News & Blog

  The Interconnections Seam Study, led by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and completed in 2018, provided one of the first in-depth analyses of benefits associated with a North American high-capacity multiregional HVDC transmission overlay, referred to as a macrogrid. In 2022, ESIG developed a report on macrogrid design study requirements.  Further work is ongoing via…

  Tuesday, June 20, 2023, 4:30 p.m. – I had just exited a 90-minute online knowledge-sharing session with fellow Global Power System Transformation Consortium (G-PST) system operators in the U.S., Australia, and Europe discussing best practices for managing transmission constraints in a system with high levels of inverter-based resources (IBRs) like wind and solar generation.…

The goal for our energy future in Hawaiʻi is clear: Eliminate carbon emissions and rely on renewable resources every time we turn on a light, share a meal, or take a ride. But, as the saying goes, a goal without a plan is just a wish. We’ve already made significant progress. More than one-third of…

Green hydrogen has catapulted into the limelight thanks to grant funding and tax credits in the recent U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and newly announced mega projects like the multi-billion-dollar AES/Air Products facility in Texas. This surge in interest isn’t just a trend; it reflects a deeper shift in our energy landscape. As clean electricity…

ESIG’s Grid Planning for Electric Vehicles Task Force recently released a report, Charging Ahead: Grid Planning for Vehicle Electrification, examining the key challenges for distribution system planners in anticipating and integrating EVs both today and the increasing number on the horizon. This task force was an opportunity to engage on the hard questions facing the…

The decarbonization challenge in buildings is to create a comfortable and healthy indoor climate in a carbon-neutral society. Cost-effective decarbonization requires a balanced approach, where efficiency measures that reduce the demand for heating and cooling are balanced with decarbonization measures that radically change how we heat and cool our buildings. Combining both types of measures…

System operators around the world face the increasing integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) into the power grid. DERs – small-scale, decentralized generators such as rooftop solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and electric vehicles – are connected to the distribution system, whereas larger inverter-based resources are often connected to the transmission system and can be…

As the power system continues to evolve with an increase in inverter-based resources (IBRs), there could be a need to adopt future inverter technology and capability that could allow for operating a 100% IBR network in a safe, secure, and reliable manner. Such inverter technology has been labeled as grid-forming (GFM) in certain industrial discussions.…

EirGrid and the System Operator for Northern Ireland (SONI) are the transmission system operators (TSOs) for Ireland and Northern Ireland, respectively. Together the Ireland and Northern Ireland power systems constitute a synchronous system with a peak demand of approximately 7 GW. In 2022, approximately 40% of electricity used on the island of Ireland came from…

  In recent decades, the electric power utilities have integrated a sizeable amount of renewable energy source (RES) technologies into the power system. Their generation is inherently variable and not easy to precisely forecast in the medium term. Nonetheless, at small penetrations, the power system can still be operated more or less in a traditional…