Panel Discussion: Transmission is Everything: Expanding & Upgrading for Future Load Growth
Texas is facing rapid load growth and increasing transmission congestion and curtailment, making long-term transmission planning critical to maintaining resource adequacy and meeting load and generation interconnect. While Texas remains a leader in clean energy deployment, transmission bottlenecks complicate efforts to deliver power efficiently and cost-effectively. Stakeholders must balance the urgency of near-term expansion with comprehensive, forward-looking planning, raising complex questions around cost allocation, risk, and regulatory coordination. Evolving policies, technologies, and federal initiatives are also reshaping how transmission projects are evaluated, financed, and approved. This panel will examine the challenges and potential solutions to expand grid capacity, reduce congestion, and ensure the system can reliably meet future demand.
- What’s the status of today’s transmission expansion plans and new projects? Are process and cost allocation changes affecting planning and project financing? 345 vs 765 KV?
- How can transmission keep up with load growth? Are expedited approvals necessary? Without more inter-regional transmission ties, where’s the breaking point?
- Are plans flexible enough to meet future system needs? Does ERCOT need to share stability data? Can West TX to load buildout happen, what about incentivizing new load in high congestion areas? What about GETs? Is CREZ 2 a pipedream? Any other avenues to explore?
- 765 KV: What’s happening and what’s the timeline? What’s more cost-effective and quicker: new transmission vs GETs vs other upgrades? Who pays? What about 4CP revision?
- How might FERC order 2023 and other federal initiatives change the landscape in TX? What risk reduction strategies are viable given the current conditions?
- How is load balancing happening during planned maintenance? Where do stability limits really lie in a grid increasingly dominated by intermittent assets?
