Being able to tap into generation well beyond their borders makes it easier for utilities to deal with disruption or demand spikes caused by intense weather events like winter storms or heat waves. That’s one of the benefits cited for North Plains Connector in last month’s draft National Transmission Needs Study, the most recent in a series of DOE reports highlighting the value of these kinds of interregional connections.
“The most reliable and resilient system will have diversity in generation supply, both in terms of types of generation and location,” said Kershaw, who previously worked as a senior adviser to the DOE’s Grid Deployment Office, which was the source of the North Plains Connector grant but disbanded by the Trump administration last year. “You’re essentially able to make the system bigger, with generators and customers on both sides, and weather systems that are different at both ends.”
“We knew this energy transformation happening in our nation is going to require people to go well beyond the boundaries of their previous business and service territories,” said Julie Pierce, vice president of strategy and planning for the utility and energy company.
Allete owns Minnesota Power, a utility serving about 150,000 customers, as well as renewable energy subsidiaries including wind farms in North Dakota, which happen to be connected with a decades-old HVDC line to its Minnesota territory.
A key step in convincing other utilities to sign on is figuring out how to measure the new interregional line’s resource adequacy value. That’s the term of art for how utilities ensure they can keep their grids running during times of high demand, power plant outages, severe weather, or other emergencies.
“It’s so massive, it’s hard to put boundaries around what it’s going to enable,” Pierce said. “How do you value the ability to keep lights on in the Upper Midwest when there’s a storm coming through, but you’re able to import that solar from California?”
That work has some clear starting points, she said. Utilities can start to incorporate the reliability value of their share of the line into the integrated resource plans they file with state regulators, which lay out how much new generation and grid investment they need to make over the next decade or more.
North Plains Connector has its work cut out for it beyond measuring resource adequacy. Before it can break ground, it must make agreements with landowners along the path of the line, secure state and local permits, and win final regulatory approvals from both states it passes through.
“These projects take many years to put together,” Skelly said.
Indeed, high-profile transmission lines like the SunZia project from New Mexico to California and the Champlain Hudson Power Express from Canada to New York City have taken more than a decade from inception to completion. Many transmission projects fail to overcome hurdles. Skelly’s previous company, Clean Line Energy Partners, shut down in 2019 after failing to complete five power lines to carry 16.5 GW of wind power across the Midwest.
But if North Plains Connector can get connected, “the project will be online for 30 years,” he said. “What does generation in America look like in 2050? I don’t know. But it’s very likely we have very different demand profiles in each system, and whatever generation we have in that time, we’ll be better able to optimize if we have a great grid to lean on.”
