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Author(s):
Konstantinos Oikonomou, Patrick R. Maloney, Saptarshi Bhattacharya, Jesse T. Holzer, Osten Anderson, Xinda Ke, Jan Westman, Casey D. Burleyson, Sohom Datta, Jeremy B. Twitchell, Di Wu
Year Published:

Cataloging Information

Topic(s):
Weather
Fire Effects
Fire & Fuels Modeling

NRFSN number: 28432
FRAMES RCS number: 70394
Record updated:

Extreme weather events pose significant risks to power grid stability due to their severe consequences and potential for widespread failures. Energy storage systems hold great potential for enhancing grid resilience against such events by providing reliable power during peak demand periods. However, accurately quantifying the size, location, and investment costs of new energy storage assets is a complex task, as energy storage planning decisions depend on the investment choices of other generation technologies and the integration of new transmission projects. This paper presents a novel capacity expansion planning framework that simultaneously optimizes investments in energy storage, generation, and transmission, determining their optimal size, location, and type, while incorporating extreme weather events into long-term planning. More specifically, our stress-event-informed planning framework integrates the impact of heatwaves and wildfires into the planning process, identifying least-cost investment solutions that comply with policy goals and enhance grid resilience. The proposed framework employs machine-learning-based modeling to project heatwave-induced loads and performance-based risk assessment to evaluate wildfire-driven transmission line derates. Using industry-standard datasets to accurately represent the transmission topology of the Western Interconnection (WI) system, the proposed framework is applied to the WI 40-zone system, with investment decisions reported for the years 2030, 2035, and 2040. Simulation results reveal that with just a 10% increase in investment costs, resilience against extreme events can be significantly improved, with investment decisions heavily favoring energy storage, particularly 4-hour energy storage systems.

Citation

Oikonomou, Konstantinos; Maloney, Patrick R.; Bhattacharya, Saptarshi; Holzer, Jesse T.; Anderson, Osten; Ke, Xinda; Westman, Jan; Burleyson, Casey D.; Datta, Sohom; Twitchell, Jeremy B.; Wu, Di. 2025. Energy storage planning for enhanced resilience of power systems against wildfires and heatwaves. Journal of Energy Storage 119:116074.

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