A Comparative Analysis of GridPIQ’s Fossil Fuel Dispatch Algorithm

The Grid Project Impact Quantification tool (Grid-PIQ) is an online screening tool developed by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) that estimates various impacts of adding new technologies to the electrical grid in the Continental United States. The Avoided Emissions and geneRation Tool (AVERT) was developed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to estimate the change in emissions associated with regional electrical energy generation that results from technologies that affect regional load shape. GridPIQ leverages AVERT's emissions estimation methodologies, but requires additional data to operate because its scope extends beyond emissions and fossil-fuel energy generating resources. Each tool therefore uses different publicly available data to model regional generation dispatch. This paper provides a comparative analysis of these two methodologies in order to explore their respective strengths, limitations and potential applications.