The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and Avangrid selected ProsumerGrid to demonstrate its integrated solution to forecast and assess the impacts of electric vehicles and DERs including solar PV and heat pumps, on the distribution system in the Binghamton area. ProsumerGrid used its Grid+DER Planning Studio™ (Planning Studio) to provide detailed modeling of New York State Electric and Gas (NYSEG) Binghamton’s District (service territory) for the project. The project activities were designed to assist NYSEG in forecasting DERs and assessing the impact of the increased electrification on their grid through 2032. The project included forecasts of solar PV, EV and heat pumps with scenarios for high, medium and low adoption.
Customer adoption of distributed energy resources (DERs) including solar photovoltaic (PV), electric vehicles (EV), energy storage, and heat pumps will continue to grow in the coming years. Software solutions and planning methodologies available to electric utilities today require more granular, locational, and temporal forecast and scenarios of EV, heat pump, and solar PV adoption, and capability to assess the potential impacts on the existing distribution circuit equipment and the need for equipment upgrades for multiple scenarios. During this project ProsumerGrid demonstrated an integrated solution that: produces granular locational and temporal future scenarios for electricity loads, EV, heat pump, and solar PV adoption, and assesses the impacts on existing equipment for distribution circuits for each scenario.
An interactive GIS visualization showing the solar PV, EV and heat pump forecasts and their impacts on the distribution system equipment was produced. The results include a ten-year geographically and hourly granular forecast for different solar PV, EV and heat pump adoption scenarios including the allocation of these forecasts to distribution circuits at the substation and to primary nodes. The corresponding impacts on the distribution grid in the form of line and transformer thermal overloads and nodal over and under-voltage are assessed. The project scope corresponds to the area around the City of Binghamton, NY, also known as the Binghamton Division, which includes 116,000 customers, 128 distribution circuits with 3,808 miles of distribution lines.
