Integrated Assessment of Dispersed Energy Resources Deployment

The goal of this work is to create an integrated framework for forecasting the adoption of distributed energy resources (DER), both by electricity customers and by the various institutions within the industry itself, and for evaluating the effect of this adoption on the power system, particularly on the overall reliability and quality of electrical service to the end user. This effort and follow on contributions are intended to anticipate and explore possible patterns of DER deployment, thereby guiding technical work on microgrids towards the key technical problems. An early example of this process addressed is the question of possible DER adopting customer disconnection. A deployment scenario in which many customers disconnect from their distribution company (disco) entirely leads to a quite different set of technical problems than a scenario in which customers self generate a significant share or all of their on-site electricity requirements and additionally buy and sell energy and ancillary services (AS) locally and/or into wider markets. The exploratory work in this study suggests that the economics under which customers disconnect entirely are unlikely.