Residential energy supply market: Unmet promises and needed reforms

This article explores the market distortions and behaviors that have undercut the promise and performance of residential energy markets. Market trends are discussed, and possible paths forward are identified for reducing these market distortions. If policymakers are unwilling to eliminate residential energy markets, aggressive and extensive reforms of residential energy markets are warranted.     

Using advanced metering infrastructure to characterize residential energy use

Decades of effort have been dedicated to understanding precisely where energy is consumed in residences to help consumers, device manufacturers, utilities, and policymakers better manage this consumption. We review and classify the three most prevalent methods currently used to build this understanding. We then compare two prominent studies, and make recommendations for how existing datasets can inform estimates of device-level energy consumption in the U.S.     

How hydropower enhances the capacity value of renewables and energy efficiency

One of the ways that hydropower contributes to reducing carbon is by enhancing the ability of new resources, including renewables, to meet peak loads. An analysis concludes that the hydropower system can triple the capacity value for Columbia Gorge wind from initially low values and increase the capacity value of Southern Idaho solar by a factor of 10. Energy efficiency has the highest overall capacity value relative to average energy.     

Scheduling distributed energy storage units to provide multiple services under forecast error

When energy storage units (ESUs) within the distribution grid, such as batteries, provide local services such as supporting the integration of photovoltaics, peak shaving, and infrastructure upgrade deferral, they are inactive or only partially used most of time. Moreover, they are often not profitable because of their high investment costs. Their unused capacities could be used to provide power system services, such as frequency control, allowing them to generate additional revenues. However, individual units might not be available to provide system services over the entire frequency control contract duration, since they must also provide their local services. This paper shows how a set of distributed ESUs can simultaneously provide local services individually and system services in aggregate. Using a model predictive control approach, a central scheduler dynamically allocates parts of the energy and power capacities of each ESU to either the local or grid service with the objective of maximizing the profit of the aggregation. A key contribution of this paper is the development of an algorithm that handles both resource aggregation and optimal provision of multiple services. We find that multitasking can almost double an ESU’s profits as compared with a single-service approach, and that the benefits from aggregation increase with the frequency control contract duration and with the forecast error.     

Converting excess low-price electricity into high-temperature stored heat for industry and high-value electricity production

The large-scale deployment of wind or solar energy results in electricity prices below the price of fossil fuels at times of high wind or solar output. Price collapse can be limited by using low-price electricity to heat firebrick to high temperatures, store the heat in firebrick, and provide hot air as needed to industrial furnaces, kilns, power plants and gas turbines. This sets a minimum price on electricity near that of fossil fuels.     

Microgrid Reference Methodology for Understanding Utility and Customer Interactions in Microgrid Projects

A holistic and systematic approach, based in key concepts of systems thinking, systems of systems and management science, can be employed to completely represent, model and analyze microgrid systems. This proposed Microgrid Reference Methodology can guide electric utilities and industrial customers in cooperating to attain the mutual benefits of microgrid projects.     

Meeting the Texas electricity peak demand conundrum: A case for wind and solar

Texas electricity production and consumption profiles were reviewed to gain an understanding of the renewable energy role in a high-demand jurisdiction. According to NERC, peak demand on the ERCOT electricity grid is rising at exponential rates, yet the operating reserve margin is still set at 13.75%. The study shows that only recently has Texas been replacing generating units with adequate capacity, primarily wind and solar installations due to an increased offer cap in its competitive electricity market.     

Improving solar development policy and planning through stakeholder engagement: The Long Island Solar Roadmap Project

The Long Island Solar Roadmap Project involves a collaborative research approach with multiple organizational entities and actors engaged in a stakeholder driven process. Long Island is a space-constrained region with a steep urban to rural gradient, resulting in a complex suite of local governments, development priorities, and utility, planning, and development actors. This project is integrating technological, economic, and social data into a spatial planning output that allows decision makers to see where mid-to-large scale solar development (capacity of 250 kW and larger) is technically, economically, and socially feasible. This spatial output involves innovative methods of evaluating site suitability based on criteria developed by stakeholders. The project’s stakeholder and partnership driven approach allow the team to consider technological and economic feasibility across a wide variety of solar development forms and financial models. Social science data collected via a residential electric utility ratepayer survey is used to examine the perceptual barriers and opportunities for solar development as well as the sites and types of solar development that community members are most likely to support. The Long Island Solar Roadmap Project is an example of how research and community engagement can improve solar development policy and planning.     

