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Climate-Induced Tradeoffs in Planning and Operating Costs of a Regional Electricity System

CSS Publication Number
CSS21-25
Full Publication Date
August 3, 2021
Abstract

Electricity grid planners design the system to supply electricity to end-users reliably and affordably. Climate change threatens both objectives through potentially compounding supply- and demand-side climate-induced impacts. Uncertainty surrounds each of these future potential impacts. Given long planning horizons, system planners must weigh investment costs against operational costs under this uncertainty. Here, we developed a comprehensive and coherent integrated modeling framework combining physically based models with cost-minimizing optimization models in the power system. We applied this modeling framework to analyze potential tradeoffs in planning and operating costs in the power grid due to climate change in the Southeast U.S. in 2050. We find that planning decisions that do not account for climate-induced impacts would result in a substantial increase in social costs associated with loss of load. These social costs are a result of under-investment in new capacity and capacity deratings of thermal generators when we included climate change impacts in the operation stage. These results highlight the importance of including climate change effects in the planning process.

Co-Author(s)
Aviva Loew
Bart Nijssen
Edson Severnini
Francisco Ralston Fonseca
Haibo Zhai
John Yearsley
Mario Bergés
Nathalie Voisin
Paulina Jaramillo
Yifan Cheng
Research Areas
Energy
Energy Systems
Publication Type
Journal Article
Digital Object Identifier
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.1c01334
Full Citation
Fonseca, Francisco Ralston, Michael Craig, Paulina Jaramillo, Mario Bergés, Edson Severnini, Aviva Loew, Haibo Zhai, Yifan Cheng, Bart Nijssen, Nathalie Voisin, and John Yearsley (2021) “Climate-Induced Tradeoffs in Planning and Operating Costs of a Regional Electricity System.” Environmental Science and Technology 2021 55 (16), 11204-11215.