Extreme Weather Gets Nod in New Draft Rules to Guide Power Grid Planning

(Bloomberg) -- The top U.S. energy regulator released the first set of draft rules for upgrading and expanding the country’s aging electric grid to create a cleaner, more resilient network.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission proposed rules that would require regional transmission planning to consider at least 20-year impacts, including the changing power-and-demand mix and extreme weather events, according to a staff presentation released Thursday. Utilities and planners will also be required to seek agreement from states in each region for cost allocation. The comment period is 75 days.

The current planning approach doesn’t sufficiently anticipate the grid’s transformation and pressures from extreme weather, said Chairman Richard Glick said in a webcast of the commissioners’ first in-person meeting since the start of the pandemic. Glick and Commissioner Mark Christie said states will have unprecedented opportunity to participate in this process.

“The nation’s electricity grid is the backbone for an increasingly digitalized and electrified U.S. economy,” Commissioner Allison Clements said. “Its affordability, reliability, resilience and security are essential to every individual and families’ ability to thrive and to access economic opportunities.” 

FERC committed last summer to make the biggest push to overhaul outdated transmission rules in a decade to spur more competition and allocate costs to help speed up projects. Big transmission projects can take a decade or longer to build. An “enormous” amount of high voltage lines are needed, Glick said last month, to connect hundreds of gigawatts of solar and wind in remote areas to consumers, who ultimately pay for it all.

Grid Order

Separately, FERC issued an order to the country’s six regional grids to file reports about their changing systems and the need for potential reforms for the next five years and during the next decade. They have 180 days to file.

About 70% of the U.S. power network is at least 25 years old and some regions are much older, “making it vulnerable to disruption and attack,” Clements said. There are also more than 1,400 gigawatts of new power supply and storage stuck in grid queues, she said.

The transmission rules would “provide a much-needed catalyst” for grid upgrades, especially when paired with investments from Congress, John Moore, director of the Sustainable FERC Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement.

(Updates with power market order and FERC comments starting in sixth paragraph.)

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