ECAI Web Forum Presentations

HELD - May 15, 2008

Leadership Committee Meeting

February 6, 2008

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News

This page includes news on activities related to the Energy Collaborative Analysis Initiative and results of collaborative efforts.

Upcoming Events

Web Forum to Discuss Modeling the Impacts of Policy Options

May 2008

The Energy Collaborative Analysis Initiative (ECAI) will present its fifth Web forum in May 2008, which will look at modeling the impacts of policy options. Increased attention on reducing oil consumption and greenhouse gas emissions have spurred debate on the relative effectiveness of actions and policy options designed to achieve these goals. Decision makers need credible projections of the future impacts and costs of various actions or policies, which take into account both price and non-price factors and uncertainties about the future. This forum will focus on energy-economic modeling tools available to help estimate the future results of actions or policies. Discussion will focus on strengths and weaknesses, gaps in coverage, and opportunities for collaboration.

Please watch for a separate announcement in early May regarding the date, time, and speakers for the event. For information on past Web forums, see the Web Forum Archive.

Analysis Activities

ECAI Holds Web Forum on Modeling Renewable Project Financing

January 2008

The Energy Collaborative Analysis Initiative (ECAI) Planning Committee presented its fourth Web forum, "Modeling New Renewable Project Financing," on January 31, 2008.

During the Web forum, presenters discussed the significant evolution of financing new renewable projects during the past decade. Speakers included John McKinsey of Stoel Rives, Chris Namovicz and Tom Lee of the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration, and Nate Blair of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

For more information on the speakers and/or to access their presentations, please access the Web Forum Archive on the ECAI Web site. Please contact Alison Wise with any questions.

Environmental Protection Agency

April 2008

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is developing a guide that will enable state energy offices to better use analysis tools in making informed policy decisions. The guide, which is expected to be released in June, will explain the types of models available and how to use them.

Analysis Results

Some of the following documents in this section are available as Adobe Acrobat PDFs. Download Adobe Reader

Clean Energy States Alliance

April 2008

The Clean Energy States Alliance (CESA) released a new publication in April 2008 describing the key policies and program strategies that have emerged as effective tools for states to advance widespread solar deployment.

The report, "Clean Energy State Program Guide," (PDF 3.4 MB) recommends that states:

Provide Sustained Financial Support for Projects—Recognize that PV markets cannot function successfully in the near future without predictable, long-term government incentives and policy support
Establish "PV-Friendly" Laws and Regulations—Pursue a comprehensive public policy agenda that includes expanded net metering, simplified interconnection standards, and renewable portfolio standard "set-asides" for solar technologies
Ensure Sensible Program Design—Develop solar incentive programs to avoid onerous program requirements that can drive up installer costs in the name of consumer protection
Stimulate Long-Term Financing—Facilitate creation of long-term, favorable solar financing programs
Promote "PV-Friendly" Building Codes—Promote standard building codes and permitting requirements that specifically and fairly address the characteristics and requirements of PV systems
Walk the Talk—Encourage a formal state government commitment to installing PV on public buildings
Support Training—Advance work force development by supporting installer training and certification programs to meet the demand for trained technicians
Promote Education and Marketing—Educate consumers and private lending institutions about the benefits of PV technologies and pursue cooperative strategies to grow PV markets.

Energy Information Administration

April 2008

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) has posted the full "early release" of the Annual Energy Outlook 2008. The Annual Energy Outlook 2008 (Early Release) was updated to include the impact of H.R.6, "Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007," which was enacted in late December 2007.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

April 2008

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) released a new report in April, "Renewables Portfolio Standards in the United States: A Status Report with Data through 2007" (PDF 1.5 MB). This report provides a comprehensive overview of early experience with renewables portfolio standards (RPS) in the United States.

State-level RPS programs are among the most important drivers for renewable energy deployment in the United States. As their popularity and importance have grown, so too has the need to keep up with the design, early experience, and projected impacts of these RPS programs. This report seeks to fulfill this need by providing basic, factual information on RPS policies.

Drawing from a variety of sources, this report – the first in what is envisioned to be an ongoing series – provides comprehensive information on a broad range of RPS-related topics, including:

What states have RPS policies, and when were they developed?
What percent of sales by U.S. retail electricity suppliers is subject to RPS obligations?
What are the key design features of, and differences among, state RPS programs?
To what extent have RPS policies driven renewable energy investments?
What kinds of renewable resources are benefiting from these policies?
How much new renewable energy will ultimately be required to fully meet these mandates?
How have RPS policies been designed to specifically support solar power?
Have suppliers fully complied with RPS purchase requirements so far?
How are renewable energy certificate markets developing?
To what degree have RPS policies impacted retail electricity rates?

The report concentrates on key recent developments, while also providing information on historical RPS experience and design.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

March 2008

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) recently released the report "Analysis of the Transition to Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles and the Potential Hydrogen Energy Infrastructure Requirements" (PDF 1.4 MB). The report summarizes the results of several studies of the transition to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles that the Department of Energy has supported and coordinated during the past several years. It compares the infrastructure development costs associated with the scenarios and presents the results of a geographic deployment analysis. In addition, the report describes the simulated market response to advanced hydrogen technologies and estimates the costs of different policies to support the introduction of FCVs and fueling infrastructure over the 2012-2025 timeframe.

