A NEW MODEL OF INCREMENTAL DECISION-MAKING FOR RESOURCE ACQUISITION BY ELECTRIC UTILITIES

Electric utilities have developed and applied several new ways to addr ess the uncertainties they face in resource planning. In these methods , however, all the resource-acquisition decisions (e.g., construction of power plants and operation of energy-efficient programs) are made a t the beginning of the simulation. This paper describes a new model th at explicitly deals with the frequent, incremental nature of utility d ecision making. This model requires users to interact with model resul ts and forecasts after every year or two of simulation. At that time, the user can initiate new resource acquisitions or modify past decisio ns (e.g., slow down construction of a power plant or change the market ing budget for an energy-efficiency program).