Getting more out of the grid we've already built

Clean-energy transmission lines in the US are horribly congested,
and buildout of new ones is agonizingly slow. Yet while other
parts of the world use grid-enhancing technologies (GETs) to
significantly improve performance of existing transmission lines,
the US system has been resistant to deploying them. In this
episode, Julia Selker, head of a GETs trade group called the WATT
Coalition, discusses the potential of GETs.


(PDF
transcript)


(Active
transcript)


Text transcript:


David Roberts


One of the primary threats to the clean energy buildout spurred
by the Inflation Reduction Act is a lack of transmission. Models
show that hitting our Paris climate targets would involve
building two to three times our current transmission capacity,
yet new lines are desperately slow to come online. Meanwhile,
existing lines are congested and hundreds of gigawatts of new
clean energy sits waiting in interconnection queues.


Wouldn’t it be cool if there were some relatively cheap and
speedy ways to get more capacity out of the transmission
infrastructure we’ve already built? To ease some of that
congestion and get more clean energy online while we wait for new
lines to be completed?


As it happens, there are. They are called grid-enhancing
technologies, or GETs, and they can improve the performance of
existing transmission lines by as much as 40 percent.


It’s just that, in the US at least, utilities aren’t deploying
them. They’ve been tested and deployed all over the world, but
the US system has resisted using them at scale.


I contacted Julia Selker, head of the Working for Advanced
Transmission Technologies (WATT) Coalition, a GETs trade group,
to discuss exactly what these technologies are, their enormous
potential to ease grid congestion, why utilities still resist
them, and what kinds of policies can help move them along.


So with no further ado, Julia Selker. Welcome to Volts. Thank you
so much for coming.


Julia Selker


Thank you so much for having me.


David Roberts


This is, to me, a very exciting topic that is like many exciting
topics in the world of energy, somewhat obscured behind a wall of
jargon and technical sounding terms. So we're going to do our
best up front to decode some of this and lay it out in a simple
way so people can grasp it. But before we get to GETs, before we
get to the GETs, let's talk just a little bit about the need
here, the need for more capacity on the transmission system. Run
down a little bit, because I know you've done or have been
involved in some research on grid congestion and things like
that, give us a little rundown of why this topic is so important
right now.


Julia Selker


Yeah, absolutely. The United States is basically desperate for
transmission capacity and there are a few ways that we see that
in data, and one is transmission congestion. So this is a
quantification of the cost of a transmission constraint. So if
you don't have enough transmission to deliver the cheapest
electricity, you'll then have to turn on a thermal generator or
something more expensive than a wind or solar generator, for
instance, and that will increase costs for consumers. So back in
the day, let's say 2016, the market monitors found $3.7 billion
of congestion in the regional transmission organizations and the
independent system operators that actually transparently report
congestion data.


And if you scale that to the whole US, we're looking at about
$6.5 billion in congestion in 2016. But in 2022, the national
number was over $20 billion in congestion.


David Roberts


20 billion.


Julia Selker


20 billion. It's rising astronomically. And it makes sense:
There's more low cost generation available, gas prices are going
up. So the redispatch cost is another term for this is going to
get higher as you have to curtail more renewables and dispatch
more expensive generation because there's just not enough
transmission to deliver all the clean energy. So we also see this
in clean energy interconnection costs and delays. Back when there
was a lot of headroom on the grid from large scale infrastructure
expansion back in the day that projects could interconnect at
lower costs and with faster timelines.


But now projects are seeing bigger and bigger upgrades, all that
headroom is used up and projects are seeing tens or hundreds of
millions of dollars in transmission upgrades that need to happen
in order for them to interconnect to the grid.


David Roberts


Volts listeners will recall just a few weeks ago had a pod on
interconnection queues and they'll recall that sort of you get in
a single file line and if you happen to be the project that
triggers a need for a transmission upgrade, that whole cost gets
added to your project, which renders many projects unviable. And
that's just happening more and more often now because the grid is
more and more congested and there's more and more upgrades
needed. So it's making that process take longer too.


Julia Selker


Yeah, and beyond the cost. I've heard from clean energy
developers that they are looking at seven years to actually make
the transmission upgrade, or in one case, four years to
szslchedule an outage to begin construction. So that's not
sustainable at all. And there are policy actions that are taking
place to try to make these processes more efficient. But the
fundamental issue is there's not enough transmission capacity and
we need to be finding it fast.


David Roberts


There's no way to fiddle with processes enough to get around
that, which is there's just not enough transmission capacity.


Julia Selker


Exactly.


David Roberts


Given all that, we need more transmission capacity. New
transmission capacity takes forever to build in the US. Which is
a problem a lot of people are working on. But even reforms look
like they're years out and then more years out to build the new
lines. So here we have then this set of technologies that can
help us get more transmission capacity out of the existing grid.
The GETs, the grid enhancing technologies. So let's talk about
first what counts as a GET and let's run through the big ones.


