features collaborative approaches, lessons learned, and interviews with leading state and local decision makers.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2026

The Evolving Role of Demand Charges in Retail Electricity Rates

Retail electricity demand charges refer to a type of retail rate that is based on a metric of kilowatt (kW) demand rather than kilowatt-hour (kWh) energy usage. Demand charges are widely used in the commercial and industrial (C&I) electricity sectors to recover significant portions of utility revenue and are also used in residential rates in a modest but growing number of locations. This paper explores the historical context of and motivations for demand charges, describes their implementation and impacts in today's context, and uses a variety of opinions collected from relevant parties through semi-structured interviews to inform how demand charges align with four widely accepted rate design principles. This project is funded by the Department of Energy's Office of Electricity, which is interested in conducting research to understand the current state of affairs related to demand charges and how the future U.S. electricity grid will help to define retail rates.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