The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) recently released a report entitled Collaborative Enhancements to Unlock Interregional Transmission, which includes recommendations to address challenges facing interregional transmission planning, permitting, and operations and utilization. The report notes that its objective "is to confront the barriers to interregional transmission that exist today and address them with potential reforms and collaborative solutions."
As the generation mix in the United States transitions to a higher percentage of renewable and carbon-free resources, the transmission system is experiencing the need for unprecedented transformation. The generation and transmission transitions have recently accelerated with passage of federal laws such as the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). The report also notes that climate change and severe weather events are straining the transmission system, causing more unplanned outages and increasing demand on the transmission grid.
The report discusses how investment in interregional transmission infrastructure – transmission interconnections between transmission planning regions – can help address these challenges to ensure the transmission system across the United States remains reliable into the future. Distinguishing between states, planning regions, and the federal government as key actors in implementing recommended solutions, the "report identifies solutions with the potential for immediate beneficial impact on interregional transmission with the ultimate goal of allowing more effective identification and advancement of interregional transmission projects that create the most positive net value to the participating systems."
More specifically, the report identifies specific problems and then proposes solutions to address them. First, the report notes three primary challenges to interregional transmission planning: a) lack of planning motivators, b) cost allocation, and c) planning process misalignment and analysis limitations. Expansion of coordinated interregional planning, process harmonization by standardizing best practices in regional and interregional transmission planning, and model and data harmonization to better collaborate on interregional transmission analysis, primarily at the planning regions (multi-state) level, offer potential solutions to improving interregional transmission planning activities.
Second, the report notes that permitting of transmission projects takes place at the state level and that there are certain challenges that present barriers to the successful permitting of interregional transmission projects, such as meeting different permitting criteria and processes in states crossed by interregional transmission line and working with state agencies that may have limited resources. The report offers various solutions to address challenges related to creation of special state transmission authorities that would engage in a variety of transmission planning activities, providing non-energy host community benefits such as job training, revenue sharing and other investments, streamlined need determination across planning and permitting processes, and coordination efforts related to multi-state evidentiary records to help expedite permitting timelines.
Third, regarding transmission line operations challenges, the report poses solutions that could aid in ensuring the interregional lines are utilized in the most valuable manner – that is, ensuring that interregional transmission is used "both responsively and at lower cost." The report notes that "[r]ecent historical data for the operation of existing interregional transmission lines indicate that interregional interties are often underutilized even when flows are most valuable." The report goes on to offer potential solutions to operational challenges, such as reducing transaction charge impacts, reducing advanced-time requirements, developing optimized scheduling mechanisms, and improving utilization of interties for resiliency.
The report also discusses that certain proposed solutions have been addressed by recent actions at the federal level, such as promulgation of FERC Order 1920 that reforms transmission planning and cost allocation, FERC Order 1977 that amends FERC's regulations regarding its transmission siting authority under the Federal Power Act, and other rulemakings at the U.S. Department of Energy, including funding opportunities for infrastructure projects.
The complete report is available on NARUC's website and can be viewed here.
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