Track: C3. Net-Zero Energy & Conservation Measures

Background/Objectives

Offshore wind has the potential to be a key player on the path to decarbonization due to its ability to generate power from strong and relatively uniform offshore winds, representing immense generation capacity potential to complement the more variable nature of other onshore renewable energy technologies. The implementation of offshore wind, however, is still largely unrealized. Building on prior work in large-scale capacity expansion planning, this study presents an approach for climate-informed capacity expansion planning including offshore wind to present a bounded and optimal buildout of generation and transmission to ensure a cost-effective grid that is resilient to the future climate.

Approach/Activities

This study demonstrates the inclusion of offshore wind development for generation and transmission capacity expansion planning on a large-scale realistic synthetic case of over 8000 buses geographically located in California, US. This is done using an optimization process that incorporates cost data and representative days of load and generation availability scenarios informed by climate projections to design an optimal expansion plan.

Results/Lessons Learned

Preliminary results suggest that the inclusion of offshore wind enables improved resource adequacy of the system. The full results of the capacity expansion planning for this test case under various technology cost conditions will be presented.  The inclusion of offshore wind in a climate-informed capacity expansion planning process holds significant potential to inform system planning decision-making based on realistic grid models and climate projections on the path to decarbonization.