CAP Seminar Series

 

Title:  Capacity expansion modeling for low-carbon electricity markets

Speaker: Audun Botterud, MIT

Venue: EENG 611

Date and Time: Wednesday, 06 March 2024, 11:00-12:00

Abstract: The electric power system stands at the center of decarbonization efforts. Although clean energy investments are increasing, further acceleration is required to meet ambitious climate goals. We give a brief update on the status and outlook for the U.S. power system, with a focus on grid integration of variable renewable energy (VRE). We discuss the role of capacity expansion modeling (CEM) in guiding decarbonization decisions and future electricity market design. We demonstrate the use of large-scale least-cost optimization to identify viable decarbonization pathways under different climate policies, and to assess the importance of transmission in zero-carbon systems dominated by VRE . We also illustrate how analytical formulations can provide insights into price formation and revenue sufficiency for wind, solar, and energy storage under stylized system assumptions, and the use of bi-level programming to investigate strategic interactions among investors in zero-carbon technologies. We conclude by identifying research directions for enhanced CEM to better inform planning decisions in future low-carbon power systems

Biography:  Audun Botterud is a Principal Research Scientist in Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with a co-appointment as a Senior Energy Systems Engineer in the Energy Systems and Infrastructure Analysis Division at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). He is currently a Visiting Research Fellow in the Energy Policy Research Group (EPRG) at the University of Cambridge. His research interests include electricity markets, power systems, energy economics, renewable energy, energy storage, and energy system decarbonization. Audun holds a M.Sc. (Industrial Engineering) and a Ph.D. (Electrical Power Engineering), both from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He was previously with SINTEF Energy Research in Trondheim, Norway.

Past talks of CAP Seminar Series