What is the Regional Portfolio Model (RPM)?

In its Northwest Power Plans, the Council is responsible for developing a resource strategy based on independent analysis of the region’s long-term energy needs and the costs and availability of a wide variety of energy efficiency and generating resources. In addition to minimizing system costs, the analysis addresses major uncertainties and strategies for mitigating risks.

The Regional Portfolio Model or RPM is an electric integrated resource planning model used by the Council to identify adaptive, least-cost resource strategies for the region. 

The RPM uses a sophisticated and unique risk analysis methodology, developed by the Council, which involves simulating numerous candidate resource plans across a broad range of possible futures to identify tradeoffs between expected cost and risk.

Council staff discusses the model and presents information on model updates, analysis and functionality at it's System Analysis Advisory Committee meetings.  View the agendas and video of past SAAC meetings for more information.

While in past plans the RPM has been used successfully as the primary analytical tool for understanding strategy tradeoffs, in the 2021 Power Plan, many of the previous assumptions that made its underlying structure convenient and efficient for understanding regional risks were challenged. Through the advisory committee process it became clear that there were some limitations to the RPM structure that made it difficult to rely on the model without the context of the other Council power system models due to effects on regional operations due to policies both internal and external to the region. Significant model enhancements and assumption changes were implemented to try and incorporate information necessary to make reasonable regional resource strategy decisions.

 

 

 

RPM Redevelopment Project (completed 2015)

Timeline:

  • On May 16, 2014 the final contract between the Council and Navigant was executed (this contract resulted from an RFP process that the Council initiated in December of 2013)
  • On June 2-4, 2014 the Council and Navigant met for a series of kick off meetings to finalize the project details and work on system requirements.
  • Each month Council Staff will give an update on the project at the Power Committee
  • On August 22, 2014 Navigant published a redevelopment functional approach document that was developed in coordination with Council staff.
  • In the Spring of 2015 the Council accepted the finished RPM from Navigant.

Background:

In 2013, the Council decided to redevelop the RPM in order to take advantage of current software technologies, provide increased accessibility to the model, and to get it ready for use in the Seventh Plan.

The redeveloped RPM software is intended to provide the Council with a model that can analyze different electric resource portfolios during the development of the Seventh Northwest Power Plan. Use of the redeveloped RPM will include strategic risk analysis, including cost and risk tradeoffs of differing resource portfolios across a large number of potential futures. The redeveloped RPM may also be used to test various policy propositions (e.g., identify and evaluate strategies for, and costs of, achieving postulated goals for regional power system greenhouse gas emissions). 

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