Tabors Caramanis Rudkevich (TCR)

The grid relies on conventional bulk power plants to provide the flexibility to operate power systems reliably. These assets can guarantee available capacity except in rare events. The existing risk management strategy protects against those rare events and aligns well with conventional technologies. New risk management strategies are needed due to the shift in grid resources: intermittent renewable resources, distributed energy resources, and storage technologies. Management systems must be able to leverage all capabilities of these new technologies to maintain an economical and reliable grid. PERFORM projects aim to address that need by developing methods to quantify and manage risk at the asset and system levels for the grid.

Tabors Caramanis Rudkevich’s (TCR) Stochastic Nodal Adequacy Platform (SNAP) will determine the value of resource adequacy for the electric power industry given significant penetration of intermittent and distributed generation. TCR and IBM’s The Weather Company are developing algorithms and software to stochastically value system adequacy by taking into account the weather-driven stochasticity of intermittent solar (utility and residential) and wind generation and weather-dependent variation in demand. SNAP is based on the premise that uncertainty in resource availability characterizes real-time utility operations. SNAP will probabilistically measure operational uncertainty and economic risk for system operators and asset owners to calculate individual contributions to system adequacy and produce a nodal adequacy pricing structure for consumers. SNAP will provide a statistically rigorous methodology for integration of intermittent resources into the system and for incorporation of the value and the cost of those resources (including those behind the meter) in system operations – improving both reliability and economic efficiency.