Preparing for a transition with limited transmission

IT has never been as lucrative to deploy wind, solar, batteries, and other alter native energy technologies yet simultaneously so difficult to connect these assets to electricity networks in a timely and cost-effective manner. That interconnection has become the biggest obstacle to decarbonising the grid is no secret to private developers, grid operators, utilities, and policymakers on the front lines of the energy transition.

The sheer volume of development activity on the periphery of the grid is staggering. The capacity of total projects in interconnection queues amounts to nearly twice the nationwide installed generation capacity, most of which are wind, solar, and batteries. But what makes the pain for developers and grid operators particularly acute is the decentralized nature of renewable energy resources, meaning we are replacing large, centralised power plants with a greater quantity of smaller, distributed assets. It is predominantly the higher volume of proposed projects that is fueling this daunting feedback loop of speculation, cancellation, and delay.

There is no shortage of reform proposals. Developers and grid operators have plenty of ideas about process improvements that can alleviate the crisis within existing frameworks (mostly at the behest of their respective counterparts), such as more stringent queue entry requirements, nes for missed interconnection study deadlines, and better data transparency. Unfortunately, many of these smaller tactical reforms have already been implemented and often favor one side or the other without tangibly moving the needle on key metrics like cancellation rates and delays. Other tactical solutions amenable to both sides, like batching proposed projects together in “cluster studies”, also have not seemed to stem the tide; in a recent interconnection reform plan, PJM hailed cluster studies as a cornerstone improvement despite the fact that SPP has been using the same approach since 2009 and still su ers from a remarkably clogged queue.

Grid experts agree we need more transformative solutions. Chief among these has been integrating the interconnection and transmission planning processes. As developers ock to areas with cheap land and high capacity factors, aligning broader network upgrades with new power plant development ensures renewables coming online will have enough line capacity to reliably deliver their generation output to load centers, bringing more certainty to the queue. This “no transition without transmission” narrative is the most popular and ostensibly straightforward response to the inundation of queue backlog visualisations and congestion heatmaps in West Texas.

However, this lens tends to overlook the most disruptive characteristic of renewable energy production, particularly solar and storage. Although centralising transmission planning and interconnection processes could potentially emerge as a silver bullet, we should hedge these e orts with strategies that emphasise what this new wave of alternative energy technology does extremely well: decentralise power production. Limits of centralised modeling

We are already stretching the limits of what centralised grid planning can accomplish and expanding the scope of responsibility may exacerbate the very di culties that already make grid infrastructure so complicated and time-intensive to build. When conducting interconnection studies for new projects, the challenge of modeling new hypothetical states of the grid to identify upgrade needs and assign costs is not necessarily calculating power ows but rather handling the rotating door of assumptions that make study conclusions obsolete nearly as fast as they are produced.

The complexity and uncertainty driving this rotating door are primarily due to two factors inherent to pairing centralised models with decentralized stakeholders: the interdependency of developer behavior and exogenous factors outside the scope of interconnection analysis. When a developer participates in a cluster study and gets hit with a big network upgrade cost they may drop out of the queue, triggering a cascade of reshu ing model assumptions and restudies. Additionally, they may cancel or delay projects because of “exogenous shocks” caused by forces outside the scope of the network model, like local permitting opposition, that are not related to grid upgrade costs, but that nevertheless spin the assumption wheel.

Expanding the scope of interconnection analysis to include regional transmission planning increases the geographical area of the grid under consideration, meaning there are greater quantities of independent developers and local communities involved whose behavior must be accounted for. Greater numbers mean higher probabilities that an unhappy developer or landowner changes the model assumptions, compounding the very uncertainty grid operators are trying to mitigate.

We need a strategy that eases the burden on our existing interconnection institutions, not one that expands the scope of their responsibility. The logic of colocation

Power plant development balances the tradeo between cheap, undeveloped land far from load centers with high capacity factors and proximity to consumers in expensive industrial or urban areas with potentially lower capacity factors. As interconnection and curtailment woes translate to rising delivery costs and upgrade delays for consumers, nanciers of both generation and industrial o takers will lose patience for long queues and transmission buildout. Instead, they will explore ways to deploy assets faster and with more certainty by putting generation and load closer together, even if paying proportionally more for land and site construction.

Everyone wants to see transmission get built, but in light of the structural challenges outlined above, it is unwise to pin all hopes on one solution. We should allocate more support towards what makes renewables and new energy technologies di erent from legacy forms of thermal generation resources by exploring ways to accelerate decentralised, co-located development.

—Renewable Energy World