Report electricity generation with or without own consumption of power plants (gross or net)

[fschreyer]

Dear all,

currently we say that Secondary Energy|Electricity should not include electricity used for own consumption in power plants as we define it as Total net electricity generation.

We were wondering why this was chosen and whether models can usually report net or gross generation more easily. One argument to switch to gross generation would be that this is what is usually reported in statistics e.g. by the IEA or BP. If models calibrate to this data for historical years, they would report gross generation. On the other hand, net generation is the amount that is available to the system and probably more intuitive to users of the data who do not necessarily think about own consumption of power plants.

Any opinions? @IAMconsortium/common-definitions-energy

[masahirosugiyama]

@fschreyer Thank you and I appreciate your proposal. I guess we can keep the default as is to ensure the continuity from AR6, and add an additional variable for the gross generation.

I don't know what would be a consistent set of variable names.
Seeing the emissions,
https://github.com/IAMconsortium/common-definitions/blob/main/definitions/variable/emissions/emissions.yaml
we have
Emissions|{Level-1 Species}
Gross Emissions|CO2

So a new addition would be the following?
Secondary Energy|Gross Electricity
Gross Secondary Energy|Electricity
Secondary Energy|Electricity|Gross

I cannot opine about the readiness of modeling teams.

[pkyle]

The main issue that I see here is not the question of electricity use within power plants, which is minimal, but rather electricity used within facilities that self-supply, mostly industrial but also commercial/public. The vast majority of this difference between “gross” and “net” electricity generation lies in the electricity consumed by facilities that supply their own power. The IEA’s definitions are clear, that electricity produced and consumed on-site within an industrial facility should be reported separately; i.e. the fuel inputs and (gross) electricity outputs from electricity generation are AUTOELEC, AUTOCHP, ELAUTOE and ELAUTOC, and the electricity consumed is all under EPOWERPLT, irrespective of whichever activity is purchasing the electricity. However, given that these designations are made upstream of the data inputs to any of the models here, I don't see any value to differentiating gross and net electricity in the reporting from the models. I think we should just follow the IEA conventions, unless and until they provide further clarification on the difference between net and gross generation.