The Department of Energy released a study Thursday that identifies the nation’s greatest electricity transmission needs and calls for more planning and investment that would clear up costly congestion on the interstate power grid.
Relieving bottlenecks on the U.S. grid that drive prices up during hours of high energy demand is a notable move away from DOE’s focus under the Biden administration on enabling the build-out of long-distance power lines to ship renewable energy across the United States.
The draft triennial National Transmission Needs Study lands as the country confronts growing demand from data centers, manufacturing and other large industrial electricity loads. It provides new analysis on how transmission investment can help maintain reliability, provide congestion relief and account for new generation and grid interconnection.
“Electricity demand is accelerating faster than anything we’ve seen in decades, driven in part by data centers, manufacturing growth, and new forms of industry that are emerging almost by the month,” said Assistant Secretary of the Office of Electricity Catherine Jereza in a statement.
