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May 1, 2014 8
2014 TEPPC Study Program
By
Transmission Expansion Planning and Policy Committee
Western Electricity Coordinating Council
May 1, 2014
Table of Contents
Introduction 3
Transmission Planning and the Study Program 4
Purpose of Transmission Planning 4
Regional Transmission Expansion Planning 5
TEPPC Study Program Development 5
Other Study Activities 7
Types of Study Cases 7
Elements and Themes of the 2014 Study Program 9
General Study Themes 9
Appendix A – 2014 TEPPC Study Program 12
High Priority Studies 12
Medium and Low Priority Studies and those Combined with 2013 Requests 17
Appendix B – 2013 TEPPC Study Program 18
Base Cases 19
10-Year Studies 19
20-Year Studies 20
Appendix C – Glossary of TEPPC Terminology 21
Appendix D – Study Case Scoping Form 25
Introduction
The 2014 Transmission Expansion Planning Policy Committee (TEPPC) Study Program has been prepared under the provisions of the TEPPC Regional Transmission Expansion Planning (RTEP) Protocol (TEPPC Transmission Planning Protocol[1]). The 2014 Study Program represents the second year of TEPPC’s 2013-2014 biennial transmission study program. The goal of the biennial study program was to produce a first set of study results in 2013, and an additional set of results in 2014, both of which will be used in the preparation of the 2015 Interconnection-wide Transmission Plan. The 2014 Study Program details the analytical activities TEPPC will complete in 2014 and early 2015 to evaluate the transmission system of the Western Interconnection. Two time horizons will be studied as part of the 2014 Study Program.
· Horizon Year 2024 – This time horizon will be used to evaluate the impact of options to meet existing and potential future energy policies, and the impact technology changes and external drivers may have on transmission needs and costs in the Western Interconnection. The 10-year studies in the 2013 and 2014 Study Programs use the 2024 Common Case as a starting point to conduct the studies from, ensuring a common reference point for all studies used to inform the 2015 Plan. The Common Case is based on stakeholder-provided assumptions regarding loads, generation and transmission. The 10-year studies are conducted with a production cost model.
· Horizon Year 2034 – A set of studies representing potential energy futures for a 2034 study year will be evaluated using the WECC Long-Term Planning Tool (LTPT), a capital expansion model. A desired outcome, in part, of the long-term studies is to identify those decisions that need to be made now in order to realize the potential energy futures being evaluated.
The 2014 Study Program was developed to:
1) respond to requests received under the provisions of the TEPPC Transmission Planning Protocol;
2) incorporate relevant study needs of regional planning groups, state authorities, transmission providers and generators;
3) develop needed models for production cost and transmission utilization studies; and
4) support the objectives of the WECC Strategic Plan by providing useful transmission insights into the implications of major policy and technology changes for the future of the western power system.
The list of proposed studies outlined in this document was prepared by the Technical Advisory Subcommittee (TAS) from an initial clustering and consolidation of the 2014 study requests prepared by the Studies Work Group (SWG). The list includes study requests submitted under the provisions of the TEPPC Transmission Planning Protocol during the request window period that ended January 31, 2014. The result of this process is the proposed 2014 TEPPC Study Program described herein. Prior to finalizing the Study Program, TEPPC will review stakeholder feedback and requests for reconsideration.
Transmission Planning and the Study Program
The objective of TEPPC’s transmission expansion studies is to provide an Interconnection-wide perspective on future transmission needs of the western power system. This information is useful to transmission project developers, energy service providers, regulators, policymakers, and other parties involved in making public policy and investment decisions that impact the Western Interconnection. Since TEPPC’s work is one component of the many activities involved in the planning, building, and operating of the transmission system, this section first covers WECC’s planning activities. Following this, there is a brief description of the adaptive planning cycle of the TEPPC Transmission Planning Protocol. Finally, the specific study methodology that will be used for this year’s TEPPC Study Program is described.
