With the previous to caveats being understood, the weekly load factor, which is the total electricity generated during the week divided by the amount of energy that would have been generated if electricity demand was constantly at the peak load for the week, was calculated to be nearly 0.77 during all scenarios. As a comparison to the real world, the simulated weekly load factor was lower than the PJM annual load factor of 0.58 during 2009. This indicates that the model results are representative of a week that is less variable than the year as a whole. Also as an error-checking mechanism, the consistency of the load factor results suggests that in all cases electricity generation was meeting demand in the model. A deviation from that value would mean that demand was not being met.
As noted in section III.3.a., in all scenarios this study assume that the average roundtrip cycle efficiency of all bulk ES technologies in use on the electricity grid is 75%. However, this value was simply chosen due to the fact that several ES technologies are purported to have a range of roundtrip efficiencies that include 75%. Since it is unlikely that any particular technology will monopolize the ES market over the period of this study, this was a safe value to assume. However, the extent to which these technologies improve (or the extent to which these technologies fail to match their promised efficiencies) during the studied time period will be the extent to which the results of this study are an over-(or under-)estimation. Thus, the results of this study should be understood as a guideline rather than a strict prediction of the future.
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