September 21, 2021
The U.S. has been investing between $20 billion and $25 billion annually in improving the nation’s transmission grid. Over 90 percent of these investments are justified based on: (1) the local reliability criteria of transmission owners, including the replacement of the many aging transmission facilities built before the 1970s; (2) the local and regional reliability upgrades triggered by generation interconnection requests, which are now dominated by renewable generation and storage resources in many regions; and (3) the reliability criteria associated with regional planning processes conducted by independent system operators (ISOs) and regional transmission operators (RTOs). To date, only a small portion of transmission spending is justified on economic criteria and full…
Read More
