Understanding the Impact of Distributed Energy Resource (DER) Adoption on Customer Electricity Usage Behavior

• In Event: Coordinating Grid Needs: Demand-Side Innovation Across Institutions, Customers, and Technologies

Abstract

Residential and commercial utility customers are increasingly adopting two or more of the distributed energy resources (DERs) of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, battery energy storage systems, and electric vehicles (EVs), with their complementary charging equipment. The limited understanding and modeling of this “co-adoption” phenomenon raises difficulties for many energy stakeholders, including the electric utilities which are responsible for integrating DERs into the electric power system. Utility planning studies must estimate how much and where DERs are located downstream of each substation, and differentiate between customer-sited and standalone DERs. Inaccuracies and uncertainties in these forecasts can adversely impact infrastructure investments.

This paper analyzes the customer data of seven electric utilities located across the United States to better understand how residential and commercial customer loads change with co-adoption. The paper determines time-differentiated and aggregate differences in consumption between co-adopters, single-technology adopters, and non-adopters to characterize customer behavior specific to DER usage. It also assesses load shape differences over temporal domain types such as peak days, weeks, months, and seasons. These load shape analyses represent the outcomes of co-adoption and usage patterns, which we tie to past work that elicits the stated preferences of residential and commercial utility customers in order to better inform adoption forecasts.

Findings will also be tied to a range of opportunities (e.g., targeted utility distribution planning, more surgical DER program design, policy development) that can enable the greater grid integration of DERs in ways that provide benefit to both end-use customers and the electricity system.

Author

• Margaret Taylor, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  Presenting Author