The U.S. Department of Energy looks to be preparing for a full court press on grid-enhancing technologies in 2024, with a new report and funding opportunities aimed at removing barriers to the deployment of technologies like dynamic line ratings and advanced conductors that can quickly increase capacity on existing transmission and distribution lines.  

“We’re entering into an extraordinary time where many parts of the country are seeing rapid load growth, generation additions and resiliency threats all at once,” said Vanessa Chan, chief commercialization officer and director of DOE’s Office of Technology Transitions (OTT), during a Dec. 12 webinar. “So many solutions are already sitting right in front of us. We need to get the commercially available, innovative technologies out the door on the existing system today.” 

The key challenges are not the maturity of specific technologies, but “deployment barriers inherent in the market structure,” she said. “We need to ramp momentum. It will be a massive, massive miss if we don’t work together to break these barriers down today.” 

Chan’s call to action kicked off a preview of the department’s upcoming Pathways to Grid Innovation Commercial Liftoff Report, due early in 2024, while also sending some clear messages about the kind of projects DOE will be looking for in applications for the second round of its Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) program.  

“We’re really prioritizing in this round of funding projects that significantly increase transmission capacity, whether they’re using advanced conductors or [high-voltage, direct current lines] or grid-enhancing technologies,” said Maria Robinson, director of DOE’s Grid Deployment Office (GDO), which administers the GRIP program. The goal, she said, is to leverage federal funds “to catalyze a long-term transformation of grid systems and technologies.” 

DOE awarded $3.46 billion to 58 projects across 44 states in the first round of GRIP funding, and has announced $3.9 billion for the second round, with initial concept papers due Jan. 12. (See DOE Announces $3.46B for Grid Resilience, Improvement Projects.) 

While the Commercial Liftoff report will cover about 20 technologies that are ready or almost ready to scale, the webinar was strategically focused on the same technologies that the GRIP program will be prioritizing — dynamic line ratings, advanced conductors, HVDC lines and advanced distribution management systems (ADMS). 

All four provide the most bang for the buck, said Louise White, a policy advisor in DOE’s Loan Programs Office. 

“When we evaluate the impact of these solutions on the grid, we see that each contributes in multiple ways to enhancing grid capacity to make the most of existing rights-of-way today and toward achieving modern grid objectives by improving systems portability, environmental sustainability, reliability, safety and security,” she said.  

DOE funding — from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act — can buy down the high cost of the early projects needed to stimulate supply chain and further adoption, and bring down prices, she said.  

Some utilities have started deploying GETs, said Avi Gopstein, a GDO senior advisor, pointing to projects such as National Grid’s use of dynamic line ratings in New York to cut curtailment of wind projects and expand capacity on transmission lines.   

But he said, “There are more than 3,000 utilities in the United States, and a few excellent projects won’t get us where we need to be.”  

Utilities face “the competing priorities of maintaining an aging system while planning for future system upgrades, as well as the need for efficient capital allocation to minimize ratepayer impacts,” Gopstein said. The need now is for “new processes to better evaluate emerging technology benefits when technology is first deployed and for a future when it is utilized at scale. … 

“It’s clear that legacy approaches to capital allocation, which often depend on a maintenance framework built on the foundational assumption that existing infrastructure is sufficient to serve load, are no longer adequate,” he said. 

Lucia Tian, a senior advisor for OTT, agreed. “Given the pressures our electric grid is facing, stakeholders across the board are emphasizing the need to shift to a proactive, future-oriented approach for managing and investing in the grid to ensure system reliability in a rapidly changing energy system,” she said.  

“Both industry and regulators recognize that current regulatory and business models make it challenging to invest in advanced innovative grid solutions that go beyond the maintenance of existing infrastructure and development of traditional assets,” Tian said. “And the status quo here isn’t an option.” 

Innovation in Many Flavors

The main driver for GETs is burgeoning demand on the grid. According to new report from Grid Strategies, grid planners now see demand almost doubling over the next five years, requiring an additional 38 GW of capacity. (See Grid Planners Predict Sharp Increase in Load Growth.) 

Expanding capacity on existing lines is critical, but accelerating deployment will require a shift in business and regulatory models to develop standards and methods for valuing the benefits GETs can provide across a system, White said. Looking at dynamic line ratings (DLR), for example, White said, the technology “drives multiple capacity, reliability, decarbonization and affordability outcomes. 

“But to implement DLR requires installing sensors to measure real time environmental and land conditions, which also significantly [increases] system visibility,” she said. Advanced DLR also may require automating and digitizing substations, which “will enhance line voltage and current control, amplifying DLR benefits.” 

New communication and data management systems also may be needed, she said, but “being strategic about investment in these infrastructures can prepare a utility to unlock additional benefits down the road and improves cost-sharing between technologies.” 

Still, the way forward will be different for different utilities, she said. Not everyone needs best-in-class systems.  

“Innovation comes in many flavors, and considerable benefits can be realized with more basic technology investments,” White said. “So, a strategic investment plan must identify the appropriate level of innovation and supporting technical requirements to best support a diverse array of future applications to meet utilities’ current and future grid needs.” 

Angelena Bohman, a GDO technical analyst, also raised the organizational challenges adoption of new technologies can trigger. While an ADMS “increases visibility and situational awareness on the system and automates processes that exist manually today,” setting up the system “requires managing the migration of old workflows and databases into the system … [and] benefits may not be realized for many years.” 

The result is a misalignment between traditional planning and valuation based on short-term profit, and the need for more forward-looking, long-term perspectives. 

Deployment of advanced grid technologies suffers from “a lack of sufficient investment incentives to warrant the significant organizational effort required to deploy many of these innovative solutions,” White said. “This again highlights the need to shift from traditional cost-of-service models that often disincentivize these types of innovative investments and toward business models that reward utilities for these types of investments that are needed for a modern grid.” 

White ended the webinar with a list of critical takeaways: 

• • Valuing innovative grid technologies “requires looking at the system holistically to recognize complementary and stacking benefits and to strategically plan for the long term to ensure capital is deployed efficiently today.” 
  • Regulatory and business models must be updated to “address the meaningful misalignment between traditional incentive structures and the needs of a modern grid.” New structures must “value performance instead of capital expenditure [and] enable new risk- and cost-sharing models and encourage innovation.”  
  • Grid management also must change, from “legacy, reactive” approaches to “proactive, future-oriented strategies that serve the long-term interests of ratepayers.”