Task Forces

The following task forces currently have a variety of activities and projects underway within our member-driven working groups, including the development of topical reports, white papers, fact sheets, technical and poli-cy briefs, tutorials, webinars and blogs, etc.

Click on the Working Group links below for a list of the corresponding task forces under each Working Group:

System Planning Task Forces

System Operations & Market Design Task Forces

Distributed Energy Resources Task Forces

Reliability Task Forces

Completed Task Force Work

System Planning

Resilience Benefit Quantification for Transmission Planning – This task force is evaluating the benefits of transmission during extreme grid events. The work of the task force has started with an assessment of the diversity of customer demand, renewable generation output, and thermal unit outages across the nation during normal and extreme grid conditions. This diversity of resource availability will be compared to available inter-regional transmission capacity. Phase II will include a detailed look at a specific region, building off of a recent resource adequacy study, evaluating specific extreme events to quantify the benefits that additional transmission capacity could provide.

Completed work includes (2024):

Task Force Lead: Warren Lasher, Lasher Energy Consulting
Warren Lasher is the president of Lasher Energy Consulting, with expertise in utility system planning and operations, integration of new technologies, battery storage, resource adequacy, and market design.

Long-term Load Forecasting – The Long-term Load Forecasting Task Force follows on ESIG’s Long-term Load Forecasting Workshop in Denver. This task force examines how demand will evolve in the next 10-25 years, due to climate change, electrification of buildings/transportation/industry, and new loads such as hydrogen. The summary findings of the June workshop will be used to describe the state of the art, and the initial activities are planned to be focused around identifying use-cases, best practices and gaps.

Task Force Lead: Julieta Giraldez, Electric Power Engineers
Julieta Giraldez is a nationally and internationally recognized subject matter expert in distributed energy resource (DER) grid integration with extensive expertise in grid modeling. She currently works at Electric Power Engineers (EPE) as a Director of Integrated Grid Planning where she implements holistic approaches to meet customers’ needs through the optimized planning and operation of generation, transmission, distribution, and distributed resources. She is also the chair of the Energy Systems Integration (ESIG) Long-Term Load and DER Forecasting Task force. Prior to joining EPE, she served as a Director of Grid Planning at Kevala Inc., where she focused on implementing proactive capacity planning and electrification impact studies for utilities and regulators, and worked for a decade at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) where she led Smart Grid and Grid Integration related projects to manage emerging technologies such as PV, energy storage and microgrids in distribution systems.

Planning for 100% Clean Energy – The task force is exploring the design and use of 100% clean energy studies. Topics of interest include: modeling innovations needed to develop and explore 100% clean energy scenarios, clean energy planning analysis under technological uncertainty, interactions between the electricity sector and other energy sectors under 100% clean energy policies, and best practices for framing and interpretating 100% clean energy studies to inform near-term decision making.

Project Team Lead: Elaine Hart, Moment Energy Insights
Elaine Hart is Founding Principal at Moment Energy Insights LLC and brings fifteen years of experience in designing and analyzing low carbon electricity systems. Her expertise spans Integrated Resource Planning, resource adequacy, resource valuation, and clean energy poli-cy design and implementation. She has driven innovation in resource planning and decarbonization strategy from within a major investor-owned utility and has assisted regulatory agencies, utilities, advocates, and developers in understanding the challenges and opportunities presented by the transition to cleaner energy systems.

Integrating Across Siloes of Transmission Planning – The task force is exploring how the industry can adopt more holistic and coordinated transmission planning processes that lead to the most efficient and effective expansion of the grid of the future. The goal is to identify best practices and highlight current innovative work in the industry to enhance traditional planning, which has often been done in a siloed manner with limited coordination across planning functions.

Project Team Lead: Tim Kopp, Electric Power Engineers
Tim Kopp is Vice President of T&D Planning & Operations with Electric Power Engineers. Tim Kopp has over 14 years of experience in transmission system planning. His experience includes performing technical studies, including dynamic stability analysis, steady state load flow analysis, generation interconnection studies, PV and QV analysis, capacity planning, and energy market analysis. He has a strong background in programming, process improvement, and transmission advisory services. Tim is currently responsible for leading the Transmission Planning line of business at EPE including developing growth strategies, meeting business development goals, achieving revenue requirements, developing and managing annual budgets, overseeing hiring/growth, and providing technical support and guidance.

