TODAY’S STUDY: THE WIRES NEW ENERGY NEEDS

First, the bad news: Well, not really news. It's been written here many times. The U.S. is simply not moving ahead very effectively on the new transmission urgently needed to efficiently deliver this nation's enourmous but remote New Energy resources to its clean-energy-hungry electricity users. Sadly, today's transmission-building bureaucratic complexities make the red tape that gave life to the World War II-era acronym SNAFU (Situation Normal, All-F**cked Up) seem like child's play. What made NewEnergyNews title its first entry on transmission in 2007 TRANSMISSION-TO-US INTERRUPTUS? has not been improved much.

Now the good news: Thanks to the untiring leadership of visionaries and engineers such as the Working group for Investment in Reliable and Economic electrical Systems (WIRES), which published the report highlighted below, the vision of what can be built is becoming crystal clear and the technology is getting ever better. Check out the report.

It is only a matter of time - and persistence. In the end, the logic of New Energy is simply undeniable to anybody who cares about their kids, their grandkids or the fate of this good earth.

Smart Transmission: Modernizing the Nation’s High Voltage Electric Transmission System
January 2011 (Working group for Investment in Reliable and Economic electrical Systems – WIRES)

Executive Summary

North America’s high-voltage electric transmission system, often referred to as the “grid,” is today an aggregation of evolving networks of complex physical and information systems that enable the flow of electricity across and between regions. Transmission systems are already “smart” in the kind of sophisticated monitoring, market, and control technologies employed to manage the flow of power. However, the physical and public policy demands on that system are changing and transmission providers, both incumbent utilities and new market entrants that propose to build and own transmission facilities on a merchant basis, and grid operators are making new investments in physical transmission and information technology infrastructure to modernize the grid and make it stronger, smarter, and more efficient and secure.

For the high voltage transmission system, the modern smart grid exists at the intersection of four elements: (1) the physical infrastructure of the electric system; (2) advanced information technologies such as measurement, analytics, automation and controls; (3) high-speed bi-directional communication of data and control commands; and (4) advanced components such as power electronics, energy storage, and composite core transmission lines and superconductors. These technologies, deployed in a coordinated, strategic fashion, are making the transmission system more reliable, secure, flexible, efficient, economic, diverse, and environmentally sustainable.

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This report reviews the elements of smart transmission and the investments that transmission providers are making to modernize and improve North America’s high voltage grid. Although today’s high voltage transmission system already contains high levels of sophisticated monitoring, analysis, automation, two-way communications, and power electronics, new investments are increasing the grid’s digital management capabilities and efficiency as well as its throughput and reliability.

This report focuses on transmission-level technologies and the new investments being made to enhance the transmission system with those technologies. It does not examine the application of smart grid technologies at the distribution level, or behind the customer’s electric meter – applications that are more typically associated with the term “smart grid.” Last, this report seeks to place in perspective investment in smart technologies and in the physical transmission capacity that will be more fully utilized as part of the Smart Grid.

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Smart Transmission: An Introduction

Section 1301 of the Energy Independence & Security Act of 2007 (“Act”) established a federal policy that the nation’s electricity transmission and distribution system should be modernized to maintain a reliable and secure electricity infrastructure. The Act laid out the goals and characteristics of the smart grid. For purposes of the transmission system, those characteristics include:

Increased use of digital information and controls technology to improve the reliability, security and efficiency of the electric system,

The dynamic optimization of grid operations and resources, with full cyber-security,

The development of standards for communication and interoperability of devices and equipment connected to the grid, including the infrastructure serving the grid.

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The Act makes clear that the smart grid, including smart transmission, should also support the deployment and integration – actual or potential -- of demand-side resources, distributed generation, renewable generation, energy storage, and electric vehicles.

The modern transmission system is information-rich and complex. It must therefore be complemented by sophisticated processes and a workforce trained to understand, support, and exploit the capabilities of the system. Smart transmission, like the rest of the smart grid, is (or will be) characterized and built upon clear technical interoperability standards, open architectures that enable technological and process innovation, and extensive physical and cyber-security protections.

Even before the recent upswing in smart grid investments, the bulk power system was comprised of central station generation, transmission, and the dispatch and market systems that operate them. Together, it was the “smartest” component of the entire electric system. The system of communications-linked power plants, substations and control devices, informed by SCADA systems (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition), and high-speed relays that collect grid and device information, make distributed control decisions and feed or respond to complex market or other dispatch phenomena. Smart grid investments today are building upon that foundation to provide an ever-increasing level of reliable and market responsive service…

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The Benefits of Smart Transmission Investment

Smart transmission investment provides a range of benefits to power customers and to the markets that support the electricity trade. Although they vary according to the type and location of smart technologies, installation of new digital technologies materials and implementation of the functionalities identified above are aimed at achieving the following:

Increased reliability

Increased electricity throughput at lower delivered cost

More efficient fuel use for generation, yielding lower air emissions

Greater use of renewable and other clean generation resources, with lower operational integration costs

More effective use of energy storage to lower the costs of peak electricity provision

Facilitating third party participation in the power system

Fostering wholesale and retail markets by improving information available to customers and market participants on grid conditions and electricity prices and usage

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Advanced technologies are proving their worth on the grid every day.

