Increasing electrification in the buildings, industrial, and transport sectors will lead to changes to both the magnitude and shape of future electricity demands. While these changes pose potential challenges for electricity system operation, electrification also provides opportunities for greater demand flexibility. Moreover, as utilities expand intermittent renewables to meet decarbonization goals, system flexibility and the technologies that can provide this flexibility are expected to become increasingly valuable. Most capacity expansion models are limited to supply-side technologies for providing flexibility, such as flexible generation, transmission, and energy storage. However, there is growing evidence that flexible demand resources may be able to provide substantial system flexibility at lower cost. To explore the value of flexible demand resources, this research developed a novel methodology for including flexible demand resources in a capacity expansion model so that investments in flexible demand compete directly with flexible supply. Managed light-duty vehicle (LDV) charging is used as a case study since personal light-duty vehicles are parked for most of the day and thus represent a potentially large flexible demand resource.
Authors Nils Johnson