Julia Selker


Sure. So there are some practical reasons that certain
technologies would fall under the GETs category, and there are
some policy reasons too, so I'll cover both of those. But the
items that we think about are does this technology make use of
the dynamic capabilities of the grid to increase transmission
capacity? That's sort of the practical category. So, we're used
to thinking about transmission lines, transformers, substations.
We install them, and they have these set capabilities that are
based on really conservative assumptions. And when you have
digital technologies and high tech communications, you can
actually monitor these assets and make more efficient use of them
depending on grid conditions.


And another value we look for from a technical perspective is the
redeployability. So if you build a new transmission line, great,
you have a new line right where you put it. But with these
technologies, you can use them as stopgap measures. If you have a
big line under construction and you want to reduce costs in the
interim, or you're expecting grid topology or the grid assets to
change or increase, but you're not sure how. It's still kind of a
zero regrets option because you deploy it, it pays for itself
quickly and you can move it later.


David Roberts


Right. So redeployability just means you can put it on a line and
if you don't need it on that line anymore, you can take it off
that line and put it on another line. It's not a permanent
addition to a line.


But it could be. Certainly there's no expiration date, but the
flexibility is —


Right, you can leave it on, but you can move it if you need to.


Julia Selker


Right.


David Roberts


And so, given those parameters, let's walk through the three big
ones. The first one helps elucidate something you said. I think
the first one is called dynamic line ratings. So, I think the
important background for people to understand here is today you
build a transmission line, you have the transformer and the line,
the familiar pieces of infrastructure, and basically a grid
operator has to know how much energy can I push through that
line? And to come to that number, they make some estimates about
how much will the line sag if power is going through it, what are
the sort of ambient weather conditions typically in this area?


So, they do these estimates to come up with a capacity estimation
for that line and the grid operator uses that estimate. But of
course, because these are estimates that you're doing sort of in
advance, you have to be very conservative. You have to be careful
that your estimates are not on the high end so that you don't
overload the line and blow stuff up. So all of which adds up to
the fact that existing transmission lines typically only use like
30% to 40% of their capacity. Is that right? Just out of sort of
an abundance of caution because you just don't know specifically
in real time what's going on in that line.


Is that roughly correct?


Julia Selker


Yeah. So historically a lot of transmission lines use a static
line rating, so they'll assume it's going to be a hot day and
that there's not very much wind. The wind has the highest impact
on the cooling of a transmission line. So they're like, "Okay,
this is how much the line will be cooling, and this is how much
the current would heat that line. And that's our limit." But they
might use that limit year round, even in the winter. So
transmission owners have been updating to seasonal ratings.
That's an improvement. FERC is requiring lines to use ambient
adjusted ratings, which will take into account temperature by
2025.


But like I said, dynamic line ratings also include wind. They're
at a more granular level, so they might be updated every 15
minutes, for instance.


David Roberts


Right, so dynamic line ratings, if I could just back up dynamic
line ratings just means you attach something on the line that
will give you real-time information about those conditions that
you were previously estimating on a seasonal or yearly basis.


Julia Selker


Yeah, it could be on the line itself. It could be on the
transmission tower looking at the line with LiDAR. It could be a
weather station, too. It could even be in the fiber optic cables
that are strung on the same towers as transmission lines. Those
are really good temperature measurement tools as well. So there
are lots of different approaches to dynamic line ratings. And
they're not just real-time, they're also forecast, which is
really important, because when you're making your dispatch
decisions, the day ahead forecast is critical and maybe even
further ahead. So that's one of the major values of DLR.


Once you've had the sensor on your line for a few weeks or
months, you know how the line heats and cools, and you can use
those forecasts.


David Roberts


Right. So, long story short, by getting more real-time data about
the conditions around a line and reliable forecasts around the
condition of the line, basically, grid operators can get closer
to the actual capacity of these lines rather than stopping so far
short out of caution. So how big is that delta between, say, I
was using a yearly, static yearly, rating for a line, and then I
shifted to DLR, so I was getting real-time information about that
line and good forecasts. How much more, theoretically, can I push
through that line once I have DLR attached?


Julia Selker


Yeah. So in one 2021 deployment across three states, DLR exceeded
static reference ratings by 9% to 33% in winter and 26% to 36% in
summer. And so that's a big range, of course, but you're still
looking at big capacity increases. And also the fact that the
extra capacity found in summer was higher kind of shows that they
were probably using seasonal ratings. And the summer rating was
very conservative in terms of heating. But then in this same case
study, the DLR actually found 15% of hours either matched the
static rating or was below the static rating.


So DLR also shows you in cases of extreme weather, for instance,
whether you should be running less power along the line. And if
we're dealing with weather patterns like heat domes and these
unprecedented situations, that's when that kind of monitoring
could be really life saving.


David Roberts


Right. Because even with the caution of static ratings, with
extreme weather, you might exceed even those bounds.


Julia Selker


Right.


David Roberts


So basically, DLRs can tell you what's really going on. So that's
somewhere from 9% to 33%, more transmission of power through the
same line, through the addition of DLRs.


