The OurEnergyLibrary aggregates and indexes publicly available fact sheets, journal articles, reports, studies, and other publications on U.S. energy topics. It is updated every week to include the most recent energy resources from academia, government, industry, non-profits, think tanks, and trade associations. Suggest a resource by emailing us at info@ourenergypolicy.org.
Resource Library
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California’s SB 100 bill has committed the state to decarbonize its power grid, with a goal of 60% renewable energy by 2030 and 100% clean electric retail sales by 2045. Plans and resource procurements are falling into place to pursue those goals, including through the California Public Utilities Commission’s (CPUC’s) recent Mid-Term Reliability Procurement Order and the ongoing Integrated Resource Plan and Long Term Procurement Plan.
Using Brattle’s gridSIM model, we then compare the world with such an investment to one without. gridSIM is a state-of-the-art electricity capacity expansion and operations simulation model comparable to RESOLVE. We start with a …
View Full ResourceThis report contains the latest developments and good practices to develop grid connection codes for power systems with high shares of variable renewable energy – solar photovoltaic and wind. The analysis is an update of the 2016 IRENA report Scaling up variable renewable power: The role of grid codes.
There is an urgent need to adopt clean energy solutions to cope with growing demand for energy and replace existing polluting generators. The inclusion of variable renewable energy introduces challenges to system operation. As renewable energy is variable, uncertain, location constrained and inverter-based, replacing conventional synchronous generation technologies. Furthermore, the …
View Full ResourceThe United States depends on the delivery of reliable, affordable, clean, and safe electricity. Electric utilities invest billions of dollars each year in generation, transmission, and distribution assets to meet this need. However, experiences with recent natural disasters of increasing frequency and duration demonstrate the shortcomings of this approach in the face of modern threats. Further, as customers rely on electricity for a broader range of important needs, such as transportation, as well as critical life-saving services and mission critical facilities such as water treatment, medical care, shelters, telecommunications, and more, the need to minimize the likelihood and impacts of …
View Full ResourceMost electricity outages in the United States are localized and do not expand outside of state or regional borders or a utility’s service territory. However, when large parts of or the entire electricity system are failing (due to an extreme weather event, a cyber-attack or other natural or man-made hazards), blackstart capable generation resources are crucial to restarting the electricity grid. Blackstart resources can be started without electricity from the main grid, thus providing the initial energy needed to repower the larger electricity grid. Without operational blackstart units, restoration time would be significant and impacts of a …
View Full ResourceThis report recounts the factors contributing to disruptions in electricity and natural gas service in Texas during Winter Storm Uri, with a particular focus on blackouts on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid during the period from February 15-18, 2021. Our goal is to create a common basis of fact to educate the debate over strategies to avoid similar problems in the future. We specifically limited the scope of this report to the events during February 2021, a comparison of the February 2021 event to the previous energy system disruptions in 1989 and 2011 during winter storms, and …
View Full ResourceSince Thomas Edison threw the switch at the world’s first commercial power plant in 1882 to power 400 lamps, buildings have consumed the lion’s share of U.S. electricity, and today account for three-fourths of the total and even more at peak. Yet, buildings consume power indifferent to grid conditions, blind to the high costs and threats to reliability posed by high peak demand and grid stress; inflexible to opportunities offered by variable, carbon- free renewable power sources; and senselessly missing the smart and connected technology revolution.
Grid-interactive efficient buildings (GEBs) can remake buildings into a major new clean and flexible …
View Full ResourceAchieving energy decarbonization in America will require a power grid supplied by renewable energy and backed by ample energy storage. The challenge is that many types of renewable energy provide power intermittently depending on factors such as the time of day or weather conditions. To maintain grid reliability while working towards a nation powered by 100% renewable energy, the Biden-Harris Administration should accelerate adoption of distributed energy resources and expand transmission capacity to create a more unified national power grid. These efforts will increase equitable access to clean energy, accelerate investment in renewables, and create thousands of long-term, high-skilled jobs …
View Full ResourceElectric utilities are facing new challenges in the United States. Here in the West, we are beginning to experience the direct impacts of climate change, through extreme weather, droughts, reduced snowpack, and wildfires. A hotter, drier climate intensifies wildfire risk and severity. Electric utility infrastructure—like high-voltage transmission lines—have always posed fire risks, but those risks are now much greater than when those facilities were initially constructed. This has led utilities to commence preventative emergency disconnection of electricity service as a tool to mitigate the risk of utility infrastructure sparking deadly and devastating wildfires. These interruptions in service, while reducing wildfire …
View Full ResourceCalifornia’s electricity infrastructure is entering a period of profound change. From a policy perspective, the state is moving toward goals of 60 percent renewable electricity by 2030 and 100 percent zero-carbon power by 2045, while state and local governments are striving to electrify more buildings and vehicles. At the same time, climate change is destabilizing these efforts, as extreme heat waves and record-setting wildfires are leading to electricity demand spikes, public safety power shutoffs, and questions about the reliability and resilience of an increasingly renewable-powered grid.
As the grid becomes more defined by flexible, distributed assets that generate, store, and …
View Full ResourceIn fall 2019, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) and the National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO) initiated a joint Microgrids State Working Group (MSWG), funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Electricity (OE). The MSWG aimed to bring together NARUC and NASEO members to explore the capabilities, costs, and benefits of microgrids; discuss barriers to microgrid development; and develop strategies to plan, finance, and deploy microgrids to improve resilience. Based on member input, the MSWG developed two companion briefing papers to answer key questions about microgrids: (1) User Objectives and Design Approaches for …
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