Natural gas (NG) and electric power markets are becoming increasingly intertwined. The clean burning nature of NG, not to mention its low cost due to increases in discovery and extraction technologies over the past several years, has made it a very popular fuel for the generation of electricity. As a result, the power sector is consistently the largest NG consumer. For example, in 2014, 30.5% of the total NG consumption in the United States was used for the generation of electricity (Figure 1).

 

Figure 1: U.S. Natural Gas Consumption by Sector, 2014. Source

According to EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook (AEO) 2015 projections,

“…natural gas fuels more than 60% of the new generation needed from 2025 to 2040, and growth in generation from renewable energy supplies most of the remainder. Generation from coal and nuclear energy remains fairly flat, as high utilization rates at existing units and high capital costs and long lead times for new units mitigate growth in nuclear and coal-fired generation.”

Economic, environmental and technological changes have helped NG begin to displace coal from its dominant position in power production. Although it was just for a single month, NG surpassed coal for the first time as the most used fuel for electricity generation in April 2015. The EIA also notes that considerable variation in the fuel mix can occur when fuel prices or economic conditions differ from those in the AEO 2015 reference case. The AEO reference case assumes adoption of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) implementation of Mercury and Air Toxics Standard (MATS) in 2016, but not the Clean Power Plan (CPP). Adoption of CPP, along with favorable market forces, could change the projections of the AEO 2015 reference case significantly. There is a consensus within both NG and power industry that NG-fired power generation will likely increase with the adoption of CPP.

Quantifying such a trend is non-trivial, but is crucial for stakeholders and regulators in both gas and power markets to fully understand what the future holds. Proper accounting of the interdependencies between NG and power markets is integral to the quality of any long-term predictions. Approaches for modelling an integrated NG-power capacity expansion that account for economics and market operations is the key to the most effective analysis.

The issue of gas-power integration has been a topic of active interest in the industry, and that interest is increasing. For example, the East Interconnect Planning Collaborative coordinated a major study in 2013 – 2014 to evaluate the capability of NG infrastructure to: satisfy the needs of electric generation, identify contingencies that could impact reliability in both directions and review dual-fuel capability. Likewise, the notorious “polar vortex” during the winter of 2013-2014 caused unusually cold weather in the New England region, which “tested the ability of gas-fired generators to access fuel supplies,” and caused ISO-NE and others to acknowledge the need to further investigate the issues affecting synchronization between gas and electric systems. More recently, companies like PIRA Energy are sharpening their focus on the interdependencies between gas and electric power.

There is a need for new and improved modeling approaches that realistically consider this growing gas-power market integration. An even greater need is to integrate the modeling of these markets in a way that is both efficient and practical for the end user, and still able to produce commercially viable results. EPIS has extensively tested interfacing AURORAxmp with GPCM, a calibrated NG model developed by RBAC, Inc. Several organizations and agencies have found this approach successful. Utilizing the two models allows us to develop projections for endogenously derived capacity additions (in both electric generation expansion and gas-pipeline expansion), electricity pricing, gas usage and pricing, etc. which are consistent between the two markets. This consistency leads to greater insight and confidence to aid decision-makers.

Figure 2: Abstract representation of integrated NG-power modeling using AURORAxmp and GPCM..

Although the industry is now anxiously waiting for the judiciary to weigh in on the legality of CPP regulations, there is a consensus that some form of carbon emission regulation will likely be in effect in the near future. Some states, such as Colorado, have already undertaken several regulatory initiatives and may implement a state-level CPP-like emissions regulation even if the federal plan is vacated by the courts.

As part of our ongoing research on the topic of gas-power modeling, we have designed and executed a series of test scenarios comparing the standard calibrated cases of AURORAxmp and GPCM against a potential implementation of CPP. If the proposed form of CPP is upheld in the courts, states have a number of implementation options. At this early stage, there has been no good evidence to indicate that one option would be more popular over another. This necessitated we make some broad assumptions in our experimental gas-power integration process. In our test scenarios, we assumed that all states would adopt the mass-based goal with new resource complement option.

An integrated gas-power framework allows us to better understand the most probable direction for the two markets. Our integrated GPCM-AURORAxmp CPP test scenario for the Eastern Interconnect took 7 iterations to converge to a common solution that satisfied both markets. By comparing resulting capacity expansions, fuel share changes, and gas prices between the starting point (Iteration 0) and ending point (Iteration 6) we get a sense of how the markets will coevolve.

Figure 3: Starting capacity expansion in the Eastern Interconnect for GPCM-AURORAxmp model.

Figure 3 shows the capacity expansion resulting from Iteration 0, the starting point of the integrated iterations. Iteration 0 is essentially a standalone power model with no regard for the impact the capacity expansion would have on the gas market. Figure 4 shows the capacity expansion after Iteration 6.

Figure 4: Resulting capacity expansion in the Eastern Interconnect for GPCM-AURORAxmp model.

The convergent prices of NG were lower for Iteration 6 than Iteration 0 at all major gas hubs. Figure 5 shows the monthly prices at Henry Hub for both the iterations. The lower gas prices are unintuitive, but plausible. The combined gas-power sector has several market forces that are interdependent. We are currently working with gas experts to understand some of the mechanisms that could lead to lower gas prices. We hypothesize that our accounting for capacity expansion in both the markets is one of the drivers for this behaviors and our findings will be reported in a future publication.

Figure 5: Comparison of starting and ending price trajectories with integrated GPCM-AURORAxmp model.

The lower gas prices highlight one of the key benefits of integrated gas-power models. Standalone modeling frameworks are likely to misrepresent the impact of the complex cross-market mechanisms. Integrated models avoid this particular pitfall by explicitly modeling each market and is a more apt tool for evaluating policies such the CPP. AURORAxmp provides the capability to model any of the implementation plans that states might adopt in the future – rate-based, mass-based, emission trading schemes and so forth. The ability to interface with widely used NG models, such as GPCM, provides a convenient option for analysts to confidently navigate the highly uncertain future of intertwined NG and power markets.