Final Scientific Report
Energy and Environmental Economics, Inc. (E3) developed an open-source machine learning model, RESERVE, for deriving ancillary services timeseries in deeply decarbonized electricity grids. E3 used a bespoke PLEXOS production simulation model of the California Independent System Operator’s (CAISO) balancing area to validate RESERVE’s ability to enable production cost, greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), and renewable energy curtailment savings. These savings were modeled by comparing PLEXOS cases with RESERVE’s outputs to PLEXOS cases with CAISO’s incumbent reserve product in the Western Energy Imbalance Market (EIM)’s 15-minute market. E3 also tested cases with solar operating flexibly to provide reserves. E3 found that, in a 2030 modeling year, using RESERVE and flexible solar enabled significant production cost, GHG and curtailment savings versus the incumbent CAISO method in cases with low penetrations of lithium-ion batteries. However, with the full 14 gigawatts (about 30% of peak CAISO demand) of 4-hour lithium-ion batteries that are expected to be installed by 2030, these savings approach zero due to batteries saturating ancillary services markets. E3 also found significant savings under a 2019 benchmarking year. E3 provided ARPA-E with an open-source version of RESERVE in a public GitHub repository. While extremely high penetrations of batteries reduce the benefits of RESERVE, most utilities will not exhibit such high battery penetrations for decades to come, and all utilities need to know ancillary services requirements to ensure reliable grid operation and compliance with North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) standards. E3 has released a public version of RESERVE to ARPA-E so that the utility industry can reap the cost, emissions, GHG, and potential reliability improvements enabled via adopting the RESERVE model versus incumbent ancillary services derivation practices.
- Research Organization:
- ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS INC
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AR0001275
- OSTI ID:
- 2324814
- Report Number(s):
- DOE-E3- 00127
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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