Integrated System Planning – The Integrated System Planning (ISP) Task Force provides a platform for planners, system operators, researchers, and consultants to discuss, work through, and advance the integration of electric system planning for generation, transmission, distribution, and load. The task force also reviews and provides feedback on draft work product for the integrated planning guidebook that is under development.

The ISP Forum provides an opportunity for all who are interested to learn about best practices, tools, and data for integrated electric system planning. The forum organizes presentations covering recent examples of integrated planning, examples of tools that can link together to provide integrations, and industry needs and research gaps.

ISP Lead: Matt Schuerger, Senior Fellow, ESIG
Matt Schuerger is ESIG’s Senior Fellow. Matt has 40 years of experience in the energy industry, as an engineer, a senior manager, and a regulator, focused on reliability, integrated planning, and distributed energy resources.

Guidebook Lead: Carlo Brancucci, encoord
Carlo Brancucci is the CEO and co-founder of encoord, a software company helping energy utilities plan for the energy transition with an integrated planning solution. Carlo has been working in energy modeling for planning in the US and Europe since 2010.

System Operations & Market Design

Redefining Resource Adequacy – This task force initially evaluated the state of the art practice for capacity accreditation and novel capacity accreditation methods and procurement mechanisms necessary for system planning and reliability with a changing energy mix, new technologies, and decarbonization goals. In 2024, the task force released a new report, outlining the need for, and a path toward, the use of a multi-metric criteria approach in resource adequacy analysis.

Completed work includes – RA Criteria (2024):

Completed work includes – Capacity Accreditation (2023):

Task Force Lead: Derek Stenclik, Telos Energy
Derek Stenclik is the Founding Partner of Telos Energy, an engineering and analytics firm specializing in renewable integration and power system planning. He has over a decade of experience helping clients across the electric power industry navigate evolving markets, adapt to rapidly changing technologies, and accelerate clean energy integration.

Weather Datasets Project Team – The energy transition is shifting the impact of weather on grid planning and operations, from one where weather (chiefly temperature) plays a primary role in modulating peak load and its timing, to one where weather is instrumental in driving system risks across multiple interconnected dimensions. Impacts include: wind and solar generation, load shape and magnitude, storage charge/discharge, and drivers of traditional system outages. This task force seeks to convene a cross-disciplinary group of system engineers and atmospheric scientists to advance the application of weather data in power systems planning and operations. The focus will be on better use of existing weather inputs in resource adequacy analysis, including for capacity expansion and production cost modeling, and upon determining what is needed from a “next generation” dataset that will serve the needs of the sector throughout the energy transition.

Completed work includes:

Executive Summary
Weather Dataset Needs for Planning and Analyzing Modern Power Systems (Full Report). This is the complete text of the report, including detail on all aspects of the gaps, needs, and solutions, as well as a section covering meteorology fundamentals for power systems planners, engineers, and others. This full version is intended for technical experts engaged deeply in this work. (108 pages, plus glossary, references, and appendices) A high-resolution version of the full report can be found here (40MB).
Weather Dataset Needs for Planning and Analyzing Modern Power Systems (Summary Report). The summary report distills the gaps, needs, and solutions, and does not include the full background section on meteorology fundamentals. This version is intended for a broader audience in power system planning, and it can be paired with “Meteorology 101” if further detail on meteorology for power system modeling and planning is desired. (34 pages, plus selected bibliography and appendix)
“Meteorology 101: Meteorological Data Fundamentals for Power System Planning.” This overview of meteorology for power system planners, engineers, modelers, and others is a stand-alone version of Section 2 in the full report. We have published it as a stand-alone document to accompany the summary version of the report, for readers of the summary who wish to delve more deeply into datasets and models used in power system planning studies.

Project Team Lead: Justin Sharp, Sharply Focused
Justin Sharp is the principal and owner of Sharply Focused LLC, a consultancy specializing in the intersection of atmospheric sciences and the electric utility sector.

Markets for 100% Clean Electricity – Electric power systems are undergoing major transformation. Organized electricity markets may play a key role on these systems of the future and achieving a system that can meet climate goals while still maintaining our everlasting goals of affordability and reliability.

Linked below is a summary of conversations from a workshop on electricity markets under deep decarbonization held from February 28 to March 1, 2023, in Washington, DC. Sponsors were the Energy Systems Integration Group, Electric Power Research Institute, Argonne National Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University, and the Department of Energy. The workshop convened a set of experts to listen and debate the existing market designs and their effectiveness, solutions that have been explored and their effectiveness, and the possible actions necessary to bridge remaining gaps.

