[LDES-coremodel] Fwd: WHY LOCAL SOLAR FOR ALL COSTS LESS (Update)

[Sarah Kurtz]

I haven’t read this, but it looks interesting...

Begin forwarded message:

From: Vibrant Clean Energy, LLC (VCE®) <info at vibrantcleanenergy.com<mailto:info at vibrantcleanenergy.com>>
Subject: WHY LOCAL SOLAR FOR ALL COSTS LESS (Update)
Date: December 16, 2020 at 1:40:58 PM PST
To: <skurtz at ucmerced.edu<mailto:skurtz at ucmerced.edu>>
Reply-To: Vibrant Clean Energy, LLC (VCE®) <info at vibrantcleanenergy.com<mailto:info at vibrantcleanenergy.com>>

View this email in your browser<https://mailchi.mp/vibrantcleanenergy/localsolarandstoragepathways-3938714?e=cf80d82f24>
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VCE® Modeling Demonstrates That Co-optimizing the Distribution Grid Can Result in Half a Trillion Dollars in Savings When Cleaning the Electricity Sector by 2050

________________________________


Dear VCE<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=36e0a4080b&e=cf80d82f24>®<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=4aa5652b84&e=cf80d82f24> friends:

This past week, our team released our full technical report for the study "Why local solar for all costs less: A new roadmap for the lowest cost grid<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=7e1d3e2c43&e=cf80d82f24>". The detailed technical report explains the procedures by which the modeling shows a clean electricity with distribution coordination can be lower cost than keeping polluting or other methods of cleaning the grid. The latest press release can be found here<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=242615cd98&e=cf80d82f24>. The full technical report<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=6e9b9da24b&e=cf80d82f24> and other documents can be found here<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=c6f69efd75&e=cf80d82f24>.

RESEARCH OVERVIEW

The, first-of-its-kind, study<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=f6d0fb5e50&e=cf80d82f24> computes the evolution of the entire contiguous US electricity system as it strives to achieve lower emission goals. The study looked at business as usual and a national clean electricity standard (95% by 2050). The modeling didn't just produce a single year estimation or a coarse buildout of capacity, but rather it created highly-granular siting of generation across the entirety of the contiguous US, while estimating the dispatch for each 5-minute interval for each "investment period" from 2020 through 2050. By combining the macro-level capacity changes with the micro-level operations, the study can identify impacts that could compound over time or vanish if fleeting. The modeling also included estimating the distribution system assets and infrastructure in concert with the wider utility grid in a holistic and integrated way. This results in emergent behavior not see at this scale before in modeling.

Long-story-short: The entire contiguous United States can reduce electricity sector emissions by 95% by 2050 (from 1990 levels) at a cost LOWER than continuing without a clean electricity standard. This avoids 10,000 mmT of carbon dioxide emission, creates new jobs in excess of 8 million, and reduces rates for customers. The alternative is hundreds of billion of additional spending to achieve the same results (or worse).

KEY FINDINGS

  *   Reduce electric sector CO2 emissions by 65% by 2035, and by over 95% by 2050 and sharply reduce other harmful air pollutants across the region.
  *   Save $473 billion and decrease the average electric bill rate by more than one-third (under clean electricity standard), from over 10 cents/kWh today to around 7 cents/kWh by 2050, saving a typical household more than $400 per year. These savings are broadly shared by all consumers across the region. The savings emerge as a combination of distribution infrastructure savings and utility-scale deployment savings and changes.
  *   Create over 8 million net new jobs, increasing electric sector employment over 5-fold from around 2 million to over 10 million jobs by 2050. The new jobs are broadly spread across the entire contiguous United States.
  *   Obtain over 90% of its electricity comes from variable renewables by 2050.
  *   Deliver reliable power by meeting electricity demand in every 5-minute period of the year, even with wind and solar providing over 80% of electricity in 2050 in the clean electricity scenarios.
  *   Scenarios with local solar and storage were more cost-effective and created more jobs than scenarios without. The scenario with 95% CO2emission reductions and high local solar and storage deployment was also more cost-effective than the scenario far less local solar and storage, to the tune of $473 billion dollars, cumulatively. While the business as usual was over $300 billion lower cost. Finally, the clean electricity with local solar and storage was nearly $90 billion lower cost than business as usual without local solar and storage.
  *   Wind, solar, storage, transmission, and DERs each play essential, unique, and complementary roles in providing consumers with reliable and affordable electricity. Wind and solar tend to produce at opposite times, so they complement each other. However, the best wind and solar resources are generally in different locations, so transmission is needed to aggregate them and deliver a reliable mix of power to customers at all times. Transmission also allows local weather-driven variation in wind and solar output to be canceled out by opposite variations in other regions, providing a more constant supply of power. Energy storage helps meet reliability needs and increase the utilization of transmission capacity by absorbing excess generation and filling in when wind and solar output is low. Finally, DERs enable reshaping of distribution demands that can more readily meet supply on the utility grid. Reducing the demand incoherent changes in demand and supply would otherwise exist. Together these resources provide a reliable, efficient, and clean portfolio.

