How to deploy advanced transmission technologies

In the United States, demand for power is growing faster than supply, and especially clean supply, can keep up.

As a result, a growing chorus of grid experts and stakeholders, including both the White House and the Department of Energy earlier this year, have encouraged the deployment of grid-enhancing technologies, or GETs, to make the most of the existing grid. GETs are an example of advanced transmission technologies, or ATTs, a category of technologies that includes both software and hardware solutions, such as advanced conductors, dynamic line ratings, or advanced power flow control devices.

The latest buoy for advanced transmission is a roadmap for their deployment from MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, authored by Rob Gramlich, founder and president of Grid Strategies; Brian Deese, former director of the National Economic Council under the Biden administration and current innovation fellow at MIT; and Anna Pasnau, an economic advisor at MIT who works closely with Deese.

“U.S. electricity deployment is falling behind the pace necessary to meet projected demand growth,” the report says. That delay, it continues, will potentially compromise “the United States’ ability to meet its clean energy deployment goals” and raise electricity costs to boot. 

Using ATTs can help meet this demand growth cost-effectively, without relying on brand new generation, they found. However, electricity markets are structured in a way that disincentivizes innovation. The authors, therefore, came up with a five-point plan for skirting the hurdle of the market, one which essentially comes down to policy changes.

Their recommendations are: 

1. For regulators to require transmission providers to use ATTs in certain contexts; for instance, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission should require dynamic line ratings on congested lines, they said, and DOE should adopt a national conductor efficiency standard;
2. For transmission providers and regulators to conduct robust analyses of the value of ATTs for their current footprint, a recommendation that represents a deepening of the requirements of FERC Order No. 1920, finalized in May;
3. For FERC, DOE, and, where possible, state legislatures to create financial incentives for transmission providers to adopt ATTs where they can provide significant benefits;
4. For FERC to require transmission providers to release additional data on the grid and building digital tools to inform ATTs adoption, which would include researchers (likely at a national lab) to develop a “digital twin” of the current transmission system; and
5. For FERC to require transmission providers to release data to a third-party entity, such as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, that takes on the responsibility of planning ATT adoption. 

One of the reasons GETs deployment is so crucial is the fact that getting renewables onto the grid is harder than ever. As electricity demand soars — due largely to the combined pressures of electrification, data center growth, and onshoring — using GETs to, well, enhance the existing grid is the best way to make sure the power system is taking full advantage of the infrastructure that already exists.   

This is a point that the International Energy Agency echoed in its new research, also released this week: its “first-even global stocktake” on the global integration of solar and wind across 50 power systems.

The variability of these resources “will require increasing the flexibility of the entire power system” by using tools such as GETs, as well as dispatchable generation, increased storage, and demand response.

And any delays will cost the grid; IEA found that waiting to implement these measures could jeopardize the up to 15% of solar and wind generation in 2030 — and result in a 20% smaller emission reduction.