Anchored presenter Carlo Brancucci outlines SAINT tool to model flexible interconnection agreements

Carlo Brancucci of Anchored told a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission staff conference that SAINT (Scenario Analysis Interface for Energy Systems) can model "flexible interconnection" agreements that combine a firm capacity with additional flexible capacity that may be curtailed under bounded hours and events.

Brancucci said the approach addresses a growing mismatch: developers often want interconnection in 18–24 months, but transmission upgrades needed under traditional planning can take five to 10 years. "SAINT stands for scenario analysis interface for energy systems," he said, describing the software as an integrated economic and reliability planning tool that combines production-cost optimization with AC power-flow and contingency analysis.

The tool lets planners move beyond a single peak-hour snapshot by creating clusters of representative operating hours from the year's 8,760 hours and running iterative interconnection studies across those clusters. Brancucci gave a hypothetical example of a 100 megawatt firm capacity plus 100 megawatts of flexible capacity and described contract bounds (for example, limiting curtailment to a set number of hours or events per year) as a way to allocate risk between utilities and developers.

Brancucci cited a pilot in PJM territory, funded by Google, that examined six substations for a 500 MW data center. "In all 6 locations, curtailment or grid curtailment was only required for less than 1% of the hours of the year, between 40 and 70 hours depending on the location," he said, and noted the study is publicly available on his company website.

He also presented an illustrative 600 MW case showing that iterating economic and reliability models changed the firm interconnection number in his example from 520 MW to 350 MW once new security constraints were accounted for, increasing the identified flexible capacity and weekly energy subject to curtailment.

Brancucci tied the technical approach to policy, saying it is timely after recent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission activity: "on June 18, FERC issued six orders," and he argued that several reform areas hinge on improved planning tools and processes that a platform like SAINT can enable.

Audience members asked about risks and long-term reliability. One questioner praised the software and asked whether planners should impose a "safety factor" to account for future increases in the frequency or duration of curtailment events as more load enters the system. Jason Sexire of PJM cautioned that flexible interconnection is inherently an interim state: "I feel like we're trying to build the plane while we're flying it," he said, asking whether the tool models the outages and capacity reductions that will be needed to build the system to a firm state.

Brancucci said those concerns require scenario analysis: the pilot used a one-year deterministic simulation, but planners must run multiple future scenarios and study interactions when many flexible loads coexist. He said the SAINT user can define construction-outage scenarios and that the platform models grid consumption (how many hours, when and by how much consumption must be reduced) while the exact mix of solutions to meet those reductions (demand response, behind-the-meter generation, diesel backup) is handled as post-processing. He noted a new project funded by three major U.S. utilities will study operational rules for multiple interacting flexible data centers.

Andrew Liu of Purdue University asked how the study models data-center flexibility; Brancucci said SAINT models grid-side consumption and the timing and magnitude of reductions rather than internal data-center control systems.

The presentation concluded with Brancucci inviting further questions and pointing to the published PJM pilot and ongoing utility-funded work as next steps.