Integrated Power System Model for Operations and Planning – Reality or Myth?

Operations models represent the existing system while Planning models also include future facilities expected to be built through a 10/20-year planning horizon. While appropriately modeling planned facilities is difficult, ensuring accurate representation of the existing system in Planning models has also been challenging. Models developed for Operations and Planning follow independent processes with limited touch points thereby potentially resulting in inconsistent information and possibly redundant effort. Use of different formats - "node-breaker" for Operations and "bus-branch" for Planning aggravates the situation. On various instances, results obtained using Operations models have not been able to be replicated using Planning models. The objective of this Panel session is to have a robust discussion on reconciliation of Operations and Planning models and will seek perspectives of experts from different industry sectors such as ISOs, consultants and vendors.