6/29/2023 0 Comments Transmission linesThere was about $5 billion for transmission-line construction in the IRA, but that's not nearly enough, said Gramlich, who called that sum "kind of peanuts." There's also been some incremental federal action on transmission lines. "Everybody's becoming more cognizant of permitting and the impact of permitting and how to do that and more efficiently," he said. Those projects should take seven to nine years instead of the 10 to 12 that is historically required, Johnson told CNBC. Currently, the regional organization has approved a $10.3 billion plan to build 18 new transmission projects. Johnson from MISO says there's been some incremental improvement in getting new lines approved. ( Here is a map showing the region-by-region planning entities.) We don't have a well-functioning system to determine who benefits and assign costs," Gramlich told CNBC. "Sometimes its three, five, 10 or more utility territories that are crossed by needed long-distance high-capacity lines. The longer the line, the more problematic the planning becomes. "They have oddly shaped footprints and they have trouble reaching decisions internally over who should pay and who benefits," said Gramlich. Regional transmission organizations, like MISO, can oversee the process in certain cases but often get bogged down in internal debates. "Someone that benefits from a more frequent transmission line will pay more than someone who benefits less from a transmission line."īut the mechanisms for recovering those costs varies regionally and on the relative size of the transmission line. "One principle that has been imposed on most of the cost allocation mechanisms for transmission has been, to the extent that we can identify beneficiaries, beneficiaries pay," McCalley said. Ultimately, an energy organization - a utility, cooperative, or transmission-only company - will pass the cost of a new transmission line on to the electricity customers who benefit. ![]() "They have got to get paid for what they just did, in some way, otherwise it doesn't make sense for them to do it." Because energy companies know that there's not a functioning way really to recover the costs," Gramlich told CNBC.Įnergy companies that build new transmission lines need to get a return on their investment, explains James McCalley, an electrical engineering professor at Iowa State University. "More often than not, there's just not anybody proposing the line. This type of headache and bureaucratic consternation often prevent utilities or other energy organizations from even proposing new lines. It's like we have municipal governments trying to fund an interstate highway." "The regulatory structure was not set up for lines that cross 10 or more utility service territories. "The industry grew up as hundreds of utilities serving small geographic areas," Gramlich told CNBC. No, you pay for it.' So, that's kind of where we get stuck most of the time," Rob Gramlich, the founder of transmission policy group Grid Strategies, told CNBC. States "look at each other and say: 'Well, you pay for it. The system really flounders when a line would span a long distance, running across multiple states. And a transmission-first or transmission-only company involved is going to benefit more than a company whose main business is power generation, potentially putting the parties at odds with each other. For example, an environmental group is likely to disagree with stakeholders who advocate for more power generation from a fossil-fuel-based source. What's more, the parties at the negotiating table can have competing interests. "We are patching and connecting all these different pieces, all of these different utilities, all of these different load-serving entities, and really trying to look at what works best for the greatest good and trying to figure out how to resolve the most issues for the most amount of people," Johnson told CNBC. Energy Information Administration told CNBC, and for transmission lines to be constructed, each of the affected utilities, their respective regulators, and the landowners who will host a line have to agree where the line will go and how to pay for it, according to their own respective rules.Īubrey Johnson, a vice president of system planning for the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), one of seven regional planning agencies in the U.S., compared his work to making a patchwork quilt from pieces of cloth. There are 3,150 utility companies in the country, the U.S. Personal Loans for 670 Credit Score or Lower ![]() Personal Loans for 580 Credit Score or Lower Best Debt Consolidation Loans for Bad Credit
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