Price Tag in Customer Rates?
Branko Terzic, Sc.D. Engineering (Hon.) is a former Commissioner on the Wisconsin Public Service Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He also was Chairman, President and CEO of a regulated utility and holding company.
R. Bruce Williamson, PhD. is Senior Fellow, Public Utility Research Center at the University of Florida. He was Commissioner with the Maine Public Utilities Commission following a career in energy and utility markets and telecommunications in the U.S. and internationally.
Part three concludes our analysis of future electric transmission requirements in the U.S. to accommodate the expected transition away from fossil fuels and to renewable and intermittent energy sources of solar and wind, all requiring a large and unprecedentedly expensive grid transformation. Our analysis draws on statements from the 2020 Princeton Net Zero (PNZ) report, which findings have found their way into official U.S. Department of Energy press announcements.
The PNZ research found that the net-zero target will require that U.S. electricity transmission systems expand "~60% by 2030 and may need to triple...by 2050" to connect wind and solar facilities to demand, tripling being a 200 increase. The PNZ cost estimates for total capital invested in transmission was "$360 billion through 2030 and $2.4 trillion by 2050."
In part one, we reviewed the history of electric transmission expansion from 1972-2016. In part two, we provided our estimates of what investment in transmission plant would be required and the implications of that expansion for rate growth to support it and the associated operations and maintenance expenses.