Webinar Brief: Clearing the Air with GE Digital

Daniel Hynum discussed operational challenges that utilities face as the power grid shifts to renewables, and how GE Fleet Orchestration can help address those challenges.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Market shifts create challenges for vertical integration of utilities’ operations.

There is a major energy transition taking place in power grids around the world. As the market moves toward renewables, traditional fossil-based plants are retiring at a rate such that many will be eliminated by 2050 or sooner. However, vertically integrated utilities are facing organizational shifts driven by three factors stemming from this transition:

1. Uncertainty. Renewable energy sources are being added to grids daily, creating variability in both power generation and demand. Coupled with weather volatility, utilities are facing ever-increasing uncertainty in operations.

2. Transmission constraints. As renewable projects are built out, the increased generation requires a corresponding transmission buildout.

3. New market mechanisms. As utilities are going through planning processes, new market mechanisms, such as the Western Energy Imbalance Market (WEIM) and the Southeast Energy Exchange Market (SEEM), must be taken into account when making operational decisions. In a conservative operation position, utilities want to ensure there is spinning reserve to cover some percentage of the renewables being delivered into the system. The exact percentage has usually been a heuristic, rather than a true probability computed from system statistics and predictive analysis.