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Sunday 13 March 2022

(CLE) US PLANS TO CONNECT ELECTRICITY GRID

For those doubting that the global economy can decarbonize fast enough to avert catastrophic warming, take a look over at the United States. 

The nation’s massive offshore wind resources are finally in the pipeline, and its land-based renewable energy profile is about to get a shot of adrenaline. 

Two leading transmission stakeholders in the US have hatched a plan to stitch themselves together, opening a bottleneck that has held back wind and solar developers for years.

For those of you new to the topic, the US electricity grid could be all interconnected, enabling states with ample wind and solar resources to send their clean kilowatts over to others. However, it is not. The US is chopped into various regions that are not seamlessly interconnected. Jumping the seams between grids is a cumbersome exercise, holding back wind and solar development.

The US Department of Energy has been working on a grid modernization initiative that would help renewable energy development, with a focus on the east-west seam that slips the country down the middle until it meets Texas, which has its own grid under the management of ERCOT (long story!).

Just a few months after former President Trump took office with a coal-friendly agenda, the Energy Department went ahead and updated the public on their grid modernization efforts.

That included something called the Interconnections Seam Study which was designed to support utilities and other grid stakeholders by quantifying the value of addressing the seam issue.

Apparently the White House got wind of the study, so to speak, and promptly buried it.

With the climate-friendly President Joe Biden in office, naturally the Interconnections Seam Study is on the move again. Last October, the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory published an update in the journal IEEE Transactions on Power Systems.

Uniting the Eastern and Western U.S. electric grids could offer significant value in strengthening the power system’s ability to share generation resources and flexibility across regions, according to the Interconnections Seam Study,” NREL explained.

NREL senior research engineer Josh Novacheck emphasizes the impact on cross-country renewable energy resource sharing:

“With variable renewable resources like wind and solar contributing an increasing share of our nation’s electricity supply, the ability to transfer those resources across regions could be incredibly valuable—whether that’s in periods of power system stress, like extreme weather, or during a typical day when we want to take advantage of the best available resources.”

“Results show that increasing the transmission capacity between the Eastern and Western Interconnections could enable more economically efficient and flexible exchange of power throughout the United States—with scenarios showing up to $2.50 in benefits for every $1 of cost,” NREL explained. Clean Technica - link - Tina Casey - link - more like this (USA) - link - more like this - link

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