This Exploratory Topic works to develop electricity system models and associated analysis that can inform technology development for new grid resources. This includes the ability to model carbon capture and storage (CCS) -enabled power plants with more fidelity as well as model negative-emission resources such as direct air capture (DAC) systems. Additionally, projects will work to generate a set of electricity price signals that will allow CCS technology developers to appropriately value the operating characteristics of their systems, and to evaluate how technology tradeoffs will impact total system costs of electricity under a range of carbon emissions constraints.
Flexible CCS technology can achieve high CO2 capture rates from flue gas, further enables the continued use of low-cost domestic fuel for electricity generation, and increases the reliability of deeply decarbonized electricity. Electricity system models such as capacity expansion models are used to study the evolution of the electricity-generating portfolio of a grid as a function of time and across various technology and policy scenarios. These types of models have shown that when fossil-fueled power generators are equipped with CCS technology meeting certain cost and performance metrics, they can further reduce the cost of a net-zero carbon electricity system.
Related Program(s)
Projects selected within this Exploratory Topic will work concurrently with teams selected under the following ARPA-E program to evaluate their potential to provide value in future decarbonized energy systems:
FLExible Carbon Capture and Storage (FLECCS)
Program Director(s)
Dr. Scott Litzelman
Projects Selected Within This Exploratory Topic
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
ELECTRICITY SYSTEM CAPACITY EXPANSION AND OPERATIONAL MODELING FOR EVALUATION AND OPTIMIZATION OF FLEXIBLE CARBON CAPTURE AND SEQUESTRATION SYSTEMS
Princeton University will improve and apply the existing GenX configurable electricity system planning model to evaluate the value of fossil-fueled power plants with CCS and direct air capture technologies in future electricity grids under a range of possible future scenarios, including high shares of variable renewable energy sources. With these improvements, Princeton University will explore the ‘design space’ or combination of possible cost and performance parameters for each major subcomponent of a generic natural gas-fired power plant with CCS. The team will evaluate several designs and strategies, including load following and part-load operation of generation and capture systems, integrated thermal or electrical storage, and buffering of the carbon capture medium itself to shift the timing of energy consumption by CCS systems.
NATIONAL RENEWABLE ENERGY LABORATORY
MULTISCALE ELECTRICITY MODELING FOR EVALUATING CARBON CAPTURE AND SEQUESTRATION TECHNOLOGIES (MEME-CCS)
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) will adapt an existing, rigorous multiscale electricity modeling platform to evaluate carbon capture and sequestration and negative emissions technologies from the ARPA-E FLECCS program. NREL’s platform includes the Regional Energy Deployment System (ReEDS) electric sector capacity expansion model, which projects future electricity generation mixes at sub-state geographic resolution. Using ReEDS projections in the PLEXOS production cost model then allows the team to perform hourly, zonal, or nodal grid operations modeling to understand how CCS-equipped power plants will dispatch in the future. The resulting raw hourly price data from PLEXOS will then be processed by the Cambium tool to develop price trajectories for ARPA-E FLECCS technology developers. The ReEDS-PLEXOS-Cambium modeling suite has already been used to examine electric sector futures with high renewable energy penetrations, energy storage, electrification, and distributed generation, and it will be augmented to include the capability to model CCS-equipped power plants and negative emissions technologies.