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THE U.S. URGENTLY NEEDS A BIGGER GRID. HERE’S A FAST SOLUTION.  
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Brad Plumer
April 14, 2024
New York Times
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_ A rarely used technique to upgrade old power lines could play a big
role in fixing one of the largest obstacles facing clean energy, two
reports found. _

Replacing existing power lines with cables made from state-of-the-art
materials could roughly double the capacity of the electric grid in
many parts of the country., Jim Wilson/The New York Times

 

One of the biggest obstacles to expanding clean energy in the United
States is a lack of power lines. Building new transmission lines can
take a decade or more because of permitting delays and local
opposition. But there may be a faster, cheaper solution, according to
two reports released Tuesday
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Replacing existing power lines with cables made from state-of-the-art
materials could roughly double the capacity of the electric grid in
many parts of the country, making room for much more wind and solar
power.

This technique, known as “advanced reconductoring,” is widely used
in other countries. But many U.S. utilities have been slow to embrace
it because of their unfamiliarity with the technology as well as
regulatory and bureaucratic hurdles, researchers found.

“We were pretty astonished by how big of an increase in capacity you
can get by reconductoring,” said Amol Phadke, a senior scientist at
the University of California, Berkeley, who contributed to one of the
reports released Tuesday. Working with GridLab, a consulting firm,
researchers from Berkeley looked at what would happen if advanced
reconductoring were broadly adopted.

“It’s not the only thing we need to do to upgrade the grid, but it
can be a major part of the solution,” Dr. Phadke said.

Today, most power lines consist of steel cores surrounded by strands
of aluminum, a design that’s been around for a century. In the
2000s, several companies developed cables that used smaller, lighter
cores such as carbon fiber and that could hold more aluminum. These
advanced cables can carry up to twice as much current as older models.

Replacing old lines can be done relatively quickly. In 2011, AEP, a
utility in Texas, urgently needed to deliver more power to the Lower
Rio Grande Valley to meet soaring population growth. It would have
taken too long to acquire land and permits and to build towers for a
new transmission line. Instead, AEP replaced 240 miles of wires on an
existing line
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advanced conductors, which took less than three years and increased
the carrying capacity of the lines by 40 percent.

In many places, upgrading power lines with advanced conductors could
nearly double the capacity of existing transmission corridors at less
than half the cost of building new lines, researchers found. If
utilities began deploying advanced conductors on a nationwide scale
— replacing thousands of miles of wires — they could add four
times as much transmission capacity by 2035 as they are currently on
pace to do.

That would allow the use of much more solar and wind power from
thousands of projects that have been proposed but can’t move
forward
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local grids are too clogged to accommodate them.

Installing advanced conductors is a promising idea, but questions
remain, including how much additional wind and solar power can be
built near existing lines, said Shinjini Menon, the vice president of
asset management and wildfire safety at Southern California Edison,
one of the nation’s largest utilities. Power companies would
probably still need to build lots of new lines to reach more remote
windy and sunny areas, she said.

“We agree that advanced conductors are going to be very, very
useful,” said Ms. Menon, whose company has already embarked on
multiple reconductoring projects in California. “But how far can we
take it? The jury’s still out.”

Experts broadly agree that the sluggish build-out of the electric grid
is the Achilles’ heel of the transition to cleaner energy. The
Energy Department estimates that the nation’s network of
transmission lines may need to expand by two-thirds or more
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2035 to meet President Biden’s goals to power the country with clean
energy.

But building transmission lines has become a brutal slog, and it can
take a decade or more for developers to site a new line through
multiple counties, receive permission from a patchwork of different
agencies and address lawsuits about spoiled views or damage to
ecosystems. Last year, the United States added just 251 miles of
high-voltage transmission lines
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a number that has been declining for a decade.

The climate stakes are high. In 2022, Congress approved hundreds of
billions of dollars for solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles
and other nonpolluting technologies to tackle global warming as part
of the Inflation Reduction Act. But if the United States can’t add
new transmission capacity more quickly, roughly half the emission
reductions expected from that law may not materialize
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researchers at the Princeton-led REPEAT Project found.

The difficulty of building new lines has led many energy experts and
industry officials to explore ways to squeeze more out of the existing
grid. That includes “grid-enhancing technologies”
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that allow utilities to send more power through existing lines without
overloading them and advanced controls that allow operators to ease
congestion on the grid. Studies have found these techniques can
increase grid capacity by 10 to 30 percent at a low cost.

Countries like Belgium and the Netherlands have been widely deploying
advanced conductors in order to integrate more wind and solar power,
said Emilia Chojkiewicz, one of the authors of the Berkeley report.

“We talked with the transmission system planners over there and they
all said this is a no-brainer,” Ms. Chojkiewicz said. “It’s
often difficult to get new rights of way for lines, and reconductoring
is much faster.”

If reconductoring is so effective, why don’t more utilities in the
United States do it? That question was the focus of the second report
released Tuesday, by GridLab and Energy Innovation, a nonprofit
organization.

One problem is the fragmented nature of America’s electricity
system, which is actually three grids run by 3,200 different utilities
and a complex patchwork of regional planners and regulators. That
means new technologies — which require careful study and worker
retraining — sometimes spread more slowly than they do in countries
with just a handful of grid operators.

“Many utilities are risk averse,” said Dave Bryant, the chief
technology officer for CTC Global, a leading manufacturer of advanced
conductors that has projects in more than 60 countries.

There are also mismatched incentives, the report found. Because of the
way in which utilities are compensated, they often have more financial
incentive to build new lines rather than to upgrade existing
equipment. Conversely, some regulators are wary of the higher upfront
cost of advanced conductors — even if they pay for themselves over
the long run. Many utilities also have little motivation to cooperate
with one another on long-term transmission planning.

“The biggest barrier is that the industry and regulators are still
caught in a short-term, reactive mind-set,” said Casey Baker, a
senior program manager at GridLab. “But now we’re in an era where
we need the grid to grow very quickly, and our existing processes
haven’t caught up with that reality.”

That may be starting to change in some places. In Montana,
Northwestern Energy recently replaced part of an aging line with
advanced conductors to reduce wildfire risk — the new line sagged
less in the heat, making it less likely to make contact with trees.
Pleased with the results, Montana legislators passed a bill
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would give utilities financial incentives to install advanced
conductors. A bill in Virginia would require utilities
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consider the technology.

With electricity demand beginning to surge for the first time in two
decades
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of new data centers, factories and electric vehicles, creating
bottlenecks on the grid, many utilities are getting over their
wariness about new technologies.

“We’re seeing a lot more interest in grid-enhancing technologies,
whether it’s reconductoring or other options,” said Pedro Pizarro,
the president and chief executive of Edison International, a
California power company, and the chairman of the Edison Electric
Institute, a utility trade organization. “There’s a sense of
urgency.”

_Brad Plumer is a New York Times reporter based in Washington,
covering technology and policy efforts to address global warming._

* Climate Change
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* electric grid
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* Technology
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