Opinion: How California can fix its transmission lines bottleneck

The state has virtually no chance of building enough power lines in time to relieve its grid bottleneck.

California’s grid is stretched to its limits. Power lines in parts of the state are already at capacity. Housing developments and even a hospital in Humboldt County face indefinite waits to get connected. At the same time, record amounts of wind and solar power are being wasted  – almost $650 million worth in 2022 –– as the grid just does not have enough capacity to handle the supply. And new fast chargers for electric cars? Approving them takes years as sites often need more capacity than the transmission system can provide. All while demand for power is climbing to feed those new electric cars, trucks and heat pumps.

The Golden State needs a staggering increase in transmission capacity.  Experts at Princeton forecast that the state will need to triple its grid capacity by 2050. The bulk of that long term increase will come from the decades-long process of planning, approving, and building new transmission lines. California cannot wait this long. The state has virtually no chance of building enough power lines in time to relieve its grid bottleneck.

The cost to build all those new power lines is enormous. California’s Independent System Operator has approved $7.3 billion in transmission investments for the next 10 years while projecting a need to invest over $30 billion in the next 20 years.

There is another way. Adding capacity to the grid does not need to take a decade or longer. Neither does it need to come at an exorbitant cost to ratepayers. New grid enhancing technologies can significantly increase the amount of power that can be carried over existing transmission infrastructure. At a fraction of the cost of new construction. One of these technologies, Dynamic Line Rating (DLR), has been proven to expand capacity over existing lines by an average of 30%. That capacity can be delivered quickly – in months rather than years. And at 1/20th the cost to ratepayers.

Utilities in the United States and around the world are successfully using these technologies. Duquesne Light Company found 25% more capacity on transmission lines equipped with DLR — enabling it to integrate more renewable energy and support growing demand. In upstate New York, National Grid has installed a DLR system that is enabling an additional 350MW or renewable energy to be used. At 1/26th the cost of a build. Grid enhancing technologies have been endorsed by the Department of Energy, the chair and former chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the White House.

Gov. Gavin Newsom is right to prioritize building faster. The Golden State is notoriously slow when it comes to green-lighting energy infrastructure projects. Think rush hour on Highway 101 slow. Want to build a solar or wind farm? Approval takes years and 87% of new power projects that are proposed never get built – the lowest completion rate for new energy projects in the country. Zero – yes zero – large scale transmission projects have been approved in California since 2007.

Newsom’s proposals to cut red tape and streamline regulations to accelerate the building of clean infrastructure are an important step forward. California absolutely needs to speed up the process of approving energy infrastructure projects. But building faster is just not fast enough for California’s transmission bottleneck. There is an urgent need to prioritize the use of grid enhancing technologies that will provide essential congestion relief in the very near term. At a much lower cost. Embracing these technologies will help California rapidly integrate new sources of renewable power into the grid while addressing pressing demands for electricity.

Nora Mead Brownell is the co-founder of Espy Energy Solutions, LLC, an energy consulting firm and a former Commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) from 2001–2006.