Report: Nation needs more power transmission now

Published on January 22, 2020 by Jaclyn Brandt


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To meet the nation’s continually evolving power needs, additional transmission must be planned for now and built as soon as possible to ensure both the resilience of the United States electrical grid and to meet 2030 clean energy mandates, according to a newly released report.

“This report is clear confirmation that in order to meet ambitious renewable energy goals and provide a resilient power grid, significantly more transmission is needed, and needed now,” said Larry Gasteiger, executive director of WIRES, the international nonprofit trade association that commissioned the report, Informing the Transmission Discussion: A Look at Renewables Integration and Resilience Issues for Power Transmission in Selected Regions of the United States.

Gasteiger — whose group WIRES promotes investment in the North American transmission system to benefit electricity customers, communities and the U.S. economy — said he’s hopeful that the report “will instill policymakers with a sense of urgency on taking actions that facilitate getting needed transmission built in a timely manner.”

Prepared by the management consulting firm ScottMadden Inc., the report looks at the energy needs in specific regions of the U.S. and how transmission can and should play a role in addressing those needs, which include cybersecurity threats and natural events, such as superstorms, hurricanes, bomb cyclones, extreme cold snaps, and wildfires.

“Many of these issues are inherently regional,” according to the report. “Each location has its endowment of existing infrastructure (including power generation and transmission), load sinks, renewable resource potential, and potential risks from widespread resilience events. Moreover, states have a meaningful role in siting and permitting electric facilities, mandating renewables procurement, and cost recovery.”

Therefore, the report focuses region-by-region on the key issues of renewables integration and resilience challenges by reviewing the current transmission landscape, renewable integration issues, recent resilience concerns, what regional transmission planners have done to address them, and what they think should be done to ensure reliability and resiliency.

“Continuing to provide reliable, resilient power in the midst of significant change in the generation mix and ongoing electrification will challenge the industry,” said Cristin Lyons, partner and leader of the energy practice at ScottMadden and one of the report’s experts. “Transmission is needed to connect these resources to load, ensure reliability and resiliency, and provide customers access to low-cost power.”

At the same time, WIRES’ Gasteiger pointed out that transmission is getting increasingly harder to build.

“The challenges associated with getting a transmission line planned, approved, permitted, constructed, and in service are significant,” he said. “It takes 10 years or longer for that process to play out. Faced with that timeline, we need to look for ways to streamline and accelerate the process if we are to address the resilience risks facing the transmission system today and meet renewable energy goals targeted by states, utilities and customers over the next 10 years and beyond.”

To help, policy from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and across the regions “should facilitate transmission as infrastructure that enables our clean energy future and provides myriad other benefits,” Lyons said.

And utilities will have an increasingly important role to play in the future of energy and transmission.

“Utilities have been the primary developers of transmission and will continue to be,” said Lyons, who added that “policymakers need to incentivize the right behaviors.”

For example, she cited “proactive policy” instituted by FERC’s Order 679 in 2006 designed to promote transmission investment through pricing reform and which she said led to significant investment by utilities and other industry stakeholders.
“We need similar focus and incentives today,” said Lyons. “Utilities and others making clean energy commitments have the opportunity to highlight the critical role that transmission plays in integrating these generation sources into the grid.”

Gasteiger agreed and said that utilities are “ready and prepared” to build and operate needed transmission, but what’s also critical right now “is the right direction and signals from regulators and policymakers” to make it all happen.

“On impactful topics such as incentives and rate of return, regulators need to consistently align decision-making with policy goals if we are to get transmission built in time to meet renewable energy goals and provide for a resilient grid,” said Gasteiger.

In addition to strong policy, federal and state regulators need to push it forward more quickly, the experts said.

“If FERC acts in favor of incentives and proactive ROE policy, regulation has the opportunity to facilitate transmission development,” said Lyons. “States have the opportunity to consider permitting and siting within their jurisdictions and how they facilitate (or stymie) transmission development.”

Other considerations noted in the report are that extreme weather and energy supply limitations are causing regional resilience concerns, according to the report.

Gasteiger suggested that the ongoing expansion of clean energy mandates and goals should be met with a commitment to “strategic transmission infrastructure” that will remedy transmission infrastructure gaps across the nation.
“There is no one-size-fits-all approach,” he said. “Each region faces its own set of issues and challenges. What is clear is that the regions should continue working together and learning from each other as to what has or hasn’t worked in getting needed transmission infrastructure built.”

Thus far, different regions are working through their clean energy challenges while also learning how transmission plays a role in solving such challenges, according to the report, which notes that their successes should be used as a blueprint for other regions.

For instance, Lyons said examples of successful transmission projects include those in New England, which saw a lot of transmission built in the 2000s; Texas, which built the competitive renewable energy zone (CREZ) projects to integrate wind; and California, which has integrated large amounts of wind and solar through transmission.

But, according to the report, there will be a need for more than 600 terawatt hours (TWh) to 714 TWh of mandated clean energy demand by 2030.

So the pressure is on.

“Regulators can, and should, take actions that speed the process up,” said Gasteiger. “With each action they take, they should be asking themselves, ‘Does this help get needed transmission built?’”