Non-wire Alternatives Coordination toward Efficient Power System Planning

Recent years have witnessed a growing attention on non-wire alternatives (NWAs) toward beneficial power system planning instead of traditional wire expansion. The I-5 corridor project in the Pacific Northwest of the United States explores the distributed energy resource (DER) alternative to improve available transfer capability. However, it remains an open challenge regarding how to efficiently aggregate the NWA resources for combinatorial coordination with bulk power systems. To maintain power system stable and reliable, distribution system operators (DSOs) should be given the responsibility to provide virtual inertia for dynamic regulation, to curtail elastic load for resilience enhancement, and to achieve seasonal peak shaving for expansion deferral. Therefore, this panel will focus on:
1) Virtual inertia and primary frequency regulation provision of NWAs
2) Resilient power system operation and planning supported by NWAs
3) Integrated hierarchical transmission-distribution market
4) Grid services and secure data exchange through NWAs.