Congestion Insights

Understand grid congestion with intuitive toolsets.

Electrons move across power lines similar to cars down a road. In both cases, congestion occurs when too many converge on the same path.

Traffic jams are frustrating, but electricity congestion can be costly, from incorrectly quantifying and assessing potential revenues of new renewable developments to power outages in extreme situations.

With the rapid growth of renewable generation and the dispersed nature of renewable power generation, understanding the impact of congestion and accurately modeling power revenues is more important than ever when siting projects and understanding how future renewable projects will impact existing facilities.

Grid congestion occurs due to transmission constraints such as the lack of transmission line capacity to deliver electricity without exceeding thermal, voltage, and stability limits designed to ensure reliability. Constraints lead to inefficiencies such as the dissipation of electricity along a wire, or higher-cost generation becomes required as transmission lines can't efficiently transfer low-cost generation to areas of high demand, creating a high-cost load.

For example, power may need to move from a northern to a southern area, but if there's congestion, the price could double. With congestion insights, system planners and operators gain a better understanding of congestion and how it can be mitigated through dispatch decisions.

Understanding Congestion is critical to energy planning and investments.

Currently, dispersed renewable projects are facing longer interconnection queues as market operators are being overwhelmed with the requests to interconnect renewable resources even while investment in new transmission lines is hitting an all-time high to meet the demand. 

Organizations that can identify siting locations that meet revenue goals while minimizing their impact on congestion to give investors a leg up in the energy investment space.

70
%

of global power generation will come from renewables by 2050

$
12
 Trillion

Global investments in renewable energy generation and storage systems over the next 30 years

$
64
 Trillion

Global investment in clean power generation technologies to reduce emissions

PLEXOS Congestion Insights are a crucial tool for resource planning and smart investments.

Energy Exemplar's PLEXOS modeling software enables companies to minimize costs and accurately assess resources through intuitive congestion toolsets so stakeholders can easily leverage deep insights to assess, plan, and optimize their operations.

PLEXOS enables planners, traders, executives to understand grid congestion by modeling the impact of all power demand and generation points throughout a network, along with power line transmission limits, transformers, and power generators. Energy Exemplar also offers regional datasets for organizations looking to build out our add to their existing modeling capabilities.
  • Quantify the contribution of binding constraints to the Locational Marginal Pricing on various buses
  • Identify helpers and harmers
  • Identify resources that may impact congestion

PLEXOS for Congestion Insights

PLEXOS makes accessing congestion insights is as simple as checking a box. The user can then see which lines are congested at certain times. It also includes shadow price and flow.

congestion-insights-v2

A deeper look at the congested line then shows which generators are either “helpers” or “harmers.”

Helper and Harmer Generator report from PLEXOS Cloud

Filter generators based on flow. This lets users see which transmission lines are heavily loaded at any time resolution.

Visualizing Transmission Flow in PLEXOS Cloud

Users can also sort generators based on contribution, so they can see which generators or loads have the most positive or negative contribution.

Sorting Generators by Contribution in PLEXOS Cloud

As the world moves toward decarbonization, renewable energy sources are increasing. But renewables energy projects aren't just about greening the grid, they are transforming it. Creating new challenges to grid congestion and opportunities to alleviate congestion with battery optimization and hybrid resource projects.

 

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