Aubrey Johnson, head of transmission planning for Midwest electrical grid operator MISO, explains the $22 billion effort to expand and modernize the grid for clean energy and reliability.

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Last year, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, issued its landmark Order number 1920, with the goal of spurring the development of long distance electricity transmission lines in the United States. The order came in response to a challenging reality: the U.S. will need dramatically more transmission to accommodate growing electricity demand and an expanding fleet of clean energy resources. Despite this need, very little regional transmission development has, in fact, taken place over the past decade.

Yet there has been at least one place where grid planning has aggressively moved forward. The Midcontinent Independent System Operator, or MISO, is the electric grid operator for the midwestern U.S. and part of Canada. In December, MISO approved $22 billion dollars' worth of new transmission projects as the latest step in its ongoing effort to build a clean and reliable grid of the future.

One of the leaders of that effort is Aubrey Johnson, vice president of system planning and competitive transmission at MISO. He discusses the need behind MISO’s grid expansion efforts and the unique set of challenges involved in getting more than a dozen states, each with their own unique energy policy agendas, to lend their support to these projects. Johnson also explains the range of benefits that the new powerlines will offer and challenges that could lie ahead as the lines move from the planning stage to construction.

Aubrey Johnson is vice president of system planning and competitive transmission at the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO).

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Energy Policy Now is produced by The Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. For all things energy policy, visit kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu

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Grid Strategies’ Rob Gramlich discusses the dramatic increase in electricity demand from data center and manufacturing growth, and the challenges it presents for the grid.

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Electricity demand growth has returned with a vengeance in the United States due to an increase in manufacturing and, most dramatically, the growing use of AI. Across the country, technology giants are racing to build AI data centers, the largest of which will consume as much electricity as an entire mid-sized city.

Yet our electrical grid was not built with such large and immediate new sources of power demand in mind, and it has become clear that solutions are urgently needed if our grid is to successfully accommodate this new load. Adding to the challenge is the fact that forecasts of future demand have been frequently and dramatically revised upwards. The future of electricity demand looks big, but just how big remains uncertain.

Rob Gramlich, president of power sector consultancy Grid Strategies and a frequent expert witness on grid issues before Congress and regulatory agencies, explores the future of electricity demand. Gramlich discusses data from a new Grid Strategies report on the pace of demand growth, and a variety of strategies by which our electric grid might meet that demand. He also considers implications for the cost of electricity and the pace of grid decarbonization.

Rob Gramlich is president of Grid Strategies.

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Energy Policy Now is produced by The Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. For all things energy policy, visit kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

North America’s electricity grid faces a shortfall of power. A grid policy expert explores one region’s efforts to ensure reliability and the controversies its proposals have raised.

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In December, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, or NERC, released its annual assessment of grid reliability across North America. The results were concerning.

NERC, which is the organization responsible for setting grid reliability standards, reported that electricity supply is struggling to keep up with rapidly growing demand across much of the U.S. and Canada. In several major grid regions, electricity shortfalls could occur under challenging conditions within the next one to three years.

On the podcast, Abe Silverman, assistant research scholar at the Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute at Johns Hopkins University, discusses the threat of electricity supply shortages with a focus on one area of the grid in particular, the PJM Interconnection. PJM is the largest regional grid operator in the U.S., serving 65 million people in the eastern part of the country. PJM recently announced that it, too, could face a capacity shortage as early as 2026.

To date, the grid operator has undertaken a complex set of actions to address its challenges, with more efforts on the way. Silverman explores PJM’s looming supply shortfall, and examines the steps it’s taking to shore up supply. He also explains the controversies that some of these actions have raised.

Abraham Silverman is an assistant research scholar at the Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute at Johns Hopkins University, and former general counsel for the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.

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Energy Policy Now is produced by The Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. For all things energy policy, visit kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.