Puget Sound Energy | Elizabeth Hossner | Xcelerate 2023 Nashville Testimonial

[Music] [Applause] my name is Elizabeth hosner I'm the manager of resource planning analysis at Puget Sound Energy I've been using Aurora since 2006 when I started at PSC um and then I started using plexus about 2017 was when we first got the model so we use as a model pretty differently uh Aurora we use for electric price forecasting so it's a pretty wide wet wide model we do to forecast out electric prices there's a short-term modeling that's done by different group and then we do the long-term modeling so about 20 25 years out um for hourly prices um the second way we use Aurora is for our portfolio model so we use it for the capacity expansion and um kind of the zonal model in Aurora to get to the capacity builds for our portfolio and some dispatch and costs of the portfolio as well plexus we're actually using it for some sub hourly flexibility and renewable integration studies so those are just one year out studies um to see how new resources might help with um flexibility or integrating the renewable resources that will be coming for the new laws [Music] um I think they're both great models they can both do different things there's some overlaps for what they do I what I like about Aurora is kind of more the ease of use um there's a lot more userfriendly features I think customer the help desk is really great they've been great at helping us set everything up any question we have they help us work through it um so plexus we use differently as the sub hourly modeling so that helps us get to kind of a redispatch of plants to see how some plants might move around and operational cost how that will change with some different resources I remember when um the change sets came out for Aurora that was a really big feature that came out previously we were having to keep multiple databases as we were making changes so we could track changes but when change sets came out we were able to keep just the small change set files and actually track changes between the models um or what we were running for specific sensitivities or scenarios so that was a pretty big game changer for Roar when that came out um so it was definitely top of the list for some features um plexos has been really great for kind of the hydr modeling so we're able to do a lot more Hydro modeling for the flexibility of some of our systems especially the ones we can control with the um reservoirs as [Music] well we've had a lot of questions between used between Aurora and plexos going between the different models um really the biggest thing coming out right now is in Washington state we've had the clean energy transformation act come through and we now have the climate commitment act to come through and all this is to move to a kind of cleaner non-emitting portfolio of resources to reduce emissions into the future and so both of those models will be important with a capacity expansion and trying to get to those renewable resources we have to account for the transmission to those renewable resources in our modeling um and making sure we have enough resources for the flexibility of the system so the wind and solar intermittent we need other resources to make sure that loads are still met so I think both models be part and going in just to make sure into the future we have enough Renewables we have enough flexibility on the system enough capacity to meet all the demands so like guess help desk is great any problems we have the model's not running there's errors we can call them they will help us work through the problems even if it is we entered something into the model wrong they'll help us troubleshoot to figure out what's going on there's been several times where we wanted to do something the model wasn't ready to do and they made adjustments and we figured out and they went into development and added features for us so that we could actually get the model to do what we needed to make our um simulations work so that's been really great too I think the accelerate is great um one of my favorite parts of it is to hear from other people using the models how they're using the models and just really get new ideas um to make improvements on our work um and just really collaborate with other people and I would recommend it the training is great and just collaboration with the other users