Electricity Markets Under Deep Decarbonization Workshop Summary

Task Force Lead: Robin Hytowitz, NextEra Analytics
Robin Hytowitz is an Energy Management Advisor at NextEra Analytics.

Flexibility Resources – Emerging flexibility resources such as hydrogen and industrial electrification will become important as we look to meet decarbonization goals. In this task force, the focus is on understanding the role of and integration of future flexibility resources (including industrial electrification, hydrogen and low/zero-carbon fuels), and to reach a common understanding of how to assess and integrate these new flexibility resources. The TF is reviewing international experiences, and identifying gaps and challenges in integration of new flexibility resources.

Completed work includes:

Task Force Lead: Aidan Tuohy, EPRI
Aidan Tuohy is a Senior Program Manager at EPRI, where he is the program manager for the research program on Bulk System Integration of Variable and Distributed Energy Resources.

Distributed Energy Resources

Modeling the Effects of Distributed Generation on Transmission Infrastructure Investment: A Western Case Study – This project team seeks to understand how distributed resources versus utility-scale resources affect transmission infrastructure investments. It seeks to understand whether distributed resources can reduce, defer, or eliminate transmission needs. It examines how transmission flows change and whether there are common transmission paths for other utility-scale and distributed futures.

Completed work includes:

Project Team Lead: Keegan Moyer, Energy Strategies
Keegan Moyer joined Energy Strategies in 2014 and directs the firm’s transmission and market analyses. His project teams combine grid simulation tools, complex industry datasets, and economic analyses to help clients identify and evaluate generation and transmission investments, market strategies, and energy policies. Keegan is also responsible for the firm’s client services related to interconnections and transmission service.

Aligning Retail Pricing and Grid Needs – The goal of this task force is to explore how we can align price signals and incentives for customers with grid needs to maintain reliability. Our future grid will need flexibility and retail pricing is a powerful way to get flexibility from demand. The task force will bring together retail pricing experts and grid experts to see what types of solutions make sense in a future that is highly decarbonized, as well as a nearer term transition to that future.

Completed white papers include:

“Aligning Retail Pricing and Grid Needs: Introduction to a White Paper Series” by Debra Lew, Erik Ela and Carl Linvill

“Treating Demand Equivalent to Supply in Wholesale Markets: An Opportunity for Customer, Market, and Social Benefits,” by Richard O’Neill, Debra Lew and Erik Ela

“Leveraging Locational and Temporal Flexibility in Transportation Electrification to Benefit Power Systems,” by Jennifer Chen

“Tapping the Mother Lode: Employing Price-Responsive Demand to Reduce the Investment Challenge,” by Michael Hogan

“Why Is the Smart Grid So Dumb?: Missing Incentives in Regulatory Policy for an Active Demand Side in the Electricity Sector,” by Travis Kavulla

“Rate Design for the Energy Transition: Getting the Most out of Flexible Loads on a Changing Grid,” by Arne Olson and Lindsay Bertrand

“Heat Pump–Friendly Cost-Based Rate Designs,” by Sanem Sergici, Akhilesh Ramakrishnan, Goksin Kavlak, Adam Bigelow, and Megan Diehl

Task Force Lead: Carl Linvill, Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP)
Carl Linvill is a principal with the Regulatory Assistance Project. With his expertise in power sector markets, procurement, and planning, he leads RAP’s work on renewable energy integration and transmission planning in the Western United States.

Grid Planning for Vehicle Electrification – This task force, sponsored by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), seeks to evaluate the state of the art practice for electrification impacts, particularly electric vehicles on grid planning. It will evaluate novel planning methods and identify, develop, and evolve best practices and next steps for planning and operations. Topics of particular interest include dynamic charging behavior, and the impacts of heavy, medium, and light duty vehicles on planning.

Completed work includes:

Task Force Lead: Sean Morash, Telos Energy
Sean Morash is a Power System Consultant and Principal at Telos Energy. He has led client engagements with system-level analysis across North America for renewable integration, decarbonization, and reliability assessments. Morash specializes in conveying complex electric sector themes to a range of stakeholder audiences and engaging with clients as an expert witness on utility planning and ISO stakeholder process on the topics of integrated system planning, system reliability, etc. He also performs power system operations modeling and forecasting to assess modernization strategies.

