Consulting Services assessments and studies

With battery energy storage systems becoming a larger portion of the energy grid, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) came to GE Vernova’s Consulting Services team to help understand how to leverage battery storage without compromising the grid.

GE Vernova’s Consulting Services team conducted a study that provided ERCOT with recommendations for future resource qualification, procurement structure, and operational practices.

Based on the findings of Consulting Services ASEAN Interconnection Masterplan Study, ASEAN countries will be able to set out the transmission infrastructure needed and required investment to support multilateral power trade in ASEAN and renewable energy integration into the ASEAN Power Grid throughout Southeast Asia region.

To help avoid future blackouts and better prepare the Bangladesh grid for future growth, Consulting Services recommended code improvements and mitigation strategies to help avoid a future blackout, and worked with the country’s grid to simulate, model and plan a more stable grid that can support the additional electricity needs of the future.

The government’s Power to the People (PttP) has opened up opportunities to develop a modular and scalable solution for electrification of rural Papua New Guinea with a focus on off-grid solutions.

Consulting Services focused their work around a “hub and spoke” approach, which involves identifying a hub—such as a city, village or town—to serve as a focal point of electricity generation for spokes (schools, clinics and other community facilities) for the benefit of a larger rural area.

Consulting Services is providing a review of Myanmar’s generation, transmission, and distribution planning that includes production simulation, load flow, short-circuit and contingency analysis.

The study highlights the need to focus on all fuel types being considered in planning, like gas combined cycle near load centers (Yangon) while reducing dependence on hydro power generation, especially during the dry season.

Cambodia’s grid is interconnected with the grids in Vietnam and Laos. Interconnected grids provide support in the event something happens on a neighbor’s system. Consulting Services was contracted by the grid operator in Cambodia to evaluate what would happen if Cambodia’s grid were unexpectedly disconnected from Vietnam’s.

Supporting an Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) GE signed with the Federal Government of Nigeria, Consulting Services is helping the country understand the risks and opportunities associated with achieving its goal of enhancing its electric power system.

Consulting Services performed a detailed analysis of the country’s power supply and demand outlook, along with analyzing any constraints on gas supply that could inhibit the country’s ability to meet its objectives.

Recently The New York Power Authority (NYPA), the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), and Consulting Services conducted a test demonstration to study impacts on operability and emissions while operating on a blend of hydrogen and natural gas. The Brentwood Small Power Plant was the staging ground to vet the changes power plants need to operate on this zero-carbon fuel.

The results? Decreased carbon emissions, continued thermal plant reliability, and perhaps a new key to unlock a cleaner energy future. 

Working with Shakti Foundation, CEA, POSOCO, and MNRE, Consulting Services developed an assessment to determine whether India’s power grid could remain stable and meet load requirements while integrating additional renewable power sources.

In their assessment process, Consulting Services developed a production simulation model in MAPS to examine the hourly and annual impact on system operations and economics, evaluated operational issues, and used MARS to assess the reliability of India’s grid system and analyze additional generation capacity requirements to meet target LOLE levels..

In collaboration with the Canadian Renewable Energy Association, Consulting Services developed a study to help Canadian policymakers and planners understand the impact of higher penetration of wind energy—from 5% today to 35% by 2025.

Consulting Services needed to determine how to most effectively integrate large amounts of wind within the provinces, so they conducted the first-ever nationwide analysis of wind energy integration. Analysis shows Canada can get more than one-third of its electricity from wind without compromising grid reliability, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and generating new export opportunities.

With India’s ambitious renewable capacity goals, the Consulting Services team was called on to determine the technical and commercial feasibility of an integrated wind, solar and energy storage (IWSES) plant with combined generation capacity of more than 1,200 MW.

The Consulting Services team provided a blueprint for developing the financial and technical elements of an IWSES plant that addressed challenges by connecting and siting wind, solar and battery storage in the same place, and laid out the business case to make it economically viable.