Open zaneselvans opened 2 weeks ago
Hey @nilaykumar just comment in here if you run into anything strange or have questions about the data or electricity system background (it looks like I can't assign the issue to you until you've engaged with it though)
Overview
Regulated utilities have a habit of overestimating load growth, in order to justify expanding their rate base. @arengel at RMI did a little exploration of this in 2017 in The Billion Dollar Costs of Forecasting Electricity Demand and it has become relevant once again with the rush to build gas plants and delay coal plant retirements in order to serve "hyperscale" data centers and AI training. To what extent are utilities simply taking advantage of the hype around this narrative to justify "emergency" build out of new fossil infrastructure? Data reported by planning areas in the FERC-714 can provide some context, and would also provide a nice example analysis notebook for our PUDL Examples repo.
Outline
out_ferc714__hourly_planning_area_demand
(only available as Parquet) -- you'll need to look at what the definition of winter and summer peak demand are.Questions
Background Reading