The Impact Of Improved Solar Forecasts On Bulk Power System Operations In Iso Ne

The diurnal nature of solar power is made uncertain by variable cloud cover and the influence of atmospheric conditions on irradiance scattering processes. Its forecasting has become increasingly important to the unit commitment and dispatch process for efficient scheduling of generators in power system operations. This presentation is an overview of a study that examines the value of improved solar forecasts on Bulk Power System Operations.

The diurnal nature of solar power is made uncertain by variable cloud cover and the influence of atmospheric conditions on irradiance scattering processes. Its forecasting has become increasingly important to the unit commitment and dispatch process for efficient scheduling of generators in power system operations. This study examines the value of improved solar power forecasting for theIndependent System Operator-New England system. The results show how 25% solar power penetration reduces net electricity generation costs by 22.9%.

The diurnal nature of solar power is made uncertain by variable cloud cover and the influence of atmospheric conditions on irradiance scattering processes. Its forecasting has become increasingly important to the unit commitment and dispatch process for efficient scheduling of generators in power system operations. This study examines the value of improved solar power forecasting for the Independent System Operator-New England system. The results show how 25% solar power penetration reduces net electricity generation costs by 22.9%.

This book dispels common myths about electricity and electricity policy and reveals how government policies manipulate energy markets, create hidden costs, and may inflict a net harm on the American people and the environment. Climate change, energy generation and use, and environmental degradation are among the most salient—and controversial—political issues today. Our country's energy future will be determined by the policymakers who enact laws that favor certain kinds of energy production while discouraging others as much as by the energy-production companies or the scientists working to reduce the environmental impact of all energy production. The Reality of American Energy: The Hidden Costs of Electricity provides rare insights into the politics and economics surrounding electricity in the United States. It identifies the economic, physical, and environmental implications of distorting energy markets to limit the use of fossil fuels while increasing renewable energy production and explains how these unseen effects of favoring renewable energy may be counterproductive to the economic interests of American citizens and to the protection of the environment. The first two chapters of the book introduce the subject of electricity policy in the United States and to enable readers to understand why policymakers do what they do. The remainder of the book examines the realities of the major electricity sources in the United States: coal, natural gas, nuclear, hydrodynamic, wind, biomass, solar, and geothermal. Each of these types of energy sources is analyzed in a dedicated chapter that explains how the electricity source works and identifies how politics and public policy shape the economic and environmental impacts associated with them.

In recent years, the contribution of photovoltaic (PV) power production to the electric grid has been increasing. Still, a number of challenges remain for a reliable and efficient integration of solar energy. While conventional electric power generated by gas turbines can be adjusted to follow the grid load, the stochastic nature of solar radiation makes it difficult to control the PV output, which hinders its integration in the grid. Accurate solar forecasts help grid operators integrate solar energy by enhancing power quality and reducing grid operation costs. Following the development of sky imager hardware and algorithms at UC San Diego, we present a variety of models and methodologies to reduce sky imager forecasts errors by improving the accuracy of meteorological parameters, compensating the power mismatch caused by solar forecasts errors, and mitigating the impact of solar forecast errors on real world grid planning and operations. First, a low-cost instrument for measuring local cloud motion vectors (CMVs) was developed. Three algorithms for estimating local cloud base height (CBH) using a single sky imager paired with either distributed ground irradiance sensors or measured CMVs were then designed and tested. Since sky imager forecasts are often used in conjunction with other instruments for measuring CBH, cloud velocity, and/or solar irradiance measurements, our approaches decrease instrumentation costs and logistical complexity. More importantly, through these algorithms, local measurements improve sky imager forecasts by adding information that is unobservable from a single sky imager. Second, integrating battery systems into a PV plant can compensate the power imbalance caused by solar forecast errors. Battery system size can be optimized by determining the energy reserve required to offset the possible maximum power ramp. Because passing cloud shadows are the main cause of the power ramps, a simple model based on physics variables that are available globally can determine the worst power ramp rates. Local CMV measurements enable even more accurate maximum ramp rate estimates. The key merit of the method is that it is universally applicable in the absence of high frequency measurements. Finally, issues when integrating imperfect solar forecasts in grid operations are evaluated. Both physics-based forecasts and Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) based machine learning forecasts that are commonly utilized in the grid operations exhibit autocorrelated forecast errors. First, a deterministic valley-filling problem through EV charging is formulated to investigate how the autocorrelated forecast errors increase peak demand and cause grid net load variability. Then a corrective optimization framework is proposed to minimize the deviation of the realistic valley filling solutions from the ideal solutions. In addition, with the goal of operational deployment, stochastic programming incorporating real time updates of solar forecast and EV charge events to address real-world uncertainty is employed. The optimal valley filling problem is solved in an innovative way and executed under a predictive control scheme in the presence of autocorrelated forecast errors. The proposed corrective stochastic optimization framework successfully mitigates the impact of autocorrelated forecasts errors on grid operations.