Julia Selker


Right.


David Roberts


More or less. And then the second one, even nerdier sounding,
"advanced flow power control," what do we mean by this?


Julia Selker


Yeah, so there are existing technologies that utilities use to
control power flow, but the advanced ones are just that much
better. Basically, these are devices that go at the substation
between the generators and the load. And often in that pathway,
you'll have multiple circuits that could deliver power. But power
likes to follow the path of least resistance we say. Technically
it's impedance, which is a combination of resistance and other
items. But advanced power flow control can adjust that impedance
to push and pull power over different circuits. So say you have
one circuit that's just maxed out 100%.


You have two circuits that are more like 20, 30%, you can push
that power off of the maxed out circuit onto the others, and then
you can actually add generation behind them.


David Roberts


One of my theories about this is that the sort of average person
on the street, their familiarity with technology is mostly around
the Internet and phones and stuff like that, and digital stuff.
And I just think the average person on the street, probably, if
they have thought about it at all, thinks in their head that the
people controlling the grid just have much more fine grained
digital level control than they actually do. But the standard
practice now is for the power to just go the way it goes based on
physics. And if it runs into a congested line, you're just
screwed.


So this is like the advance here is just you can push power where
on your system it needs to go based on availability, which seems
so — such a rudimentary level of control. It's a little wild that
it's new, it's a little wild that we didn't already have that, I
think.


Julia Selker


Yeah, there are sort of analog approaches to all of these GETS in
terms of: There are ways that you can reroute power manually by
flipping switches, or you could use emergency line ratings
instead of dynamic line ratings where you say, "Okay, I could run
more power for 2 hours or 15 minutes," but we have the technology
to do that more strategically. And that means you can do it every
day instead of in these sort of emergency situations.


David Roberts


Right. And you can do it, I presume, much faster digitally than
you can by running around physically throwing switches.


Julia Selker


Right.


David Roberts


And so, the third of the big three here is "topology
optimization," the nerdiest sounding one of all. So, I think
people are familiar with topology, like a topological map, which
shows you heights, basically shows you elevations. So, in grid
terms, the topology of a grid is just sort of the equivalent of
elevation in that sort of like power will go, quote unquote,
"downhill" towards the easiest place to go. That's the topology
of the grid. So, what does it mean to optimize that topology?


Julia Selker


Basically, it gives you sort of a map of everything that's going
on on the grid. All of your power lines, all of your generators,
all of your load and topology optimization software lives with a
system operator or other entities could use it, but they can say,
"Oh, we see congestion here, what are our options for reducing
it?" And one example is you might see congestion on line A, and
if you switch off line B, that actually balances everything out
so that line A is no longer overwhelmed. So, it's
counterintuitive sometimes. And that's why we need software to do
it, because today transmission owners would undertake
reconfigurations, as they're called, manually by flipping
switches.


But it's just based on operator experience, whereas this software
lets you actually look at all of the options, all of the
interventions and quickly assess the system impacts. Because the
other thing is, like I said, it's counterintuitive. It takes some
math to figure out exactly what's going to happen when you switch
something off.


David Roberts


Right. Especially as these things get more and more complex, the
amount of interactions involved. I mean, again, not to beat this
point to death, but it's just wild that today grids are run by
Bob, who just knows this grid because he's rode this horse for 20
years and he knows its quirks and he's going around physically
throwing switches, trying to get things to work smoothly. It's
just so much more analog. I think that people have it in their
heads that these things work. So, this just replaces Bob's
intuitions with software basically that analyzes the shape of the
grid and can come up with solutions for which switches to throw
that will maximize the smooth performance of the grid, basically,
yes?


Julia Selker


Yeah. And it's worth acknowledging that when we had a bunch of
thermal generators that operated really consistently that we knew
their costs, there wasn't this variability. You didn't have to be
so dynamic in your operation of the grid. But the fact is we're
moving into a new era and that means that the dynamic
capabilities of the grid will absolutely be very valuable. So,
for instance, topology optimization could reduce congestion costs
in PJM by 50% in one study, just by reconfiguring the grid,
depending on —


David Roberts


50%?!


Julia Selker


Right. And that was $2.5 billion in 2022. That was the congestion
in PJM.


David Roberts


Good grief, that's a large number. The grid is getting more
complicated, not just because variable renewables are coming
online, but also like distributed renewables. So, like
distribution grids are going to start becoming producers also.
And once you get that level of complexity, then you quickly get
way beyond what any one person can intuit, no matter how long
they've worked with that grid, right. At that point, you need
software.


Julia Selker


Definitely.


David Roberts


So, these are the big three that I always hear discussed when
people talk about grid enhancing technologies. Dynamic line
ratings, which sort of watch the line and tell operators what's
going on around that line in real time and what's going to be
going on around that line in the next day or two so that grid
operators can increase the throughput of those lines. And there's
advanced flow power control which allows you to move power around
as it moves through the grid to the least congested areas. And
then there's topology optimization, which is sort of optimizing
power flow through the grid at a system level, which as we say,
is getting increasingly complex and requires software.


