Fulfilling the recommendations from NERC’s Interregional Transfer Capability Study will not be a simple task, a speaker said at a webinar Jan. 29 hosted by the Texas Reliability Entity.
“I don’t expect that we’re going to have a mandate from Congress to build anything at a certain level, particularly with the administration we have now, but I don’t know for sure. Nobody does,” Mark Henry, Texas RE’s chief engineer and director of reliability outreach, said at the regional entity’s “Talk with Texas RE.”
Henry took part in writing the ITCS as part of the ERO Executive Leadership Group; he told attendees that industry stakeholders from Texas also contributed through the ITCS Advisory Group.
NERC filed the ITCS with FERC in November 2024 as ordered by Congress in the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023. (See NERC Files ITCS to FERC, Meeting Congress’ Deadline.) The commission posted the report for a 12-month public comment period Nov. 26 and will submit a report on its conclusions to Congress after the comment period concludes, along with recommendations for statutory changes, if any (AD25-4).
The three parts of the ITCS submitted last year include a transfer capability analysis summing up the current transfer capabilities between transmission planning regions in North America, recommendations for prudent additions to transfer capability that could strengthen grid reliability, and recommendations to meet and maintain total transfer capability. A fourth document is planned in the second quarter of 2025 covering transfer capabilities and prudent additions from the U.S. to Canada and between Canadian provinces.
NERC recommended 35 GW of additional transfer capability across the North American grid, while noting that it was still not possible to resolve all the potential energy deficiencies identified over the 10-year course of the study.
Henry observed that these additions included a significant amount of added capacity — 14,100 MW — in ERCOT across the existing SPP-South connection (4,100 MW) and two new connections to Front Range (5,700 MW) and MISO-South (4,300 MW). These still hypothetical new connections do not represent any specific projects or locations, he said, because identifying such opportunities would be outside the ITCS’ scope.
Henry emphasized that the ITCS should be seen as a jumping-off point for further studies and planning work, rather than a blueprint for solving the grid’s transmission problems. He pointed out that the study only posited transfer additions between neighboring regions and added that even if such additions are constructed, there is no guarantee that the regions will be able to use the full capacity, because severe weather or other conditions that lead to energy shortfalls in one region could easily affect a nearby one.
In addition, Henry reminded listeners of the constraints imposed on the team. The FRA set NERC a deadline of just 18 months to complete the first-of-its-kind study, and the ERO had to choose its focus carefully to ensure it could finish on time.
“With the time and resources allowed for this, we kept this at a very, very high level,” Henry said. “The first part of meeting and maintaining is just to recognize that you’re going to have to do a lot of additional work. You’re going to have to study the system in more detail and identify where you might actually accomplish some of these transfers.”
Henry promised that NERC will continue to study the topics raised in the ITCS and refine its findings. He also urged listeners to “offer some insight” and reactions to the report through FERC’s comment process.
