2016 TEPPC Study Program27
2016 TEPPC Study Program
Approved- TEPPC
May 5, 2016
155 North 400 West, Suite 200
Salt Lake City, Utah 84103-1114
Western Electricity Coordinating Council
2016 TEPPC Study Program27
Table of Contents
Introduction 2
Transmission Planning and the Study Program 3
Purpose of Transmission Planning 3
Relevance of TEPPC Planning Process to Regional Planning Efforts 4
TEPPC Study Program Development 4
Lessons Learned from Previous Study Cycles 6
Other Study Activities 6
Types of Study Cases 6
Elements and Themes of this Study Program 10
Study Consideration Criteria 10
The following criteria were used as guidance in soliciting the 10-year and 20-year studies. 10
General Study Themes 11
Focus areas for 2016 TEPPC Study Program 12
Special Spatial Data Assessment Project: 14
Appendix A – 2016 TEPPC Study Program Cycle 15
Appendix B – 2016 TEPPC Study Program 16
Common Case, Reference Case and Sensitivities: 17
Appendix B - Glossary of TEPPC Terminology 23
Appendix C - TEPPC 2015 Study Program Study Case Scoping Form 27
Introduction
This document presents and discusses details of the 2016 Transmission Expansion Planning Policy Committee (TEPPC) Study Program. TEPPC is tasked with conducting an annual transmission system study program (Study Program) as a component of WECC’s regional transmission planning process in accordance with WECC’s broader mission to assess the reliability impacts of the Western Interconnection under varying economic, technological and regulatory (policy) conditions. . The 2016 TEPPC Study Program is intended to guide and improve economic and operational analyses and modeling of the Western Interconnection through transmission utilization and planning studies. The studies are requested by a diverse range of stakeholders – Load Serving Entities, Transmission Planners (TPs), Transmission Owners (TOs), public interest stakeholders, western state agencies, and regulatory staff. The TEPPC Study Program also informs the planning obligations of regional planning groups across the Western Interconnection and not limited to, entities obligated to comply with FERC Order 890 and 1000 planning tasks.
The 2016 Study Program has been prepared under the provisions of the Interim TEPPC Planning Protocol. The goal of the Study Program is to employ production cost and capital expansion models to analyze planning issues and eventually summarize the results into a year-end Integrated Transmission and Resource Assessment Report. The draft Study Program for 2016 details the analytical activities that TEPPC will perform to evaluate changes and vulnerabilities to the Western Interconnection under various conditions for future 10-year and 20-year time horizons. The 20-year horizon studies include the assessment of scenarios constructed by the Scenario Planning Steering Group (SPSG).
Two time horizons will be studied as part of the 2016 Study Program.
· Ten-year Horizon (2026) – The 10-year time horizon will be used to evaluate the impact of options to meet existing and potential future energy policies, and the impact of external drivers such as technology changes may have on transmission needs and costs in the Western Interconnection. All Year 10 studies start with the 2026 Common Case, ensuring a common point of reference exists for all year 10 studies performed. The 2026 Common Case is based on stakeholder-provided assumptions regarding loads, generation and transmission. The Year 10 studies are conducted with a production cost model.
· 20-year Horizon (2036) – A set of studies representing potential energy futures for a 20-year study horizon will be evaluated using the WECC Long-Term Planning Tool (LTPT), a capital expansion model (CXM). A desired outcome, in part, of the long-term studies is to identify decisions that need to be made now in order to realize the potential energy futures being evaluated.
The Study Program is developed to:
1) Respond to requests received during the Open Season under the provisions of the TEPPC Interim 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.
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 study requests prepared by the Studies Work Group (SWG) for this planning year. The list includes study requests submitted under the provisions of the TEPPC Interim Planning Protocol during the request window period that ended January 31, 2016. The result of this process is the Draft 2016 TEPPC Study Program described herein. Prior to finalizing the Study Program, TEPPC will review stakeholder feedback and requests for reconsideration (see Appendix 1).
Transmission Planning and the Study Program
The objective of TEPPC’s transmission utilization and resource assessment studies is to provide an Interconnection-wide perspective on future transmission and resource adequacy needs of the Western Interconnection. 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 planning, building, and operating 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 Interim 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 utility integrated resource plans (IRP), activities of the Western Planning Regions, state and provincial renewable portfolio standards (RPS), research by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), and initiatives by the Western Interstate Energy Board (WIEB).
Purpose of Transmission Planning
Electric power networks are a unique part of our national infrastructure. With current technology, long-distance high-voltage lines are above ground, 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 after considering possible future needs and expansion options. Few, if any, 10-year 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 considerations:
1) System reliability—characterized as “keeping the lights on” while responding predictably 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. 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?”
