The grid consultancy Tapestry, launched seven years ago as a Google “moonshot” project, has announced it will work with Google and the grid operator PJM to deliver artificial intelligence (AI) tools. These tools are expected to streamline the interconnection application process, which is the first step to enable new generators to connect to the transmission grid.
The collaboration will automate and improve the process of verifying data on interconnection applications. By speeding data verification, Tapestry aims to reduce the burden on energy developers and PJM planners, “and significantly reduce the time it takes to process new project applications,” said Tapestry General Manager Page Crahan in a statement.
PJM had 225 GW of solar, wind, storage and hybrid projects awaiting interconnection at the end of 2023, and the grid operator reports that 50 GW of “mostly renewable” projects have cleared its interconnection process but are not yet online. In 2022, to prevent its interconnection backlog from increasing, PJM paused review of new interconnection requests until 2026. The grid operator serves 67 million customers in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions.
Crahan said that “ultimately, the vision for this project extends” to a suite of tools that could “dramatically improve the transmission planning process.” Added transmission within PJM could make it easier, faster and less costly for new generators to interconnect.
Tapestry’s suite of tools will create for PJM an “AI-enabled unified model of the grid,” Crahan said. Like “Google maps for electrons,” the model will bring together multiple grid models into a single model with multiple views or layers.
The existing siloed grid models, Crahan explained, perform functions such as documenting equipment locations, tracking the thermal capacity of each asset, managing grid connections, and showing the economic impact of connecting new sources. Currently, “every time a change is made in one model, it must be applied to all the other models,” she said.
Automating interconnection
Highlighting related work, Commissioner David Rosner with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recently said in a letter to the nation’s six regional grid operators that an automation solution used by midcontinent grid operator MISO “reproduced the manual study of a large interconnection cluster—which took nearly two years to complete—in just 10 days, arriving at largely similar results.”
MISO has worked with Pearl Street Technologies to implement that firm’s interconnection automation platform, known as SUGAR.
Worthwhile
According to a study by the consultancy Deloitte that was commissioned by Tapestry and Google, faster deployment of energy infrastructure in the PJM region through 2045 could contribute about $21 billion in annual gross domestic product, and increase construction jobs in the region by 5%.
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