[LDES-coremodel] Update of existing and planned generation for SWITCH WECC db

Thu Sep 17 20:38:51 PDT 2020

Agreed.

dan

On Thu, Sep 17, 2020 at 7:32 PM Patricia Hidalgo-Gonzalez <
patricia.hidalgo.g at berkeley.edu> wrote:

> Hey Julia,
>
> Just to clarify on 2: Did you mean to rank the hydro years by total energy
> produced? I'd advise against calculating any statistics because that will
> change hydro monthly dynamics within the "year-type". I thought it could be
> good to rank from driest year to wettest year (based on energy produced),
> and then choose for scenarios, for example: median year, driest year,
> wettest year, etc. But have the data for all the years so we can choose
> different years for different scenarios if we want. Or even different years
> for each period in a given scenario. What do you think?
>
> Thank you,
>
>
> *Patr**i**cia Hidalgo-Gonzalez*
> Assistant Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
> University of California San Diego
> patricia.hidalgo.g at berkeley.edu
> (Pronouns: She/Her/Hers)
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 17, 2020 at 2:21 PM Julia Szinai <jszinai at berkeley.edu> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>> Thanks for your feedback on some of these questions at this morning's
>> meeting.
>> Here are notes on what we discussed for each of the points above:
>> 1. Variable cap factors: I'll schedule a meeting with Paty to go over the
>> time zones/time stamps associated with the variable capacity factors for
>> the existing generation, and how it was done for the proposed generation.
>>
>> 2. Hydro cap factors: I'll upload the historical monthly data for 2004 -
>> 2018, and construct a few scenarios based on this time series that
>> calculate the monthly average, medium, maximum, and minimum generation for
>> each plant and then repeat that monthly value for each future year.
>>
>> 3. Non-US part of WECC: I'll go through with Paty or ask Josiah where the
>> Canadian and Mexican generation data came from.
>>
>> 4. Candidate generators: For the baseline scenario I'll start by using
>> the set of generators that are environmentally constrained. We will need to
>> ask E3 if they have an updated set of candidate generators and/or if they
>> are still using the same "screen" to exclude generators based on
>> environmental constraints.
>>
>> 6. Solar cap factors: For now I will average the capacity factors by load
>> zone across residential, commercial, and utility scale solar. We will ask
>> E3 if they have forecasts of residential solar buildout to add to the
>> planned generator list.
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 17, 2020 at 11:02 AM Julia Szinai <jszinai at berkeley.edu>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>> I'm almost done updating the script and pushing the data of the existing
>>> and planned generation in the US portion of the WECC into the SWITCH
>>> database. The updated scripts 1) scrape the data from EIA forms 860 and
>>> 923, 2) process and standardize the data, and 3) upload the data into the
>>> database. They build on the original scripts in github here:
>>> https://github.com/RAEL-Berkeley/eia_scrape. (I haven't pushed my
>>> updated code to github yet).
>>>
>>> This data contains the generator parameters that go in the main
>>> generation_projects input file into SWITCH (including heat rate, capacity,
>>> build year, max age, etc), as well as the variable capacity factors for the
>>> renewable generators. The data is as of 2018 (since that is the most recent
>>> year for which there is both generator capacity and annual energy data),
>>> but I've removed generators which have been retired between 2018 - May 2020
>>> (since retirement data is more current). I also added planned retirement
>>> dates whenever available.
>>>
>>> I compared the total capacity in the WECC between the previous data of
>>> existing generation (as of 2015) with this update, and with the total
>>> current capacity in the WECC according to the WECC website (
>>> https://www.wecc.org/epubs/StateOfTheInterconnection/Pages/Capacity.aspx).
>>> The updated data has more solar, wind and gas than the 2015 data
>>> (interestingly also more coal), and the numbers are pretty close to that of
>>> the WECC website. I've attached an Excel file of the comparison.
>>>
>>> I have a couple of questions for the group that I think need to be
>>> settled before I finish preparing the data for a baseline scenario:
>>> 1. The variable capacity factors in the original script are added to the
>>> "variable_capacity_factors" table in the database. However, the inputs for
>>> the WECC SWITCH runs use the capacity factors from the
>>> "variable_capacity_factors_historical." What is the relationship between
