Toward More Effective Transmission Planning: Addressing the Costs and Risks of an Insufficiently Flexible Electricity Grid
Prepared for WIRES
WIRES is proud to submit this electric transmission analysis for consideration by policy makers, planners, regulators, and the public. Its importance cannot be overestimated, in our view, for two reasons. First, the report will help the reader grasp that, despite the positive and constructive aspects of transmission planning in the United States today, planners still depend on outmoded methodologies that are likely to cause those critical planning processes to result in suboptimal transmission solutions in the future. Second, the report reflects new issues that have arisen because our historical network of wires and substations is being modernized by federal and state regulators (for example, under FERC’s Order No 1000) and by integration of distributed generation technologies, demand responsive innovations, and new digital monitoring and control mechanisms into the larger electricity marketplace – a development with enormous benefits but one that has not eroded the central role of the transmission system as the platform for innovation, security, and markets.
