Grid Planning for Building Electrification: Key Takeaways and Considerations for Grid Planners

Electrification in buildings—especially for space heating— is advancing across the US driven by policy incentives, consumer preferences, and advances in technology. This presents both challenges and opportunities for the grid, but grid planners are often preoccupied with the onslaught of other recent trends, such as distributed solar and EVs, to understand the nuances associated with incremental building electrification. This article summarizes key findings from a recent Energy System’s Integration Group (ESIG) report, outlining critical planning considerations and actionable recommendations from a task force of industry thought leaders at the intersection of building energy modeling and grid planning. The group was assembled to cut through volumes of research and identify the key insights that grid planners should know about building electrification.

Impact on the Grid

While electrification offers decarbonization benefits, it also introduces new load profiles, altering both the seasonal and diurnal dynamics of electricity demand. Notably, winter heating loads are increasingly challenging due to their seasonal peaks, which often do not align with the production profiles of renewable resources like solar.

Even areas that are already heavily electrified or who do not experience extreme cold events will still see changes from building electrification, such as improved efficiency in summer air conditioning. Consider the chart below, which shows the percentage of energy needs for residential buildings served by electricity. Most states have significant electrification inroads to achieve.

Planning Challenges in Electrification Scenarios

One core issue in grid planning for electrification is the increased vulnerability of the system to extreme weather events. Demand for electric heating, especially with greater adoption of air source heat pump technology, could stress grids more during the winter like we have seen during recent winter storm events. Traditional summer-focused grid planning must be adapted to accommodate these new, weather-dependent winter peaks.

Additionally, electrification necessitates a shift from siloed planning approaches for electric and natural gas systems to a more integrated process. Such integration enables better assessment of resilience, affordability, and sustainability.

Key Recommendations for Improved Grid Planning

To address these emerging challenges, the task force offered a suite of actionable recommendations, categorized into four primary areas:

1. Improved Load Forecasting: Improved forecasting methods are critical to preparing for the impact of building electrification. Opportunities include developing end-use-specific baselines, incorporating weather impacts, and adopting physics-based simulations that capture the full complexity of electricity demands for various building types. These simulations can assess load changes associated with different adoption rates of heat pumps and other electrified appliances. Moreover, a longer planning horizon is needed to capture the long-term needs of the system driven by building electrification. As shown in Figure 2, the relative importance of each component of load forecasting changes over a longer planning horizon.
2. Holistic Modernization of Planning Approaches: To prepare for electrification, planning must move beyond the traditional peak-load focus. Instead, planners should adopt time-series analyses and stochastic methods, which consider the effects of multiple high-demand events over time, including extreme cold spells and seasonal variability. These methods offer a more comprehensive view of grid stresses and potential solutions. Furthermore, revisiting equipment standards is needed to account for electrification-driven load growth. Conventional equipment sizing assumptions may not be adequate, particularly under peak winter loads. A careful reassessment of design criteria, load diversity assumptions, and resilience metrics is warranted.
3. Leveraging Energy Efficiency and Demand Management: Energy efficiency is more important than ever. The concept of “thermal resilience” is increasingly relevant, where building insulation and envelope improvements help maintain temperature with minimal grid dependency. This whole-system approach is helpful in moving beyond the widget efficiency approach, such as incandescent to LED lighting efficiency improvements, that has historically been emphasized. Energy efficiency assists with the long-duration stress presented by extreme winter conditions. Grid-interactive buildings also offer substantial potential for demand flexibility, which can mitigate peak loads by leveraging distributed energy resources like smart thermostats and energy storage.
4. Touch the Grid Once through Coordinated Planning: Planners are encouraged to consider long-term needs during each infrastructure upgrade to avoid repeated and costly retrofits. By coordinating building electrification with infrastructure development, planners can prioritize investment in future-ready systems designed for scalable growth. Regular maintenance and resilience projects provide an opportunity for upsizing and minimizing the soft costs associated with infrastructure deployment. Another area for coordination is aligning electricity and natural gas distribution planning to meet shared decarbonization goals. Policymakers and utilities should focus on clearly defining regional electrification objectives, which will help guide efficient infrastructure investment and integration across energy systems, not just the electricity system.

A Pathway for Resilient and Efficient Electrification

In conclusion, building electrification demands a new era of grid planning, with a holistic, forward-looking approach. By aligning our planning processes with the demands of electrification, we can build a more resilient, sustainable grid that meets the needs of future generations.