TEPPC’s work complements and coordinates with other transmission planning related activities. These include state and provincial integrated resource planning (IRP), regional planning group plans, state and provincial renewable portfolio standards (RPS), analyses of renewables integration by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the Western Electricity Industry Leaders (WEIL) studies, and the numerous initiatives by the Western Governors’ Association (WGA).
Purpose of Transmission Planning
Electric power networks are a unique part of our national infrastructure. With current technology, long-distance high-voltage lines are not buried, so they become a visible part of the landscape through which they pass. Transmission facilities also have very long lives, so decisions made today have long-lasting effects. Therefore, the objective of long-term transmission planning is to make the best network design decisions today after considering possible future needs and expansion options. Few, if any, 10- or 20-year transmission plans will come to fruition as originally conceived. However, by planning for possible future needs, flexibility is built into the network’s design that allows options to be exercised and adaptation to occur as future conditions are revealed.
TEPPC’s activities are an integral part of the Western Interconnection’s overall approach to Interconnection-wide planning of the transmission system, which has two major aspects for consideration:
1) System reliability—characterized as “keeping the lights on” while responding in a predictable fashion to both planned and unplanned outages to generation and transmission system elements.
2) System utilization,—a measure of the economic performance of the transmission system. System production cost studies and associated capital cost estimates for those studies provide answers to the question, “While operating within the bounds of reliable operation, how well does the transmission system perform to deliver electricity services to consumers at a reasonable cost?”
Regional Transmission Expansion Planning
WECC’s RTEP project is described in the TEPPC Transmission Planning Protocol. The TEPPC Transmission Planning Protocol governs the transmission planning process used by TEPPC to: 1) produce Interconnection-wide transmission plans consistent with the cooperative agreement between WECC and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)[2]; and 2) support transmission providers in meeting the transmission planning obligations of Attachment K to the transmission providers’ Open Access Transmission Tariffs (OATT).
TEPPC Study Program Development
A key component of RTEP is TEPPC’s biennial Study Program. The 2014 TEPPC Study Program represents the second year of a biennial RTEP study cycle. The development of the annual TEPPC Study Program is an adaptive process that uses previous experience to not only improve the quality of the cases, but to add new models or modify study methodology to continually improve the results produced by the Study Program. This expansion of planning activity was made possible, in part, by lessons learned in previous years and, in particular, lessons learned as part of the creation of WECC’s first-ever 10-Year Regional Transmission Plan in 2011 and the 2013 Interconnection-wide Transmission Plan in 2013.
Figure 1 is taken from the TEPPC Transmission Planning Protocol and presents the process for developing a TEPPC Study Program. From the inputs presented in Figure 1, the SWG develops a consolidated list of studies. In preparing the consolidated list, the SWG looks for opportunities to combine requests to meet multiple needs with a reduced number of studies. The consolidated list is reviewed by TAS and forwarded to TEPPC for consideration. All stakeholders, including the parties who submitted study requests, are invited to attend TEPPC meetings and participate in the prioritization discussion. The consolidated list of studies is then adjusted based on the TEPPC discussion and posted for review. Stakeholders are given an opportunity to request reconsideration of TEPPC’s proposed Study Program before it is finalized.
Figure 1: Study Program Development Process
Feedback from Previous Study Cycles
Results from both the 2013 and 2014 Study Programs will be used to create the 2015 Interconnection-wide Transmission Plan (due in September 2015). As such, the studies ran as part of the 2013 and 2014 Study Programs are intended to provide the analytical foundation such that their results can be combined with forthcoming results from next year’s Study Program to provide the analytical basis for the 2015 Plan. The list of proposed studies outlined in this document has been developed and prioritized to reflect this goal.
In addition, the goal of each Study Program is to improve on previous Study Programs. As such, the studies outlined in this document consider new issues/topics of Interconnection-wide significance, and address gaps left by past Study Programs and the 2013 Plan.
Other Study Activities
In addition to the studies described in this report, TEPPC has ongoing activities that support its Study Program effort.
