ERCOT reserve adequacy study for the future system development scenarios with large share of renewable energy resources

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has provided the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) with funding to improve tools and processes used in Long Term Transmission System Planning as well as to increase the transmission system planning horizon to 20 years. As a part of the DOE project, ERCOT is assessing the reliability adequacy of hypothetical resource expansion scenarios with increased share of renewable energy sources (photovoltaic and wind generation). The ability of the ERCOT market and system to manage inherent variability and uncertainty of power production from these sources is evaluated by system operation simulation with second-by-second granularity. This paper describes a methodology for reserve adequacy assessment and presents the results from one of the resource expansion scenarios.