The expansion from the 22 projects in the 2021 report to the 36 projects ready-to-go in this report reflects expanded market interest in transmission, but much of the growth is from new transmission projects to interconnect offshore wind projects in the Northeast and MidAtlantic.5 However, new projects serving a range of purposes have also emerged in other regions as well. [...] From 2013 to 2017, roughly half of the authorized transmission investments were approved out- side of the regional planning and cost allocation processes, and to date non-RTO regions have not approved a line planned through the regional planning process.63 In MISO, al- most 80% of spending on transmission went to local projects from 2018-2020, and in PJM during that period about two-thirds of spen. [...] The movement to the needs found in the studies above, into construction and the addition of the 22,500 GW-miles added by these new projects reflects some progress 36 projects is just under 10% of the on transmission in the US. [...] The large differences in power prices as Winter Storm Elliott moved west-to-east across the country, plus the economic cost of outages in parts of the Southeast, indicate the value a stronger power grid could have provided during the event. [...] Based on the ability to use the geograph- ic diversity of wind and solar resources to obtain a more constant output profile, and the complementarity between wind and solar output profiles, it is typically possible for the nameplate capacity of wind and solar attached to a transmission line to exceed the capacity of the line by around 50%.
- Pages
- 45
- Published in
- United States of America
