Electrification Planning and Analysis
Project Highlights
- Detect homes/buildings with and without electric space heating/cooling using automated real-time analytics.
- Characterize baseline space heating/cooling load footprint, load profiles, and coincident system peak impacts.
- Obtain space heating/cooling load data (8760) for each AMI customer and end-use aggregations by pre-defined customer groups.
- Provide insights beneficial for electrification applications such as determining space heating/cooling electrification potential, electrification targeting based on cost-effectiveness, optimal selection of demand flexible technology such as variable speed heat pumps as well as other customer and system impacts.
Background, Objectives, and New Learnings
Electrification is a key pathway to meet regional decarbonization targets while providing customer and grid benefits. However, a key gap in enabling streamlined electrification is the lack of utility data models and tools that aid planning and analyses.
This project seeks to address this gap by providing new learning regarding time-differentiated end-use load profiles disaggregated from premise-level usage (AMI) data for decision support and assistance in utility planning and prioritization of electrification deployments. The project focus is space heating and cooling of single-family residential and small commercial customers served by a utility, though subsequent phases are envisioned involving other large end-uses such as electric vehicle (EVs), water heating, cooking, etc.
Key project objectives include:
- Develop a method for real-time detection of electric and non-electric space heating and cooling in single-family residential homes and small commercial buildings (< 15,000 kWh /year).
- Develop end-use consumption and end-use load profiles for each premise.
- Characterize electric usage footprint and electrification potential for individual and aggregated premise types.
Benefits
The load shapes and other data-driven insights from this project can bring about potential benefits through their usefulness in:
- Determining electrification potential and the best-fit technology to meet strategic objectives (flexible demand, location, feeder loading, customer cost, other.).
- Forecasting end-use consumption and load profiles for short-term and long-term planning, rate analysis, and regulatory filings.
- Analyzing ‘what-if’ scenarios for computing distribution impacts such as at various levels of space heating/cooling electrification adoption, during winter/summer weather extremes etc.
Project Approach and Summary
Kick-off Meeting: EPRI will conduct a kick-off meeting, a key goal of which will be to ensure all parties are made aware of the scope of data required and the obligations to provide the data to EPRI through data transfer processes that enable EPRI to govern and manage the data responsibly.
Data Assessment and Transfer: EPRI will coordinate with the utility team to assess the scope and availability of residential single-family and/or small commercial building (<15,000 kWh/year) AMI data. Up to a total of 35,000 customers’ AMI data for 24 historical months or less and zip code data is required. Metadata such as load saturation survey information and select end-use metered data, if available, will be collected to validate results. Project participants will transfer anonymized data (without personally identifiable information) to EPRI.
Model Calibration and Validation (Space Heating, Cooling Disaggregation): EPRI will calibrate the model with usage data (AMI) along with metadata/information. If space heating/cooling end-use metered data is not available, the calibrated model estimated results will be compared with climate zone-specific field/pilot project data available to EPRI from prior studies.
Space Heating, Cooling Disaggregation Load Profiles: EPRI plans to generate model results including aggregate and resolute end-use load profiles, such as aggregate load profiles for homes with and without electric strip heat. The resolute analyses will include space heating and cooling consumption (kWh) by day, month, and season for each home. The load profiles are by time domain distinctions such as average weekday, average weekend, user-selected (system peak) day(s), and average season (summer, winter, shoulder). Data results are formatted in Excel files.
Data Results Tool: EPRI plans to develop a standalone tool (such as Excel macro-enabled, pivot table, etc.) that can be stored locally on the project members’ computers to query, aggregate, sort/filter, and plot disaggregated load profiles.
Deliverables
- Utility-specific report – The EPRI team will summarize and present the results and insights derived from the study (PPT format).
- Utility-specific data result files – Multiple data result files with each resolute space heating/cooling load profiles.
- Data Results Tool – An Excel tool to query, aggregate, sort, and plot end-use load profiles.
Price of Project
Option A: $80,000 per project member. Includes results for space heating/cooling load discovery and disaggregation.
Option B: $100,000 per project member. Includes Option A results plus space heating/cooling load forecasting.
Option C: $125,000 per project member. Includes Option B results plus analyses for two “what-if” scenarios.
This project qualifies for Self-Directed Funding (SDF). Funding can be distributed across two calendar years.
Project Status and Schedule
The project will commence after two member agreements have been completed. The project is expected to be completed within 12 months of data receipt from both members.
Who Should Join
Utilities seeking strategic heat pump electrification deployments and use cases to maximize system and customer benefits.
Contact Information
For more information, contact the EPRI Customer Assistance Center at 800.313.3774 (askepri@epri.com).
Technical Contacts
Krish Gomatom 865.218.8070 (Pgomatom@epri.com)
Ron Domitrovic 865.218.8061 (Rdomitrovic@epri.com)
Additional Contacts
Kelsey Palko 865.218.8035 (Kpalko@epri.com)