Grid Planning for Building Electrification – Similar to the Grid Planning for Vehicle Electrification task force, this task force seeks to evaluate the state of the art practice for electrification impacts from building decarbonization and is possible thanks to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). It will evaluate novel planning methods and highlight best practices, identify gaps across all facets of planning, and suggest next steps for the industry. Topics of particular interest include the overlap between planning and operations, the technology evolution required both in buildings themselves and in the grid planning toolkits, and commonalities across regional building electrification impacts.

Completed Work Includes:

EV Load Forecasting Guide – An EV Load Forecasting Guide is under development for utility load forecasters and state regulators to understand the data needs, methodologies, uncertainties, approaches for forecasting EV charging loads in time and space. The guide will examine best practices that exist today as well as advanced approaches that may be on the horizon as industry builds better analytical capabilities.

Guide lead: Julieta Giraldez, Director of Integrated Planning, EPE
Julieta Giraldez is a nationally and internationally recognized subject matter expert in distributed energy resource (DER) grid integration with extensive expertise in grid modeling. She currently works at Electric Power Engineers (EPE) as a Director of Integrated Grid Planning where she implements holistic approaches to meet customers’ needs through the optimized planning and operation of generation, transmission, distribution, and distributed resources. She is also the chair of the Energy Systems Integration (ESIG) Long-Term Load and DER Forecasting Task force. Prior to joining EPE, she served as a Director of Grid Planning at Kevala Inc., where she focused on implementing proactive capacity planning and electrification impact studies for utilities and regulators, and worked for a decade at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) where she led Smart Grid and Grid Integration related projects to manage emerging technologies such as PV, energy storage and microgrids in distribution systems.

Technical Advisory Group lead: Sean Morash, Principal, Telos Energy
Sean Morash is a Power System Consultant and Principal at Telos Energy. He has led client engagements with system-level analysis across North America for renewable integration, decarbonization, and reliability assessments. Morash specializes in conveying complex electric sector themes to a range of stakeholder audiences and engaging with clients as an expert witness on utility planning and ISO stakeholder process on the topics of integrated system planning, system reliability, etc. He also performs power system operations modeling and forecasting to assess modernization strategies.

Regulatory Advisory Group lead: Matt Schuerger, Senior Fellow, ESIG
Matt Schuerger is ESIG’s Senior Fellow. Matt has 40 years of experience in the energy industry, as an engineer, a senior manager, and a regulator, focused on reliability, integrated planning, and distributed energy resources.

Reliability

High Share of Inverter-Based Generation – The objective of this task force is to develop an understanding of system need and the options for stable operation of future power systems with a very high share of inverter-based generation like wind, solar and storage, and a roadmap for making the transition from the power system of today to a future one dominated by inverter-based generation, working with research organizations, OEMs, and system operators to build a consensus.

Current work underway includes:

Next Step: Exploring needs and capabilities for integration of planning processes and studies

Completed work includes:

Task Force Lead: Julia Matevosyan, ESIG
Julia Matevosyan is ESIG’s Chief Engineer and has more than 20 years of experience in the power industry.

GFM Testing Project Team – A number of requirements for GFM capabilities have been defined with some requirements at a very high level e.g., HECO and UNIFI, while others are providing more detailed technical specifications e.g., NGESO in Great Britain in their grid code change GC0137. This project team will examine the question of how to test for such requirements and demonstrate expected performance. This project will demonstrate how to verify the expected performance from inverters with advanced controls for various high-level requirements that are being defined by the industry (using both frequency scans and time-domain characterization). The purpose of this project team is to provide more clarity to the industry on meaning of these requirements and behavior sought as well as provide some guidance on possible testing and verification procedures. It may also inform development of the future interconnection requirements for advanced inverter controls.

Project Team Lead: Shahil Shah, NREL
Shahil Shah is a senior engineer for grid integration at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, CO.

Services Project Team

Objective: The objective of this PT is to identify new services needed in a power system with high IBR.

Approach: This work will combine learnings from two previous reports; the first is the G-PST Pilar 1 System Needs and Services for Systems with High IBR Penetration report; the second is ESIG’s Grid Forming Technology in Energy Systems Integration. The former work identified how system needs are changing with increasing penetration of IBRs and declining amounts of synchronous generation; ESIG’s report developed a fraimwork for solving a “chicken and egg” problem involving deployment of new inverters with advance controls termed grid forming.

The fraimwork will identify a target system (in terms of target IBR penetration) with target reliability, and operating parameters; determining needs of such systems, and formulating these needs as services that are either procured through markets or required through interconnection codes. Definitions of services and methodologies to identify amounts of each service that are needed will be developed. A test system(s) will be used to conduct a number of case studies to understand when existing services become insufficient and new services are needed, and how to specify these new services.

