Electricity Sector Activities
Introduction
Overview of Activities
Note
Please add your comments on this section in this Google Doc.
- Demand forecasting (deep dive)
(a literature review and analysis on demand and demand forecasting)
CC impacts on energy/peak demand.
Indirect increase from the relationship between climate indicators (e.g. extreme heat) and penetration rates of some technologies (e.g. residential air conditioning). - Generation Forecasting (Hydro, Nuclear, Solar, Thermal, Wind) (deep dive)
(how does climate data impact generation forecasting processes)
It will be important to differentiate long-term climate projection from medium-term forecasting. - Capacity Expansion Modelling
(summary of how this process works, but climate data interactions come from Demand and Generation forecasts) - Resource Adequacy Planning
(summary of how this process works, but climate data interactions come from Demand and Generation forecasts)
- Electrical System Operations (deep / intermediate dive)
(what seasonal to annual data go into this process?)
CondiderFERC/NERC documents pertaining to ambient ratings and extreme temperature scenarios for use in transmission planning.
We should confirm with system operators whether or not this should be an area of focus. - Outage scheduling
(What factors are considered for scheduling outages - linked to generation and demand forecast o no real climate data in isolation)
From an HQ perspective, most of outage scheduling occurs during summer. This goes beyond generation + demand forecast, but also includes considerations such as redundancy during forest fire season, workers capacity during extreme heat, ambient ratings for transmission lines, degradation rates of components, etc. Just a random thought here: while outage scheduling relies on other factors and no climate data are needed in isolation, it could be interesting to map the interactions between those different activities to better capture which ones serve as inputs for which ones. - Vegetation Management
(I think we do a light review of this topic but not a deep dive)
Integrate forest fire. - Worker safety
(reference some generic material on safety and health implications of CC)
I see two components to this question. 1) Safety and 2) Productivity. Increased heat stress should decrease productivity which might represent a financial or operational risk to some utilities. There is material on quantifying the cost of heat-induced loss of productivity that should be referenced as well.
Infrastructure Planning and Asset Management
- Construction
(focus here is the temporary activities during construction. For example a coffer dam doesn’t have the same design criteria as a permanent dam) - Dam Safety Review
- Nuclear Safety Review
What do you think about wrapping Dam Safety and Nuclear Safety Reviews into a section Infrastructure Design and Review? Effectively, these are a detailed asset condition review and a design review. The actual ‘climate data’ related activities are the same from a DSR or new dam design for example.
I think it could make sense to group DSR and NSRs together but somewhat on the fence about including design. While they may have similar data needs, the two activities (designing a new asset vs reviewing the safety of an existing asset) could be quite unique and worth differentiating. - Infrastructure Condition Assessment & Investment Prioritization
(can review some general literature on asset management and tie it to operations challenges and design reviews) - Infrastructure Design (Hydro, Thermal/Nuclear, Transmission & Distribution) (deep dive)
(Do we break these out? We are currently thinking to do a mix of standards/practices and some literature on extremes that inform design parameters. For example, there might not be much on pole design and climate change, but we can see who winds are expected to change and cross reference that with pole design practices. From the perspective of this project the deeper dive will be in the climate data the influence pole design)
Do we separate out these asset types? We could have a separate “chapter” on hydro, T&D, etc. However, all generating stations have transformers as does T&D, so we could talk once about extreme temperature as a design value and how it interacts with each of these types of stations. The same is true of extreme flooding. We could repeat sections for each asset type or talk about how it affects each asset. Because the project is focused on climate data, I am leaning towards being able to do a deeper literature review on climate extremes and then relate that back to design values. I am open to others’ thoughts on this structure?
I think organizing by climate event makes sense and then pointing to the various types of assets and specific indices used in design… however I’m a bit biased to the climate science side of things. From a design practitioner’s perspective, it might be more intuitive to have a section pertaining to their specific assets. I guess we need to think about who the intended audience is and if there’s a way to find a balance. We could also engage some of the workshop attendees involved in design to get more direct feedback on preferences.
I like the idea to survey some workshop attendees on their preference. - Support supply chain decision-making
(short summary talking about supply chain vulnerabilities) - Licensing, Impact & Environmental Assessments
How much is warranted here? We have three deeper dive topics already and the use of climate data for an EA/IA could be very wide reaching depending on the topic.
I think a short summary is suitable here (similar to other non deep dive topics). In some cases there will already be guidance documentation like ECCC’s SACC that we can point to.
Is this where content on Indigenous Knowledge would be addressed, or is the vision for a separate section?
A topic of interest here should we want to go deeper that reference general guidance documentation would be to look at the question from the cumulative impact of cc + project standpoint. This is where I believe there is a gap in knowledge, but I have the feeling that the gap is not so much from a climate data perspective as much as from a methodological or M&E framework standpoint.
Assurance, Reporting and Disclosures
- Enterprise Risk Management
(Short overview of generic ERM practices. Climate data comes from infrastructure reviews or demand/generation forecasts) - ESG/Sustainability Reporting
(Short overview of ESG reporting. The actual climate data from other areas informs this one.)
Would climate related financial disclosures fit into ERM or ESG topic? I think it’s worth addressing this somewhere as it may become a more pressing topic in the foreseeable future which will require climate data.
Especially given that standards focus on the reporting side of the disclosure and not as much on the analysis side of it. I feel that there is a high level of variance in the quality of information that is provided in ESG reporting, and I believe that this is partly induced by the variance in the quality (and utilization) of climate data.