Although as widely deployed across the transmission system as on any other part of the electricity system, modern technologies themselves are not a panacea for what afflicts the system. Despite the installation of modern communications technology on the high-voltage network, a significant reduction in direct, real-time human control of all aspect of the system in favor of equally (if not more) reliable automation is just beginning. The smart transmission system of the future will be adjusted a myriad of FACTS devices over a wide area to maintain the grid in a steady state and it will do so faster than a human controller possibly could. In addition to improved relays, ubiquitous broadband, and common control platforms, the development and deployment of an information-enabled dynamic control infrastructure, operating like "autopilots" from a reduced number of proprietary control platforms, will be essential if we are to significantly reduce the potential for human error in the interest of maximizing efficiency and safety.

Moreover, the ability of the grid control system to "heal" itself promptly when an interruption threatens or occurs will depend on use of EMS systems and state estimators that archive millions of past system "states" with which they can test current operations and make adjustments. The system will actually evolve.

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Although modern and smart grid investments will strengthen the transmission and generation system in many ways, smart grid investments complement and supplement but cannot replace conventional “wires in the air and steel on the ground” in terms of new or upgraded facilities. Computers, information technology, and communications alone cannot deliver generation from location-constrained renewable power plants to customers if physical transmission capacity either does not exist or is very limited. Congested transmission lines cannot deliver high volume of power between regions without construction of new high voltage AC or DC lines. Large metropolitan areas with growing loads will need new smart substations and other equipment to maintain even existing levels of reliability. Enhancing the physical backbone of the high voltage transmission system may be needed to improve system redundancy and resilience in response to the potential for terrorism and the threat to cyber-security.

On a per capita basis, Americans are consuming more electricity than ever before. Even with growing use of energy efficiency, demand response, and distributed generation, new challenges like demographic shifts and concentrations of energy users, urban sprawl, and changing patterns of energy use will drive the need for new transmission facilities. Economists that have studied various future scenarios predict that the nation will require as much as $300 billion in transmission investment by 2030, only about one-third of which will be a direct response to public policy directives that necessitate increased reliance on renewable energy resources. Much of this investment will be driven by the fact that most of the existing transmission system was built over 30 years ago, and many of those facilities have been over-utilized and insufficiently updated or maintained. Consider that 70% of America’s transmission lines are 25 years or older; 70% of the large power transformers are 25 years old or older; and 60% of the circuit breakers are more than 30 years old. Consider further that most of those facilities were built before digital technologies were available. Failed or degraded transformers have caused restricted thermal ratings or rerouting that caused hundreds of millions of dollars in congestion costs and reduced the region’s grid reliability over the past few years. Such failures have resulted in local brown-outs and outages and, on occasion, caused wide-area black-outs.

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According to the Department of Energy, major power outages and power quality problems cost the U.S. economy as much as $180 billion annually. With increased load on the system and transmission over greater distances come greater line losses and wasted energy. In the absence of major load reductions, only technology-driven efficiencies or significant transmission capacity improvements will be capable of maintaining system throughput efficiency.

Capacity constraints on existing transmission systems in some regions make more difficult any interconnection of new generation to the system. The challenge of integrating new capacity, especially where the demands of public policy are at stake, can be daunting. In the California ISO, for example, there are 375 power plants in the queue awaiting interconnection agreements, representing over 52,000 MW of capacity, and another 30 more with executed agreements.

Approximately 70% of California's queued capacity represents renewable generation which is favored under the state’s renewable energy standards.

Regional transmission organizations and regulators continue to seek ways to streamline long and costly interconnection queues where new generators, excluding the majority of proposed plants that drop out for economic reasons, nevertheless await sufficient transmission capacity to enable delivery of their power to load.

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The integration of new renewable wind energy resources will therefore require new and upgraded transmission. ITC’s proposed Green Power Express project would entail transmission lines and related facilities through North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana, interconnecting approximately 12,000 MW of new wind generation to distant load centers. The Upper Midwest Transmission Development Initiative (a coordinated effort among five states – Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota) has, with the help of the Midwest ISO, developed plans to meet the existing RPS standards adopted by the five states. Those plans were developed by the Midwest ISO as part of the Regional Generator Outlet Study which looked at the transmission needed to move 15,000-25,000 incremental MWs of wind generation throughout the MISO footprint. MISO also developed, and FERC recently approved, the Multi-Value Project cost allocation proposal which would allocate the cost of regional MVPs to the entire Midwest ISO footprint. Currently, the Midwest ISO is analyzing approximately $5 billion of new 345kV and 765kV transmission that would be eligible for MVP cost allocation status and that would be built between now and 2020. In Texas, Oncor Electric Delivery and other investors are building over 2300 miles3 of new 345 kV transmission line and upgrading others dedicated principally to wind resource areas to allow more than 18,000 MW of wind power to reach consumers. Without these new transmission facilities, these wind generators would not be able to connect to the grid and customers would be denied access to renewable generation that they may prefer and state energy policy mandates. However, in all the cases cited, new communications and control technologies will be instrumental in optimizing the efficient use of those facilities.

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Concluding Observations

North America’s transmission system is already smart, and new investments in technology will make it even smarter. Most of these smart grid technology elements are well-tested, mature and cost-effective, and their use will make the North American bulk power system more reliable, secure, efficient, economic, diverse, and environmentally sustainable. But while communications, computer analytical tools, sensors, and controls are critical smart grid elements, those technologies cannot themselves deliver electricity from a power plant to the consumer. That task requires a strong platform of wires, cables, and substations, and that in turn requires investment in existing transmission infrastructure and additional investment in new wires in the air and transformers on the ground. The combination of conventional transmission technologies with advanced smart grid elements will optimize the value of transmission investments and enhance transmission’s value and service to the nation.