As the Northwest steps up to meet emission reduction targets, demand for clean resources is rising rapidly, particularly clean electricity. With that electricity demand comes the need for more transmission.
As President of Grid Strategies Rob Gramlich says, “There is no transition without transmission.” To build the transmission needed to realize a clean energy future, the Northwest needs an effective, centralized process for transmission planning, which it currently lacks.
High-voltage transmission is the backbone of the electric power system. It moves electricity from where it is generated to where it is consumed. Like other major infrastructure, new transmission is complicated to develop, and essential to our daily lives.
In the West, transmission provides the means for electricity to travel throughout the Western Interconnection, which covers 1.8 million square miles and delivers electricity to 87 million people. It uses approximately 156,000 miles of transmission lines through all or part of 14 states, two Canadian provinces, and the northern tip of Mexico’s Baja peninsula (Figure 1).
The Northwest relies on approximately 20,000 miles of high-voltage transmission, 75% of which is operated by the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), and the rest of which is primarily operated by other individual utilities. Much of the high-voltage transmission in the Northwest was constructed in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, providing the region with ample capacity to accommodate power generation and demand. After four decades of limited new construction, existing transmission has reached its limit for interconnecting new resources and serving new demands.
According to the Department of Energy’s National Transmission Needs Study, reliability has driven transmission development over the past decades. Today, the Northwest faces the additional challenge of expanding transmission to achieve a clean and equitable clean energy future.
One way to think about this is that past planning was largely reactive, based on maintaining the grid’s foundational function of delivering electricity from large and unchanging sources in consistent patterns. Future transmission planning needs to be more proactive, with a focus on integrating intermittent and geographically diverse renewables while meeting increasing demand and reducing system-wide costs for the long term.
Recent studies and reports, such as the Pacific Northwest Utilities Conference Committee’s Northwest Regional Forecast, show that utilities are planning on an unprecedented amount of new generation to meet emissions targets and increased demand. Drivers of new electric load include data centers, the trend towards electrifying the transportation sector, and relying more on electric heat pumps to heat and cool homes and businesses. The Forecast projects the demand for electricity could increase by 30% in the next 10 years (2024-2033).
In CETI’s Net-Zero Northwest study (NZNW), the Northwest would build 138 GW of new wind and solar to reach economy-wide net-zero emissions by 2050 and provide clean electricity to power many uses that fossil fuels support today. High-capacity factor wind in Montana represents the largest portion of that build-out, at 56 GW by 2050. This is a primary driver for additional transmission development to move electricity produced by inland wind to load centers in Washington and Oregon.
In addition to Northwest resources such as Montana wind, the NZNW study finds that Wyoming wind stands out as a valuable resource and key driver for transmission development, as does solar in Southwest states such as Arizona and New Mexico—some of the best solar resources in the world. Notably, the NZNW modeling found that the cost of transmission development impacts the timing of when it would be built but not how much is built overall, which underscores the value of new transmission capacity in meeting the demands of a decarbonized grid.
While it is clear that transmission development is a critical component of the clean energy transition, the current system for planning and developing transmission is not prepared to deliver the quantity and variety of electricity required.
Unlike in other parts of the country, the Northwest lacks a centralized grid operator like the Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) or Independent System Operators (ISOs) that operate elsewhere. The lack of centralized planning and coordination across the Western Interconnection has led to disconnected efforts and insufficient development of new, bulk electric system elements.
The Western Interconnection has three regional planning organizations—NorthernGrid, WestConnect, and the California Independent System Operator (CAISO). The Northwest participates in NorthernGrid, which (along with WestConnect) was established to facilitate compliance with Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Orders 890 and 1000.
The NorthernGrid process produces a biennial Regional Transmission Plan (RTP). BPA also conducts a Transmission Service Request Study and Expansion Process (TSEP), looking at transmission needs specific to the Northwest. Despite these efforts, successful development of new transmission remains stymied. Since NorthernGrid’s inception in 2020, no projects have been included in an RTP that would connect to other transmission planning regions. Regionally, BPA added only 153 miles of 500 kV circuit to its transmission system in the 2010s through the TSEP process and just one mile in the 2020s.
The image below, from RMI’s States in Sync report, shows how energy resources could travel if transmission planning were more effectively coordinated throughout the Western Interconnection.
The Western Transmission Expansion Coalition (WestTEC) is a West-wide effort to develop an actionable transmission plan to support the needs of the future energy grid. WestTEC has committed to a new approach to transmission planning through the main themes of being “different, inclusive, expedient, and transparent.” WestTEC is bringing together transmission planning entities, utilities, regulators, transmission developers, Tribes, ratepayer advocates, independent power producers, public interest organizations, and other industry actors in its process.
CETI is participating in the WestTEC initiative as part of the Regional Engagement Committee (REC). The REC is WestTEC’s primary stakeholder engagement group. As described in WestTEC’s Project Charter, the REC is responsible for reviewing proposals, scopes of work for technical studies and other deliverables, and for providing feedback and recommendations to the WestTEC Steering Committee. REC meetings are open to the public and provide an opportunity for comment at the end. WestTEC also recently held a public webinar with a high-level introduction to the project. Slides are available, and the next public webinar will be on July 23, 2024.
Several federal actions have also indicated momentum towards more cohesive transmission planning. In May of this year, FERC issued Order 1920, which will require more coordination between states; a 20-year planning timeline rather than 10-year; new cost-allocation guidelines; and consideration of a specific set of benefits that need to be quantified in transmission planning.
The new FERC requirements offer a framework for impactful changes in how the Northwest plans transmission, particularly by considering long-term needs at a time when the electricity system is changing rapidly, and by aligning cost-allocation methods, which can streamline the planning of major interregional renewable energy projects across the Western interconnection that could decarbonize the Northwest’s grid in the future.
Transmission is also deeply intertwined with the upcoming decisions by Northwest utilities about regional electricity market participation. A more connected grid across the West will enhance access to diverse energy resources, help balance the variability of demand and supply and bolster grid resiliency. Northwest utilities are currently considering two day-ahead electricity market options – California’s Extended Day Ahead Market or the Southwest Power Pool’s Markets+. A future Demystifying Decarbonization blog post will explain what is going on with creating a West-wide market that could help with decarbonizing the Northwest region.
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