Planning in this evolving landscape requires those in the energy industry to understand and answer questions that are far more complex than ever before, whether regulatory, market-driven, or stakeholder-driven. We need new and innovative approaches to revamp our current resource planning practices and provide a more comprehensive commodity view of the energy system to address these demands.
Integrated System Planning Overview
Traditional planning tools and methodologies for maintaining the electric grid are not capable of keeping up with the evolving changes. Utilities and planning committees realize that planning our energy system can no longer be done in silos, planning electricity generation and transmission separately from fuel sources such as gas or energy demand sectors such as water supply. Instead, we require a comprehensive approach that studies our energy system as an integrated, co-dependent system. The cost and availability of one resource directly impact the rest of the energy ecosystem’s demand for availability. As new technologies are commercialized and introduced to the grid (i.e., hydrogen storage and electric vehicles), we must learn and understand their impact by looking at the system holistically as a single unified energy system.