The flexible demand necessary to make this alternative a reality requires identifying tasks whose power demand can be shifted over time, modulated, or curtailed. He said this would result in less overall CO 2 while enabling utilities to continue to sell a large portion of electricity from their more efficient base units. The ideal outcome would be to modulate the demand to align closely with the renewables available and minimize the reserve electricity used. One alternative to this approach is to attempt to tailor the demand to match the renewable supply, Varaiya commented. The electricity market, Varaiya cautioned, because as prices increase, consumers are more likely to turn to distributed electricity generation sources (such as rooftop photovoltaic panels) to lower prices, thereby increasing the renewable fluctuation in the market and furthering the dependence on reserve electricity to fill the gaps. Varaiya believes the utilities may need to raise electricity prices by that time because the greater use of renewables will lead to less use of profitable base generation, yet expensive reserve generating capability will be needed because of the intermittent nature of renewable sources. This status quo looks to change considerably by 2020, when both the demand and the proportion of renewables will likely be higher. Typically, he explained, utilities make a profit selling electricity from the base load but incur losses when they have to draw electricity from the reserve.
Currently, consumer demand for electricity is met mostly through base generation (by large, efficient generators that cannot be switched online or offline quickly), to which is added a small fluctuating supply of renewable energy supplemented with reserve generation that can be altered quickly. Pravin Varaiya began by saying that there is a crisis facing utilities over the next decade. Pravin Varaiya, University of California, Berkeley Presentations were made by Pravin Varaiya (University of California, Berkeley), Sean Meyn (University of Florida), and Robert Bixby (Gurobi Optimization).ĭURATION-DIFFERENTIATED ELECTRICAL SERVICE FOR INTEGRATING RENEWABLE POWER The third session of the workshop, chaired by Jeffery Dagle (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory), concerned issues related to optimization and control methods for a robust and resilient power grid. Optimization and Control Methods for a Robust and Resilient Power Grid