In-Depth Partnerships Frequently Asked Questions

What are examples of topics a C2C in-depth partnership could tackle?
Topics eligible for support through in-depth partnerships could include but are not limited to:

• How might demand for electricity change with more adoption of energy technologies such as electric vehicles and rooftop solar?
• Does reaching clean energy goals mean big changes locally—such as building new transmission lines or power plants?
• How can a community make sure that the new system is reliable under extreme events such as fires or heat waves?
• What does achieving clean energy goals mean for jobs, air quality, health, the local economy, and environmental justice?
• What are the costs of a clean electricity grid in the region, and what are the quantified benefits?

What is an Energyshed?
The concept of an "Energyshed" is loosely similar to that of a watershed. Energyshed considers energy loads, sources of generation, and transmission and distribution networks within a broad footprint. Similar to a watershed, an Energyshed includes multiple closely coupled regions, adjacent geographic areas, communities, electric utilities, coordinating bodies, and/or jurisdictions. For example, an urban Energyshed could consist of multiple jurisdictions across a metro area with interconnected energy networks such as electricity, transportation, and heating. A rural Energyshed could consist of neighboring rural communities that host energy clean infrastructure that supports local and/or distant loads.

Energysheds represent a valuable framework for considering how to achieve locally driven clean energy goals while ensuring communities that are most affected by clean energy investment decisions benefit in an equitable way. Energysheds allow consideration of both community-specific needs and challenges as well as the broader energy landscape. The Energyshed model can also illustrate and improve how benefits and impacts of energy systems are shared across and between geographical areas, ultimately leading to more resilient, affordable, and equitable decarbonized energy systems.

What is an Energyshed in-depth partnership?
The in-depth partnerships using an Energyshed focus bring the benefits of the general in-depth partnerships but with an emphasis on addressing challenges unique to two specific types of geographies.

Rural communities face energy challenges that are often distinct from areas of greater population density. Population decline, rapid changes in the energy landscape, and infrastructure miles needed to serve relatively small populations create unique conditions for long-term, regional energy planning. This type of partnership seeks to better understand and address these issues for a specific rural region.

Metro areas across the United States are seeing rapid changes in energy generation and use—from rapid electrification of buildings and transportation to increasing deployment of rooftop solar and other distributed energy resources. These advancements are changing the characteristics of local electricity grids and the resources needed to manage them. Efficiently and equitably modernizing these systems involves decision-making across multiple, often overlapping, jurisdictions. This type of partnership seeks to better understand and address these issues for a metro-area region, with a focus on ensuring that benefits of a cost-effective, resilient grid are equally distributed across the community.

What are examples of topics an Energyshed rural partnership could tackle?
Topics of interest for rural partnerships include but are not limited to:

• Integrated planning assessment (looking out 10–20 years) with a cross-sectoral approach that jointly considers grid, mobility, and buildings (including electrification of transportation and buildings) across the bulk and distribution systems as well as hardware validation.
• Procedural and distributional justice related to energy siting in rural areas, or other elements related to energy equity and energy justice, that are embedded within a technical assessment of future Energyshed systems.

What are examples of topics an Energyshed metro area partnership could tackle?
Topics of interest for metro Energyshed partnerships include but are not limited to:

• Development of strategies to ensure resilience and reliability of building systems to withstand events such as natural disasters so that communities may safely ride out service interruptions.
• Development of visualization dashboards to demonstrate energy interactions across multiple energy sectors (grid, transportation, and buildings) in a metro area.
• Emulation of a community grid, including thousands of connected devices, to understand and demonstrate different communication and control strategies. (This emulation could include real-time pricing and weather impacts to understand responsive demand.)
• Analysis of rate design for grid benefits and energy equity, with consideration of the distribution of benefits across jurisdictional boundaries.
• Distribution grid operational planning, including demand response and distributed energy resources.
• Distribution system controls design and validation, including device-level controls of distributed energy resources.
• Development of strategies to decarbonize the building sector through a combination of energy efficiency measures; electrification of end uses; demand-side management; and distributed energy resources such as solar power, battery storage, and building control systems.

Where can I learn more about an Energyshed?

Learn more about previous Energyshed-related initiatives from the U.S. Department of Energy.

From Watershed to Energyshed: Determining the Implications of Place-Based Generation Workshop

Energyshed—Exploring Place-Based Generation Funding Program