A report prepared for the Western Electricity Coordinating Council aims to help educate policymakers about the exponential growth of large loads and highlight the challenges and risks to reliability that are driven by the interconnection of these facilities, which include data centers, cryptocurrency mining operations, large industrial manufacturing facilities, aggregate transportation electrification, and more.
Large load interconnections across the U.S. electric grid, including the Western Interconnection, are growing at an exponential rate, the report, which was prepared by Elevate Energy Consulting, notes.
The electricity sector is faced with ensuring the reliable operation of the bulk power system by managing and meeting this demand growth, understanding these new facilities, operating the system with new load characteristics and interconnection configurations, and implementing mitigations to address the new reliability challenges and risks that are emerging.
These large loads include data centers, cryptocurrency mining operations, large industrial manufacturing facilities, hydrogen electrolyzers, aggregate transportation electrification, aggregate electrified heating and cooling systems, excavation mining, grow houses and electric agricultural loads.
“This report intends to educate users, owners, and operators of the electric power system about these new large loads and highlight the challenges and risks to the BPS driven by the interconnection of these new facilities.”
While the demand growth forecasts due to these new large loads range significantly (anywhere from 17 GW to 50 GW to 100 GW), “the scale of even the low ends of today’s forecasts presents exponential growth the electric power system has not seen since the 1950s,” the report said.
“Failing to quickly address the unique challenges and risks presented by this exponential growth with adequate risk mitigation strategies may result in unreliable operations of the BPS, an undesired outcome for grid operators and large load operators alike. Many of these large-load facilities provide essential societal services and are a key part of supporting our way of life today.”
“Collaboration, communication, and detailed technical information sharing between all involved parties is critical to solving the interconnection challenges and risks to the BPS, while ensuring reliable and resilient power to the large load,” the report said.
Regulatory support at the state, regional, and federal level “is an additional critical tool that is needed to ensure consistent, fair, and uniform reliability standards and requirements for all load interconnections to the electric grid. Putting reliability and resiliency of the BPS as the focus is the fundamental goal.”
Industry Advisory Group
In early 2024, WECC stood up an informal industry advisory group (IAG) comprised of transmission providers across the Western Interconnection to foster the sharing of information regarding large load forecasts, interconnection queue practices, and areas of BPS concerns and risks where increased collaboration could be useful moving forward.
The Large Load IAG provided estimates of large load interconnection queue size, composition, and additional information so the group could broadly assess which types of large loads will likely present the biggest impacts and challenges to the BPS moving forward.
The Large Load IAG developed a self-administered questionnaire designed to gather information related to two key questions: (1) The estimated large load interconnection queue size and breakdown by large load category; (2) The relative rank priority of each large load category in terms of growth, system impact, and effects on business operations.
Results from the ten respondents of the survey illustrate that data centers are projected to be the largest contributor to demand growth across the West in the next five to ten years and are expected to have the largest impact on BPS reliability, the report said.
Takeaways include:
- Data center load interconnection requests comprise nearly 80% of the large load interconnection queues, far outweighing the size, breadth, and potential impact of all other large load categories;
- The total large load queue size for the ten respondents is 44,650 MW, which is nearly equivalent to the current system peak demand level for those entities (48,425 MW);
- All utilities ranked data center impacts as “high” and each utility described several factors for the ranking such as forecasting, planning, operations, design and engineering, supply chain, transmission service and expansion.
- Following data centers, survey results reflected that utilities are most focused on hydrogen electrolysis, transportation electrification and the growth of electric vehicles (EV), large industrial manufacturing, and heating/cooling electrification.
“Estimating large load growth is difficult, particularly across entities and given uncertainty and variability in processes and accounting methods. Therefore, these numbers are high-level estimates but send a clear and resounding message regarding the size and magnitude of large load interconnection requests in the Western Interconnection,” the report noted.
BPS Reliability Risks Posed by Large Loads
The report goes on to note that large loads can have an impact on the reliable operation of the BPS, particularly those connected directly to the BPS or those that in aggregate have a material impact on the BPS.
The report details “some of the more critical impacts and risks posed to the BPS by large load interconnections.”
In particular, it looks at:
- Large Load Interconnection Risks and Challenges
- Large Load Modeling and Study Risks and Challenges
- Large Load Planning Risks and Challenges
- Large Load Operational Risk and Challenges
- Large Load Regulatory Risks and Challenges
