Energy Efficiency, Industrial, Utilities, Sourcing Renewables - May 13, 2022
PJM Analyzes Future Grid Output
PJM released a report outlining a future vision for the grid by examining how industry trends and drivers could impact PJM and PJM’s transmission planning process.
Grid of the Future: PJM’s Regional Planning Perspective (PDF) envisions a transmission system driven by decarbonization, renewables, public policy, a diverse resource mix and new technologies.
The study ensures that PJM’s future grid maintains the reliability and operational flexibility necessary and builds on the work of PJM’s renewable integration and offshore wind studies.
The report was presented by Suzanne Glatz, Director, Strategic Initiatives and Interregional Planning, at PJM’s Planning Committee on May 10.
“The grid of the future is happening now, and this paper details the road map that will help us plan the transmission system to enable the shift to renewable generation resources that are smaller, more dispersed, and more variable in output than the existing fleet,” Glatz said in a statement. “The reliable electric grid of today will have to become increasingly flexible and responsive to customer demands, and our processes streamlined to integrate the many new resources that are coming online.”
PJM anticipates that during the next 15 years it will integrate more than 100,000 MW of onshore wind, offshore wind, solar and storage in addition to 15,000 MW already in service. Future grid enhancements alone are estimated to be more than $3 billion.
In creating the report, PJM planners examined key industry trends driving future grid expansion, including generation development, evolving load characteristics, emerging transmission technologies, and resilience.
The resulting road map for PJM’s evolving Regional Transmission Expansion Plan (RTEP) encompasses four focus areas:
- Transmission build-out scenario studies will be conducted in 2022. These will leverage PJM’s renewable integration and offshore wind studies as well as include additional analysis of the potential impacts of greater transportation and building electrification.
- Targeted reliability studies will continue to explore generation and transmission reliability attributes such as reactive control, stability, system inertia and frequency control, and short-circuit impacts.
- RTEP process improvements will continue, including key initiatives already underway: interconnection process reform, generator deliverability methodology enhancement, the development of Effective Load Carrying Capability methodology and the implementation of probabilistic planning techniques.
- Regulatory policy impacts will inform new reliability criteria for such eventualities as extreme events, state electrification policies and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission action on regional transmission planning.
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