The American Clean Power Association, Advanced Energy Economy and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) filed supplemental comments with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to emphasize the need and opportunity for near-term interconnection improvements.
These joint comments highlight areas of agreement from clean energy companies that would allow timely and cost-effective interconnection of much-needed new, clean generation while FERC continues to work towards comprehensive transmission planning reform. FERC has the opportunity to improve certainty, reduce costs and resolve backlogs of projects waiting to connect to the grid, and these organizations jointly urge FERC to move forward with these much-needed reforms.
“Interconnection backlogs are one of the biggest impediments to our ability to quickly and efficiently decarbonize our electricity grid in the near term,” said Sean Gallagher, VP of state and regulatory affairs at SEIA. “Without meaningful reforms to the interconnection process, like the ones we’ve outlined for FERC, the United States will never be able to meet its long-term decarbonization goals. Our comments will help the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issue a once in a generation rulemaking that will unlock renewable projects across the nation, enabling us to create thousands of jobs and new economic development opportunities across America.”
Read the supplemental comments below.
News item from SEIA
It was determined that on average the project cycle for start to finish on transmission lines and regional interconnects is right around 10 years. The U.S. is running into the problems Australia came across when some very large wind and solar PV farms were put in place, then it was found out that an interconnect could be one or more years away from the generation site. Several solar PV and wind farms changed hands as the original developer went bankrupt waiting for transmission lines to the site. Others had a transmission line nearby and yet could not operate the solar PV farm at full generation capacity due to constrictions in the feed in place. At times this took a couple of years to “upgrade” the feed to handle the generation from the solar PV farm. FERC needs to assert its wholesale transmission authority and use existing Federal rights of ways along railroads, pipelines and interstate highways and freeways to lay in buried UHVDC feeders to connect the east coast to the west coast and north to south so solar PV farms and wind farms can be constructed at an accelerated pace over the next two or three decades. While we’re doing all of this infrastructure upgrades let’s not forget moving towards making the national wholesale grid resistant to a large CME or intentional HEMP event to protect the grid and energy systems as part of a national security move for future generations.