KEY PROCESS FOR CHANGE

Distribution solar and storage (along with other distributed resources) reshape the demand to minimize infrastructure costs and maximize use of utility-scale wind and solar (which are the cheapest forms of electricity today).

The WIS:dom®-P model constantly and relentlessly seeks the least-cost system. When the distribution grid is co-optimized, it finds that solar and storage in that grid can reshape the demand profiles observed by the utility grid. This means that the utility grid can procure more variable resources (and smooth their supply with utility-scale storage) to meet that shifted distribution demand. In addition, the shifted distribution demand can utilize distribution assets more efficiently (avoiding overloading feeders and substations, mitigating peaks during hot conditions, and drawing power during low demand periods).

The value of doing this reduces the perceived additional costs of the distributed solar and storage, and thus makes them attractive to the system as whole entity. This produces a feedback loop that iterates until any change to the system would increase the costs somewhere.

REPORTS & DATA


Press Release<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=b33617ea95&e=cf80d82f24>

Executive Summary<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=35cde05070&e=cf80d82f24>

Full Technical Report<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=6b0125d264&e=cf80d82f24>

Results Summary<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=79e4ffa2e4&e=cf80d82f24>

Model Output Data<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=48a04ff4d6&e=cf80d82f24>

In preparing the study, we used our WIS:dom<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=761d69abc1&e=cf80d82f24>-P<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=ed621aeacc&e=cf80d82f24> (model that is now available for license and use in consulting agreements). The model is the only commercial combined capacity expansion and production cost model that can co-optimize over a large geographic region (up to a continent) with high granularity (3-km, 5-minutes). There are many facets and features to WIS:dom<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=e6c6c5a7c3&e=cf80d82f24>-P<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=08cac3a503&e=cf80d82f24>, which can be located in our technical documentation<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=af69784897&e=cf80d82f24>. Feel free to reach out to discuss this study, WIS:dom<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=74761ae48e&e=cf80d82f24>, or any thing else that VCE<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=7b3044b4aa&e=cf80d82f24> might be able to help with. We have a brochure<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=0f32716c5f&e=cf80d82f24> available for the WIS:dom<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=d7e3390f42&e=cf80d82f24>-P<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=e6a479783b&e=cf80d82f24> tool. We also have a subscription pricing model, a bespoke study pricing model, and even a weather/power data purchase price model.

We would love to hear from you about this study with your comments, questions, and feedback. We will be doing more work around this in the coming months.

The entire VCE team

SUMMARY IMAGES

[Breakdown of System Costs (levelized)]<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=9f173f161d&e=cf80d82f24>
[Installed Capacities Across Contiguous United States]<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=cbddfafad5&e=cf80d82f24>
[Annual Electricity Sector Carbon Dioxide Emissions]<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=9754a3c033&e=cf80d82f24>
[Breakdown of Electric Sector Full Time Employees]<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=2867f390ee&e=cf80d82f24>
[Cost Changes Due to Distribution Co-optimization (BAU)]<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=77f5621b21&e=cf80d82f24>
[Cost Changes Due to Distribution Co-optimization (CE)]<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=d6f5938d7c&e=cf80d82f24>
[Carbon Dioxide Emissions Avoided]<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=de3deb7d5e&e=cf80d82f24>
[Cumulative Cost Savings]<https://vibrantcleanenergy.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=78a2c5180427e50eb7619c74d&id=3db143ce71&e=cf80d82f24>
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