Completing three 500 kV transmission line upgrades in the Southeast that would cost $5 billion would achieve $8 billion in savings, for a net benefit of $3 billion, the consultancy Brattle has projected in a report.
A projected $2.9 billion of the savings would result from lowering operational costs “by accessing the cheapest available energy sources,” the report says. Other savings would result from reducing peak energy demand costs by sharing power across states, and strengthening the grid against extreme weather and unexpected disruptions.
Potential additional benefits, the report said, include “greater production cost savings with increased solar/wind additions” and reduced costs for interconnection upgrades.
The report was prepared for the Clean Energy Buyers Association (CEBA), the Southern Renewable Energy Association (SREA), and the Carolinas Clean Energy Business Association (CCEBA).
The groups said in a statement that the Southeast “remains the only major U.S. region that has not approved a regional transmission project.”
Katie Southworth, CEBA’s deputy director of market and policy innovation for the Southeast, said “the business community understands that an outdated power grid is a business risk.”
Simon Mahan, SREA’s executive director, said that as manufacturers and data centers bring jobs to the Southeast, “without a modern transmission system, we risk higher energy prices, power shortages, and lost economic opportunities. The utilities can’t keep just patching up local lines. Regional investment is the only way forward.”
Chris Carmody, executive director of CCEBA, called for improving the region’s transmission planning process, saying “now is the time for state regulators and utilities to act.”
Leading examples
The Brattle report describes recent transmission investments by U.S. grid operators MISO, ERCOT and PJM that total, respectively, $33 billion, $31 billion and $6 billion.
Within the Southeast, Brattle reports that the Carolinas Transmission Planning Collaborative, which includes the utility Duke Energy, has implemented a “proactive, scenario-based” planning process to identify multi-value strategic transmission upgrades. That process, currently underway, is “providing a blueprint that can be scaled up to the regional Southeast planning process.”
But elsewhere in the Southeast, the report says, “utilities do not study regional upgrades to support the future generation mix; instead, higher-cost network upgrades will be identified on a just-in-time basis through generator interconnection studies.”
The report recommends that the Southeast Regional Transmission Planning (SERTP) entity implement nine fundamental changes to its regional planning process, drawn from “best practices from across the industry,” to “reduce long-term system costs and risks.”
Proactive transmission upgrades will also “allow new loads to interconnect more quickly.”
The recommended reforms “will ensure that the Southeast’s transmission system is better prepared for future energy needs while keeping costs low, reliability high, and regulatory burdens minimal,” Brattle says.
The three groups sponsoring the report noted that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Order 1920 “created a process to modernize long-term transmission planning.”
The Brattle report is titled “Modernizing Southeast grid investments: How enhanced regional transmission planning supports a growing economy.”
The report was funded by the Clean Grid Initiative, a project supported by the nonprofit fiscal sponsor Multiplier.
The three transmission upgrades analyzed by Brattle are mapped on electronic page 9 of SERTP’s 2024 Regional Transmission Planning Analyses
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