The West needs new transmission in the near term and more in the long term for California to meets its goals of providing retail customers with 100% clean energy by 2045 under the requirements of Senate Bill 100, presenters said in a day-long workshop Thursday.

The session was the second SB 100 workshop held jointly this year by CAISO, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and the California Energy Commission (CEC), which have planning, procurement and operational responsibilities for the state’s power grid.

The first workshop in June focused on the unprecedented buildout of generation resources necessary to meet SB 100 mandates. (See Calif. Needs Tx and Gas to Decarbonize, Advocates Say and Calif. Must Triple Capacity to Reach 100% Clean Energy.)

The transmission required to carry so much new capacity occupied Thursday’s workshop.

CPUC Senior Analyst Karolina Maslanka said that the CPUC’s current integrated resource plan includes 1,000 MW of out-of-state resources from New Mexico, Wyoming and Idaho requiring transmission upgrades.

“Connecting these resources would require transmission expansion to bring the power to the CAISO system border,” Maslanka said. “I highlight this because, as we plan for the SB 100 goal, it’s important not only to think about what upgrades may be necessary within the CAISO system but also what transmission expansions may need to take place to bring generation from other states to the CAISO load.”

CAISO is studying the CPUC IRP in its 2021/22 transmission planning process (TPP), with a draft expected in November.

In the last few years, the state seemed to have “sufficient headroom on the transmission system” to accommodate an influx of new resources,” Maslanka said. “But we are we are beginning to see a shift from an era of available transmission headroom to one where transmission development will be necessary to accommodate the large amount of resources expected to come online in the next 10 years.”

CAISO opened a 20-year TPP in May to look more broadly at the clean energy transition. The long-term TPP runs in parallel with CAISO’s traditional 10-year planning cycle and coordinates with its 2021/22 plan, said Jeff Billinton, the ISO’s director of transmission infrastructure planning. (See CAISO Launches 20-year Transmission Planning Process.)

Billinton said in May that the CPUC’s IRP portfolio envisions importing 3,000 MW of wind from Wyoming and New Mexico, potentially requiring both in-state and out-of-state transmission upgrades.

On Thursday, he touched on potential in-state needs, such as lines to carry offshore wind to major urban areas and out-of-state transmission projects to serve CAISO load.

In the long- and short-term planning process, “we’re welcoming and wanting to encourage and incorporate stakeholder input and consultation,” he said.

Tx in the Works

Transmission developers pitched their projects at Thursday’s workshop. Some of the projects are still in early planning; others are close to construction. They included:

• • • The Pacific Transmission Expansion Project, an underwater line to carry renewable power from the Central California coast directly to the Los Angeles Basin, bypassing congestion.
    • TransWest Express, a transmission project intended to carry large amounts of wind power from Wyoming to California that is “nearly shovel ready,” said David Smith, its engineering and operations director.
    • The Southwest Intertie Project, North, the final link in a three-part project to carry wind power from Idaho to CAISO through eastern Nevada.
    • The Sunzia Southwest Transmission Project, connecting wind resources in central New Mexico to Arizona and Southern California.
    • And the Lucky Corridor Transmission Project, intended to bring wind energy from northeastern New Mexico to Arizona and California.

Jim Avery, an independent consultant, presented the Pacific Transmission Expansion Project. (Avery is also a member of the WECC Board of Directors.)

He emphasized “the need for planning for the future, especially when you consider that the electric load on the grid has to increase dramatically in order to deal with the decarbonization of [the transportation, residential, industrial and commercial] sectors” as the state seeks to eliminate natural gas from its resource mix.

Decarbonization “will place traumatic stress on the grid,” requiring new transmission from “the renewables zones, where the potential energy is going to come from … [and] getting that power to California,” Avery said.

A third workshop in August will focus on resource mapping and land use, a touchy topic given the vast acreage needed for new solar arrays, wind farms and transmission rights-of-way.