The U.S. transmission system will require significant restructuring and greater alignment with public policy goals to meet the future needs of the electricity sector, according to industry insiders speaking at WIRES’ virtual fall member meeting last week.

The trade group promotes investment in transmission and progressive government policies to advance energy markets, economic efficiency, and consumer and environmental benefits through electric infrastructure development.

Here is some of what RTO Insider heard at the event.

Logjams, Dysfunction

During a panel on the integration of renewable energy and its impact on transmission, former FERC Chairman Joseph Kelliher said if he were an all-powerful king or wizard with a magic wand, he would change the structure of transmission ownership in the U.S.

“When I was at FERC, I was really stunned when National Grid testified at a FERC conference saying that the U.S. had at the time 492 different owners of the grid, and the government owns a third of the grid,” Kelliher said. “I think it would work better if you had a series of regional, national grids, something along the lines of our U.S. pipeline network. Pipelines are all corporate structured. They’re separated from production, dedicated completely to the business of moving other people’s gas. If you had regional, national grids whose only businesses were transmitting other people’s electricity, I think they’d be much more focused on quickly investing and anticipating the needs of the market.”

Kelliher added that the more realistic option is “effective, proactive regional transmission planning and execution of those plans.”

Grid Strategies President Rob Gramlich concurred and added that he does “a lot of work with renewable energy companies and associations, and what they see and feel right now is a symptom of a bigger disease.”

“What they see is interconnection queue logjams and dysfunction where you get to a certain number of projects in the queue, and suddenly the costs balloon, and then they jump out, and everybody else has to be restarted. It’s a total mess,” Gramlich said.

He said the interconnection queue problems could be “alleviated” by aligning transmission planning — and the cost allocation associated with it — with utility and state public policy goals.

Antoine Lucas, vice president of engineering for SPP, said he advocates for improved or increased alignment between the transmission planning processes and cost allocation.

“Any efforts that can create more alignment in that area, create more of a clear vision, will remove a lot of the hurdles that we see plague some of the transmission planning processes, including the generator interconnection process that Rob mentioned,” Lucas said. “We do have a lot of entities who are all working hard to try and serve the needs of their members or customers, but when you have so many different plans, different strategies, optimizing those is a significant challenge that if we could bring more alignment to it, I think we’d be able to see more get done at the national level.”

Kelliher said regional grid development currently relies “very heavily on network upgrades funded by generators,” which “is an inefficient way to build out the grid.”

“If you rely less on network upgrades and have more proactive regional planning, you have more clear cost allocation that’s as regional as possible,” Kelliher said. “You probably need to abandon the competitive provisions of [FERC] Order 1000, which I don’t take lightly. But I think the reason you have utilities deferring, going to great lengths to avoid regional cost allocation, is they don’t want competition for their projects.”

Gramlich said he would like to see much more hands-on leadership from FERC, “not just serving as sort of judges.” He cited current Commissioner Richard Glick and former Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur, now on the Board of Directors for ISO-NE, as positive examples of FERC working with governors and stakeholders on the interregional planning process.

Gramlich added there are “30 GW of offshore wind in the goals across the Northeast states [and] that it’s going to be much more efficient to proactively build transmission if those states get together and say, ‘OK, here’s what we’d like our RTOs and ISOs to do to proactively plan this.’ So, I think it will require both state and federal leadership outside of just the stakeholder processes.”

From the RTO perspective, interregional projects have two main challenges, Lucas said: cost allocation and siting. He said siting “seems to be an issue that creates a tremendous amount of friction, specifically when you’re talking about state authority versus federal authority.”

“I think any clarity on that would go a long way in helping to solve the problem, but I do recognize it’s a very challenging issue,” Lucas said. “If it were to be taken up again at FERC, I don’t know how successful it might be.”

‘No Silver Bullet’ for Energy Transition  

In his keynote speech, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), ranking member on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said the demand for clean energy is growing to address climate change. The challenge, however, is “maintaining affordable, reliable and dependable energy while also reducing emissions, and ensuring that hardworking families and communities that have powered our nation to greatness aren’t left behind in the transition.”

“There’s no silver bullet. We’re going to need a variety of solutions to ensure we can meet this challenge both at home and around the world, where fossil fuels are going to be used for decades to come,” Manchin said. “That’s why I say we need innovation, not elimination.”

Manchin said that his and Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-Alaska) American Energy Innovation Act would invest $24 billion to advance critical technologies such as renewable energy, advanced nuclear, cybersecurity, energy storage, grid modernization, and carbon capture, removal, utilization and sequestration. It would also push technologies that can reduce emissions in four sectors of the economy that currently contribute about 90% of the nation’s overall greenhouse gas emissions.

“These varied solutions are necessary for us to reach any goal for reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” said Manchin, who hopes the bill comes to a vote during the lame-duck session following the elections. “They would also strengthen the United States’ position as an exporter of the technologies other countries will also need to tackle this global climate problem.”

Manchin added that the energy mix is changing with more renewables coming online and the retirements of older fossil-fuel units. That means “cost-effective energy storage is a critical technology to advance, and that’s also why a more flexible and modern electric grid is needed,” he said.

He said there is “a good argument for investment in grid infrastructure to help us meet our challenges.”

“We know that transmission is an essential component of a reliable and resilient grid because we know what happens when congestion disrupts the system,” Manchin said. “I expect transmission to get a good deal of attention next year. I know several bills seek to advance transmission by improving the interregional planning process at FERC or extending the investment tax credit to transmission.”

Manchin added that he hoped the “two very qualified nominees” for FERC — Allison Clements and Mark Christie — can be confirmed during the lame-duck session. (See FERC Nominees Bob and Weave Through Senate Hearing.) Clements, a Democrat and energy policy adviser for the Energy Foundation, and Christie, a Republican and chair of the Virginia State Corporation Commission, were nominated by President Trump in late July. Clements would fill the seat left open by the departure of LaFleur in August 2019. Christie would take the place of Bernard McNamee, who departed in September.

“I think we can all agree that the best FERC is a fully seated FERC,” Manchin said.