Brattle Consultants Quantify the Benefits of Proactive GI Planning in a Recent Report for ESIG
At the end of 2021, there were over 8,000 generation interconnection (GI) requests in the lower 48 states, consisting of 1,000 GW of generation and 400 GW of storage. The average wait time in the queue, currently at about four years, is becoming longer.
A more proactive approach could remedy the delay observed in the current GI process if it involves (1) increasing the number of projects in an interconnection cluster study by extending either the window of time or the geographical area considered and (2) improving coordination of other planning processes could help. With EnerNex, Brattle consultants coauthored a study – prepared for the Energy Systems Integration Group (ESIG) Proactive Planning Task Force – that seeks to quantify the benefits of proactive GI planning. The study, “Proactive Planning for Generation Interconnection: A Case Study of SPP and MISO,” provides a comparison across three levels of “proactive-ness:”
- Level 1 represents the status quo, where RTO/ISOs and utilities study GI on an annual (or semi-annual) basis.
- Level 2 represents a multi-year (3-year) study window from the existing GI queue, rather than a single (or half a) year.
- Level 3 represents a multi-year (5-year) study window together with a better-coordinated Affected Systems Study (AFS) that a previous study (the MISO-SPP Joint Targeted Interconnection Queue study) analyzed.
The authors found that proactive GI planning can help bridge the gap between short-term GI studies and long-term transmission planning studies while significantly reducing GI costs. The full study, coauthored by Principal Bruce Tsuchida, Managing Energy Associate Dr. Long Lam, Energy Specialist Adam Bigelow, and Senior Energy Analyst Jadon Grove, is available below.
