How To Build A Better Grid That Can Reach Our Clean Energy Goals
The Solar Energy Industries Association and the Solar and Storage Industries Institute have a few ideas to add to the conversation about our broken electric grid.One of the biggest problems is that we do not have a central agency coordinating grid upgrade efforts.
Currently the grid is “planned” and built by disparate utilities that are regulated by a variety of state, regional, and public entities. If a developer wants to add new electric capacity to the grid, the project developer must work with the local utility to identify the equipment and electric lines needed to connect to the grid. In many areas, the grid is already completely saturated, making the interconnection process incremental and slow.
To do this, we need an apolitical federal entity that is explicitly tasked with planning and building out the inter-regional transmission grid. This entity would identify, plan, and fund inter-regional transmission lines in close collaboration with local communities and states.
While it’s up for debate where an entity like this might “live” within the federal government, regardless, a change like this would require Congressional approval and funding.In addition to sound planning practices, we need to figure out how to finance these upgrades which could amount toUnder the current model, project developers and ratepayers finance grid upgrades, but for a massive grid build-out on a tight timeline, this model simply isn’t possible.
For larger projects trying to connect to the transmission grid, this model is already strained by high interconnection costs, a growing interconnection queue, and a
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