The US power sector continues to see surging levels of new clean generation and storage projects in development, as well as rapidly rising demand for electricity to power new end uses, industrial electrification, and economic growth. There is no shortage of interest in developing and accessing the increasingly low-cost, carbon-free generation that characterizes the vast majority of projects seeking connection to the grid today. There is, however, a shortage of grid capacity to accommodate this expansion of both generation and load. While enhanced transmission planning and build-out is the long-term solution to addressing our capacityconstrained electric grid, there are near-term tools at our disposal to ensure we are getting the most out of the grid we have.
In this analysis, we assess the potential for gridenhancing technologies (GETs) to facilitate the cost-effective, timely interconnection of new generation across five states within the PJM region: Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Working with regional power flow cases and PJM's interconnection study criteria, we analyzed the viability of GETs as network upgrades for queued projects in those five states. Additionally, we ran a PJM-wide economic dispatch model to evaluate the impacts of these technologies and the queued generation they enable to interconnect.
GETs are hardware and software solutions that are deployed within the existing transmission system, helping increase the capacity, flexibility, and efficiency of the current grid. These transmission tools dynamic line ratings (DLRs), advanced power flow controls (PFCs), and topology optimization (TO) are becoming more widely studied and deployed in the United States as well as internationally; however, they are not yet routinely considered in planning paradigms such as grid operators' interconnection studies. Because they are cheaper and quicker to install than other types of transmission upgrades, such as reconductoring or rebuilding lines, GETs have tremendous potential to expedite the integration of new resources onto the grid.
Our analysis results reveal that GETs support higher levels of new resource integration and deliver large economic benefits. We find that deploying GETs as network upgrades would allow over 6 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity from the existing PJM queue to come on line within the next three years (see Exhibit ES1) at significant savings for both project developers (see Exhibit ES2) and consumers (see Exhibit ES3).