These are the big three. Are there other sort of like the
category of things that could help the grid work better? Seems
pretty capacious. Are there other technologies that sort of
qualify or that are around the periphery here? Or is it just
those three?


Julia Selker


Yeah, I'm not as much of an expert in the other options, but
energy storage can be deployed as a type of power flow control.
Basically, if you site your batteries at the substation, they can
inject power or consume power strategically in a way that also
changes power flow. So that could count. And then other
technologies that increase transmission capacity much faster than
building new infrastructure: There's reconductoring with high
performance conductors and superconductors potentially, tower
raising. There are these other technologies, but they don't have
that dynamic aspect to them that GETs have, and then GETs are
also very low cost.


Very low cost. We'll get into that, I'm sure. But reconductoring
a line is a level of capital expenditure and a type of technology
that utilities understand and they're ready to use.


David Roberts


Right. Can we just pause to define reconductoring? Is that just
literally replacing the line itself, the actual wire itself?


Julia Selker


Yeah, exactly.


David Roberts


With just better wire, better higher capacity wire?


Julia Selker


Yeah, there are a few different types of technology, but a basic
way that you would increase capacity would be to use a stronger
core in your transmission line. So right now most lines have
steel cores and steel, when it heats, gets a lot weaker.


David Roberts


Right.


Julia Selker


If you're using a composite core, then you won't have that sag
that the steel would have and it can withstand a lot higher
temperatures.


David Roberts


Right. So that gets you somewhat higher capacity with the same
sort of towers. But as you say, it's not the kind of dynamic
real-time control that sort of characterizes the other GETs. And
I think for our purposes we can just sort of slot energy storage
under advanced flow power control, since that's basically what
you can use storage for in this instance is helping power move
around more rationally through the grid.


Julia Selker


Just an aside, we usually say advanced power flow control.


David Roberts


Advanced power flow control. So is APFC the — ?


Julia Selker


Yes.


David Roberts


All right. Advanced power flow control. Yeah, that makes more
sense. I don't know why my notes have it backwards. Advanced
power flow control, none of these trip off the tongue. So I think
the next question, the obvious question is the numbers you cite
in terms of increased capacity that you can get out of these
things are pretty mind boggling. Like, DLR can get you up to 33%
more capacity. Topology optimization reduces congestion costs by
50%. This is the point I want to emphasize most in this pod, is
that these are not marginal gains here, necessarily.


Like, you can get big chunks, big amounts of new capacity with
these things. So how much do they cost relative to, say,
reconductoring, putting new better wire through or building a new
line? What's the sort of cost scale here?


Julia Selker


Yes, well, the fun and frustrating thing about GETs is it's hard
to generalize. Every deployment will have a different value,
different payback period. Some places are windier, sometimes
there's a hill in the way, what have you. That's why these ranges
will be big. But I have some good examples in terms of costs. For
instance, PPL Electric Utilities just won the Edison Electric
Institute's Edison Award, the 95th award for their deployment of
DLR. They're the first utility to deploy DLR in markets, in
operations.


David Roberts


The first US utility to do that.


Julia Selker


Yes.


David Roberts


Wild.


Julia Selker


Yes, in 2023. Whereas Belgium was all over it in 2008. So we're a
few —


David Roberts


2008?


Julia Selker


Yes.


David Roberts


So these are not new. Like, DLR, for instance, is not new. Not
brand new technology.


Julia Selker


No, it's getting better every year so that there's a benefit
there, but we're way past due to bring it into common practice.
But PPL's sort of flagship deployment, they had a line that was
seeing $23 million of congestion a year, and they could fix it by
rebuilding a price tag of $50 million. So that's a little over
two years payback. That's not bad for transmission, certainly,
but instead used DLR, which cost a quarter million dollars. And
so that's a big cost savings. And when you talk about the payback
period, it's infinitesimal.


David Roberts


Yeah, no kidding. That's a quarter of $1 million rather than $50
million to build new lines. That's quite a delta.


Julia Selker


Exactly. And so we often talk about net savings. So a deployment
of advanced power flow control devices saved $70 million in
congestion costs over a three and a half year transmission
outage. So that's a net savings. I don't know how much the
deployment cost, but $70 million is not chump change for one
deployment. And another, widespread deployment of advanced power
flow control in the United Kingdom saved half a billion dollars
in production cost savings by enabling new renewable energy and
then also in avoided investments in new infrastructure. So half a
billion dollars for like 50-odd power flow controllers.


David Roberts


That's wild. So huge potential savings here. Relatively cheap to
install. One thing I'm a little curious about is what do these
physically look like? What is the physical process of installing,
say, DLR? How long would it take and how disruptive would it be
for a utility to go put DLR on a particular line?


Julia Selker


Yeah, like I said, there are multiple approaches to DLR, so there
are some that would require no outage at all. So if you're
installing a sensor on your tower that's looking up at your line,
or if you're using the fiber optic cable, then you don't have to
take an outage and you immediately start getting data about the
line temperature and ambient conditions. And then, as I
understand, it takes a few weeks for that data to give you the
right information for forecasting. But you're in business within
months. And the sensors that go on the line, it's not that big of
a difference.


