How market and operating practices impact benefits of coordinated transmission operations and planning

Interregional transmission—traces that join a number of planning areas—can present many advantages to electrical clients, however market and working practices weren’t essentially designed for such a interconnected system.

“As we build up our interregional transmission systems, we need to take a fresh look at improving the efficiency and efficacy of the existing system, which could increase grid reliability while reducing cost,” stated Christina Simeone, grid researcher on the Nationwide Renewable Power Laboratory (NREL).

A brand new NREL report led by Simeone, “Barriers and Opportunities To Realize the System Value of Interregional Transmission,” examines points that stop current transmission services from delivering most potential worth and gives a collection of choices that energy system stakeholders can pursue to beat these challenges.

The report teams boundaries and alternatives for interregional transmission amongst all areas, between non-market or a mixture of market and non-market areas, and between market areas.

Limitations and alternatives amongst all areas

A standard barrier to interregional transmission amongst all areas is the dearth of readability on useful resource adequacy sharing—or how we plan to share electrical energy era assets throughout broad geographic areas to maintain the lights on even when demand is excessive.

As well as, transmission house owners and operators usually can not predict when massive energy transfers are wanted and the sorts of irregular energy flows that may happen, comparable to throughout excessive climate occasions. Guaranteeing inner energy networks can deal with the big power flows wanted between areas throughout these occasions lies exterior of present transmission planning and working practices.

Some choices to beat these widespread boundaries could possibly be creating an interregional useful resource adequacy sharing framework, performing joint research of switch wants and means to mitigate energy points, and assessing the interior transmission system’s massive energy switch functionality because the era combine adjustments.

Limitations and alternatives between non-market areas or a mixture of market and non-market areas

In areas that both function with out a market or with a mixture of market and non-market techniques, the largest barrier to effectively utilizing interregional transmission is inconsistent and nontransparent strategies of transmission scheduling and real-time working.

NREL additionally finds transmission system congestion administration tends to be uncoordinated in these areas. This might in the end result in greater provide prices or reliability dangers alongside very important transmission corridors.

“Even in regions with no markets, there are different options for grid operators to reduce costs for electricity customers through greater coordination with other regions,” Simeone stated. A number of of those choices might embrace creating coordinated scheduling and operations platforms between techniques and growing constant strategies for calculating out there switch capability.

Limitations and alternatives between market areas

Packages have been established via joint working agreements to extend the usage of interregional transmission between market areas. Nonetheless, NREL finds these packages can have inaccurate value forecasting and excessive transaction charges in coordinated transaction scheduling platforms.

In some cases, there are additionally outdated energy stream limits and inaccurate modeling for interregional transmission that may result in greater congestion administration prices. Finally, these prices are then handed on to shoppers.

Moreover, in most regional markets, extra high-voltage direct present (HVDC) transmission capability tends to not be used effectively, which might in any other case assist meet demand. Efforts like eradicating charges and enhancing value forecasting for coordinated transaction scheduling might make a distinction.

Transformative actions for all areas

Transformative actions could possibly be utilized to all areas to extend the worth of interregional transmission, like nationwide coordination of community and useful resource adequacy planning.

“Many of the changes outlined in the report are technically complex to implement and impact power system stakeholders in different ways,” Simeone stated. “But the goal is for the suite of options to be considered alongside other local, state, and regional objectives to enhance systemwide benefits.”

Understanding learn how to modernize market and working practices is one piece of a bigger nationwide transmission image that NREL and the Pacific Northwest Nationwide Laboratory (PNNL) have been finding out for greater than two years.

The Nationwide Transmission Planning Research (NTP Research) led by the U.S. Division of Power’s Grid Deployment Workplace, in partnership with NREL and PNNL, goals to establish transmission choices that may present broad-scale advantages to electrical clients, inform regional and interregional transmission planning processes, and establish interregional and nationwide methods to speed up decarbonization whereas sustaining system reliability.

The NTP Research is complemented by a number of companion stories, together with this newest report on market and working practices and a earlier report on interregional renewable power zones, or high-value interregional zones for renewable power growth. The NTP Research and its key findings will probably be launched later this 12 months.