The Future of Electric Power in the United States (2021) / Chapter Skim
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1 Introduction: Framing the Issues
1 Introduction: Framing the Issues
Pages 13-34
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From page 13... ...
This is especially true in the context of regional or multiregional system operations and in accommodating possible future disruptive changes, especially at the grid edge. For these and other reasons, this report does not tell readers how the nation's electric system should evolve.
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From page 14... ...
This includes • Developing better technologies and management strategies to ensure public and worker safety in the face of growing numbers and severity of extreme weather events such as wildfires, hurricanes, and ice storms, as well as geophysical events such as earthquakes and solar storms. • Ensuring that continued attention to safe operation as a larger proportion of the functions that once fell in the domain of utility operators now fall in the domain of non-utility providers and customers.
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From page 15... ...
• Acknowledging that because there is no way to make power systems completely invulnerable to intentional or accidental physical or cyber disruptions and to the effects of extreme weather events, the nation must move aggressively to create systems that can continue to provide basic services as they recover from disruptions. • Implementing technologies and polices that provide high-quality and highly reliable power to sensitive digital loads without compromising the quality and cost of service that is provided to regular customers.
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From page 16... ...
As noted in the Annual Energy Outlook (EIA, 2020) , EIA projections out to year 2050 are not "predictions of what will happen, but rather, they are modeled projections of what may happen given certain assumptions and methodologies." The EIA Reference case assumes that current laws and regulations impacting the sector, including laws that have end dates, will remain unchanged in the future and that it reflects the current views of leading economic forecasters and demographers on issues such as energy production, delivery, and consumption technologies (EIA, 2020)
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From page 17... ...
(B) Modeled projections of natural gas prices to the power sector from the AEO compared with actual historic prices (bold red curve)
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From page 18... ...
The committee invited and heard from modelers and practitioners involved directly or indirectly in estimating the future performance of the national and regional generation and transmission systems and local distribution systems. The presentations reviewed the purposes of and technical differences across different types of models, data requirements, and sensitivities to key assumptions.
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From page 19... ...
industry includes a large number of investor-owned utilities, four federal Power Marketing Administrations (Bonneville Power Administration, Western Area Power Administration, Southeastern Power Administration, Southwestern Power Administration) , several large generation and transmission systems operated by federal agencies, and a large number of systems operated as cooperatives or municipally owned utilities or special purpose districts (e.g., the Salt River Project)
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From page 20... ...
; • Federal support for opening up access to transmission service for other suppliers besides the owner of the transmission lines; • Requirements in some states that their utilities use competitive supply procurements to identify the most cost-effective new source of power; • State actions to allow customers to choose their own source of supply, with such supplies delivered through local wires still owned by utilities; • Federal and many states' actions to encourage utilities to establish independent system operators and to rely on wholesale power sold at market-based prices; • States' and federal policies to allow demand-side resources to compete with generators to ensure least-cost provision of electricity service; and • State policies to create incentives and/or requirements for power to be supplied by clean-energy resources, including energy efficiency, distributed energy resources located on customers' premises, and larger-scale clean energy resources (including solar plants, wind resources, storage facilities, and other renewable energy facilities)
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From page 21... ...
The last time such policy uncertainties and business-model risks occurred in full force in the electric industry -- during the opening up of retail choice in many places across the country during the mid-1990s and early 2000s -- utilities' investments in many parts of their business stalled until cost-recovery considerations were addressed. This being said, there have been some positive early indications from investors regarding utilities shifting generation sources, though the ultimate outcomes remain to be seen.
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From page 22... ...
The historical evolution of the electric grid, both from a physical and an economic point of view, influences the current architecture and design of the grid. As noted above, electrical grids started as local distribution networks connecting consumers with local generation plants.
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From page 23... ...
SOURCE: North American Electric Reliability Corporation, 2016, "Critical Infrastructure Protection Committee (CIPC) ," presentation March 8–9, https://www.nerc.com/comm/CIPC.
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From page 24... ...
, these three renewable resources provided approximately 17 percent of total power supply. All told, total electricity generation from all fossil fuels -- natural gas, coal, and oil -- has increased by only 2 percent since 2001, while total electricity production from all resources increased by 10 percent from 2001 through 2019 (EIA, 2020a)
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From page 25... ...
As shown in Figure 1.5, since the 1960s, U.S. per-capita electricity consumption grew steadily until the early 2000s, after which it leveled off, and per-capita energy consumption started to decline.
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From page 26... ...
SOURCE: D Rastler, 2012, "Electric Energy Storage Systems for the Electric Enterprise Trends and Opportunities," presented at the Future of Energy Summit, Electric Power Research Institute, June 8.
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From page 27... ...
Grid Architecture The statement of task for the committee's work instructed the committee to gather evidence, deliberate, and provide findings and recommendations regarding "both technical and jurisdictional challenges to implementing a broadly applicable approach to grid architectures." There is a long history of using concepts related to the architecture of systems to understand how individual components interact and influence each other.
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From page 28... ...
While some forms of non-utility generation have been around for a long time (commercial and industrial on-site electricity generation and independent power producers) , the need to increase the focus on grid coordination is heightened by the rise in deployment of distributed energy resources (DER)
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From page 29... ...
As this happens, frequency and voltage controls have to be provided by the power electronic interfaces. The adoption of both DER and utility-scale wind and solar to decrease emissions of conventional air pollutants and CO2 will likely intensify.
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From page 30... ...
The typical scan rates for distribution measurements are slower but allow the DMS to control voltage or sectionalize distribution feeders automatically. Control rooms at most substations are now full of microprocessors because protective relays and instrumentation are increasingly digital.
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From page 31... ...
Thus, the organizational decision making is a fundamental layer of the grid architecture. Engineering: Planning and Design Before electricity generation was restructured, bulk generation was jointly planned with transmission.
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From page 32... ...
In addition, with the ability of the generation developers and customers to make independent choices that impact the grid, local distribution utilities are no longer solely responsible for how the grid evolves. As such, no organization appears to be the backstop for guaranteeing grid reliability across both the bulk power and local systems.
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From page 33... ...
STRUCTURE OF THIS REPORT Chapter 2 describes the drivers of change in the electric power system, beginning with changes in the nature and mix of future demand, the need to achieve deep decarbonization, edge-of-grid developments including distributed generation, storage and energy management resources, efforts for and challenges from the effort to achieve deep decarbonization, challenges arising from high penetrations of nondispatchable sources of generation, efforts to address social inequity and energy poverty, changes in labor markets within the electricity industry, as well as the market forces experienced by producers and users of electricity from shifts of relative costs of different energy system technologies. Chapter 3 builds on the discussion of society's expectations for power systems and examines how legal and regulatory frameworks are changing to accommodate a rapidly changing electricity system.
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From page 34... ...
2018. Annual Energy Outlook (AEO)
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Key Terms
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