Video Transcript

Introducing Our Capacity Evaluation Tool

Today, I wanted to take a few minutes and take you through something that we’ve created that you might find interesting to use in managing your energy spend.

When we were creating Distributed Energy Clearinghouse, we built that platform kind of module by module. One of the modules we created was something that would really get a tight estimate of capacity charges.

What we’ve done is we’ve kind of dusted off that module, which feeds into our bigger platform, and created a new product from it. We’re going to offer this product free to anybody who reaches out to us and says they’d like to take advantage of it.

We’ve created this tool for PJM, ISO-NE, and also New York. It doesn’t cover every jurisdiction in PJM or every jurisdiction in the Northeast, but it does cover the bigger states in terms of where industrial loads and big commercial loads are going to be. We can talk to you more about that.

If you’re interested in what you see, reach out to me at rzdunkewicz@declearinghouse.com, Ryk Holden, our Chief Product Officer, at rholden@declearinghouse.com, or info@declearinghouse.com. We’ll get the email and send you a link so that you can access this.

A Look at the PJM Capacity Evaluation Tool

So, I’m going to share my screen and take you into the PJM tool.

We tried to build this as straightforward as we could. I want to make sure I’m sharing my screen before I do this. And I’m not sharing my screen. So now I’m sharing my screen, and you can see this.

Okay, so this is PJM’s Capacity Evaluation Tool.

We think it’s pretty straightforward in terms of how to use it, with directions and everything you need.

We’re going to start with the LDA, and then that’s going to narrow down what transmission zone we might be in. So, ComEd. Shocker. And the utility, well, that’s also ComEd.

We’re going to pick a rate class and rate schedule. We’re just going to pick a very large load, and then we’re going to pick a voltage level. So, 4 kV up to 69 kV for this one.

I’ve completed all of the inputs, and this is all fed automatically, so you don’t have to try to come up with a name. Everything is driven by these first three.

Uploading Interval Demand Data

Okay, now what we’re going to need to do is upload an interval demand file.

We’ve given you a template. You’ll download the template and cut and paste your information in. Then you pick your timestamp convention. Either we’re going to start with the interval beginning or the interval ending. So instead of, say, midnight, it would be 1:00 if we’re going hourly.

We’re going to pick ending here.

You have to click on that first.

Click there, then you can upload. Okay, and I’m going to pick the hourly file. I’ve already got that file set up.

Step three has reviewed that uploaded interval demand file. You see 8,760 observations. The intervals are 60 minutes. This was total energy over that period of 8,760 observations, and the peak demand was 2.3 megawatts.

We’re giving some alerts here about what it found. It found no issues.

Reviewing Capacity Assumptions

What comes out of the back end here in step four are the capacity assumptions. Based upon what it saw for the interval demand, it calculates what we call sustainable capacity reductions. That’s a statistical measure.

Our default here is three hours of duration for curtailment. That could be driven by a battery, some sort of load management, or what have you.

Then we pick a capacity delivery year. There are three auction years: 2026–27, 2027–28, and 2028–29. We’re going to stick with 2026–27.

What we’ve automatically calculated here based upon that is that the clearing price for that capacity year was just about $330. Then the original load file informed our derived Planning Load Contribution, or PLC, which was 2.3 megawatts.

I’ve got everything I’m happy with here, so I’m going to go ahead and calculate results.

Calculating Potential Capacity Savings

Now, these are financial results. I’m going from 2.3 megawatts to 1.76 megawatts, and annually that represents $70,000 in savings.

Okay, well, that’s cool. Now I’m going to go to 2028–29 because those numbers went up.

We’re going to calculate results.

And they’re pretty much flat.

They’re pretty much flat because we’ve been at a pretty high level that entire time. So we went from $70,000 to $69,000. Not a big change.

Just for grins, let’s go pick 2027–28.

Okay, go down here. We’re going to see what we go to from $69,400 to $71,000. Okay, so this auction price is actually higher than 2026–27 or 2028–29.

Downloading the Calculation Details

We’ve got this tool down here that’s summarizing all the inputs used and their values. I can click on “Download All Calculation Detail,” and it’s going to spit all this stuff out for you. You can also download this into a PDF and do what you want with it.

So, we think it’s kind of cool.

Availability Across PJM, ISO-NE, and NYISO

We’ve got this, again, for PJM, ISO-NE, and also NYISO. We don’t have every utility for PJM. For example, this is only for the competitive markets in PJM.

In the Northeast, we did not do Vermont and New Hampshire. We did do Maine and, obviously, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Right now, we’ve also excluded Rhode Island, but we’ll probably pick Rhode Island up based upon feedback we get from customers.

Interested in Trying the Tool?

We’d love to hear from you as to what you think about this and whether or not you’re interested. If you are, just send us an email. Here, by the 20th of September, we’ll make this live on our website.

Thanks so much, everybody. Stay cool.