Grid Enhancing Technologies: From R&D to Reality

A future-ready grid requires infrastructure built with the latest technology, including everything from complex devices compatible with digital technology to fundamental components, such as mapping out the flow of electricity. Grid-enhancing technologies (GETs) that include sensors, power flow control devices, and analytical tools. 

The electric power system must balance electrical supply and demand in real time because of the high rate of speed electricity travels and less-than-optimal conditions can introduce complications, such as unsuitable frequency and voltage at the distribution level to outages and load shedding across the network. To ensure optimal supply and demand, generation has been adjusted and distributed to meet consumer and economic demands. In a real-world application, the best-case scenario involves initially distributing the most affordable generation, then distributing more costly generation as needed to meet customer demand. However, physical system constraints restrict this possibility. 

Examples of GETs include dynamic line rating, power-flow control devices, and supporting analytical tools to reduce the need for new infrastructure as well as the integration of renewables️ by maximizing the grid’s current capacity: 

• Dynamic Line Rating relates to hardware and/or software that appropriately updates calculated thermal limits of existing transmission lines in real time. Often, these schemes establish new limits to determine the true, real-time capacity of power lines. On cold or windy days, power lines can easily deliver 50% more energy than their labeled limits. 
• Power-Flow Control Devices allow grid operators to reroute power to lines with available capacity, increasing or decreasing the total power delivered by the system to balance overloaded lines and underutilized corridors within the transmission network. 
• Supporting Analytical Tools such as sensors, smart meters, and monitoring devices collect real-time data, helping grid operators make informed decisions and respond quickly to grid changes. 

These technologies show improvements to energy transfer capabilities of existing transmission paths and can be deployed more quickly than building new lines at costs significantly below traditional upgrades. However, transmission organizations and system operators across the country have not adopted these GETs for reasons including data availability and a lack of rigorous, independent testing of the devices. Often, utility decision makers are left with little more than trust of the vendor to mitigate concerns about cost, real-world economic benefits, deployment schemes, deployment usage characteristics, and challenges in integrating the technology with existing systems and business/market practices. The Office of Electricity (OE) has worked to fund research that addresses this very issue. 

OE works tirelessly to develop solutions for making elements of the future grid a reality. OE strongly supports investments that expand good-paying jobs offering workers a free and fair choice to form, join, or assist a union, improve job quality through the adoption of strong labor standards and labor-management partnerships, and support responsible employers. The office offers funding opportunities that will help fill information gaps that prevent deployment of new GETs. The funding provided will contribute to demonstrations across a variety of systems differing in scale, geography, topology, and connected renewable generation resources to determine critical aspects for any GETs location-specific impacts.

In the words of OE’s Deputy Assistant Secretary, Grid Systems and Components, Michael Pesin, “Grid modernization is a necessity for a sustainable future. The electricity delivery system is the crucial foundation that keeps the entire grid together.”