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New Strategy to Transmission Planning Hyperlinks Renewable Power Zones to Main Load Facilities through Longer, Excessive-Voltage Transmission
A brand new strategy to grid planning may make it attainable to energy your private home with the nation’s finest and lowest-cost wind and photo voltaic vitality, regardless of the place you reside.
Researchers on the Nationwide Renewable Power Laboratory (NREL) led the evaluation with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) learning the economics of constructing long-distance, high-voltage transmission traces which might be anchored to interregional renewable vitality zones (IREZs), or areas with very excessive concentrations of the lowest-cost developable renewable vitality potential. The envisioned transmission traces would cross lots of of miles and hyperlink the nation’s finest renewable vitality sources to the largest load facilities. Based mostly on the NREL analysis, the IREZ strategy may get monetary savings general, assist hold the lights on, and prudently pace up the tempo of decarbonizing the nation’s electrical grid.
Modeled Advantages of Interregional Renewable Power Zones
Right now, virtually all transmission traces are native or regional, versus interregional, which might cross planning authority seams. Transmission traces have been initially designed to convey energy from energy crops to close by communities. However many of the nation’s finest wind and photo voltaic sources are positioned lots of of miles away from areas with a number of electrical energy demand.
For this research, NREL modeled 20 IREZ eventualities specializing in price, reliability, and electrical energy price impacts. Almost all wind IREZ areas are within the Midwest, and all photo voltaic IREZs are within the Southwest. IREZs present the potential to optimize vitality technology prices, with prices per kilowatt-hour lower than that of wind and photo voltaic elsewhere. Every zone comprises an IREZ hub, the place transmission substations accumulate energy from numerous renewable vitality crops and join them to bulk energy programs. Energy from an IREZ is shipped alongside high-voltage direct present transmission paths throughout state traces to main load facilities (pictured in crimson under).
Utilizing IREZ transmission planning, low-cost renewable electrical energy may very well be despatched from areas like southern Wyoming—which has one of many highest wind energy potentials in the country—to cities like Salt Lake Metropolis, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles. Lots of the modeled IREZ corridors have already got high-voltage transmission tasks which might be both in superior planning phases or are already underneath development. Moreover, most of the IREZ corridors have been modeled in areas recognized within the U.S. Division of Power’s (DOE’s) Grid Deployment Workplace’s National Transmission Needs Study that want deployment to fulfill future demand, technology, and reliability wants.
NREL discovered the potential financial savings from the low price of renewable technology offset the price of constructing the long-distance interregional transmission corridors. Plus, the IREZ corridors may present extra dependable sources to assist hold the lights on than relying solely on native or regional sources.
Mapping Out Interstate Collaboration for IREZ Corridors
An important part to the potential creation of IREZ corridors is collaboration between states.
“Lengthy-distance transmission between planning areas was at all times more durable to get via the approval course of than new traces inside the identical area,” NREL researcher and lead writer David Hurlbut stated. “However over the previous few years the facility sector has been altering in ways in which may make interregional transmission a extra compelling possibility than it was once.”
The NREL research assumed that the trail of least regulatory resistance was collaboration amongst states main choices on improvement of IREZ corridors.
“States are essential determination makers within the transmission course of,” Hurlbut stated. “The IREZ evaluation is designed to make it straightforward for states to reply the regulatory questions they should fulfill with a purpose to get useful interregional traces shifting.”
States alongside the identical hall may work collectively to pursue essentially the most cost-effective choices for transmission planning and means to compensate landowners the place proposed transmission traces may go. The research assumed that when states attain agreements on IREZ hall improvement, they might attain out for federal monetary, regulatory, and analytical assist.
The research additionally explored the implications for tribal lands, notably these in western Oklahoma, northwestern Montana, and southeastern Arizona. The hope is that the findings from the research may assist inform tribal choices about how they want to take part within the nation’s vitality transformation with respect to land entry, employment, tribal revenues, and different IREZ hall improvement questions.
IREZs are an actionable piece of a bigger nationwide image that NREL and PNNL have been learning for greater than two years. The National Transmission Planning Study (NTP Study), performed by NREL and PNNL and funded by DOE’s Grid Deployment Workplace, goals to establish transmission choices that may present broad-scale advantages to electrical prospects, inform regional and interregional transmission planning processes, and establish interregional and nationwide methods to speed up decarbonization whereas sustaining system reliability.
The NTP Examine might be complemented by a number of companion studies, the primary of which is the IREZ report. The NTP Examine and its key findings might be launched later this 12 months, together with a companion report back to IREZ that explains the regulatory challenges to interregional transmission which have traditionally prevented realizing most of the advantages quantified within the NTP Examine technical eventualities.
Learn the complete report on Interregional Renewable Energy Zones. Study extra concerning the NTP Study and NREL’s energy analysis and grid research.
Courtesy of NREL. By Tim Meehan
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