I think you do need a short outage to put a sensor on the line,
but very short. It takes a couple of hours in a helicopter to
install the sensors. So again, you'll be in business in months,
and you'll see that 30%, 40% increase. And it also corresponds,
of course, to when wind generation is highest. If the wind is
cooling your line, then it's also spinning your blades.


David Roberts


Right. And what about advanced power flow controls? I imagine
there's a couple of different technologies there, too. But is
that how fast or disruptive is a deployment there?


Julia Selker


Yeah, again, we're looking at just months to procure the devices
and install them and have them operational. So really fast, I
guess, is a short answer.


David Roberts


And same with topology optimization. That's just installing
software, or are there physical changes you have to do to do
that?


Julia Selker


Yeah, no physical changes. Installing software and then training
your staff to use it. Again, really fast.


David Roberts


Which is no small thing. It's a diverse set of technologies. And
as you say, every installation will be different since every sort
of line is somewhat different, every sort of grid system is
different, et cetera. But has anyone modeled sort of the
cumulative possibility here, the cumulative effect they could
have, say, if, like, every US utility got religion on this and
went out and installed GETs on all their systems and all their
lines, do we have any idea sort of the cumulative effect that
could have?


Julia Selker


Yeah, as you can imagine, they're somewhat complicated to model
because we're looking at dynamic conditions. But the Brattle
Group back in 2021 did a great study called "Unlocking the
Queue." And so they used the Kansas and Oklahoma grids as a
little case study, medium sized case study. And they looked at
the interconnection queue as it stood. They looked at planned
upgrades, they looked at weather snapshots, and then they looked
at GETs deployments. So where can we optimally use GETs to
increase transmission capacity? And they found that if they
didn't install any GETs, the Kansas and Oklahoma grids could
sustain 2.6 gigawatts of new wind and solar generation using
traditional planning approaches.


And then with GETs, you double that. We would have room for 5.2
gigawatts of new renewable generation without any other grid
upgrades.


David Roberts


That's which two states again?


Julia Selker


Kansas and Oklahoma.


David Roberts


Ah, very windy states. So you could install double the clean
energy with GETs basically than without is what they found?


Julia Selker


Right. And this was a pretty conservative study. We did not allow
any import/export changes. So that really limits the value. And
so I feel great about this result. And the total installation of
GETs would have cost $90 million. And the production cost savings
just from having that cheaper generation available would be $175
million a year. And then there are other benefits, there are
jobs, there are lease benefits for the community.


David Roberts


So $90 total to install it, and then $175 million of savings per
year from then on.


Julia Selker


Exactly.


David Roberts


And presumably that will filter down to consumers, that will
lower costs for consumers at the end of the line. What does it do
to reliability? Has that been sort of studied or modeled?


Julia Selker


Yeah, that's a little harder to quantify, but we have some ideas
for sure. Basically, if you can see how your system is performing
and you have options for how to respond to changes, that is a net
improvement on reliability. Right? You have awareness, you have
flexibility, and you can improve your resilience and reliability.
And then also I mentioned case studies of advanced power flow
control, saving money during an outage. Topology optimization has
also been demonstrated to, for instance, save $40 million over a
nine month outage. So when you're dealing with contingencies and
outages, these tools can help you do that at lower cost and with
more optionality.


David Roberts


All right, so this brings us then to this $61 million question,
or whatever the term is, the big question, which is if we have in
the US right now huge problems with grid congestion that is
blocking the buildout of clean energy that we all say we want and
that in fact, we're plowing tens of billions of dollars into. And
there's a solution on the table that gets us considerably more
transmission capacity quickly at relatively low cost compared to
building more transmission: What the hell? Why aren't utilities,
why aren't RTOs and ISOs, why aren't states and state
legislatures, why isn't everyone beating down the door to put
these on?


It just seems like an interim solution that takes the pressure
off of all our current problems relatively cheaply. So what am I
missing here? Why is there resistance? Why are there not laws
mandating these things? Why are utilities resisting at all? Let's
start with utilities. Why aren't utilities doing more of this?


Julia Selker


Well, very big question, and I'll start by saying you're doing
your part because one of the big barriers is just awareness that
planners and utility executives and regulators and stakeholders
don't know that these technologies are available. They don't
understand the benefits. And so I'm out here trying to tell the
story and share examples and that's an issue and just general
inertia.


David Roberts


I mean it's kind of their business to know these things, isn't
it? I have limited sympathy for that. But okay, so they're not
aware. I guess here's what I'm obliquely getting at which regular
Volts listeners will roll their eyes as I harp on this all the
time but I'm not telling you anything. The basic utility model is
they make money by spending money. They make money by deploying
large physical assets and getting a guaranteed rate of return on
them. So if you're telling them "We can with something that is
super cheap and doesn't involve deploying much money, get you
more capacity out of what you already have and avoid the need for
you to deploy a bunch of big physical infrastructure," basically
you're telling them you're going to reduce their profits.


