Integrated economic and reliability planning

A multi-objective planning practice is discussed which facilitates an integrated reliability and economic planning, considering integration of renewable and distributed energy resources. Challenges in performing a multi-objective planning process is discussed which requires additional new analysis in the traditional planning process and enhanced forecasting and analysis tools. Past planning studies are discussed to identify needed additional analysis and new tools to perform an integrated reliability and economic planning study. The SMARTransmission and WECC PROMOD to PSLF Case Conversion projects are discussed as two planning studies, each implementing a different aspect of the multi-objective planning practice. In the SMARTransmission project, limited economic evaluation was added to study process to evaluate transmission alternatives to integrate over 56 GWs of wind in 11 states. In the WECC PROMOD to PSLF Case Conversion project a new analysis was added and experimented in the planning study process to iterate between reliability and economic studies to assess transmission system performance under different economic dispatch conditions. In this new analysis, production cost results for 10 selected hours from the 2020 planning case study were converted and supplemented to create 10 powerflow cases to perform feasibility analysis based on transmission constrained economic dispatch results. Challenges, alternative analysis tools, data preparation, result conversion process from production cost to power flow models, and sub-hourly production cost simualtion based on past projects are discussed to support implementation of multi-objective planning practice.