Interesting https://www.woodmac.com/news/opinion/slow-going-for-us-power-transmission/
“If new transmission projects are always going to take 15 to 20 years to build, there is no way we are going to get to a decarbonised electricity system based on wind and solar on the timetable envisaged by the Biden administration without raising serious concerns about reliability,” Berman says. “Especially if we are planning to add a significant amount of extra load from electric vehicles.”
In the face of these challenges, it is no surprise that utilities’ spending on technologies at the grid edge, which do not require construction of new transmission, has been soaring. New analysis from Wood Mackenzie shows that leading investor-owned utilities in the US plan to increase their spending on grid modernisation technologies, such as advanced metering infrastructure, by 71% this year, as they seek to improve resilience and make progress on emissions goals. The harder it is to achieve their objectives by building out the grid, the more critical those technologies become.
https://www.woodmac.com/news/opinion/us-grid-utility-investments/
Grid modernization: a promising picture
Between 2018 and 2023, 25 major investor-owned utilities (IOUs) filed for US$36.4 billion to modernize their distribution grid through rate cases, grid modernization plans or targeted applications based on specific needs. This represents a 35% compound annual growth rate. The rate of investment is rapidly accelerating, with 71% year-on-year growth from 2022 to 2023.
We expect 2024 to see the highest level of investment by these 25 IOUs so far, at US$5.9 billion.
Our report shows that based on regulatory requirements, the current condition of the grid, geographical constraints and the changing preferences of customers, utilities develop their own unique grid modernization strategies. We have identified 330 unique initiatives undertaken by the 25 IOUs, further categorized under 10 grid modernization categories, including physical infrastructure hardening, advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), distribution automation and enterprise operating software.
AMI, Distribution Automation and Entreprise Operating Software are the highest category after Infrastructure hardening (see graph)