Modern grid deployment initiative launched in US

The Federal-State Modern Grid Deployment Initiative has been launched to accelerate adoption of new solutions that expand grid capacity.

The initiative, which is aimed to bring together states, federal entities and other power sector stakeholders to modernise the grid, launches with commitments from 21 states to prioritise efforts to meet the challenges of the evolving power sector.

A resurgence of American domestic manufacturing along with the rapid adoption of electric vehicles and growth of large data centres are among factors that require a collective shift in perspective about the grid.

While some progress has been made to address challenges to building new grid assets such as transmission and distribution lines, additional options are needed, particularly tools that can provide more immediate impact and solutions.

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To that end, modern grid technologies, including high performance conductors and grid enhancing technologies (GETs), are solutions that can be rapidly and affordably deployed at scale today to improve line capacity, performance and resilience.

For new projects, these can help get new generation and loads interconnected faster with less disruption and also protect against future demand increases.

For existing infrastructure, they can significantly reduce deployment costs, permitting times and build times.

While these solutions have been widely deployed in some countries and many come from US-based companies, their widespread deployment in the US continues to lag.

According to the initiative’s launch document, “… [it] reaffirms President Biden’s commitment to ensuring the United States has the electric grid it needs to continue outperforming other countries and to help local communities thrive”.

It also builds on earlier legislative and executive actions such as the Inflation Reduction Act and a recently announced public-private effort to upgrade 160,000km of existing lines.

State commitments

The 21 ‘founder’ states in the initiative are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai‘i, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Washington and Wisconsin.

In particular, alongside the individual state and mutual federal-state commitments, they intend to focus on meeting the shared challenges and opportunities of increased load growth, a rapidly changing energy landscape, ageing infrastructure and new grid enhancing technologies – while delivering reliable, clean, and affordable energy to consumers.

They also intend to deploy innovative grid technologies to bolster the capacity of the electric grid and more effectively meet current and future demand, maximise benefits of new and existing transmission infrastructure, increase grid resilience to the growing impacts of climate change and better protect consumers from variability in energy prices.