It's pretty straightforward. It's the same story behind energy
efficiency and distributed energy and everything else. Anything
that reduces the need for utilities to spend money and deploy
physical infrastructure is going to be resisted by utilities. I'm
just assuming that's one of the dynamics at work here.


Julia Selker


Yeah. I want to be a little nicer to the utilities and say these
aren't going to make them money. They're going to have to do like
you said, this is a really small capital expenditure and it's a
change in their operations and processes so, right: It's not a
money-making opportunity. I think, and I've been working on GETs
since 2019 that there's been a shift that utilities realize
they're going to have the opportunity to build as much
transmission as ratepayers will pay for. Right. This is a
transmission building era.


David Roberts


Right. Not like there's going to be a shortage of demand. Even if
you deploy GETs, it's still going to be building as much
transmission as you can.


Julia Selker


Right. A lot of our grid was built 70 years ago. It's time to
replace things. We need large interregional transmission. There's
going to be a lot of transmission built. So I believe and hope
that utilities are seeing that they need to be showing that
they're maximizing their infrastructure. That said, they can't be
blamed for doing things the same way as they have for decades. So
they're going to be risk averse. They have this lower returns on
lower capital expenditures and historically they're only
responsible for reliability planning. They're only responsible
for building transmission to deal with reliability issues.


And that goes back to the history of thermal generation, when
that was all we needed to get a good system. But, in the future,
we need to plan for reliability and clean energy integration and
customer cost savings. Because at the end of the day, the
utilities need to demonstrate to FERC that their rates are just
and reasonable and economic transmission planning is going to be
a part of that.


David Roberts


You know you say, "You can't blame utilities." Maybe you can't, I
can blame them a little bit. But how could they be induced to do
it? Because in one obvious way is they're under legal obligation
to have just and reasonable rates. And I think if you're a
ratepayer advocate or a state regulator, you could reasonably
say: "It is not just and reasonable to ignore giant cost saving,
reliability boosting opportunities, that it's both unjust and
unreasonable. So therefore, you have to do it." Are people trying
to do that through rate cases?


Julia Selker


FERC is working on that. FERC is looking at a few different
models for grid enhancing technologies. So, one big-picture way
to think about it is requirements versus incentives. And they're
both a little bit tricky when it comes to grid enhancing
technologies. So for requirements, one model that FERC is
thinking about is a threshold where if you have a certain amount
of congestion every year on your line, then you have to look at
dynamic line ratings. And that's good. It's simple and clear, but
there are still loopholes when it comes to a requirement. There's
no transparency, really around transmission constraints.


So if a utility comes back and says, "Well, actually, there's
some other limiting element. So dynamic line ratings don't help."
We're not sure that a requirement will be the most effective
model, but it would lead to more deployments in certain cases. So
that's one good approach. And the other is an incentive which
would drive the utility — say it was based on congestion cost
savings. It would drive the utility to look for those most
congestive lines and try to solve a problem with really low cost
solutions if they were getting compensated based on the net
savings, for instance.


David Roberts


Right. I mean, those make sense to me, although I'll just
register one last time, and then I'll let it go. It's a little
crazy that you have to bully or force or beg or incent utilities
to do cheap things that could save a crapload of money. This is
like, we come around to this in the clean energy world again and
again and again. Why are we begging utilities to do these things?
It's insane that their incentive is not to have the best service
at the cheapest possible rate. Like, it's insane that they have
to be brow beaten to do these things.


Julia Selker


Well, I mentioned that Belgium is really far ahead on dynamic
line ratings. And in 2021, someone from the Belgian transmission
system operator testified to FERC, and he said that ten years
ago, when they were installing dynamic line ratings, the utility
engineers were resistant. I think he said they looked at him like
he was crazy, but that now whenever they run into congestion,
they immediately go to dynamic line ratings. So as much as we
want a fast and transformative transition, these things take
time. But I feel like we're going to follow in Belgium's bold
footsteps.


David Roberts


Well, what about PUCs? What about state regulators? Like,
presumably they could be made aware of these things and they
could push are they doing so?


Julia Selker


Yes, the Joint Federal State Task Force on Electric Transmission,
which is a group of ten PUC commissioners from around the
country, and then also FERC commissioners, met in July and
discussed grid enhancing technologies. That was their agenda for
two and a half hours. It was a really great discussion, lots of
great ideas from state commissioners in terms of how GETs should
be deployed, the barriers, etc. So that was super promising. And
then they can take various actions. So for one thing, the
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act came with $14 billion of
formula and competitive grants from the DOE that grid enhancing
technologies would be eligible for.