>>> these and is there an additional script I'm missing? More importantly, it
>>> appears that the variable capacity factors for solar are off by 7 hours
>>> (likely related to time zone). The adjustment in the original script
>>> doesn't look like it is properly correcting for this, and I think it is
>>> still mismatched in the final data going into SWITCH. This could be the
>>> reason for the infeasibility of the 100% renewables run, if for example,
>>> solar is not generating during the day because the hours are incorrect. Is
>>> there some SWITCH adjustment for timezones, or time points that I'm missing?
>>>
>>> 2. hydro capacity factors: I've added monthly hydropower data to the
>>> database for 2004 - 2018. For the baseline scenario, should I calculate
>>> average monthly capacity factors across those years? This would reflect
>>> "average" operations under dry and wet years. The previous data only
>>> included hydropower for 2010 - 2015, so not as representative of the range
>>> of hydroclimatic conditions.
>>>
>>> 3. Canadian + Mexican parts of WECC: The data I scraped is from the EIA,
>>> so it doesn't have data for existing generation in Canada (BC and Alberta)
>>> and Mexico (small part of Baja CA). Looking at the prior data in the
>>> database, the generators for these load zones were all "proposed" and there
>>> was no existing generation. I guess SWITCH just "built" all the
>>> existing generation in the first period to meet the load? I'm not sure but
>>> that seems a bit weird, and could cause overestimated costs for the first
>>> period. Am I missing something? Should I look for updated existing
>>> generation data for BC and Alberta, and part of Mexico? The query I ran
>>> below came out empty (8 and 9 are the Canadian load zones, and
>>> generation_plant_scenario_id 14 is the scenario used in the last CEC
>>> report):
>>>
>>> SELECT *
>>> FROM generation_plant
>>> JOIN generation_plant_scenario_member
>>> USING (generation_plant_id)
>>> WHERE generation_plant_scenario_id = 14
>>> And name != 'Proposed'
>>> AND load_zone_id in (8, 9)
>>>
>>> 4. This data update was just of the existing generation plants. The
>>> baseline scenario will need to also include the data from candidate
>>> generators. My plan was to append the list of candidate generators from one
>>> of the scenarios used in the prior CEC study. However, there are several
>>> scenarios of candidate generators. As we discussed some of the prior
>>> scenarios have candidate renewable generators excluded because of
>>> environmental restrictions, based on data from E3 I believe. Do you know if
>>> we will get an updated set of environmentally-friendly candidate generators
>>> from E3? If not, should I use the restricted scenario of candidate
>>> generators for the baseline?
>>>
>>> 5. The existing battery projects that are in the generation_plant_cost
>>> table for the new scenarios 19 and 20 will need to be updated in the
>>> storage_energy_capacity_cost_per_mwh to reflect whatever is the baseline
>>> assumption for battery costs. Right now I've left these as NULL in the
>>> table.
>>>
>>> 6. The capacity factors for solar were previously averaged by load zone
>>> across residential, commercial, and utility-scale solar PV. I did the same
>>> for this data, but not sure if we want to revisit this simplification or
>>> keep the residential and commercial vs. utility-scale solar capacity
>>> factors separate.
>>>
>>> *Julia Szinai*
>>> PhD Candidate | Energy & Resources Group | University of California,
>>> Berkeley
>>> Graduate Student Researcher | Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
>>> NSF InFEWS Fellow
>>> Energy & Resources Group, MS '17
>>> Goldman School of Public Policy, MPP '17
>>> University of California, Berkeley
>>> jszinai at berkeley.edu
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> *Julia Szinai*
>> PhD Candidate | Energy & Resources Group | University of California,
>> Berkeley
>> Graduate Student Researcher | Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
>> NSF InFEWS Fellow
>> Energy & Resources Group, MS '17
>> Goldman School of Public Policy, MPP '17
>> University of California, Berkeley
>> jszinai at berkeley.edu
>> _______________________________________________
>> LDES-coremodel mailing list
>> LDES-coremodel at lists.ucmerced.edu
>> https://lists.ucmerced.edu/mailman/listinfo/ldes-coremodel
>>
> _______________________________________________
> LDES-coremodel mailing list
> LDES-coremodel at lists.ucmerced.edu
> https://lists.ucmerced.edu/mailman/listinfo/ldes-coremodel
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ucmerced.edu/pipermail/ldes-coremodel/attachments/20200917/6b33062f/attachment.html>