CALIFORNIA – The California Independent System Operator (ISO) Board of Governors approved the $2.9 billion 2021-2022 10-Year Transmission Plan.

The plan identified 23 projects for system expansions, upgrades, and reinforcements, aimed at boosting grid resiliency during the state’s electrification push and ongoing transition to carbon-free resources.

“This plan is part of our ongoing commitment to resource adequacy and transmission sufficiency in California,” said ISO President and CEO Elliot Mainzer. “It is the result of extensive collaboration with the California Public Utilities Commission, the California Energy Commission, and utilities and stakeholders from across the region. We’re looking forward to the next steps in moving from planning to energization.”

The latest plan reflects an escalation in the need for new transmission. The increase is attributed to rapid acceleration in the need for new generation driven by the state’s goals of getting all electricity from carbon-free resources by 2045, and further electrifying the transportation, industrial, and residential sectors. In the past few years, the ISO’s plans have shown increased amounts of energy and transmission coming onto the grid.

The plan approved this week is based on an intermediate level of about 2,700 MW of new resources per year and outlines the role for a widening and expanding set of diverse resources to meet clean energy goals, including geothermal, new out-of-state renewables, and future offshore wind generation.

Closely coordinated with the CPUC and CEC, the ISO planning cycle runs from every January to early in the subsequent year. The actual plan, which relies heavily on state agency input and data to make sure it is aligned with California’s energy policies, also gets reviewed through a comprehensive and intensive stakeholder process.

For the first time ever, the ISO also produced a 20-Year Transmission Outlook in addition to its yearly plan. While the 10-year plan is required by the ISO’s federal tariff and identifies specific projects for construction, the longer outlook is designed to provide a framework and longer-term vision for the system’s future transmission needs without recommending specific projects for approval. Together, the two documents will help map the short-term, intermediate, and long-term milestones of the clean-energy transition, enabling rigorous and efficient planning coordination and creating the most cost-effective and durable transmission infrastructure to serve generations to come, ISO said in a press release.

Source: California ISO