Load shifting by commercial and industrial power consumers reduces costs and Scope 2 emissions for the consumer and the grid. Incentivizing this behavior requires tools for valuing flexibility amidst the heterogeneity in load characteristics across diverse sectors and the spatiotemporal variation in electricity prices and emissions factors. This work presents a top-down approach to screen and broadly understand the benefits of flexibility based on system uptime, power capacity (PC), energy capacity (EC), and round- trip efficiency (RTE). Depending on the region and season, cost savings from flexibility range from 0 to over 100% and emissions savings are generally bounded between 5-40%. We also find the magnitude and cost of emissions abatement from flexibility is highly variable and, in some cases, up to four orders of magnitude less than regional renewable energy credits or common investing or policy benchmarks like the social cost of carbon. While the value of flexibility is highly dynamic, estimating savings as a function of load characteristics and incentives can inform heuristic design of new systems, siting strategies, comparison of flexibility to other decarbonization options, and new avenues for incentivizing flexibility.

翻译：商业和工业电力用户通过负荷转移，可降低其自身及电网的成本与范围二排放。激励此类行为需要工具来评估灵活性价值，这需考虑不同行业负荷特性的异质性，以及电价与排放因子的时空变化。本研究提出一种自上而下的方法，基于系统运行时间、功率容量、能量容量和往返效率，对灵活性的效益进行筛选与宏观评估。根据地区和季节的不同，灵活性带来的成本节约幅度在0%至超过100%之间，而减排效益通常介于5%至40%。我们还发现，灵活性带来的减排规模与成本具有高度可变性，在某些情况下，其成本可比区域可再生能源证书或常见投资与政策基准（如碳社会成本）低达四个数量级。尽管灵活性的价值高度动态，但通过负荷特性与激励措施估算节约潜力，可为新系统的启发式设计、选址策略、灵活性与其他脱碳方案的比较，以及激励灵活性的新途径提供参考依据。