Brian Bartholomew posts this on Twitter:
In stark relief, the price of separate eastern and western interconnections that are unable to flow more than a thimble full of power back and forth. Low and negative prices throughout much of the Great Plains, nearly all over $400/MWh on the other side.
Josh Rhodes adds:
The West’s September 2022 power system collaboration that protected reliability against larger-than-anticipated spiking demand during a heat wave “changed everything,” CAISO President and CEO Elliot Mainzertold Utility Dive in November. Western utilities and power providers now realize “collaboration can take the West further,” and are “ready for the next big step,” he said.
Rising reliability threats have also affected how Western power providers see their financial opportunities, analysts and system executives said.
“There is a widening perception that serving customers through a single territory’s system has higher generation costs that lead to higher rates,” said Rob Gramlich, founder and president of Grid Strategies. But “transmission that expands access to a region’s diversity of lower cost renewables can be an affordability strategy” while also protecting reliability and accelerating decarbonization, he added.
Texas winter crisis was the ultimate failure that transmission could of relieved. No one really had to die if this was designed properly.
Gas company owners made lots of money during the February 2021 freeze in Texas. The system worked as politically designed and maintained for decades.
I’ll tell you this: It’s a hell of a lot cheaper to build electrical transmission links between east and west than it is to send Mississippi River water to the desert southwest.