ForeFront Power’s Post

Renewables are now so cheap it is financially advantageous for them to incur 100% costs to upgrade the grid to interconnect projects. “Over the past five years, these costs have ballooned from about 10 percent to between 50 to 100 percent of the cost of the wind or solar farms themselves.” We have almost 2,000 GW of interconnection requests with new solar and wind and batteries which dwarfs the existing 1,250 GW connected to the grid. And with utility upgrades taking 2 years to 2 decades, pure market demand is forcing electricity sales outside the grid. At first this will look like self consumption. People producing electricity behind the meter, powering their cars and heat pumps with available solar energy that the grid can’t handle. Next transporting energy over the roads and rails, just like we do with coal and oil, but this time with batteries and phase change material such as wax and ice. And when there is too much congestion, in wires, and over roads, some may even try to create synthetic fuels more cheaply than fossil fuels as they are more energy dense and can be put into existing pipelines. However I have my doubts that we will ever see electricity rates low enough to justify creating synthetic fuels. Because even with zero cost electricity, it will be better to first store energy in water heated by heat pump on site, and charge a stationary battery to allow for 24/7 battery discharge to the grid, and then sell electricity to any car or train that comes close enough to charge. Distributing energy is expensive. More so now than storing energy in a car or in hot water. We will see the grid build out in mobile form (Electric vehicles, ship to site battery and EV charging skids), much faster than interconnection queues get processed. PJM just put 3 years stop on all projects. Those who can’t wait for the utility will create their own utility, on site and over the road with overnight delivery from the factory. And with AI, data centers who can monetize electricity to solve billion dollar questions are able to pay for it. This economic cost cliff (low cost solar, no way to get power to valuable customers) is creating a gold rush in personal power networks, where time is money. This makes anyone too slow to accommodate their customer’s demands obsolete. Utilities have physics on their side, but Automakers have free commuters, overnight delivery and low cost batteries on theirs. Electricity as a service with Amazon/Uber delivery is anyone’s game when utilities are charging $0.15 / kWh for a service that can be free with a smart thermostat and less than $0.05 / kWh with current LFP EV batteries. I don’t see hydrogen or synthetic fuel delivery costing less than $0.15 / kWh, but if it does than oil majors who forage and refine fuels are going to become oil farmers. Who wins when utilities, oil majors, automakers, home builders, and tech delivery services are all competing for the same dollars?

Unfortunately, grid planning is now getting politically polarized as well. Former President Trump has even pledged to "scrap" offshore wind projects on "day one" should he be re-elected ... which creates much uncertainty, including for grid planning. We are, however, all together in this! Having inadequate transmission infrastructure is costly and the siloed and incremental current planning processes are not able to identify the most cost-effective grid investments. The entire nation will benefit from better grid planning that can reliably rebuild and expand our aging grid and simultaneously address load-serving, congestion, and generation interconnection needs at lower cost and in a more timely fashion. Cost allocations for grid investments are controversial, but can be designed such that designing lower-cost grid solutions for some states' public policy objectives do not impose costs on states that do not share these goals or otherwise benefit from the investments -- irrespective of whether these policy objectives are focused on attracting manufacturing and data center loads, the clean energy transition, or both. #gridmodernization #cleanenergytransition https://lnkd.in/ezPekpn7

Despite getting a ton of attention from policymakers — and a major push from federal regulators demanding interconnection reform at the country’s utilities and grid operators — clean energy projects remain stuck behind massive interconnection backlogs that threaten to slow down the transition away from fossil fuels. New transmission lines can take up to a decade to build, and many planned grid projects falter in the face of regulatory gridlock and legal challenges. But that doesn’t mean there’s no progress to be made in the near term. Here are two of the most promising developments from 2023 when it comes to speeding up the interconnection process: https://bit.ly/472He0r #transmission #cleanenergy #renewableenergy #electricitygird

The grid in its current state is a serious vulnerability not only for clean energy, but for economic development and security.

The country’s electric system is undergoing its most significant transformation in over a century. But new, clean generation capacity can't reach power-hungry customers without high-voltage power lines. To help, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission are making it easier to build new transmission lines through federal incentives and reforms to transmission planning and development. In this alert, R. Taylor Speer and Cordon Smart outline what you need to know. #renewableengery #enegysector #energyregulation

With the power grid under increasing pressure from data centers driving AI, crypto infrastructure and more, improving our working knowledge of the grid becomes important for all of us.

For the #cleanenergy transition to happen, we'll need electric #transmission to deliver #renewable power to places where people live. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has taken an important step to enable the development of that transmission.

The U.S. has far more clean energy projects seeking to connect to the grid than utilities and grid operators can handle. It’s a crisis that has been decades in the making, but one that must be resolved in the next few years if the country is to meet its climate goals. Last Thursday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved a sweeping set of reforms to address one facet of that crisis: the need to streamline and modernize the rules and processes that govern how power projects interconnect to the nation’s transmission grids. Learn more: https://bit.ly/43W3pDP #transmission #interconnection #cleanenergy #FERC

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Commissioner Allison Clements, in Minneapolis this week for the Mid-America Regulatory Conference, spoke with the Star Tribune about the need to invest in the nation's outdated electric grid and FERC's new transmission rule requiring grid operators to plan 20 years into the future for transmission line needs and costs. Walker Orenstein reports.   Clements: "Everyday citizens don't think about transmission lines and the process involved when they flip their switch or plug in their iPad. But it turns out big infrastructure is hard to build and it takes a long time. And so you have to start planning for the future now. It's the same as planning a family vacation. If you plan a year ahead, you can get the cheap flights, you can get reservations at the restaurants, you can get all the experiences. If you wait until the month before, you're a lot more limited in your options and everything's going to cost more." #powerdelivery #powergrid #transmissionlines #criticalinfrastructure #power #electricity #gridmodernization #powerindustry #ferc #futureproof #electricgrid #infrastructure #PDi2 https://lnkd.in/e9xjBNeP

'Federal regulators want to connect new projects to the electric grid faster. A new rule shifts the approach of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from “first come, first served” to “first ready, first served” when the agency decides what grid upgrades to prioritize to bring new generation and storage projects online. The rule is FERC’s first update to interconnection requirements in two decades. Wait times to connect projects to the grid have escalated in recent years. A typical power plant or storage project built in 2022 took roughly five years to proceed from its interconnection request to commercial operation, up from three in 2015. Meanwhile, interconnection queues increased by 40% last year, bringing the total backlog of projects awaiting grid connection to 2,000 gigawatts. Experts say the move is a step in the right direction, but more is needed to reduce interconnection backlogs, as well as the cost of completing upgrades. FERC is preparing another rule intended to spur transmission development via improved planning and cost allocation, to be released in the coming months.' Courtesy Kiplinger #gridmodernization #interconnection #cleanenergyrevolution #nxtgen David Nguyen Katharine Hayhoe Mark Rogers, PG, CPG Maria Bries Chris Kaiser Jonathan Rasmusson Sharon Foxworthy NXTGEN Clean Energy Solutions