American Public Power Association Cites Ascend Analytics' PowerSIMM™ as Driving Factor for LBWL IRP Project Success

A recent case study from the American Public Power Association cited Ascend Analytics' PowerSIMM™ energy analytics platform as a primary driver of success for the Lansing Board of Water and Light's (LBWL) 2023 integrated resource plan (IRP).

LBWL's 2023 IRP sought to address significant resource adequacy concerns that stemmed from retiring coal generation, as well as from unprecedented rapid load. Given the critical nature of meeting load, LBWL compressed the analysis timeline for responses to their all-source request for proposal (RFP) into a four-month period.

Because LBWL's grid originally served customers from a single centralized coal-fired power plant, and thus faced significant transmission and distribution constraints in light of the retiring thermal capacity, all responses to the RFP included energy storage options. In this context, storage offered a way to fulfill resource adequacy requirements, alleviate peak load conditions, manage congestion, capture energy arbitrage opportunities, and help LBWL achieve carbon neutrality.

However, a strategic challenge remained: how best to leverage storage? According to the case study, four factors contributed to the success of LBWL's effort to understand and utilize energy storage. The first factor on the list? "An effective use of modeling and simulation tools," to evaluate the financial and technical viability of deploying storage under different scenarios, specifically LBWL's utilization of Ascend Analytics' PowerSIMM™ software.

"[The PowerSIMM] modeling efforts have been useful in supporting [LBWL's] integrated resource planning and production cost modeling efforts," LBWL stated to American Public Power Association (APPA). "The software allows Lansing to investigate value-based battery dispatch opportunities through stochastic analysis, which evaluates the financial risk involved with new assets," LBWL further stated.

The case study also noted that LBWL leveraged Ascend Analytics to administer, evaluate, and model scenarios received during the RFP process, adding, "This modeling effort allows [LBWL] to understand how the storage system will interact with its transmission constraints, loads, energy needs, capacity requirements and ancillary services markets."

The full case study is available from the APPA’s Public Power Energy Storage Guidebook.