Top Innovators
Jon Cook is the senior Principal Analyst on the Resource Analysis and Planning Team at Salt River Project.
The Salt River Project won the Fortnightly Top Innovator 2025 award ''Edith Clarke Top Innovator in Reliability of Utility Service'' for its Long-Term Resource Adequacy Planning for Renewables.
PUF's Kerry Worthington: Please describe the innovation and its positive impact.
Jon Cook: As senior Principal Analyst on the Resource Analysis and Planning Team at Salt River Project, my work is focused on resource adequacy, which is an element of the long-term reliability of the power system. Within the industry, we used to be able to study resource adequacy in a simplified way that focused on the peak demand hour for the year.
We planned our resources, and studied the risks associated with having enough resources available to serve that peak hour of demand in any particular year. As the resource mix is evolving, we need to study all other hours of the year as well, because we've got a resource mix that is no longer fully dispatchable and our supply fluctuates.
We need to incorporate how weather affects supply and demand as well as simulate the operation of new technologies, like battery storage, where only so many megawatt hours can be stored. Where you are going to use those megawatt hours becomes an important question that's going to affect reliability.