Customer
California Independent System Operator (CAISO)
Background
DNV had completed an in-depth analysis for the CAISO to evaluate the market and operational impacts, and quantify the benefits and cost associated with gaining visibility and control of projected Distributed Energy Resources (DER) in California. A substantial part of this analysis involved assessing the behaviour of customers who own and control generation resources “behind the meter”, like microgrids, and can make decisions autonomously regarding how, when, and how much to “self-optimize.”
This report is public. You can download the report here.
The project
As a strategic follow-on to this work, DNV supported the CAISO in understanding the business, market, economic, policy, and technology drivers for microgrids and other types of “Self Optimizing Customers” (SOC), determine the impacts of different configurations of SOCs, and identify recommendations for the CAISO to address the opportunities and challenges that is a result of self-generation in their footprint.
Approach
To develop this microgrid strategy:
- Developing a comprehensive baseline of key policies, market dynamics, and technology deployments related to customer-owned PV, small-scale wind, storage technologies, plug-in electric vehicles, combined heat and power and demand response options, to serve as a baseline for understanding how
- Identifying the key permitting, licensing, sales, and interconnection requirements in place that affect how and when microgrids operate
- Developing, in collaboration with the CAISO, a scenario-based modeling framework to qualitatively describe the scenarios (with relevant narratives, drivers, and mixes of customers and generation types) that would be most likely to hasten the development of microgrids in California
- Developing a quantitative approach to assess the magnitude and direction of a range of defined impacts to the CAISO under the scenarios developed and correlate a series of recommendations for the CAISO based on that assessment.