Utility Planning for All Forms of Energy

Power demand is growing across the United States and meeting near- and long-term load and capacity needs will require advanced tools, new ways of thinking and diversified energy mixes. Now more than ever, power utilities like yours must identify opportunities to optimize their energy assets and increase the efficiency of their systems as they plan to meet their Integrated Resource Plan (IRPs) over the next several years. Unlocking the gigawatts the country needs will require all forms of energy including renewables, battery energy storage, natural gas and nuclear energy. As you consider how to plan, build, integrate and operate generation to serve this demand strategically, energy forecasting and optimization tools such as NextEra 360™ can help highlight solutions for delivering reliable, low-cost electricity when and where it's needed.

Optimizing Power Generation and Dispatch

As a leader in the utility industry, you know the pressure of trying to balance growing demand with the challenge of delivering reliable, cost-effective energy. Identifying the right generation mix can feel like solving a complex puzzle, where every decision impacts your utility's efficiency and bottom line. Using high performance computing and over 20 years of data from 49 states, NextEra Energy Resources’ tool NextEra 360, provides valuable asset and grid insights that can empower you to make data-driven decisions, streamlining resource design and optimizing energy management. 

With NextEra 360, you can build out a digital twin of your generation system (including gas, coal, hydro, wind, solar and storage assets) alongside their load profiles, enabling insights into how each asset dispatches daily, hourly and across seasons. By modelling generation and dispatch stacks, NextEra 360 can help you identify improvements that optimize how you meet inbound load. These models consider various critical data points including the specific vintages and qualities of existing assets, supply chain statuses for new assets and real-time market prices, to reveal the fastest and most affordable way to serve new load responsibly. 

For instance, modelling can demonstrate the benefits of adding low-cost and fast-to-deploy renewables and battery energy storage to an existing generation mix. In this scenario, new loads are served by the renewables and batteries, while the load factor of the existing asset base increases to serve the new load and charge the batteries during non-peak times, thereby reducing the levelized cost of energy. Furthermore, NextEra 360 can help identify opportunities to optimize dispatching depending on resource and/or prices in the local market, further improving system economics. By enabling smart decisions that unlock affordability, these insights make it possible to integrate new loads while protecting rates from the costs of systemic growth.   

Developing New Power Generation and Siting Future Loads

NextEra 360 has the capability to answer whether the right energy resources are available at the right place, time and price to serve demand. Using NextEra 360, you can quickly identify the best locations to site new loads by overlaying crucial factors for site selection such as fiber optic networks and operators, water availability and quality, gas pipeline networks, transmission networks, upgrade costs for substation interconnects, land use constraints, congestion and transmission routing capabilities.  

Ensuring the presence of necessary physical assets and backbone infrastructure is crucial for attracting new loads to your utility’s service territory. NextEra Energy Resources can help customize this information for your utility. By analyzing existing rate structures and generation footprints, NextEra Energy Resources provides insightful alternatives, designed to entice additional load, enhancing your utility's growth and efficiency.