he task of determining prudent technology investment strategies has become significantly complicated with the advent of distributed resources and evolving customer preferences. We are challenged with the prospect of integrating and extracting value from many disparate elements (including grid components and distributed energy resources that now have embedded intelligence), and that exhibit variable and particular behaviors within electricity delivery systems. Planning and analysis practices will need to address this uncertainty and complexity while ensuring coordination amongst all participants and enabling affordable outcomes. In so doing, planning approaches will need to consider the effective deployment of information management, communication and control functions as core enablers in combination with the physical system and evolving market/industry structures. This track will focus on emerging planning practices and tools, as well as remaining challenges, associated with the effective deployment of complex grid systems. Associated topics include:
Application of grid architecture to address requirements and design considerations for coordination frameworks, information management, communications and control systems.Methods and tools that can evaluate technological and policy options.Emerging practices for integrated planning, including approaches for scenario and forecasting analysis, hosting capacity analysis, interconnection processes, locational value analysis, Distributed Energy Resource (DER) sourcing, and transmission-distribution coordination.