In 2009, Michael Skelly, a developer from Texas, began a decade-long odyssey that would change the way the US electric grid industry operates. His company Clean Line Energy aimed to connect thousands of miles of high voltage transmission lines to transport power from America’s rural midlands to its densely populated coastlines. Through countless trials talking with state governments, congressmen, utilities, and land owners, he and the rest of Clean Line Energy fought to keep this mission alive. Despite closing the business in 2019, Skelly’s persistence set the groundwork for an entire budding industry of private transmission infrastructure development. The field has become one of the most popular topics in energy discussions today. I thought it would be great to dig a little deeper into the motivations behind this newfound interest in transmission infrastructure and why it is one of the most urgent issues our nation needs to focus on.
Why Build More Transmission Lines?
With the risk of outages increasing each year due to climate change and aging infrastructure, increasing grid stability has become one of the most crucial challenges for the US electric grid. The US has also set goals to have a net-zero emission grid by 2050, which requires a rapid transition to renewable energy sources. Strategically building more transmission lines lies at the core of solving both of these problems by reducing the chance of power blackouts and allowing renewable energy to be more readily transported to population centers.
Reducing Blackouts
The US electrical grid is a complex, mammothian machine. It’s made up of millions of miles of transmission and distribution wires, connecting every home, business, and factory in America with a consistent stream of power. But what happens when this power stops flowing? Catastrophe: billions of dollars of economic losses from businesses that can’t operate, thousands of lives in immediate risk, and millions of people thrown into a world of darkness, unprepared. In past articles, we’ve discussed ways we can develop our grid infrastructure to respond to blackouts once they happen. Just as importantly though, we’d also like to develop our infrastructure to minimize the chances these blackouts happen at all.
At its core, blackouts occur when the total load demand on the grid is greater than the total power supply. This can happen when transmission lines break or power generators malfunction. When an electric grid incorporates more generators and transmission lines, it gives an operator more options to make sure the power supply is meeting demand. When a line or generator unexpectedly breaks down, a system operator can redirect power across different transmission paths and ensure power is balanced on the grid.
By building more transmission lines and generators, we reduce the possibility of a blackout by giving operators more options to keep power flowing when failures occur. A highly stable grid is essential to a world that runs on electricity, so these developments have become a necessity rather than just a convenience.
Renewable Energy Transmission
Renewable energy technology has advanced tremendously over the last few decades. It has become more efficient and price effective. Many energy suppliers are intrigued by the prospects of opening solar and wind farms beause of this. High wind and sunlight are generally found in sparely populated areas, which makes these areas the best locations for renewable energy farms. For example, the panhandle of Oklohoma offers one of the best locations for farming wind energy, with wind blowing fast enough to on average drive wind turbines for half the day. The challenge has now become how we can transport this electricity from rural areas to population centers.
The current American electric grid is split up into three interconnections: the eastern, the western, and Texas. Each of these interconnections are further divided into either utilities or region transmission operators(RTO). These organizations manage the generation, transmission, and distribution of power in a given area. It is their responsibility to ensure grid stability and prevent blackouts.
These maps are often confusing and difficult to understand, but an immediate takeaway is that there are is no such thing as a unified electric grid in the United States. This means that there is no simple way to transport electricity from the center of the country to the coastline cities.
There were significant historical motivations for this design that we’ll discuss in a future blog article. To summarize, when the electric grid was first being built to serve users in densely populated areas, investors were driven by the principle of economies of scale. They found that a centralized system, where a few, geographically close energy plants could generate and supply the majority of power on the grid, would be the most economically viable development model. Utilities were placed nearby population centers so that costly high voltage transmission lines could be short and energy losses could be minimized. This centralized model of energy generatoin and transmission has meant that rural areas mostly only have low voltage distribution lines meant to simply supply power to factories, small businesses, and homes.
Now that we need rural electricity lines that can transport high voltage renewable energy over hundreds of miles, we need to reconsider this model of electric infrastructure. This has led to a economic and socially driven movement towards a decentralized electric grid, where renenable energy could be generated and transported anywhere across the country. The greatest challenge to making this happen is the construction of transmission infrastrucutre hundreds of miles of new transmission infrastructure.
Where are we now?
The demand for a decentralzed electric grid, and thus more transmission infrastructure, has led to a budding private sector working to develop these lines.
There are currently several companies working on projects to build this crucial infrastructure. Michael Skelly’s new company Grid United is among them. Other prominent builders in the space include Xcel Energy and NextEra Energy. The organization Americans for a Clean Energy Grid(ACEG) recently released a plan that shows, at minimum, which transmission projects need to be constructed to meet our renewable energy goals. Princeton’s Net Zero Lab did a similar analysis in this area. They have both found that a number of large infrastructure problems must be begun in the near future to meet the nation’s rapid energy-transition goals. Both of these reports are below linked for further reading.
If we want a more stable and sustainble grid, we need to began building these transmission lines immediately. Dissenting opinions in Congress over recent years have led to many of these infrastructure projects being stalled indefinitely. If we want these projects to happen, we need to make our voices heard. I encourage you to read more about transmission line projects and support the ones you feel are important. The future of our electric grid is in our hands. Without your support, these projects simply won’t be possible.
ACEG Report- https://cleanenergygrid.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Transmission-Projects-Ready-to-Go-Final.pdf
Net Zero America Report on Transmission Infrastructure(p.27-29) –
Electric Grid Gossip 