Experts consider speedy utility-scale interconnection in Texas going nationwide

National goals for utility-scale interconnection for the rest of the country are already being met in the ERCOT grid region in Texas, which uses a “connect and manage” approach, said Mario Hayden, director, transmission at Enel North America, at the Transmission and Interconnection Summit held outside Washington, DC.

It takes just a year, Hayden said, for a solar or storage developer that has filed an interconnection request with ERCOT to progress through the full interconnection study process and reach an interconnection agreement.

Noting a key downside of the “connect and manage” approach, namely the risk of curtailment if transmission capacity is inadequate, Mike Tabrizi, founder and president of Zero Emission Grid, said that although a project developer in the ERCOT region can interconnect to transmission at their own risk, and not be responsible for transmission costs upfront, once the project becomes operational, “then you are fully exposed what’s going to happen with transmission.”

ERCOT says it takes three to six years to energize transmission lines in Texas, said panel moderator Tom Kleckner in his introductory statement. Kleckner, the ERCOT/SPP correspondent for RTO Insider, related that ERCOT says energizing transmission elsewhere in the U.S. takes seven to 13 years. As a single-state entity, ERCOT is not subject to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rules, Kleckner said, “so it saves some four years in federal compliance and two years in signing and construction.”

Regan Fink, manager, transmission & interconnection policy for Pine Gate Renewables, described two issues related to managing the need for more transmission, which she called the “manage” aspect of “connect and manage.” First, ERCOT lacks proactive transmission planning, she said, adding that while “it’s really hard” to do, “some of it needs to be done.”

Second, she said that as a generator, “there’s no formal process to sponsor your own upgrades. If you’re facing a lot of curtailment and congestion, but it’s not enough” for ERCOT as a system to decide whether to build upgrades, “then we might be stuck with that. While we’ve been told by ERCOT that we can coordinate with the transmission service providers” in the grid region about sponsoring upgrades, “we would like to see a more formal process.”

Pranay Reminisetty, team lead for resource integration at the consultancy DNV, said that because of ERCOT’s “big backlog in transmission,” interconnecting a project to ERCOT’s grid without knowing how much production will be curtailed presents a financial risk for developers. “So we need more transmission in order to go into energy-only resources,” he said.

Yet in the nation’s other grid regions, he said the financial risks come from uncertainty over both the network upgrade costs that will be assigned to a project to interconnect, and the grid operator’s affected system study cost for a project, which he called a “surprise cost” for the developer.

Tyler Norris, a former Cypress Creek Renewables executive and current Ph.D. candidate, said that “it’s no secret” that staff of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) “are quite interested in the topic of flexible interconnection options,” such as ERCOT’s approach.

Flexible interconnection was “really front and center in the U.S. Department of Energy’s interconnection roadmap,” he said, “and I think that really caught the attention of FERC staff.” FERC will hold a workshop on innovations and efficiencies in generator interconnection on September 10 and 11, he noted.

With electric loads projected to increase, creating “more pressure to get more generation on the system,” Norris predicted that “we’re going to see a significant increase in demand for more flexible interconnection options in the years ahead, including energy-only interconnection, ”such as ERCOT’s approach, as well as “provisional service, and potentially other fast track options.”

Norris said his team’s ongoing analysis of 3500 interconnection studies for solar projects shows that upgrade costs for energy-only interconnection have been nearly equivalent to upgrade costs for network resource interconnection. The lack of cost savings for energy-only interconnection, he suggested, shows that energy-only interconnection is “not living up to (FERC’s) original intent,” when FERC created that service option in its Order 2003, as a “credible alternative to network resource interconnection service that would be faster and cheaper.”

“There’s a lot we can do to improve energy-only interconnection service and provisional service,” he said.

Regan said in the question period that “we don’t expect a major order” from FERC to result from its September workshop.

DNV Principal Consultant Morgan Putnam said in a comment posted in the question-ranking app that “Our collective desire for 0% curtailment has greatly misled the industry.“

The panel discussion’s theme was “Can the ERCOT ‘connect and manage’ approach lead to faster and cheaper grid interconnection nationwide?”

The conference was produced by Infocast and supported by 15 sponsors.