Energy Systems Consulting, Inc.

Policy Office Electricity Modeling System (POEMS)

The Policy Office Electricity Modeling System (POEMS) was designed and built by OnLocation specifically to address electricity industry restructuring issues. It combines the demand and other supply modules of NEMS with a more complex electricity sector. The electric sector was constructed to incorporate the features necessary to analyze key policy questions: stranded costs, consumer prices, mix of new construction, and interaction with environmental policies. The level of detail is considerably greater than many other policy models. The database contains every power plant in the country, and trade and dispatch is simulated by power market centers (roughly 70).

Depending on the aspect of the specific question being addressed, POEMS can be run with all or a subset of the fuel supply modules from NEMS. As a result, the POEMS model is ideally suited to address integrated modeling issues with a competitive electricity market focus, such as the energy system impacts of policies that achieve environmental goals by shifting power generation fuel choices to more expensive but lower polluting sources. POEMS was used extensively by the DOE in the economic assessment of:

Comprehensive Electricity Competition Act

Horizonal Market Power in Restructured Electricity Markets

National Transmission Grid Study

Report to Congress: Impacts of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's Proposal for Standard Market Design

Chapter 3—Implementation of the Reference and Competitive Scenario in POEMS (PDF, 58 KB)