Tech Talk | Putting grid enhancing technologies in the spotlight

Various technologies are available to tackle the immediate grid challenges but are not being widely adopted.

Under the name of ‘non-wires alternatives’ or ‘grid enhancing technologies’ (GETs) in the US or ‘grid optimising technologies’ in Europe, or more broadly and simply ‘smart grid’ technologies, these are technologies that can be implemented in transmission and distribution grids much more quickly and cheaply than standard grid upgrades to meet short term needs such as reducing congestion.

As such they also have the effect of investment deferral and enabling greater streamlining of utility budgets.

The most commonly deployed technology in this category is dynamic line rating, which can be used to maximise the carrying capacity of lines based on ambient conditions such as temperature and wind speed, instead of the always conservative calculated fixed values.

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Another is advanced power flow control, part of the FACTS (flexible alternating current transmission system) collection of tools, which can redistribute flows between lines based on their utilisation.

A third is topology optimisation, which is a software rather than hardware approach to power flow control, with modelling to determine optimised or reconfigured flows.

Although these technologies are readily available, they are not yet widely deployed. While there are numerous examples of individual deployments across the globe, there are no large-scale deployments yet as far as we know.

The reasons are various, from lack of knowledge about the technologies and/or their benefits to regulatory bottlenecks such as the absence of incentives.

Moves afoot in Europe

In Europe where this is an issue, the EU’s action plan for the grids calls for ENTSO-E and the DSO Entity to improve the visibility of these and other smart grid technologies by the end of 2024. And to provide at least annual updates thereafter on use cases and the benefits, in particular including the pilots and projects funded under Horizon Europe and its predecessor programmes.

The Commission intends to further facilitate the technologies with upcoming network codes on the participation of decentralised energy resources to the markets.

The industry association CurrENT has been a strong proponent of incentives for these technologies and its 2024 edition of project deployments for DSOs reiterates the call, providing along with it a list of some 15 recommendations to aid their deployment, based on published sources but also members’ first-hand experiences.

Don’t wait to use these technologies, but start the evaluation through to the deployment process to avail of the benefits early, CurrENT urges, alongside the elimination of trials or limited use first deployments.

Legislation in the US

In the US the WATT Coalition was formed to lead the charge for these grid enhancing technologies. As far back as 2020, WATT Coalition and industry association Advanced Energy United made the case to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for a shared incentive scheme to encourage their deployment.

This has now been taken a step further with the proposal for an act requiring its national implementation by FERC by July 2025, along with a number of other requirements to support the deployment of GETs.

“The Advancing GETs Act will motivate grid operators and developers to bring new projects online that expand transmission capacity by guaranteeing returns for these targeted, cost saving investments,” asserted Senator Peter Welch of Vermont, one of the proposers of the legislation.

In the meantime, while it goes through the legal process, several individual states have started acting on GETs, including Illinois, New York, Minnesota and Virginia.

Benefits and a case study

Study after study has inferred the benefits of grid enhancing technologies, most recently that by the Rocky Mountain Institute on the PJM Interconnection, which found that up to $1 billion in production cost saving could be generated annually and the interconnection of around 6.6GW of new wind, solar and storage to the system.

But what about real-life savings? One of the most recent project announcements is from the US upper midwest cooperative Great River Energy, which piloted dynamic line rating with Heimdall Power and found that with it an average 25% increase in capacity could be achieved – and as much as almost 43% increase – on one of its key transmission lines.

As a result, Great River Energy is significantly expanding the use of the technology across its transmission system from four up to 52 sensors, which is set to make it the largest dynamic line rating rollout to date in the US.

“We are laser focused on achieving our mission of providing affordable and reliable electricity to communities across the Midwest,” said Priti Patel, VP of Transmission at Great River Energy, by way of explanation.

If you have experience or are deploying these grid enhancing technologies, let us know so we can feature it here.

Jonathan Spencer Jones

Specialist writer
Smart Energy International

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