This book provides a detailed roadmap of technical, economic, and institutional actions by the wind industry, the wind research community, and others to optimize wind's potential contribution to a cleaner, more reliable, low-carbon, domestic energy generation portfolio, utilizing U.S. manu-facturing and a U.S. workforce. The roadmap is intended to be the beginning of an evolving, collaborative, and necessarily dynamic process. It thus suggests an approach of continual updates at least every two years, informed by its analysis activities. Roadmap actions are identified in nine topical areas, introduced below.

Accurate solar photovoltaic (PV) power forecasting allows utilities to reliably utilize solar resources on their systems. However, to truly measure the improvements that any new solar forecasting methods provide, it is important to develop a methodology for determining baseline and target values for the accuracy of solar forecasting at different spatial and temporal scales. This paper aims at developing a framework to derive baseline and target values for a suite of generally applicable, value-based, and custom-designed solar forecasting metrics. The work was informed by close collaboration with utility and independent system operator partners. The baseline values are established based on state-of-the-art numerical weather prediction models and persistence models in combination with a radiative transfer model. The target values are determined based on the reduction in the amount of reserves that must be held to accommodate the uncertainty of PV power output. The proposed reserve-based methodology is a reasonable and practical approach that can be used to assess the economic benefits gained from improvements in accuracy of solar forecasting. Lastly, the financial baseline and targets can be translated back to forecasting accuracy metrics and requirements, which will guide research on solar forecasting improvements toward the areas that are most beneficial to power systems operations.

Electricity, supplied reliably and affordably, is foundational to the U.S. economy and is utterly indispensable to modern society. However, emissions resulting from many forms of electricity generation create environmental risks that could have significant negative economic, security, and human health consequences. Large-scale installation of cleaner power generation has been generally hampered because greener technologies are more expensive than the technologies that currently produce most of our power. Rather than trade affordability and reliability for low emissions, is there a way to balance all three? The Power of Change: Innovation for Development and Deployment of Increasingly Clean Energy Technologies considers how to speed up innovations that would dramatically improve the performance and lower the cost of currently available technologies while also developing new advanced cleaner energy technologies. According to this report, there is an opportunity for the United States to continue to lead in the pursuit of increasingly clean, more efficient electricity through innovation in advanced technologies. The Power of Change: Innovation for Development and Deployment of Increasingly Clean Energy Technologies makes the case that America's advantagesâ€"world-class universities and national laboratories, a vibrant private sector, and innovative states, cities, and regions that are free to experiment with a variety of public policy approachesâ€"position the United States to create and lead a new clean energy revolution. This study focuses on five paths to accelerate the market adoption of increasing clean energy and efficiency technologies: (1) expanding the portfolio of cleaner energy technology options; (2) leveraging the advantages of energy efficiency; (3) facilitating the development of increasing clean technologies, including renewables, nuclear, and cleaner fossil; (4) improving the existing technologies, systems, and infrastructure; and (5) leveling the playing field for cleaner energy technologies. The Power of Change: Innovation for Development and Deployment of Increasingly Clean Energy Technologies is a call for leadership to transform the United States energy sector in order to both mitigate the risks of greenhouse gas and other pollutants and to spur future economic growth. This study's focus on science, technology, and economic policy makes it a valuable resource to guide support that produces innovation to meet energy challenges now and for the future.

Americans' safety, productivity, comfort, and convenience depend on the reliable supply of electric power. The electric power system is a complex "cyber-physical" system composed of a network of millions of components spread out across the continent. These components are owned, operated, and regulated by thousands of different entities. Power system operators work hard to assure safe and reliable service, but large outages occasionally happen. Given the nature of the system, there is simply no way that outages can be completely avoided, no matter how much time and money is devoted to such an effort. The system's reliability and resilience can be improved but never made perfect. Thus, system owners, operators, and regulators must prioritize their investments based on potential benefits. Enhancing the Resilience of the Nation's Electricity System focuses on identifying, developing, and implementing strategies to increase the power system's resilience in the face of events that can cause large-area, long-duration outages: blackouts that extend over multiple service areas and last several days or longer. Resilience is not just about lessening the likelihood that these outages will occur. It is also about limiting the scope and impact of outages when they do occur, restoring power rapidly afterwards, and learning from these experiences to better deal with events in the future.