OE Advanced Grid Modeling

Advanced Load Modeling

David P. Chassin, PI

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Objectives

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory provides technical support to the NERC Load Modeling Task Force (LMTF) activities for the 2020 planning period. The NERC LMTF is currently focused on the adoption of the Composite Load Model by all the Reliability Organizations in the Eastern Interconnection (EI) and Texas (ERCOT), as well as providing ongoing support to the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC). 

The NERC LMTF plan is to work in conjunction with regional load modeling groups, transmission planners, operating engineers, and research organizations to promulgate the adoption of the composite dynamic load model for use in planning and real-time studies in North America.  SLAC has provided load model dataset development support to the LMTF since 2018, and will continue to support, maintain, and promulgate the existing and future datasets. Since early 2019, SLAC has also worked with regional entities to collect and incorporate locally developed datasets, as well as improve the existing datasets based on feedback from local operating entities.

Currently, there are a number of important questions regarding the load composition dataset that SLAC will answer for the LMTF. These include basic validation of both the default datasets and the regional datasets used by NERC members, as well as sensitivity analysis of key behaviors of the planning models to various load model dataset parameters. The focus of the FY20 activities will include understanding the impacts of uncertainties in these parameters on the composition load models used by NERC members. SLAC work will be conducted in close coordination with staff at Bonneville Power Administration.

Load Model Datasets

SLAC will maintain and update the load model datasets used by the NERC LMTF in coordination and in collaboration with NERC staff and NERC members, academic, national laboratories, industry, and other software vendors. 

The dataset support activities will include (1) documentation and promulgation of the basic principles of load modeling and composition, (2) validation results of data collection from building end-use surveys, and (3) the documentation and promulgation of the current and upcoming versions load model datasets.

Load Model Development

SLAC will support development of tools and methods to enhance the quality of the load model data. This includes efforts to address (1) the adoption of a physics-based residential load composition modeling tool to supplement the RBSA data-driven method currently used by LMTF, (2) the acquisition of load data to enable the addition of new load components, such as electric vehicle loads, and (3) the acquisition of price and tariff data to enable price and tariff sensitivity analysis.

​Open Source Software

The Load Composition Analysis tool is delivered on GitHub at https://github.com/slacgismo/load_composition_analysis. The tool can be run using OpenFIDO (see http://gitHub.com/openfido.