06/05/26
WGA Webinar explores strategies for improving energy interconnection
Increased electricity demand, rapid energy development, and an aging and inadequate transmission system continue to strain the grid, creating significant interconnection challenges that limit the ability to bring new energy online quickly and restrict opportunities for optimizing or diversifying the grid. Energy project developers often encounter long queues and lengthy delays in securing interconnection agreements, which may be further stalled by high costs and complex permitting requirements.
As part of Utah Governor Spencer Cox's WGA Chair initiative, Energy Superabundance: Unlocking Prosperity in the West, this webinar explored how improving the interconnection process can reduce queue backlogs, lower development risk, and accelerate the deployment of new energy resources.
For this discussion, WGA was joined by Darren Buck, Director of Power Delivery at Platte River Power Authority; Will Gorman, research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Steven Johnson, Senior Director of Markets Administration at Southwest Power Pool; and Sunny Raheem, Director of System Planning for the Engineering Department at Southwest Power Pool.
Together, they highlighted several promising solutions, including improved coordinated regional transmission planning, such as Southwest Power Pool’s consolidated planning process. They also emphasized the value of market transparency, automation, artificial intelligence, transmission technologies like dynamic line ratings, and better coordination between state regulators, utilities, developers, and federal agencies.
“There are all kinds of ways we're looking to squeeze all the efficiency we can out of the system,” Steven Johnson said. “We look forward to partnering as an industry with [the regulators] to get this right and to keep this plane in the air as we continue to rebuild it.”