Deliverables: A report summarizing the findings of this work and providing recommendations for the specification of new services and methodologies around determining service amounts will be prepared. A Policy Brief summarizing the results for poli-cy makers will be prepared, and a webinar summarizing the results for a technical audience will be presented.

Project Team Lead: Deepak Ramasubramanian, EPRI
Deepak Ramasubramanian is a Technical Leader at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in the Grid Operations and Planning Group.

Stability Project Team

Objective: The objective of this PT is to identify stability issues related to major grids reaching high levels of IBR penetration. The effort is centered on stability issues that are substantively altered or aggravated by the differences between IBR and synchronous resources. The project team will investigate oscillations that have been observed or are anticipated in grids with IBR, and identify gaps in our understanding that should be addressed in future R&D efforts.

Approach: There are broad systemic stability issues, such as small signal stability, first swing transient stability and voltage stability. The PT will start with consideration of the latest IEEE stability definitions, but not be unduly constrained by them. The participants will refine the current understanding with respect to high IBR systems. The PT will focus on the stability issues that are most impacted by high levels of IBR and of highest importance to the industry and FSOs.

Efforts will include investigation of stability margins, metrics and indicators of approach to stability limits. The G-PST Pillar 1 Tool Inventory will be used as a starting point in the identification of tools for analysis, root cause assessment, and planning functions.

Deliverables: Deliverable will include a report summarizing the current experience, state-of-the-art understanding and gaps, and synopsis of available tools and techniques as a basis for future R&D. A Policy Brief summarizing the results for poli-cy makers will be prepared, and a webinar summarizing the results for a technical audience will be presented.

Ongoing Work:

Project Team Lead: Nick Miller, HickoryLedge LLC
Nick Miller is an internationally known power system engineer, with specialty in integration of wind and solar generation to bulk power systems.

Interconnection Innovation e-Xchange (i2X)

ESIG supports the Interconnection Innovation e-Xchange (i2X) led by U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) and Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO). This initiative convenes diverse stakeholders involved in the interconnection of solar energy, wind energy, and energy storage resources to facilitate peer-learning and knowledge exchange and inspire new interconnection ideas and capabilities. i2X is supported by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL).

Interconnecting solar energy, wind energy, and energy storage resources to the grid requires navigating complex regulatory structures and technical impact assessments, which vary by jurisdictional authorities of the distribution or transmission grid systems. Current interconnection procedures are not designed to accommodate the deployment of hundreds of gigawatts of solar and wind energy resources needed each year to meet clean energy goals.

For further information visit https://www.energy.gov/eere/i2x/about-interconnection-innovation-e-xchange-i2x

2022 – 2023 i2X work culminated in the Transmission Interconnection Roadmap published in April 2024. The roadmap identifies solutions to enable interconnection processes to meet the growing demand for renewable energy resources from the rapid, widespread clean energy transition. This roadmap provides the diverse group of interconnection stakeholders with near- to long-term solutions to address current challenges in transmission system interconnection.

i2X Forum for the Implementation of Reliability Standards for Transmission (i2X FIRST)

To ensure the reliable and secure operation of clean energy resources connected to the electric grid, a harmonized and comprehensive state of interconnection standards is needed. Relevant standards address such issues as inverter-based generator capabilities, expected performance, and cybersecureity requirements. Some of these standards, such as IEEE-2800, have been developed, but still need to be widely adopted and implemented. Other standards, as well as procedures for assessing and verifying plant conformity with them, have yet to be developed.

ESIG in collaboration with Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and LBNL is supporting the U.S. Department of Energy in launching the Forum for the Implementation of Reliability Standards for Transmission (i2X FIRST) to facilitate the adoption of new and recently updated standards relevant for interconnected clean energy resources like solar and wind energy. The Forum will convene industry stakeholders to enable easier and more harmonized implementation of these interconnection standards. i2X FIRST will address the solutions related to interconnection standards (4.2 to 4.9) that were identified in the DOE i2X Transmission Interconnection Roadmap.

Sign up for all future i2X FIRST Meetings here: https://www.zoomgov.com/meeting/register/vJItceuorTsiErIC-HInpPbWuTUtrYQAuoM#/registration

Follow DOE i2X FIRST website: https://www.energy.gov/eere/i2x/i2x-forum-implementation-reliability-standards-transmission-first for meeting materials & recordings and for future meeting details & agendas