So for the formula grants, every state is allocated a certain
amount of money and they can propose projects and a use for that
money. And then the DOE sends them that money. And then, for the
competitive grants, states and utilities and nonprofit utilities,
for profit utilities, there's different grants for different
entities. But they can again propose a grid enhancing technology
deployment and have it — many of the programs have a 50% cost
match, for instance, and that could include that workforce
training that I talked about. So these are really low cost
devices. Obviously, maybe the 50% cost share isn't huge there,
but if you're doing that first deployment and you have to update
your systems and you have to train your staff, then maybe that
cost share is more meaningful.


And certainly for nonprofit utilities that are on shoestring or
relatively shoestring budgets, that sort of savings should be
really significant.


David Roberts


So that's $14 billion in the Infrastructure Act, not specifically
for grid enhancing technologies, but for which grid enhancing
technologies are eligible.


Julia Selker


Right. And if you generalize that Brattle study that I talked
about, with the $90 million of GETs deployment roughly over the
country, we would expect $2.7 billion to deploy GETs optimally
over the whole network. So we don't need $14 billion, but we're
not going to get it also.


David Roberts


Yeah, I know this is the crazy thing. It's so cheap that dumping
money on it is almost beside the point. Like it's so cheap
already that whatever the problem is, it's not money. Right? It's
not money being available. Are there other federal programs in
place that are attempting to juice GETs along? Like, I know the
DOE has a gajillion different grant programs and I know the Loan
Programs Office is getting involved in nascent technologies and
there's all these different programs. Are there other pieces of
federal policy that are aimed at this?


Julia Selker


I want to say no, but I could be forgetting something. I will say
that there are national lab groups working on grid enhancing
technologies in different ways. There's a sort of separate
funding for demonstration projects, for instance, for utilities.
So again, sort of targeted at deploying your first project
because that's the expensive one, that's the hard one, and then
the ball is rolling.


David Roberts


So grants in the Infrastructure Act. And then there's this
meeting of PUC commissioners that are getting behind it. What
about FERC? You mentioned FERC is doing some things — FERC, the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, for those who don't know
that by now — what's FERC doing on this? It seems like it ought
to have a key role here.


Julia Selker


Yeah. So two recent FERC orders included GETs so order 881, which
was about managing transmission line ratings, required utilities
to use the ambient adjusted ratings and then for RTOs to prepare
their systems to accept dynamic line ratings. And some RTOs
already can. For instance, PJM is set up based on that PPL
deployment I talked about. But all the RTOs have to be able to
accept DLR by 2025. So that's a good start.


David Roberts


In what way are they not currently ready? What does that mean to
get ready? Like if you're just going to go clip a LiDAR onto your
transmission tower, what does it mean to get ready for that?


Julia Selker


Well, you have to be able to accept forecasted line ratings, and
those will change. So when the RTO is deciding which generators
are going to be dispatched and they are going to use the dynamic
forecasted line rating to do that, that's a change.


David Roberts


Right. So, it could change their planning, their sort of
integrated planning, do you think?


That's an operational change, I would say, in terms of how
they're dispatching generation. And you could talk to people who
will make it sound really hard. I hope it's not as hard as some
people make it sound, but I think it's doable, especially by July
2025.


And that's FERC 881. You said there was another one.


Julia Selker


Yeah. So, Order 2023, which was about interconnection, requires
the evaluation of alternative transmission technologies in
interconnection processes. It leaves a lot of discretion
currently to the transmission owners in terms of how they're
used. And we've seen other processes in the US that leave a lot
of discretion to the transmission owners. And that means you get
uneven results.


David Roberts


Yeah, I was going to say, I was reading your reports and it
sounds like in a lot of cases, like the case was presented to the
transmission owner with all the information you've told me. Seems
like an obvious no regrets, easy win. And then they just don't do
it and don't explain why. That's sort of one of the things that
was mysterious to me. Is that just inertia? Is that just habit? I
mean, they don't explain. So you obviously can't answer that
question. But it is mysterious.


Julia Selker


Yeah. I mean, one example that I have from a renewable energy
developer is that there was a 1% line overload identified in the
interconnection study between RTO seams. And as we talked about,
DLR is going to fix a 1% line overload almost all the time. Just
because the static rating is so conservative. It doesn't have to
be a very windy place. So the upgrade that was identified in this
case was $400 million to fix that 1% overload and the TO refused
to consider DLR.


David Roberts


It's just wild. As opposed to like a buck fifty. Yeah, I really
don't get that. I guess the positive story you could tell is just
habit and culture and that that will change over time as these
things starting to get deployed and are more familiar. Is there
something obvious that you would like FERC to do that it's not
doing?


Julia Selker


Oh, yeah, I've got a list.


David Roberts


Everybody's got their FERC list?


Julia Selker


Oh, yeah, wish list. So they've got their notice of proposed
rulemaking on transmission planning. We hope they go a little
further than they went in the Interconnection rule in terms of
requiring the use of GETs in transmission planning. They have the
threshold requirement that I was talking about for requiring the
study and implementation of dynamic line ratings, for instance,
if there's a certain amount of congestion on a line. And then
incentives: FERC was tasked by Congress, I think, about 20 years
ago to create electric transmission incentives policy for
transmission technologies, and FERC did a workshop about
performance based rate making approaches that's that, for
instance, cost savings, utilities getting compensated based on
the savings they enable.


