The Growing Challenges of the Electric Power Grid

The landscape of the Electric Power Grid is undergoing a massive shift. According to the latest findings from the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab's "Queued Up: 2024 Edition" report, the U.S. witnessed nearly 11,600 active projects seeking grid interconnection by the end of 2023, representing a staggering 2,600 GW of generation and storage capacity. Notably, solar, wind, and storage projects make up approximately 95% of this active capacity seeking transmission interconnection. Furthermore, a report titled "The Era of Flat Power Demand is Over" by Grid Strategies reveals that grid planners in the U.S. have revised their five-year load growth forecast, nearly doubling it from 2.6% to 4.7% growth over the past year alone. Industrial and manufacturing commitments have soared to around $481 billion since 2021, while data center expansion is projected to surpass $150 billion by 2028, resulting in an anticipated 38 GW increase in peak load demand through the same period.

However, amidst these transformative developments, a critical question arises: Is the U.S. Electric Grid adequately prepared to accommodate such monumental changes? Increasingly, the Grid is emerging as a primary bottleneck hindering the transition, mainly due to the growing issues of Grid Congestion. This is presenting multiple challenges for Transmission operators, Utilities, and Generation project developers.

The Regulatory Reforms to Address these Challenges

In response to these challenges, forward-thinking regulatory reforms spearheaded by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) are being introduced, such as the FERC Order 2023. This order marks a crucial step towards alleviating growing interconnection backlogs and bottlenecks in the U.S. energy landscape. Notably, FERC Order 2023 mandates the evaluation of Alternative Transmission Technologies, including Grid Enhancing Technologies (GETs) such as Grid Topology Reconfiguration and Advanced Power Flow Controllers, as an integral part of the Interconnection Studies. Additionally, the order imposes financial penalties for delays in Interconnection Studies and Generation project withdrawals from the Interconnection Queue.

GridAstra’s ‘FUSION-T Interconnection Planner’ Software Solution

To address the new challenges of growing Interconnection Queue and increasing load demand, and to help comply with the new requirements of FERC Order 2023, GridAstra is excited to announce the launch of our new software product, the ‘FUSION-T Interconnection Planner’! The key features of this software include –

• Automated and intuitive study workflows for facilitating the complex Interconnection Studies in a much faster and easier manner 
• Identification of basecase and contingency violations with the addition of new generation clusters, loads, and other components in the Planning / Study Case
• Automated suggestions for the optimal coordination of GETs-based controls for the mitigation of congestion issues in the Planning / Study Case, using Grid Topology Reconfiguration and Advanced Power Flow Controllers or APFCs (including automated decision support for optimal placement of APFCs in the Grid as well, if needed) 
• Seamless integration in the existing Interconnection Study workflows, thanks to its compatibility with industry-standard data formats

Ultimately, our goal with the ‘FUSION-T Interconnection Planner’ is to empower Transmission operators, Utilities, and Generation project developers to reliably connect larger volumes of new generation and load to the Grid, and do that in a much shorter period of time and at a much lower cost. Along with this, this software can also facilitate in ensuring better interconnection cost certainties and lower project withdrawal rates, while ensuring compliance with the latest regulatory mandates, including FERC Order 2023.

If you are interested in our ‘FUSION-T Interconnection Planner’ software, please reach out to us at [email protected] or https://gridastra.com/contact.html.