Developing transmission in the West should involve a long-term, comprehensive plan instead of a localized piecemeal approach, speakers agreed at last week’s webinar of the Western States Transmission Initiative – an effort led by Gridworks and former FERC Chair Richard Glick for the Committee on Regional Electric Power Cooperation (CREPC).

The second in a three-part series, the webinar addressed the West’s transmission needs and barriers to transmission development.

Glick, now a senior fellow at Gridworks and head of his own consulting firm, moderated a panel discussion with Rob Gramlich, president of consultant Grid Strategies, and Kris Raper, vice president of strategic engagement and external affairs at WECC and a former member of the Idaho Public Utilities Commission.

Gramlich and Raper both said that the West needs better regional planning to maximize the value of transmission built and avoid wasteful spending.

“I think you can look at the numbers and say, ‘a purely reactive short-term, just-in-time transmission approach is the most expensive way to do transmission,’” Gramlich said. “And we really are in most of the country doing just-in-time transmission.”

Building transmission to ensure grid reliability in the short term is necessary, but “if we proactively plan, we can almost certainly find a cheaper way to build a future system,” he said.

“From a consumer perspective, I think we need to do everything we can to move to more efficient operation of the existing grid and then plan for future needs,” Gramlich said. “And then I think the most important cost containment is to do good planning that does good, solid, benefit-cost analysis of what are the benefits, what are the costs. Let’s look at the portfolio, not the specific projects alone. Let’s look at the regional efficiencies and get the economies of scope brought in to bear.”

“There’s been a lot of transmission investment in the country, but most of that is on local systems,” he added. “There’s been almost none on the large regional and interregional [scale] over the last decade.”

Raper said large amounts of up-front spending on transmission could be difficult to sell to consumers and state regulators concerned about rising costs. But she suggested using a simple analogy to explain why it makes sense.

“It’s like going to Costco to buy things,” Raper said. “If you go to the regular grocery store, you buy for the short-term generally. And per item, you’re probably going to spend a little more. But if you have the ability to go to Costco, are you spending more upfront when you go there? Yes, but it lasts you longer.”

“From the most simplistic standpoint of explaining to a consumer,” planners could say, “yes, it looks like a lot of money, but if we do it onesie-twosie, you’re actually spending more, because you don’t gain the efficiencies from buying at Costco,” she said.

Raper outlined WECC’s efforts to study Western transmission needs in the next 20 years and interregional transfer capabilities, as required by recent federal law. (See NERC FAC Approves Transfer Study Funding.)

A WECC four-part study process is underway to study transmission needs, including during extended periods of extreme heat and cold in the West. Four scenario studies could be finished this year, with the 20-year analysis to be completed in 2024.

“We are working to develop a process for building out our 20-year planning model,” Raper said. “We think it’ll be valuable both for longer term transmission planning and reliability assessments of the West, and also to meet evolving FERC expectations that have come out recently under proposed rules that are focused on improving regional transmission planning processes.”

As an impartial entity that oversees reliability across the entire Western Interconnection, WECC’s long-term transmission analysis may carry more weight with regulators in Western states, where views on the need for green energy and transmission development can vary widely.

“We’re excited about the growing dialogue regarding transmission needs,” Raper said. “We see the urgency as now, and we do believe that with our stakeholders, we’ve identified a way for WECC to fill an important void in the conversation, providing a high-level, interconnection-wide view of transmission needs.”

“All of this has been done with the objective of maintaining our independent voice of reliability, remaining policy-neutral and resource-agnostic and fitting within WECC’s delegated authority to perform reliability assessments for the Western Interconnection,” she said.

The first webinar in the WSTI series on July 20 dealt with transmission planning. The third and final webinar in the series on Aug. 16 will tackle cost allocation.

“I look forward to seeing you all again on Aug. 16 for a discussion of … who pays for transmission and how much do they pay,” Gridworks Director Kate Griffith said. “And perhaps we’ll get a little bit deeper into Kris’s analogy of spending our money at a transmission Costco instead of a fancy food store.”