Powered By Webinar Series
Each month, the Powered By webinar series features an NREL grid planning and analysis tool and the ways it can be used to solve power grid challenges.
The Powered By series is a monthly informational webinar series brought to you by NREL’s Grid Planning and Analysis Center (GPAC). This series will walk attendees through NREL’s impressive suite of grid planning and analysis tools to better understand their capabilities and applications.
The series launched in March 2024 and will take place from 10 to 11 a.m. MT on the second Tuesday of every month. Each webinar will feature a different tool in the context of a real-world project. When possible, sessions will include partners from industry and government who have used the tools to inform their grid planning. Attendees will have the opportunity to engage directly with presenters to get their questions answered.
The Powered By series is designed to be relevant to anyone who works in the clean energy space and is interested in grid-related topics. State and local governments, regulators, nongovernment entities, research institutes, the renewable energy and utility industries, and more can gain useful information for their various grid-planning and analysis needs. Registration is now open and can be completed using the form below.
Current Webinar Topics
Powered By OCHRE features the Object-oriented Controllable High-resolution Residential Energy (OCHRE™) model, an open-source energy modeling tool designed to model flexible loads in residential buildings. OCHRE uses detailed thermal and electrical modeling of residential end-use loads and the building envelope and integrates with grid simulators, device controllers, and aggregators, allowing users to examine the impacts of novel control strategies on building energy consumption and occupant comfort.
The webinar will be hosted by NREL distributed energy resource and controls lead Michael Blonsky and building modeling lead Jeff Maguire and will include a Q&A session.
Register for the Nov. 12, 2024, webinar.
More resources for using OCHRE:
OCHRE: The Object-Oriented, Controllable, High-Resolution Residential Energy Model for Dynamic Integration Studies, Applied Energy (2021)
Powered By HELICS features the Hierarchical Engine for Large-scale Infrastructure Co-Simulation (HELICS), an open-source cosimulation platform that enables integrated multisector/multiscale analysis by bringing together existing software simulators so they exchange information during run-time to form a comprehensive simulation. HELICS was developed in partnership with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and has been used for multiple applications from small desktop studies to large-scale T&D analysis to real-time simulations with hardware.
The webinar will be hosted by Bryan Palmintier, NREL transmission and distribution interactions group manager and principal engineer, and will include a Q&A session.
Register for the Dec. 10, 2024, webinar.
More resources for using HELICS:
HELICS: A Cosimulation Framework for Scalable Multi-Domain Modeling and Analysis, IEEE Access (2023)
Powered By EMIS features the Electricity Markets Investment Suite (EMIS), an open-source agent-based capacity expansion model designed to capture the interactions between wholesale electricity market design, investment decisions, and resource adequacy. The tool allows users to explore a range of market structures and products to understand how associated price and revenue outcomes can impact investment and retirement decisions made by a set of heterogenous investor agents over many years. Resource adequacy is assessed and incorporated into the market structures in each investment period, allowing users to better explore the feedback between market design and resource adequacy.
The webinar will be hosted by NREL senior researcher Bethany Frew and will include a Q&A session.
Powered By CADET features Capacity Expansion Decision Support for Distribution Networks (CADET), a decision support tool for developing long-term distribution capacity planning strategies. Its flexible architecture minimizes effort on tailor-made problem formulations for use cases, such as automated switching for load balancing, voltage class upgrades, using bridge-to-wire solutions to manage load uncertainty, hosting capacity, planning more resilient systems, and incorporating distributed energy resources in bulk grid planning. CADET uses a multi-objective optimization engine to present users with investment options and tradeoffs.
The webinar will be hosted by NREL senior research engineer Jeremy Keen and will include a Q&A session.
Previous Webinar Topics
NREL’s PRECISE™ interconnection tool was developed in partnership with Sacramento Municipal Utility District, where it was deployed in 2022. PRECISE automates holistic distributed energy resource interconnection studies for distribution utilities by leveraging diverse utility datasets.
This presentation took place on March 12, 2024, and included NREL power grid researchers Killian McKenna and Darice Guittet and the principal electrical distribution engineer at Sacramento Municipal Utility District, Sheikh Hassan. To learn more, watch the March 12, 2024, webinar recording on YouTube and view the March 12, 2024, presentation slides.