Yes, but that hasn't moved much since 2021. And then also
transparency because grid users and stakeholders don't have the
information that we would need to understand what the potential
is. SPP gave a lot of information to the Brattle Group to
undertake that study I talked about. But generally, if you ask
PJM how many lines see $2 million of congestion a year, they
might tell you that, but they might not have on hand what's
causing that congestion. So this transparency question is big.
And FERC started getting into that with transmission planning and
cost management work with the Joint Task Force.


They had a technical conference where they brought up the idea of
a transmission monitor. So that's also interesting to us.


David Roberts


Is there a role here for sort of just the public, just advocates?
All of this seems kind of technical and it's all being sort of
hashed out by these technical bodies and these working groups and
federal agencies. Is there any role here for sort of just public
advocacy for the public to get involved?


Julia Selker


Yeah, why not? There are some legislators who've proposed, like
federal legislators, who proposed legislation around grid
enhancing technologies. So Senator Martin Heinrich has
legislation to include GETs in a transmission tax credit.
Representative Kathy Castor has a bill on including GETs in
interconnection. There's been some movement since that was
introduced, but there's federal legislation that can be pushed
for. And also, the Federal Congress oversees FERC to some degree
and has conversations with them. So your Congressperson can
always push FERC to act on these issues. Leader Schumer wrote a
letter to Chair Phillips at FERC in late July asking him to move
on the GETs proceedings.


So pressure on legislators is good. And let the public utility
commissions know that you're looking for more efficient use of
the existing transmission infrastructure as well. And state
policymakers, too. State legislators, they can all call on the
utilities to embrace these tools. And part of the barrier, not
the most significant barrier, but part of the barrier is that
utilities don't want questions about why they're using this new
technology. So if they're getting their state regulators and
legislators telling them to use these technologies, that's one
less thing for them to worry about.


David Roberts


Yeah, this does seem like one of the areas of policy where states
are a little more movable and good things might get going in
states and then work their way up to the federal level. That's
sort of been the path of most good policy, energy policy in the
last decade or so. Final question. You say these things have been
around for a while, they're getting better, but they've been
around for a while. Who in the U.S., if anyone, is actually using
them? And then part two of the question is who in the world is
using them?


Where are these things actually in use?


Julia Selker


Yeah, so GETs have been piloted by dozens of utilities in the
United States.


David Roberts


Love their pilots.


Julia Selker


Yeah, that's the good news. I mean, since the late 90s, dynamic
line ratings story goes way back. So they're out there, like I
said, the first operational use of DLR just recently. But even
power flow control, for instance, has been used. There's this
great story a transmission engineer told me about. They were
going to have to interconnect a generator. They were going to
have to rebuild a line in case of an outage. You have to plan for
N minus one, like something going out contingency. So they were
going to have to rebuild a line for that.


Instead, they were able to install a power flow controller and
the power flow controller was never used. That contingency never
happened. But just by putting in this device, you didn't have to
do this whole big rebuild. That would not have given that
benefit. So that's an example.


David Roberts


I saw on your map that Europe is covered in these things.


Julia Selker


Yeah, lots of dynamic line ratings in Eastern Europe, for sure.
Southern, Eastern Europe, Belgium, the UK. So in the UK, National
Grid has an incentive regulation that a) gives them funding for
innovation: So if they're using a new technology, there's that
initial support. And then they also have incentives for saving
money through innovation. So when they install those advanced
power flow controllers that create half a billion dollars in
savings, they're getting compensated for that in a way that when
the National Grid US does it, they don't get compensated directly
like that. But it's great that National Grid US and UK have some
knowledge sharing and National Grid US is one of the more
ambitious utilities in terms of GETs, I think partially because
of that.


David Roberts


Well, this is all super interesting. Julia, I just think it's so
important for people in this world, in the energy world, to know
that transmission is a bear. It's a difficult problem. It's the
difficult problem. But we're not just stuck waiting for new lines
to get built, right? We're not just stuck waiting for these
interminably slow processes to go forward. There's tons of stuff
we can do now with these existing technologies to move things
forward, reduce costs, get more clean energy on the grid, et
cetera, et cetera. It's available now. And so people, when
they're pounding the table about transmission, they should add
this to their arsenal.


You can act now. There is something to do now about all this. So
thank you for coming and sharing the good news with us.


Julia Selker


Thanks so much. And yeah, we're just sitting on all this dormant
capacity that's untapped, right? So once we start using these
technologies, suddenly we open up these lines and these circuits
to carry so much more for us. And then when we're planning the
future grid, we can consider these technologies too, and make
sure that we're building the line that's the most useful to the
system, because we have all this other flexibility and extra
capacity. So we shouldn't be making planning decisions based on
the assumption that the grid is a static asset.


David Roberts


Yes!


Julia Selker


Certainly, so, yeah, really exciting technologies. Thanks for
having me.


David Roberts


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