Keeping the electric power grid reliable and affordable has become a “critical challenge for the nation,” says a report by Grid Strategies and The Brattle Group.
Numerous challenges at various stages of the interconnection process delay the entry of new utility-scale generators, which are mostly low-cost renewables, “significantly” raising consumer costs and putting system reliability “at risk” as electricity demand rises, the report says.
Nationwide, 2600 GW of generating projects await interconnection studies, including 1100 GW of solar and 1000 GW of storage, some of which is co-located with solar.
Although the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC’s) Order No. 2023 on interconnection reforms issued last year “is helpful,” the report says that additional reforms are “urgently needed.”
The report comes weeks before a FERC workshop on “Innovations and Efficiencies in Generator Interconnection,” and was commissioned by Advanced Energy United and the Solar and Storage Industries Institute.
Proposed reforms range “across many aspects” of the interconnection process.
The first of four broad reform proposals is to create an “entry fee” process in which generators with ready-to-develop projects would pay a fee to gain access to transmission capacity that is already planned or will soon become available due to generator retirements.
A second set of reforms would implement a fast-track process to utilize planned or newly available transmission capacity, enabling resources that can use such available capacity and have paid the entry fee to bypass “time-consuming” cluster study processes designed to develop transmission solutions.
A third set of reforms would optimize the interconnection study process. One measure would enable project developers to select an energy-only interconnection option known as “connect and manage.” Another would direct transmission providers to evaluate all technologies that can “rapidly expand available headroom on transmission systems,” such as grid-enhancing technologies and advanced conductors. Other measures would use automation to expedite interconnection studies, improve alignment of interconnection study processes within and across systems, and establish independent monitors for interconnection studies.
The final set of reforms would speed transmission construction, starting with improved reporting on transmission construction progress, and also industry and government collaboration to reduce supply chain bottlenecks.
The 129-page report is titled “Unlocking America’s Energy: How to Efficiently Connect New Generation to the Grid.”
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