Battery storage in developing countries: Key issues to consider

There has been significant excitement around deployment of grid-connected battery storage around the world including many developing countries. As the cost of battery storage followed the sharp drop in solar and wind, batteries hold immense possibility to transform the power systems in the developing world. However, it will require great care in assessing the specific benefits that a battery storage can provide to the power system as a whole, and developing a business model based on a sound economic analysis. The latter assumes special significance in developing countries where electricity markets are yet to be fully developed in most cases, leaving it to the centralized planning process to undertake such cost-benefit analysis.     

Arcturus 2.0: A meta-analysis of time-varying rates for electricity

With the rapid deployment of smart meters, utilities and regulators across the globe are considering the deployment of time-varying rates for residential customers. Our analysis of the impact of several studies of time-varying rates from across the globe finds that much of the discrepancy in results across the studies goes away once demand response is expressed as a function of the peak to off-peak price ratio.     

White certificate trading: A dying concept or just making its debut? Part I: Market status and trends

Energy-saving certificate trading programs within the U.S. have not had the success of their counterparts abroad due to the energy efficiency reduction targets not being stringent enough to incite trading. Programs exist in Italy, Denmark, France, the UK and Australia, and each is unique in what it allows to qualify, its units, and other details. The Italian market is the most robust in terms of volumes traded, but programs in Australia are strong and growing.     

A solar rate option for the development of behind-the-meter photovoltaic systems

A solar rate option for the future development of behind-the-meter photovoltaic creates a win–win alternative to net energy metering, the Hopkinson tariff with energy and demand charges, and the value of solar tariff as ways of promoting new PV installations for a clean electricity future.     

Could Mexico’s capacity market design lead to gaming by generators?

The recently reformed, Mexican power sector incorporates a market for capacity, which is balanced administratively after each delivery year. Both supply and demand are determined ex post, based on generator availability and demand, respectively, during 100 critical hours. We analyze the potential incentive for generation companies to withhold supply from the capacity market by withholding generator availability during operations. We compare Mexico’s capacity market to other global markets considering this potential market power incentive and introduce possible adjustments to Mexico’s market structure.     

Sandia’s Microgrid Design Toolkit

The Microgrid Design Toolkit, developed by Sandia National Laboratories, provides decision support software for microgrid designers for use in the early stages of the design process. The MDT is the result of four years of investment by the Department of Energy Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability under the Smart Grid R&D program.     

Evaluating resource adequacy impacts on energy market prices across wind and solar penetration levels

This study evaluates market impacts of excess capacity across various wind and solar system penetrations. First, different fleet compositions are simulated in a production cost model to yield price outputs. Price statistics reveal a strong relationship between scarcity price events, resource adequacy, and the mean and standard deviation of prices. Next, a method is presented for adjusting resource adequacy to a chosen level, which links a capacity expansion model with a probabilistic resource adequacy model.     

How cyber-attacks in Ukraine show the vulnerability of the U.S. power grid

On Dec. 23, 2015, a well-planned, perfectly synchronized and brilliantly executed cyber-attack caused a six-hour blackout for hundreds of thousands of customers in and around Ukraine's capital city of Kiev. While there have been no reported cases of cyber-terrorism causing power outages in the U.S., the attack methodology, tactics, techniques and procedures that were successfully deployed in Ukraine could be deployed against infrastructure here and around the world.     

Next-generation PBR

The transformation of the electric utility industry has resulted in a shift in emphasis on consumers, regulators and utilities from the traditional input-focused regulation to an output-focused regulatory framework. This article examines the implications of these transformations for the design of a new performance-based regulatory mechanism.