In this paper, Charles River Associates and Form Energy share insights from a collaborative study that explores the impacts of weather volatility on resource planning optimization.
The authors assessed how modeling different weather year scenarios in capacity expansion planning can impact resource investment decisions and the resulting cost and reliability of portfolios.
This paper identifies approaches that enable utilities to design more reliable and cost-effective portfolios in the face of weather volatility. These practices will help utility resource planners more critically examine whether their existing practices adequately capture the role of weather and provide a more stable and cost-effective grid for a future where weather-driven impacts represent an increasing threat.
Key findings of the study include:
- Weather has a profound impact on portfolio needs, with total resource build varying by more than 40%, depending on the weather year used in optimization analysis.
- Clean, dispatchable resources insulate portfolios from weather-driven risks, improving reliability by more than 99%, regardless of the weather year used for planning.
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Clean, dispatchable resources reduce the cost of portfolios dramatically, by as much as 56% when portfolios are optimized over multiple weather years, relative to portfolios that only consider wind, solar, and short duration storage options.
Read more about utility resource planning here.
