Energy Systems

A greener Texas grid barely changes what factories and cars burn

Aghapour, R., Alavi, S., Atitebi, O.S., & Jones, E.C., Jr. (2025). Texas power system evolution and sectoral energy demand: Contrasting sector-specific and multi-sector model outcomes. Proceedings of the IISE Annual Conference & Expo 2025. https://www.proquest.com/openview/fb47c6b94c33e0e25a48f3549c46ac0e/1

Detailed Texas wind and solar plans cut coal and gas power in an economy-wide model, but industry and transport still run on fossil fuels.

• The solar-and-wind targets taken from ReEDS grow from 5.2 GW of solar and 23.1 GW of wind in 2020 to 75.2 GW and 88.6 GW in 2050, or 0.59 and 1.30 EJ of generation a year.
• With those targets, coal generation drops sooner than in the reference scenario and natural gas generation is lower from 2025 on, while nuclear, hydro and rooftop solar barely change.
• Electricity use rises slightly in buildings, industry and transportation, the only fuel that grows in every sector.
• Industry and transportation stay dominated by natural gas and refined liquids; in 2050 the model's industry uses about 0.18 EJ more electricity and 0.14 EJ less gas, out of roughly 7 EJ in total.

Correction note. The abstract says buildings show the strongest shift toward electrification; the model outputs show industry gains the most electricity (+0.18 vs +0.03 EJ in 2050). Section 5.2 says transportation's gas use falls; in the data it rises slightly from a tiny base, and it is refined liquids that fall.

• PaperPaper record on ProQuest (IISE proceedings; no DOI registered)

Testing Texas energy policy on the whole economy, not just the grid

Aghapour, R., Alavi, S., Atitebi, O., & Jones, E.C., Jr. (2025). Achieving sustainable energy transition: A system analysis approach to energy policy implementation. Proceedings of the IISE Annual Conference & Expo 2025. https://doi.org/10.21872/annual2025_6968

An EPA scenario tool traces how state energy policies would shift emissions, air quality, health and energy prices across Texas.

• Uses GLIMPSE, the EPA's front end to the GCAM-USA model, to simulate Texas energy policies across the energy sector and the sectors that depend on it.
• Reports how the policies change greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, health outcomes and energy prices.
• Adds a sensitivity analysis to find target levels for alternative energy sources.

• PaperRead the paper (IISE proceedings)

What happens to a utility when communities build their own power

Jones, E.C., Jr. (2020). Decomposing systems: Illustrating the utility of distributed energy resources with decomposition techniques. Proceedings of the 2020 IISE Annual Conference. https://www.proceedings.com/content/076/076356webtoc.pdf

When communities build their own wind and solar, they pay less per kilowatt-hour, while the utility must raise prices for everyone else.

• In every scenario the utility met demand with natural gas alone, because gas is available whenever it is needed and solar and wind cannot cover every hour.
• Communities that built their own wind or solar paid less per kilowatt-hour than the utility's price, and still bought power from the utility when their own output fell short.
• As more communities generated their own power, the utility sold less and had to raise its price to its remaining customers, a result that holds after the 2026 correction.
• Splitting the system into one utility model and one community model let all 40 identical communities be solved with a single community problem.

• PaperProceedings table of contents (no DOI)
• Codesear-labs/der-decomp-iise-2020: reproduces the published model, with a 2026 erratum
• CodeArchived code release for citation (Zenodo DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22758887): der-decomp-iise-2020
• ReportErratum (2026): two corrections to the published results

Crop leftovers could make North Dakota's ethanol supply chain leaner

Alavi, S., Evans, T., Atitebi, O., Javaheri, A., Fand, Y., & Jones, E.C., Jr. (2024). Multi-source biofuel supply chain network optimization. Proceedings of the IISE Annual Conference & Expo 2024, 1725–1730. https://doi.org/10.21872/2024iise_7959

Adding corn stover and wheat straw to switchgrass lets a North Dakota ethanol network use 10 preprocessing plants instead of 28, and less land.

• The optimal network opens six biorefineries of 380 million liters a year each, as in the earlier switchgrass-only model, in Cass, Grand Forks, Mountrail, Richland, Rolette and Walsh counties.
• It opens 10 preprocessing plants, the minimum the model allows, instead of 28; crop residues ship straight from 10 farm counties to the biorefineries without being densified first.
• Switchgrass still supplies 61% of the biomass, corn stover 38% and wheat straw 1%.
• The switchgrass is grown on 29% of the available marginal land, against 61% in the switchgrass-only model, freeing land for other uses.

Correction note. The paper prints the network's total cost as $1.21 billion. Re-solving the published model gives $1,121,384,981, so the printed figure appears to be a transposition of $1.12 billion.

• PaperRead the paper (IISE proceedings on ProQuest; subscription access)

Which assumptions drive wasted renewable power in Texas grid models?

Aghapour, R., Alavi, S., Chen, V.C.P., & Jones, E.C., Jr. (2026). What really drives our power system models? Identifying the assumptions that shape ERCOT power futures. Proceedings of the IISE Annual Conference & Expo 2026.

A structured screening of uncertain inputs to NREL's ReEDS model ranks what most changes renewable curtailment in ERCOT.

• Applied a Morris (elementary effects) screening design to NREL's ReEDS capacity-expansion model to rank which uncertain assumptions most affect renewable curtailment in ERCOT through 2050.
• The uncertainty ranges for technology costs, fuel prices and electricity demand were drawn from published projections.
• Preliminary results, from the first of five planned trajectories (40 of 200 runs), point to natural-gas prices, wind capacity-factor assumptions, and the operating cost and efficiency of gas combined-cycle plants as the strongest drivers.
• Several coal-related inputs had almost no effect in this first trajectory; the authors note that more runs are needed to settle the rankings and reveal interactions.

Grid modernization for a changing climate

Jeffers, R., Kushner, D., Ntakou, E., Paaso, A., Chalamala, B., Jourdier, B., Rahmatian, F., Fotuhi-Firuzabad, M., Jones, E.C., Jr., Araneda Tapia, J.C., Abbas, A., & Price, T. (2024). Enabling climate adaptation and mitigation through grid modernization (TR-124). IEEE Power & Energy Society technical report. https://doi.org/10.17023/02vn-4d23

An IEEE Power & Energy Society technical report on how the grid must change both to cut emissions and to keep working through extreme weather.

• The grid must decarbonize, bringing in renewables and retiring fossil plants, while serving new loads from electric vehicles and electrified heating and cooling.
• As more of daily life depends on electricity, the grid will need higher reliability and resilience.
• The report argues that, for the electricity sector, cutting emissions and adapting to climate change are each impossible without the other, and is written to support practitioners.

• ReportTR-124 at the IEEE PES Resource Center