Highlights of the report include the finding that the fuel cell vehicle (FCV) market share could grow to 50% by 2030 and 90% by 2050 with targeted deployment policies in place during 2012 to 2025. Furthermore, the level of risk and investment that industry would have to bear without policies in place to support development of a fueling infrastructure would be too high for market forces to overcome. The cost of FCVs would be high and hybrid electric vehicles would dominate the market.

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

February-March 2008

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) recently published analysis reports on financing for wind and solar projects, building energy performance, and power system planning.

Wind and Solar Financing
The "Innovations in Wind and Solar PV Financing" (PDF 732 KB) surveys some of the current issues related to wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) energy project financing in the electric power industry, and identifies both barriers to and opportunities for increased investment, including new business models. Several specific financing innovations for wind and solar PV projects were identified and are discussed in this report.

Building Energy Performance
The "Methodology for Modeling Building Energy Performance across the Commercial Sector" (PDF 3.1 MB) report uses EnergyPlus simulations of each building in the 2003 Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS) to document and demonstrate bottom-up methods of modeling the entire U.S. commercial buildings sector (EIA 2006). This report documents how the whole-building models were generated from the building characteristics in 2003 CBECS and compares the simulation results to the survey data for energy use.

Power System Planning
The "Power System Planning: Emerging Practices Suitable for Evaluating the Impact of High-Penetration Photovoltaics" (PDF 564 KB), composed by GE Global Research, explores the impact of high-penetration renewable generation on electric power system planning methodologies and outlines how these methodologies are evolving to enable effective integration of variable-output renewable generation sources.

California Energy Commission

December 2007-March 2008

The California Energy Commission (CEC) recently released analysis reports on demand response as a system reliability resource, hydropower predictions, and California's renewable energy performance goal for 2020.

Demand Response Spinning Reserve
The "Demand Response as a System Reliability Resource – 1st and 2nd Year Test Report" (PDF 2.9 MB) demonstrates how using existing utility load-management assets can provide an important electricity system reliability resource known as spinning reserve. Providing spinning reserve with aggregated demand-side resources such as those illustrated in this report will give grid operators at California Independent System Operator (ISO) and Southern California Edison (SCE) a powerful new tool to improve system reliability, prevent rolling blackouts, and lower system operating costs.

The work completed to-date demonstrates how the use of demand response as spinning reserve has produced important programmatic and technical insights, including:

Target-marketing a utility's air-conditioning load-cycling program to customers served by a single distribution feeder can be a successful strategy
Repeated curtailment of these customers' air-conditioning in a manner similar to the deployment of spinning reserve can be accomplished without a single customer complaint
Real-time visibility of load curtailments can be achieved through an open data platform and secure website
Analysis methods developed for this project could one day be used to predict magnitude of load curtailments as a function of weather and time of day
Load curtailments can be fully implemented much faster than ramping up of spinning reserve from thermal generation.

Evaluation of Alternative Models and Methods for Prediction of Hydropower Resources in California and the Pacific Northwest
As reported in the "Evaluation of Alternative Models and Methods for Prediction of Hydropower Resources in California and the Pacific Northwest" (PDF 3.7 MB) study, researchers applied three types of hydropower simulation models to the Sacramento San Joaquin Basin in California and the Columbia River Basin in the Pacific Northwest. Three models were evaluated: 1) multiple linear regression models; 2) medium complexity reservoir simulation models (CVMod in California and ColSim in the Pacific Northwest); and 3) operational reservoir simulation models (CALSIM II in California and GENESYS in the Pacific Northwest).

Achieving California's 33 Percent Renewable Portfolio Standard Goal
As stated in the "Achieving California's 33 Percent Renewable Portfolio Standard Goal" (PDF 864 KB) report, California has several key things it need to do to achieve its goal of 33 percent renewable electricity by 2020. The state needs to evaluate policies that will best acquire renewable resources, examine the overall impacts of the resources acquired on overall system costs, and examine cost/risk interrelationships associated with this mandate.

Although California's electric utility resource planning guidelines incorporate risk assessment and scenario analyses, the guidelines do not capture important cost/risk inter-relationships that dramatically affect estimated overall costs and risks associated with alternate portfolios of generating resources. To remedy this limitation, the report presents a new feed-in tariff approach that is modeled on successful forward capacity market auctions that are used by several regional transmission organizations. The analysis suggests that an optimal generating portfolio for California includes greater shares of renewable resource technologies, which may cost more on a stand-alone basis but reduce overall portfolio costs and risks because of their diversification effects.

EERE's Planning, Analysis, and Evaluation Group

November 2007

The Planning, Analysis, and Evaluation (PAE) group at the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) published a presentation and report outlining the findings from the "Modeling EERE Deployment Programs." Findings from the project are available in the Program Benefits Analysis section of the Planning, Budget, and Analysis (PBA) Web site.

PAE worked with the Technology Development (TD) programs to identify and characterize the modeling of deployment programs within their programs, address possible improvements to the modeling process, and note gaps in knowledge in which future research is needed.

These documents include the key results from analyses that were completed for each of the identified tasks. The current deployment activities taking place in EERE are summarized, and a characterization of the EERE deployment structure is provided. Current deployment-modeling efforts are also characterized with respect to each program, and the steps taken to incorporate a given program into an integrated framework are described. The gaps in knowledge regarding deployment modeling are discussed, and possible modeling strategies that may address some of these gaps are presented. Conclusions and recommendations for further, more-detailed modeling work also are included.