Energy Supply Planning in a Distributed Energy Resources World

Traditional electricity planning in the United States has typically been focused on forecasting future demand and identifying the need for new large generating facilities that involve one-way flows from central power plants to customers. However, legal innovation has incentivized the deployment of more energy resources at the customer end of the electricity network and technological innovation has facilitated rapid expansion in the number and capacity of these distributed energy resources. These changes now require innovation in the type of planning for future energy resources that must be employed to ensure an efficient and reliable electric energy network. Deployment of the rapidly growing number of distributed energy resources —solar and wind generation, combined heat and power, fuel cells, battery storage, demand response and energy efficiency—is facilitated by an increasingly smart grid. This chapter proposes a new, distributed resource-planning process to better integrate all of these distributed resources into the grid.