Minnesota gives a boost to grid enhancing technologies
Image: Heimdall Power
The Minnesota legislature has passed a bill adding grid enhancing technologies (GETs) to the state’s transmission planning process.
In terms of the bill, utilities owning more than 1,200km of transmission lines are required to report on highly congested areas and to evaluate the use of GETs on these, along with presenting a proposed installation plan.
Specifically during each of the last three years locations must be identified that have experienced 168 hours or more of congestion or the ten most costly congestion occurrences, which produces the greater number of locations.
The law also improves transparency by requiring utilities to explain their current line rating methodology.
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Representative Larry Kraft said he is thrilled with moving the GETs provisions forward.
“This bill will accelerate the implementation of various GETs where they save ratepayers money and improve reliability.”
Hilary Pearson, chair of the WATT Coalition, also commented, saying the law will help regulators align utility behaviour with customer interests.
“Minnesota’s bill provides a model for other states to ensure that utilities are evaluating low-cost GETs for economic efficiency and reliability applications.”
Among other provisions the state public utilities commission is required to maintain a list of certified high voltage transmission line and GETs projects.
In other news, Minnesota based Great River Energy, one of the state’s pioneers with GETs, has started the expansion phase of its deployment of Heimdall Power’s Neuron dynamic line rating sensors.
Following a pilot the utility cooperative is deploying a further more than 40 of the sensors across its network in Minnesota, Wisconsin and North Dakota.
In a US first, using a technique pioneered with utilities in Europe the first of these sensors was installed in April on a live 115kV line by the company’s autonomous drone system.
