Empowering Tomorrow's Planner: Navigating Uncertainty, Emerging Technologies, and a Changing Industry

EPRI's 43rd Annual Seminar on Resource Planning for Electric Power Systems
Tuesday-Wednesday, October 29-30, 2024 | EPRI Offices, Washington, D.C.

Now in its 43rd year, this long-running annual EPRI seminar explores key topics and issues of growing urgency to electric company generation, transmission and distribution system planners; integrated system planners; fuel and asset managers; and staff engaged in corporate sustainability, resource portfolio strategy, and risk management. For 2024, the seminar is again running as an in-person event (approximately 50 participants) at EPRI's Washington, DC offices.

The seminar is organized and hosted by EPRI's Program 178 on Resource Planning for Electric Power Systems. The event delivers and expands upon EPRI research, and features presentations by EPRI staff and external experts from government, industry, academia, and non-profit organizations along with facilitated discussion among all participants. This invitation-only, interactive event is designed to facilitate significant interaction between the participants and session speakers, as is customarily run under Chatham House Rule.

This year's seminar includes four sessions that address key themes of growing importance as the power system continues to transition to support a future deeply decarbonized economy, as well as educational lunch sessions with industry AI experts and utility practitioners to learn about applications of AI and other advanced computational methods for resource planning. Specifically, the seminar will cover:

• Accelerating Demands for Emerging Technologies. This session will discuss the planning and installation of technologies that are very nascent or under development. Reflecting on the past decade of technology cost projections and learning curves, what have we learned that may help electric companies prepare for the next wave of emerging technologies? In addition to technology readiness, what is the adoption readiness of the electric power system? How can system planners smoothly incorporate new technologies, and assess the impacts of installation costs, deployment timelines, and other practical considerations?
• Managing Uncertainty with Intelligent Scenarios. This session will address techniques for developing robust planning scenarios for increasingly complex futures. How can planners develop good scenarios when the world becomes increasingly complex? What are the emerging scenario generation and intelligent scenario selection techniques for integrate resource planning?
• Evolving Energy Storage Modeling Practices. Energy storage does not fit neatly into current long-term planning models due to the wide array of storage technologies, and operational features. Furthermore, proposed solutions must balance the need to maintain model tractability. What are the methods to co-optimize multiple storage technologies in the same model, and what features are most important to model? How can models fairly assess energy storage options? What is the value of energy storage under the EPA's proposed power plant performance standards?
• The Changing Cost Structure of the Electric Power Industry. This session will assess the changes in electric company revenue and spending in response to the increased deployment of technologies with zero variable cost. The system that emerges from electric sector decarbonization has low operational costs, which may not align with the volumetric rates used today. This raises the question of what the product of an electric company is, how they should charge for it, and how to plan for potential changes in cost structure. How could changes in revenue sources and rate structures alter the decisions made in system planning?
• New Applications of AI and Advanced Computation in Long-Term Resource Planning. Electric companies may benefit from using the advanced computational methods or AI capabilities to improve their long-term planning. What are the targeted opportunities for planners to leverage AI or other advanced computational techniques? Lunch n' Learn sessions will explore these topics.

Goal

The goal of this annual EPRI seminar is to explore critical topics and issues of direct interest to electric company system resource planners, asset managers, and staff engaged in sustainability, portfolio strategy, and corporate risk management.

Who should attend?

Members of EPRI Program 178 (Resource Planning for Electric Power Systems), Project Set 178A (Energy System Technology Cost and Performance), and Project Set 178B (Integrated Energy Systems Planning).

EPRI members and others who participate in this seminar include investor-owned utilities (IOUs), electric generation and transmissions cooperatives (G&Ts), independent power producers (IPPs), public power agencies, and regional transmission organizations (RTOs) and Independent System Operators (ISOs)

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All participants are typically engaged in conducting long-term system resource planning analyses, acquiring fuels for power plants, managing power plant operations, advising on corporate sustainability strategy, and/or developing corporate risk management strategies.

Additional participants typically include invited federal agency staff from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), EPA, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), state public utility commissions (PUCs), academic experts, and representatives of national environmental and other public interest organizations.

Past Keynote Presentations

Anuja Ratnayake, Former Managing Director, Integrated System Operations & Planning, Duke Energy (2023)
Judith Jagdmann, President, National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (2022)
Richard Glick, Chairman, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (2021)
Bernard McNamee, Commissioner, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (2020)
Melanie Kenderdine, Principal, Energy Futures Initiative (2018)
Catherine Jereza, Deputy Assistant Secretary, U.S. DOE (2017)

Event Committee

Agendas from previous years:

• 2024 Agenda
• 2023 Agenda
• 2022 Agenda
• 2021 Agenda