Next Generation Utility

Modeling a Dynamic, Efficient, and Renewable Electric Utility


American NightA new utility paradigm is needed to significantly reduce global greenhouse gas emissions from electric production.

ERT is leading a multi-year effort to develop a model of the Next Generation Utility (NGU). This concept replaces traditional “baseload” coal and nuclear power with dynamic demand and supply side resources to create a low carbon utility system that is both cost-competitive and highly reliable.

Specifically, NGU will have significant increases in:

  • End-use energy efficiency
  • Renewable generation
  • Demand response
  • Distributed supply technologies, including co-generation
  • Energy storage, particularly from electrified vehicles.

Together, these electric energy resources can revolutionize today’s generation infrastructure, with efficiency and renewables providing the largest share.

The NGU Model

Integrating these dynamic resources into a viable utility requires careful assessment of the ability to match supply and demand at all times.

This is particularly important for non-dispatchable resources such as variable renewables. ERT is therefore developing a simplified utility-scale production and dispatch model to verify the technical and economic feasibility of the NGU concept.

ERT's model integrates the results of extensive utility research to simulate system-level interactions between NGU’s key elements.  It uses hourly consumption and generation data for one or more years to understand important correlations –- or anti-correlations -– between weather dependent loads, efficiency savings and variable renewables.

The streamlined, modular architecture of the model also enables the rapid analysis of many different scenarios and the flexibility to work with a range of scales from a single city to an entire continent.

Learn more about the model's capabilities.

NGU Partnerships

ERT is partnering with utilities and others in the electric power industry to further develop and explore the NGU concept and to implement it in real systems.

For the modeling effort, ERT is gathering real world, historical data from partners and other sources, including:

  • Hourly load profile
  • Load breakdown by sector/end-use
  • Avoided costs
  • Variable renewable production data
  • Outage/Reliability data
  • Existing and planned generation mix
  • Ancillary service details
  • Dispatch methodology

RMI recognizes the proprietary nature of this type of data and frequently works with clients under confidentiality agreements to protect business interests while enabling innovation.