The intense heat waves of summer 2022 are further exposing the poor integrity of America’s current power grid.

Utility Dive recently published an insightful article that supports the case for transferring distribution lines underground, as places like Texas are awaiting the impending doom of possible grid outages.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency reports that 62% of all power lines in the country are overhead, and that power outages are 9 times more likely to occur when lines are conducted overhead.

In regards to worker and civilian safety, power line reliability, and resilience, Underground presents many benefits.

Learn more about strategic under-grounding and its background at the article here.

A recent story in the Wall Street Journal reports that companies like Irby are poised to install record amounts of battery storage in the coming year, citing government mandates and declining costs as reasons for significant growth in power storage.

“The U.S., which had less than a gigawatt of large battery installations in 2020—roughly enough to power 350,000 homes for a handful of hours—is on pace to add six gigawatts this year and another nine gigawatts in 2022, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence,” Jennifer Hiller and Katherine Blunt report for the Wall Street Journal. 

California is driving much of the U.S. battery market’s expansion as it races to comply with a 2018 law that requires decarbonization of its power grid by 2045. Other states also have storage mandates or targets, including New York, Virginia and Nevada, according to the U.S. Energy Storage Association.

The story says that Goldman Sachs expects the U.S. market for stationary batteries to grow from about $1 billion in 2020 to $13 billion to $14 billion by 2030.

Read the complete WSJ article here.

Irby Construction is “leading the charge” in battery storage having completed construction of the Manatee BESS earlier this month. Manatee is currently the world’s largest battery energy storage center. Read more about Manatee and see related news coverage here. 

A new report, released by the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) says transmission makes the power system more resilient to extreme weather.

The report details the value additional transmission would have provided during five severe weather events in Texas, the Northeast, and the Midwest between 2014 and 2021.

For example, according to the report, each additional gigawatt (GW) of transmission capacity connecting the Texas power grid (ERCOT) with neighboring states in the Southeast could have saved nearly US$1 billion and kept the heat on for approximately 200,000 Texas homes during Winter Storm Uri in February of 2021.

ACORE President and CEO Gregory Wetstone commented in an article in T&D World.

“As severe weather events become more frequent, our balkanized power grid is increasingly unable to deliver reliable electricity to consumers who need it,” said Wetstone. “This report demonstrates that we are already paying an enormous price for our lack of interregional transmission and that the benefits of a robust transmission grid would quickly surpass the cost of constructing new lines. It is time to implement pro-transmission policies to enable the investments we need to strengthen our grid, lower costs for consumers and reduce power outages during extreme weather events.”

Read the T&D World story here.

View the report from ACORE here.

Due to Climate and energy goals on which the Biden administration is focussed, transmission development and power grid infrastructure are in the spotlight. Capital and interest are flowing toward necessary renewables-adjacent transmission projects.

A recent white paper authored by Daniel Hagan, John Forbush, Aaron Bryant covers the business case for transmission projects connecting rural renewables to urban usage. It also covers regulatory issues, legislation, and funding.

For a good read on the future of transmission, check out the full story here.