Brattle Consultants Discuss the Need for Intertie Optimization in New Report
Prepared for ACORE, Advanced Power Alliance, Grid United, Invenergy, MAREC Action, and NRDC
Interregional transmission capacity in much of North America is not used efficiently, which unnecessarily raises costs and reduces reliability. Market monitors have long documented that interregional transmission is underutilized despite efforts, such as coordinated transaction scheduling (CTS), with power even flowing the wrong way –from high-priced to low-priced markets – during approximately 40 percent of all real-time market intervals of the year.
In a new multi-client report, electricity experts from Brattle and Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP recommend that, in the absence of action by the regional grid operators, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) should remedy the well-documented inefficient uses of interregional transmission capabilities between energy markets. As wholesale power markets become more volatile and weather-dependent, the value of interregional diversification increases, with an increased need for new interregional transmission and market designs that can utilize that capacity fully and efficiently. Intertie optimization will make that possible.
The report, The Need for Intertie Optimization: Reducing Customer Costs, Improving Grid Resilience, and Encourage Interregional Transmission, was coauthored by Brattle Principal Johannes Pfeifenberger, Manager Joe DeLosa III, and Research Analyst John Gonzalez with former FERC Commissioner Norman C. Bay and Vivian W. Chum of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP. It was prepared for ACORE, Advanced Power Alliance, Grid United, Invenergy, MAREC Action, and NRDC.
The full report and a summary presentation of its findings – presented during an Energy Systems Integration Group (ESIG) webinar and panel discussion – can be found below.