· WECC staff led effort to conduct historical analysis of system utilization.[3]
· The SWG and Data Work Group (DWG) build the study databases needed for simulation studies.
· The Modeling Work Group (MWG) develops improved simulation models based on needs identified in past studies.
Each of these activities is an important element of TEPPC’s adaptive approach to developing transmission planning studies.
Types of Study Cases
Prior to the formation of TEPPC, a number of Western Interconnection transmission studies were completed using production cost simulations. These studies stimulated an interest in economic evaluation of transmission expansion and led to the formation of TEPPC. These studies were also influential in triggering an interest in a number of major transmission projects now being developed across the Western Interconnection. However, one of the concerns expressed regarding the early studies was the inclusion of potentially redundant generation and transmission expansion proposals. The presence of surplus generation and transmission tended to mask possible congestion – eliminating it before it could be identified. To avoid this problem, the SWG uses a study methodology consisting of two types of study cases: portfolio cases and expansion cases. The relationship between the two types of study cases is shown in Figure 2 for a set of illustrative, hypothetical cases.
Figure 2: Simulation Study Case Relationships
Portfolio Cases
The resource and load assumptions for a particular portfolio case are developed to represent a possible pattern of future load and resource development. The type and location of incremental resources[4] will be different among portfolio cases. Load and general policy changes can also be included to reflect varying futures. For the network topology, portfolio cases use a representation of the existing transmission plus new transmission for which construction is sufficiently certain in the given horizon year. The first base case for the 10-year timeframe has been called the Common Case. From the Common Case, additional portfolio cases are developed that represent other possible patterns of load and resource developments. These are used to evaluate the impact of different future market, regulatory, and policy conditions on the need for transmission network expansion.[5]
Expansion Cases
Expansion cases are developed from portfolio cases by adding incremental transmission and/or storage projects, or any other incremental piece of infrastructure that may provide operational or economic benefit. This is the second step in the transmission study analysis to investigate the effect that various transmission expansion options may have on system utilization. By reporting the impact on system utilization and a capital cost estimate of different alternatives, stakeholders will be more able to judge their interest in various projects and provide a basis for further project studies.
Elements and Themes of the 2014 Study Program
The consolidated list of proposed study cases prepared by the SWG and TAS is provided in Appendix A. Because of the large number of study requests, only a limited number of study cases were given a high priority, indicating the intent to complete them in 2014. The remaining studies were ranked as medium priority and will be completed as time permits.
An explanation of each proposed study cluster and general study approach is located at the beginning of Appendix A. Once the Study Program is approved by TEPPC, the study formulation effort is kicked off in a “scoping call” where the exact study specifications, timeline, and central study questions are developed by SWG leadership, WECC staff, and the study requestor(s). TEPPC will rely on a number of study requestors to provide data needed for its study cases. Requests for this data will be communicated clearly and in a timely fashion via the Study Scoping Form (Appendix D) that is filled out in the scoping calls.
General Study Themes
This section describes the study themes within the 2013 and 2014 Study Programs (Appendices A and B). The study themes represent the areas where TEPPC would like to focus its learning while leveraging both WECC analysis and studies being conducted by others.
Studying the Important Challenges to the Grid
Stakeholder requests influenced the 2014 Study Program to examine some important trends that pose major challenges to the grid over the 10- and 20-year horizons. In particular, key topics to be addressed are increasing levels of distributed generation, increasing levels of renewable generation to meet evolving policy objectives, and the potential increase in coal plant retirements in the Western Interconnection. These scenarios strive to raise and explore important questions about the reliability of the grid and whether the future system has sufficient flexibility to meet increased levels of variable generation. The use of transmission expansions to mitigate future stresses introduced by load growth and resource build-outs has and should continue to be the focus of interconnection-wide planning efforts. In addition, it is important to explore and study how new resource and transmission technologies (e.g., storage facilities, enhancements to thermal ramping capabilities, synchrophasors, advantages of DC transmission lines) can be used to mitigate future issues.