Top Biden and Harris advisor releases MIT report on grid technologies

The Roadmap is authored by Brian Deese, Institute Innovation Fellow at MIT and former Director of the White House National Economic Council, Rob Gramlich, President of Grid Strategies LLC, and Anna Pasnau, Research Associate at MIT.

The paper discusses three barriers to ATT implementation: utility profit structures, current regulatory practices, and misalignment in planning for generator interconnection and transmission expansion.

“The commentary concisely explains the urgent need for modern technologies on the transmission system, and the benefits these tools will bring” said Julia Selker, Executive Director of the WATT Coalition. “The past decade has shown us that US utilities and grid operators won’t move ahead with Grid Enhancing Technologies without explicit support and requirements from policymakers and regulators, as suggested in the report.”

The paper then proposes five categories of regulatory and legislative action to overcome these barriers. These actions include recommendations for action by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the US Department of Energy and its national laboratories, regional transmission organizations and independent system operators, state legislators, and state regulators:

Requiring transmission providers to use ATTs in certain contexts;

Requiring transmission providers and regulators to conduct robust analyzes of the value of ATTs for their current footprint;

Creating financial incentives for transmission providers to adopt ATTs where they can provide significant net benefits;

Requiring transmission providers to release additional data on the grid and build digital tools to inform ATTs adoption;

Requiring transmission providers to release data to a third-party entity that takes on the responsibility of planning ATT adoption.

For additional information:

MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research