Relevance of TEPPC Planning Process to Regional Planning Efforts
The 2016 Interim TEPPC Protocol guides the 2016 TEPPC Study Program. TEPPC’s processes and outputs are essential for some Transmission Providers (TPs), and valuable for a larger set of TPs as part of their FERC planning obligations (FERC Order 890, 1000) under Attachment K to the transmission providers’ Open Access Transmission Tariffs (OATT). In particular, TEPPC’s Common Case data set provides a foundational database for TPs to modify and perform required planning studies.
TEPPC Study Program Development
The Study Program is an adaptive process that uses results from previous study programs to not only improve the quality of the cases, but to add new models or modify study methodology to continually improve results produced by each successive study program. This expansion of planning activity is made possible, in part, by lessons learned in previous study programs.
Figure 1 is taken from the Interim TEPPC Planning Protocol and presents the process and timeline for developing a Study Program. The inputs presented in Figure 1 are used by the SWG to develop a consolidated list of studies by integrating multiple needs of various stakeholders. This consolidated list of studies is then 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 provide feedback and final Study Program is selected by TEPPC after due review and reconsideration if needed.
Figure 1. Study Program Development Process
Time Period / Activities /January 1-31, 2016[1] / · Stakeholders submit study requests during the Request Window.
· All stakeholders—including individual stakeholders and committees, subcommittees and work groups within WECC—must submit requests by January 31, 2016.
February 1 – March 31, 2016 / Study Program Development
· WECC staff reviews and summarizes study requests and recommends 2016 study priorities, possible study request consolidations and availability of resources to conduct studies.
· SWG and TAS review the study requests and WECC staff-recommended priorities and then develop a proposed work plan. Recommendations may include proposals to consolidate requests which in turn may entail modifications of study requests to accommodate consolidation.
· TEPPC and stakeholders review proposed work plan.
(7 days prior to TEPPC meeting) / Post draft Study Program for stakeholder review
April 12, 2016 / Work Plan Approval[2]
· TEPPC approves proposed 2016 Work Plan at its scheduled meeting.
May 12, 2016 (30 days following TEPPC approval of the proposed work plan) / Reconsideration Period
· Any party who disagrees with inclusion or exclusion of a particular study request within the 2016 Study Program may submit a request for reconsideration within 30 days of TEPPC’s decision.[3]
June 12, 2016 (30 days following close of Reconsideration Period) / TEPPC Decision
· TEPPC will respond to requests for reconsideration no later than 30 days after the reconsideration request submittal deadline.[4]
April 1 – December 31, 2016 / Analysis and Reporting
· WECC staff completes analyses included in 2016 Work Plan.
· TEPPC Stakeholders review analytical results
· Reports on specific modeling analyses, as well as issue-based reports on other topics, are released as they are available.
October 1 – December 31, 2016 / Transmission Planning Assessment Summary Report
· WECC staff prepares draft summary report of analytical activities completed during 2016.
· TEPPC and stakeholders review summary report.
December 13, 2016 / Transmission Planning Assessment Summary Report Approval
· TEPPC approves Transmission Planning Assessment Summary Report and submits for Board approval
Lessons Learned from Previous Study Cycles
Results from previous Study Programs will be used to create the current Study Program which will inform the WECC Plan. As such, results produced from previous study programs will provide an analytical foundation from which new studies can be performed and analyzed for use in the creation of subsequent transmission planning reports. 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 plans.
Other Study Activities
In addition to the studies described in this report, TEPPC has ongoing activities that support its Study Program effort.
• 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 interest in a number of major transmission projects now being developed across the Western Interconnection. A consistent concern from prior planning cycles was the inclusion of potentially redundant generation and transmission expansion proposals, creating a surplus of generation and transmission. 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 TEPPC uses a study methodology consisting of two types of study cases: “portfolio cases” that examine potential changes to loads or resources, relative to the Common Case; and “expansion cases” that examine potential changes to the transmission topology in addition to potential load or resource changes. 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
Common Case and Reference Case
The Common Case and Reference Case are the Study Cases from which all other Study Cases are built. The Common Case is the Year 10 “expected future” based on a compilation of all the existing and Year 10 projected load, resources, and transmission. The Reference Case is the Year 20 “possible energy future” extending the trajectory of the Year 10 Common Case assumptions another ten years into the future.
Portfolio Cases
Portfolio Cases (PC) are developed to represent a possible pattern of future load and resource development. The type and location of incremental resources will be different among portfolio cases, based on the analysis of the WECC Loads & Resources information and study criteria defined by study requestors. Load and general policy changes can also be included to reflect varying futures. For the network topology, portfolio cases represent the 10-Year transmission system as the existing transmission plus new transmission for which construction is sufficiently certain in the given horizon year. From the Common Case, additional Portfolio Cases are developed that represent other possible patterns of load and resource developments.