More resources for using PRECISE:
DISCO is a Python-based NREL software tool for conducting scalable, repeatable distribution analyses. Although DISCO was originally developed to support photovoltaic impact analyses, it can also be used to understand the impact of other distributed energy resources and load changes on distribution systems.
This presentation took place on April 9, 2024, and included NREL power grid researchers Sherin Ann Abraham and Shibani Ghosh.
To learn more, watch the April 9, 2024, webinar recording on YouTube and view the April 9, 2024, presentation slides.
More resources for using DISCO:
ReEDS™ is NREL’s flagship capacity planning model for the power sector. The model simulates the evolution of the bulk power system—generation, transmission, and storage—from present day through 2050 or later. The ReEDS model informs a range of electricity sector research questions. These include clean energy policy, renewable energy integration, technology innovation, and other forward-looking generation and transmission infrastructure issues.
This presentation included NREL power grid researcher Stuart Cohen.
To learn more, watch the May 14, 2024, webinar recording on YouTube and view the May 14, 2024, presentation slides.
More resources for using ReEDS:
NREL's Sienna modeling framework effectively builds, solves, and analyzes the scheduling problems and dynamic simulations of quasi-static infrastructure systems. It uses a modular framework to answer different questions about future energy systems, fundamentally advancing the nation's ability to model individual and integrated infrastructure systems at a range of spatial and temporal scales.
This presentation included NREL power grid researcher Clayton Barrows.
To learn more, watch the June 11, 2024, webinar recording on YouTube and view the June 11, 2024, presentation slides.
More resources for using Sienna:
NREL's demand-side grid (dsgrid) toolkit harnesses decades of sector-specific energy modeling expertise to understand current and future U.S. electricity load for power systems analyses. The primary purpose of dsgrid is to create comprehensive electricity load data sets at high temporal, geographic, sectoral, and end-use resolution. These data sets enable detailed analyses of current patterns and future projections of end-use loads.
This presentation included NREL power grid researcher Elaine Hale.
To learn more, watch the July 9, 2024, webinar recording on YouTube and view the July 9, 2024, presentation slides.
More resources for using dsgrid:
dsgrid software documentation on GitHub
Recently published TEMPO dataset on OpenEI
TEMPO dataset documentation on GitHub
Cambium data are publicly available and include modeled hourly emission, cost, and generation metrics for a range of possible U.S. electricity sector futures, projecting out through 2050. The granular metrics illuminate trends across the ongoing changes in the power sector. Cambium can support anyone who is making decisions about the future power grid or grid-connected systems but may not have time or expertise to do the modeling themselves.
This presentation included NREL power grid researcher Pieter Gagnon.
To learn more, watch the Aug. 13, 2024, webinar recording on YouTube and view the Aug. 13, 2024, presentation slides.
More resources for using the Cambium datasets:
The Probabilistic Resource Adequacy Suite (PRAS) is an open-source, research-oriented collection of tools for analyzing the resource adequacy of bulk power systems. PRAS performs low-fidelity, high-speed simulations of multi-region power system operations, considering hundreds of thousands of years of unplanned resource outages to quantify the risk and potential nature of energy supply shortfalls in probabilistic terms.
The webinar was hosted by NREL senior researcher Gord Stephen.
To learn more, watch the Sept. 10, 2024, webinar recording on YouTube and view the Sept. 10, 2024, presentation slides.
More resources for using PRAS:
Probabilistic Resource Adequacy Suite (PRAS) v0.6 Model Documentation
At NREL, researchers are combining transmission system modeling and analysis tools into an integrated planning framework to solve transmission planning problems at a scale and depth that pushes the boundaries of existing practice. Powered By Transmission Planning features the tools and studies helping stakeholders understand future transmission needs to ensure clean energy goals can be met at reasonable cost to consumers.
The webinar was hosted by NREL senior researcher Jarrad Wright and included a Q&A session.
To learn more, watch the Oct. 8, 2024, webinar recording on YouTube and view the Oct. 8, 2024, presentation slides.
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