At a recent meeting with Travis Franck, he suggested we integrate construction timelines into the model. This would more accurately represent how some plant types are built over multiple years instead of one year and spread the jobs correctly over that timeline.
With the new structure in the model, it would be easier than in the past to do this.
For cost-based additions, we could simply put cost based additions into a pipeline that come online at the end of the construction period.
For reliability-based additions, we already project reliability needs into the future, so we would do something similar but account for construction timelines. For RPS-based additions, we could project the RPS policy forward (we already do this for foresight) and have the model build to meet the future policy requirement, as needed.
This might also allow us to incorporate construction financing costs, which can be significant for large projects that take several years to complete.
The main outcome of this work is that it would better represent financing costs and timelines for construction and that it would more accurately reflect job additions since right now a project that might take three years to build is condensed into a single year. That said, since most new additions are clean energy technologies with a typical construction period of =<1, it may not have a significant effect on jobs, at least in the US model. For these reasons, I've made it a low priority item, but we may choose to revisit this in the future.
At a recent meeting with Travis Franck, he suggested we integrate construction timelines into the model. This would more accurately represent how some plant types are built over multiple years instead of one year and spread the jobs correctly over that timeline.
With the new structure in the model, it would be easier than in the past to do this.
For cost-based additions, we could simply put cost based additions into a pipeline that come online at the end of the construction period.
For reliability-based additions, we already project reliability needs into the future, so we would do something similar but account for construction timelines. For RPS-based additions, we could project the RPS policy forward (we already do this for foresight) and have the model build to meet the future policy requirement, as needed.
This might also allow us to incorporate construction financing costs, which can be significant for large projects that take several years to complete.
The main outcome of this work is that it would better represent financing costs and timelines for construction and that it would more accurately reflect job additions since right now a project that might take three years to build is condensed into a single year. That said, since most new additions are clean energy technologies with a typical construction period of =<1, it may not have a significant effect on jobs, at least in the US model. For these reasons, I've made it a low priority item, but we may choose to revisit this in the future.