CTC Global was a sponsor and panel participant at the ERCOT Market Summit, February 25-27 in Austin, Texas. David Townley, Director of Public Policy for CTC Global, also served as a moderator for DEALING WITH THE IMPACTS OF TRANSMISSION CONGESTION panel. The excellent panelists engaged in a lively discussion representing the perspectives of the transmission providers and the renewable energy developer/owner/operators regarding the impact of increasing transmission constraints (and generation curtailments).
A consensus of the panelists was that while many thing are extraordinary in the ERCOT market, transmission planning might be “broken.” Later in the Summit, David served as a panelist in the EXPANDING TRANSMISSION CAPACITY: PROSPECTS FOR NEW CONSTRUCTION AND ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY panel.
David was able to summarize and provide examples of the superb opportunity in Texas to reconductor existing transmission structures with ACCC Conductor to quickly gain up to 2X operating and emergency capacity on existing transmission corridors, and to substantially reduce line losses by 25% to 40% (reducing electric consumer energy costs, reducing CO2 emissions, and “freeing up” generating capacity that was just running to “heat the air” [line losses]).
