Advanced Energy Perspectives

FERC’s landmark transmission planning order – Order No. 1920 – will require changes to how America builds up its transmission system, the backbone of our electric grid. Fundamental to this new process will be a formalized role for states in deciding how transmission lines are planned and paid for. The ruling has the potential to transform our system by encouraging cooperation and prioritizing system reliability and affordability. Getting it right will require a new approach by many stakeholders, and will especially require robust state engagement. 

When FERC issued Order 2023 requiring an overhaul to interconnection processes, clean energy advocates lauded it as a crucial first step in addressing overdue reforms. Inefficient interconnection processes for integrating new clean energy resources onto the grid present arguably the biggest current bottleneck in the energy transition, threatening both grid reliability, affordability, and states’ abilities to meet their climate and energy policy requirements. While a lot of work to fully rectify interconnection in New England will remain even after Order 2023 reforms are implemented, compliance with this Order marks a crucial milestone towards a more efficient, equitable, and expedient interconnection process. 

The recently finalized Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) transmission planning and cost allocation rule—known as Order 1920—represents a pivotal moment in the regulatory landscape of energy infrastructure in the United States, which we expect will launch the nation towards a more holistic planning approach for our country’s transmission grid.

America has not been building the kind of transmission lines it needs to reliably and cost-effectively power our grid, and a major part of the problem has been our short-term, just-in-time planning process. On May 13, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) released Order No. 1920, meant to modernize the transmission planning process by viewing the system through a wider lens to plan for and construct the transmission system we need for the future.

With the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) much-awaited final rule on Transmission Planning and Cost Allocation imminent, New England’s grid operator, ISO-NE, quietly prepared to file at FERC its own hugely consequential, self-initiated Longer-Term Transmission Planning (LTTP) reforms. The problem it seeks to address? With peak demand for electricity set to double to 51 – 57 GW in the region by 2050, planners recognize the current grid’s transmission capabilities are ill-equipped to ensure reliability while handling the transition to an emissions-free electricity sector. ISO’s LTTP filing establishes a framework for procuring, building, and funding transmission projects and follows the inception of a new paradigm for long-term electric system planning. Combined, these solutions promise to propel us towards the much-needed build-out of the future grid and help us reach urgent state energy and climate policy requirements. In recognition, Advanced Energy United, along with a number of other allied organizations, wrote to ISO-NE and the New England States Committee on Electricity (NESCOE), commending their efforts while urging them to leverage this process as soon as it is effective.