WIRES Celebrates Tenth Year!
WIRES held its first Annual Meeting in September 2006.  In ten years, we've expanded our membership to all regions of the country and to all types of firms - integrated public utilities, independent transmission companies, Crown corporations in Canada, cooperatives and publicly-owned utilities, technology and service firms, RTOs, renewable energy developers - and anyone else who recognizes that a robust transmission grid is the critical infrastructure link to the energy future.  Throughout, our mission has been clear - to promote transmission investment and to raise awareness of the challenges facing development of critical transmission infrastructure. 

Forgive us if we celebrate a little!  At our 10th Annual Meeting in November in Washington DC, we will hear from the  U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz and  FERC Commissioner the Hon. Colette Honorable . For our 11th year and beyond, we will keep urging state, federal, and local policy makers, regulators, and consumers to prepare for the technology-, efficiency-, and consumer-driven North American economy of the mid-21st century by making the electric power infrastructure investments our economy will depend upon.  Thank you for your support.  

Highlights of Ten Years of Major Research, Reports, & Presentations: 

• Well-Planned Electric Transmission Saves Customer Costs, with The Brattle Group (2016)
• Toward More Effective Transmission Planning, with The Brattle Group (2015)
• Market Resource Alternatives: An Examination of New Technologies in the Electric Transmission Planning Process, with London Economics (2014)
• WIRES, Smart Transmission (2011)
• Integrating Locationally-Constrained Resources Into Transmission Systems, with Charles River Associates (2008)
• Blue Ribbon Panel: A National Perspective on Allocating Cost of New Transmission Investment: Practice and Principles (2007)
• Twenty WIRES University Courses, including --
• Electric Transmission 101 - How The Grid Works
• Electric Transmission 201 - The High-Voltage Grid: Its Operations, Challenges, and Benefits
• Electric Transmission 301 - Grid Resilience, Gas-Electric Coordination, and New Business Models  

WIRES fears that the interregional transmission planning and coordination processes actually inhibit development of more efficient or cost-effective interregional transmission solutions to the individual needs identified in the respective local and regional transmission planning processes.  In some RTOs, the inconsistency in the models, assumptions, scenarios, eligibility criteria, thresholds, and cost allocation methodologies used by regions in "joint evaluations" to identify candidate interregional projects is a barrier to successful interregional coordination and project development.  Experience to date indicates that projects that are commonly shown to provide numerous kinds of benefits in interregional evaluations nevertheless fail regional evaluations. 

The June 2016 Brattle Report, performed for WIRES, asserts that the various benefits of interregional transmission should be considered in evaluating projects for eligibility for interregional cost allocation.   Experience shows that they are often not taken into account and that the lowest-cost, most-beneficial solutions for customers tend not to be identified and advanced.  WIRES' specific concerns about the evaluation of project benefits and cost allocation include:

The dilemma for FERC and the industry involves how much standardization is appropriate, especially at this time when many regional Order 1000 planning processes are just getting started.  FERC's deference to differing regional needs and preferences, and its reluctance to mandate criteria for transmission planning or evaluation of competitive projects under Order 1000, suggest that federal transmission policy will evolve quite slowly.  WIRES believes that "anticipatory" infrastructure planning is the most efficient way to maintain competitive energy markets and incorporate emerging clean energy technologies in the next half century - planning which would greatly benefit from encouragement by FERC for RTOs to move in the direction of a shared approach to evaluating regional and interregional projects.

 efficiencies, and new generation resources. The event was sponsored by

Sustainable Energy Coalition, who invited WIRES for the second consecutive year, despite its historical position that transmission upgrades are important for all sources of electric generation and all uses of electric energy.

WIRES members gathered in the Twin Cities in July, attending meetings at Great River Energy's new HQ in Maple Grove, Xcel Energy's new HQ in Minneapolis, and an evening paddle-boat ride on the Mississippi River.  Member of the Senate Energy Committee

Senator Al Franken (D-MN) welcomed the group via video , sharing a strong message about the emerging clean energy resources in our country and the critical role that transmission will play in the industry's transformation.

Pictured aboard the Jonathan Padelford riverboat are WIRES 2016 Officers: President-Elect Kathleen Shea, Vice President, Transmission Development, Eversource; Secretary Tom Hestermann, Manager, Transmission Policy, Sunflower Electric Power Corporation; and Treasurer Gerald Deaver, Manager, Regional Transmission Policy, Xcel Energy and CapX2020; and President Robert McKee, Director of Regulatory Relations & Policy, American Transmission Company.

New WIRES member PPL Electric Utilities  is investing in reliability across its 10,000-square-mile footprint in central and eastern Pennsylvania, improving its transmission grid, making it more dependable and storm resistant. Recent major projects include the Susquehanna-Roseland 500 KV transmission line and the Northeast-Pocono project, which included three new transmission substations and nearly 60 miles of new 230 KV power lines.  

The Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia heard arguments about EPA's plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, which has been stayed by the Supreme Court.

• Anbaric is a project development company in New England that specializes in early-stage development of large-scale electric transmission systems and small-, medium- and large-scale microgrid projects. Because Anbaric has learned that transmission projects are extraordinarily difficult to permit, develop, finance, and build, it has gained a deep appreciation for "non-transmission alternatives" (NTAs).

In her new book  "The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans And Our Energy Future" ,  Gretchen Bakke examines the history of electrical power and the challenges the modern grid faces. Bakke argues that today's under-funded power grid is incapable of taking the U.S. into a new energy future. Significant power outages began to increase in the 1980s, but that may not be the grid's biggest problem, Bakke says. Renewable power sources have grown dramatically in recent years but because our aging electrical grid isn't capable of integrating them into our energy use, so much power potential is not tapped. Listen to an interview between Bakke and Fresh Air's Dave Davies about The Grid.