Advanced Energy Perspectives

For the second time this year, Nevada’s energy leaders are convening to discuss the future of Nevada’s transmission system. Born from bipartisan (and AEE-supported) Senate Bill 448 (2021), the Regional Transmission Coordination (RTC) Task Force is charged with studying issues and policies related to transmission development and regional electricity markets for the Silver State. At the meeting today, the Task Force will hear about several competing efforts to create a more efficient and affordable western grid. There will be presentations from the California Independent System Operator, the Southwest Power Pool, and the Western Power Pool – each vying for Nevada’s attention and consideration. And while the exact contours of the West’s “Grid of the Future” remain to be determined, the benefits of a west-wide power system are becoming increasingly clear.

The growth of renewable energy has been accompanied by a worrisome trend: rising delays and wait times for projects asking for connection to the grid. These holdups lead to canceled projects, lost jobs, and wasted effort. Without changes to interconnection, this trend will only worsen, as the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and rising fuel costs for conventional generation accelerate advanced energy adoption. Earlier this year, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) took the first step toward streamlining the interconnection process, but there is a long way to go.

On July 25, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) Board of Directors approved an ambitious long-term plan to expand transmission infrastructure in the MISO North and Central regions (now called MISO Midwest) to serve growing demands for renewable energy and improve system reliability. The Long-Term Regional Transmission Plan (LRTP) is the second such major long-term regional transmission plan approved by MISO in the past 12 years, building on the Multi-Value Projects (MVP) transmission plan approved by MISO in 2011. MISO’s long-range planning efforts in MISO Midwest can serve as a national model for how to conduct long-range transmission planning to meet the needs of a changing generation resource mix. Meanwhile, the fact that the MISO South region will not see a similar plan until 2024 at the earliest demonstrates the challenges that must be overcome to ensure such effective planning happens everywhere – and leads to development of the transmission needed for a clean energy future.

As the West deals with a record-setting heat wave that is fueling catastrophic droughts and wildfires and is testing the limits of America's aging power grid, our team at AEE is focused on how we can improve grid resilience and connect more clean energy by establishing a regional transmission organization (RTO) to operate the power grid for Western states. Now, we can say with certainty just what the West would gain in savings, jobs, and economic growth - and it’s a lot.

Grid operators today are managing a changing portfolio mix while facing new system reliability challenges, such as extreme weather events occurring with greater frequency. As the clean energy transition accelerates, it’s vital that grid operators accurately understand how much they can count on different generating resources. They do so by evaluating the resource adequacy, or capacity value, of the resources available to determine how to meet total demand. But what happens when those methods of valuing capacity overlook certain outage risks? Some generating resources gain more reliability credit than they deserve. That is indeed happening with conventional power plants (coal, oil, and natural gas), which may be overvalued by as much as 20% under traditional methods. As new analysis commissioned by AEE shows, it’s time to get capacity right.