The Vendor is required to provide for a resource portfolio production cost modeling software.
- Department consistently assesses potential renewable energy agreements, conducts scenario analyses for long-term integrated resource plans ("IRP"), and develops monthly and annual budgets.
- Resource portfolio modeling and economic dispatch
• Model the economic dispatch of department power generation, transmission, and fuel supply resources to efficiently meet the utility's retail electricity demand while ensuring the fulfillment of contractual obligations and adherence to regulatory requirements.
• Conduct short-term (“ST”) and long-term (“LT”) (20 years or more) economic dispatch calculations on an hourly basis, ensuring compliance with various contractual, operational, and regulatory constraints.
• Simulate operations, costs, and other performance metrics for both existing and potential new long-term electric resources.
• Incorporate simulations of power supply purchases and sales within the short-term markets administered by the system operator, including both real-time and day-ahead markets, as part of the dispatch optimization process.
• Simulate the scheduling and delivery of energy from various sources, including generation from department system resources and imports from system operator and other regions within the council administrative area.
- Power supply, load, and market price forecasting
• Incorporate council data sets and forecasts of system buildouts along with corresponding demand and price forecasts.
• Provide traditional system study and load forecasting methods, including generation, transmission, and peak/off-peak load forecasting for user-defined timeframes.
• Support ST and LT budget forecasts with customizable variables.
- Performance reporting and analysis
• Aggregate and report performance results for department overall resource portfolio on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and annual basis, with projections extending up to 20 years.
• Report performance metrics for each individual resource, including production quantities, costs, emissions, and other relevant performance indicators.
• Support periodic forecasts of resource operations, including generation (MWH produced, unit start-ups), fuel consumption (e.g., MMBtu of natural gas), and emissions (e.g., tons of co₂).
d. Battery energy storage system (BESS) optimization
• Optimize BESS operations within department resource portfolio for cost-efficiency, including ancillary services; this optimization should include:
1. Simulating optimal battery charging and discharging schedules based on grid conditions, energy prices, ancillary services prices, and demand forecasts.
2. Enabling BESS participation in frequency regulation, voltage support, and reserves to maximize grid stability and revenue opportunities.
3. Assessing operational costs and revenue from energy arbitrage and ancillary services, including market incentives.
- Risk management and strategic analysis
• Support portfolio and risk management activities by forecasting load-resource balances, identifying risk exposures, and evaluating alternative strategies and transactions.
• Model physical and financial hedging products, environmental credits (e.g., recs, carbon credits), and potential legislative or regulatory impacts on resource costs and availability.
• Analyze emerging technologies and strategic initiatives, such as vehicle electrification, including impacts on department load and resource portfolio.
- Data integration, automation, and visualization
• Ability to update forward price curves to track prices in real time and predict future costs.
• Provide outputs with meaningful statistics, identify anomalies, and generate exportable graphs and charts for decision-making and presentations.
• Provide customizable reporting (tabular and graphical formats) and export data to formats including, but not limited to xml, excel, SQL and SAS.
• The production cost modeling software must be accessible via cloud, hybrid, or local installation, with clear system requirements and user access methods.
• Long-term capacity expansion modeling
• Provide outputs to support IRP processes and other strategic planning efforts, analyzing alternative resource strategies and portfolio compositions.
• Include software capabilities to run long-term capacity expansion modeling over a 20-year planning horizon, evaluating new generation and storage resources to meet demand and regulatory requirements like RPS targets and planning reserve margins.
• Develop and execute production cost modeling to evaluate department electric system, forecast long-term loads, assess resource portfolios, and analyze risks such as fuel price volatility, climate impacts, and regulatory changes.
• Design and run scenarios and sensitivities to evaluate the impacts of evolving regulations, electrification trends, and energy market conditions, ensuring the analysis captures a range of potential futures.
• Identify optimal resource additions and emerging technologies (e.g., battery storage, demand response, hydrogen) to ensure reliability, cost-effectiveness, and compliance with state mandates, while training department staff and delivering results for IRP integration.
- Contract Period/Term: 5 years
- Questions/Inquires Deadline: May 28, 2025