ACORE report shows greater regional connectivity could have saved funds, power during severe winter freeze in Texas
The damage caused by Winter Storm Uri in Texas this February need not have been so extreme, according to a new report from the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE), if only the Texas power grid supported greater interregional transmission with its neighbors.
In fact, the “Transmission Makes the Power System Resilient to Extreme Weather” report claims that with each additional gigawatt of transmission capacity connecting ERCOT with its neighbors, Texas could have saved nearly $1 billion and helped provide stable heating and power to another approximately 200,000 Texas homes. This would have been achieved by the interconnection nullifying local fluctuations in power supply and demand and offering other sources of power during the winter emergency.
Hundreds died as a result of Uri, and damages from blackouts alone crossed into the hundreds of billions of dollars. At its height, ERCOT warned that the Texas power grid had been mere minutes away from complete failure when it instituted partial grid shutdowns.
“As severe weather events become more frequent, our balkanized power grid is increasingly unable to deliver reliable electricity to consumers who need it,” ACORE President and CEO Gregory Wetstone said. “This report demonstrates that we are already paying an enormous price for our lack of interregional transmission and that the benefits of a robust transmission grid would quickly surpass the cost of constructing new lines. It is time to implement pro-transmission policies to enable the investments we need to strengthen our grid, lower costs for consumers and reduce power outages during extreme weather events.”
Texas was not alone in receiving flak from the report, however. Additional transmission would have helped during severe weather events in the Northeast and the Midwest as well between 2014 and 2021. During Uri, the report notes that other parts of the central United States could also have avoided power outages while saving consumers more than $100 million. When polar vortexes hit the Northeast and Midwest in 2014 and 2019, respectively, additional transmission ties could have saved tens of millions of dollars.
“The report reaffirms that transmission is critical to ensure reliable, low-cost energy for customers, and it is consistent with MISO’s analysis of the February Arctic Event, which concluded that new transmission capacity, along with improved interregional coordination and interconnection, will bring significant benefits to facilitate reliability and efficiency,” Jennifer Curran, vice president of System Planning at the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), said.
In its report, ACORE also laid out policies for reform planning as well as plans to pay for and permit new transmission lines to encourage greater transmission interconnectivity.
