Visualizing the Impacts of Renewable Energy Growth in the U.S. Midcontinent

Abstract

This paper presents the visualization approach for enhancing analyses of the ongoing Renewable Integration Impact (RIIA) Assessment by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), and brings the following contributions. First, this paper details the customization of state-of-the-art, open-source visualization code to complement existing power system visualization tools and data analytic processes used in MISO. Second, this paper describes how MISO integrates this visualization tool within a novel and holistic process for studying renewable integration issues. This visualization tool provides additional insights for RIIA from multiple aspects with fine spatial-temporal granularity, including the comparison of thermal generation performance at different renewable integration scenarios, improved understanding of complex interactions between regions within MISO, the effects of transmission upgrades on curtailment reduction using optimization techniques, and the improved verification of MISO's simulation results. Lastly, we make the updated visualization code package publicly available.