Here’s 2002 Department of Energy study “to examine the benefits of establishing a national electricity transmission grid and to identify transmission bottlenecks and measures to address them.” Here’s a Federal Power Commission study from 1967 (not long after the November 1965 blackout) that recommends greater coordination of bulk power resources over a larger area. Seams cites national-grid studies going all the way back to 1923. Of course, a national grid is an obviously good idea, which is why people have been talking about doing it for decades. Spoiler: It’s a good idea! A national grid has been discussed for years, but it might finally be time It examined the costs and benefits of linking up America’s three big grids into a single, functional national grid. Preliminary results were released earlier this month. The Interconnections Seam Study (“Seams”) was conducted in partnership with three other national labs, Iowa State University, three regional grid operators (the Southwest Power Pool, Midcontinent Independent System Operator, and Western Area Power Administration), and a technical committee with dozens of utilities and energy companies. If there was any doubt about that, it has been put to rest by the release of a massive new study from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). (California is currently deciding whether to link up with a larger Western energy market, in part due to the lure of savings from operating a bigger grid.)īut those virtues especially apply at the national level. Even within the three big grids, coordination and interconnection could certainly be improved. The virtues of grid expansion apply on every level. Virtually every scenario that has the US hitting ambitious decarbonization goals involves a massive buildout of transmission to eventually create a national grid. Sharing energy over a wider geographic area improves efficiency, smooths out peaks and troughs in demand, reduces the use of duplicative backup resources, allows for the integration of more renewable energy, and reduces power prices. If there is one thing almost every climate or clean energy analyst agrees on, it’s that, when it comes to grids, bigger is better. Though there are a few small ties between them, very little energy is exchanged. Instead, functionally speaking, it has three grids: the Eastern Interconnection, ERCOT (a Texas grid, basically), and the Western Interconnection. The US does not have a national energy grid.
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