The electric power sector continues to evolve dynamically, displaying increases in renewable energy technologies, distributed energy resources, and energy storage; shifting consumer participation in end-use energy choices; and continued innovation and technological change. To remain useful, the modeling tools used to analyze this sector must keep pace with these rapid developments. The physical and socio-economic interactions between the component parts of the power system are numerous and complex, often requiring a "systems approach" to capture different subsectors and their important feedbacks.
This report summarizes contemporary research in electric power sector systems analysis, and the capabilities of a selected set of long-range capacity planning models for exploring systems analysis concepts. Four key areas of recent systems analysis research are reviewed in detail with respect to improving the capabilities of long-range planning models: improving temporal resolution, improving spatial resolution, representing end-use details, and representing uncertainty. Likewise, a series of popular long-range utility-scale, national-scale, and multi-sector planning models are reviewed for their systems analysis capabilities along these dimensions.
Through the review, the report finds the following as immediate research needs: (1) the integration of hourly or sub-hourly chronology and unit-level details within intertemporal optimization frameworks; (2) better representation of the transmission network, its power flows, and expansion opportunities in capacity planning models with wide geographic coverage; (3) integration of endogenous end-use models within capacity planning models; and (4) development of stochastic optimization models to explicitly account for uncertainty and craft flexible capacity plans.