Evaluation of tools for renewable energy policy analysis: The renewable energy penetration model

The Energy Policy Act of 1992 establishes a program to support development of renewable energy technologies including a production incentive to public power utilities. Because there is a wide range of possible policy actions that could be taken to increase electric market share for renewables, modeling tools are needed to help make informed decisions regarding future policy. Previous energy modeling tools did not contain the regional or infrastructure focus necessary to examine renewable technologies. As a result, the Department of Energy Office of Utility Technologies (OUT) supported the development of tools for renewable energy policy analysis. Three models were developed: The Renewable Energy Penetration (REP) model, which is a spreadsheet model for determining first-order estimates of policy effects for each of the ten federal regions; the Ten Federal Region Model (TFRM), which employs utility capacity expansion and dispatching decisions; and the Regional Electric Policy Analysis Model (REPAM) which was constructed to allow detailed insight into interactions between policy and technology within an individual region. In 1993, the OUT supported the Oak Ridge Institute of Science and Education (ORISE) to form an expert panel to provide an independent review of the REP model and TFRM. This report contains the panel`s evaluation of the REP model; the TFRM is evaluated in a companion report. The panel did not review the REPAM. The panel met for a second time in January 1994 to discuss model simulations and deliberate regarding evaluation outcomes. This report is largely a result of this second meeting. The remainder of this chapter provides a description of the REP model and summarizes the panel`s findings. Individual chapters examine various aspects of the model: demand and load, capacity expansion, dispatching and production costing, reliability, renewables, storage, transmission, financial and regulatory concerns, and environmental effects.