Winter storms Gerri and Helen, which swept across the United States this week, highlight the need to add transmission capacity in the country, according to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Willie Phillips.
The Southwest Power Pool, which runs the grid from North Dakota to north Texas, imported a record 6.8 GW to help keep power flowing in its footprint, Phillips said Thursday at FERC’s monthly meeting.
In a move that could bolster the U.S. grid, Phillips said he expects in the “coming months” that the agency will revamp its requirements for transmission planning and cost allocation.
A new transmission planning rule would build on FERC’s updated interconnection requirements — issued in July — for connecting generator and energy storage projects to the grid, he said.
A new transmission planning rule would help ensure the grid remains robust, reliable and responsive to future energy needs, Phillips said.
“I’m confident that the collective expertise and commitment of FERC will lead us to equitable and forward-thinking transmission solutions that will stand the test of time,” he said.
During a media briefing, Phillips said he had “extreme confidence” that FERC’s commissioners have the working relationships needed to move a regional planning and cost allocation rule forward in the “very near future” and that “there’s nothing that I know … that can make me believe that we can’t get this work done.”
FERC is also exploring the possibility of taking steps to bolster transmission capacity between regions, Phillips said. Those efforts are running alongside a North American Electric Reliability Corp. study on the issue, he said, noting the study has started and may not take 18 months, the amount of time Congress gave NERC to do it.
“We are working on these two projects in parallel so that when NERC concludes its study, FERC is ready to act immediately,” he said.
Interregional transmission appeared to help grid operators deal with bitterly cold weather in the past week, according to FERC Commissioner Allison Clements, who noted the PJM Interconnection exported about 12 GW on Wednesday morning.
“It is worth taking a moment to consider the encouraging aspects of this week’s experience,” Clements said. “We can meet the challenges of extreme weather with proactive steps.”
Based on initial reports, it appears that lessons learned from Winter Storm Uri in 2021 and changes that have happened since then contributed to supporting the grid this week, according to Clements.
Since Uri led to rolling blackouts across Texas, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which runs most of the state’s grid, tripled its battery storage to 5 GW and doubled its demand response capacity to 4 GW, according to Clements.
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