Modernize my grid

The USA is the sec­ond largest elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­er in the world. How­ev­er, an out­dat­ed infra­struc­ture presents the high-tech coun­try with major chal­lenges. Con­trol­lable and dig­i­tal trans­form­ers are help­ing to over­come a whole range of chal­lenges and make the exist­ing grid fit for the future.


4,406.4 ter­awatt hours, or around 16 per­cent of glob­al pro­duc­tion, are trans­port­ed through the USA’s elec­tric­i­ty grids. With around 400,000 kilo­me­ters of high-volt­age lines, thou­sands of sub­sta­tions and trans­former sta­tions and over 1,700 dis­tri­b­u­tion grid oper­a­tors, the US pow­er grid is one of the largest and most com­plex tech­ni­cal sys­tems in the world. Over 3,000 com­pa­nies are involved in the sup­ply of elec­tric­i­ty and deliv­er an ener­gy mix in which renew­able ener­gies (RE) play an increas­ing­ly impor­tant role. The share of RE has risen from around ten per­cent in 2010 to over 22 per­cent today.

Solar and wind pow­er are the most impor­tant sources. Tar­get­ed gov­ern­ment sup­port, such as the Infla­tion Reduc­tion Act (IRA) signed in 2022, has already led to sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment in these tech­nolo­gies. In 2023, the USA had an installed wind capac­i­ty of more than 130 gigawatts and an installed solar capac­i­ty of around 120 gigawatts. And accord­ing to the U.S. Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (EIA), the share of renew­ables in the U.S. elec­tric­i­ty mix is expect­ed to grow to around 44 per­cent by 2050.

16

percent

of the world’s elec­tric­i­ty is trans­port­ed through the elec­tric­i­ty grids in the USA.

1700

grid operators

in the USA, mak­ing it one of the most com­plex grids in the world.

More electricity through older grids

How­ev­er, the ambi­tious cli­mate tar­gets are com­ing up against a large­ly out­dat­ed infra­struc­ture. Accord­ing to reports from the US Depart­ment of Ener­gy (DOE) and orga­ni­za­tions such as the Nation­al Renew­able Ener­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry (NREL), parts of today’s pow­er grids, such as trans­mis­sion lines and trans­form­ers, date back to the 1960s or even the 1950s. About 70 per­cent of the trans­mis­sion lines in the U.S. are over 25 years old. The expan­sion of the trans­mis­sion grids and the elim­i­na­tion of grid bot­tle­necks are there­fore the key tasks for advanc­ing the inte­gra­tion of renew­ables and achiev­ing the cli­mate tar­gets. “And this affects all grid lev­els,” says Robert Vary, CEO and Pres­i­dent of Rein­hausen Man­u­fac­tur­ing, adding: “From pri­vate rooftop solar sys­tems to large off­shore wind farms and solar parks, more and more elec­tric­i­ty will have to be fed into the grid in the future. Delays in grid con­nec­tion, high costs for upgrad­ing exist­ing sys­tems and inef­fi­cien­cies are hur­dles and there­fore stand in the way of RE growth tar­gets.” ( See Inter­view with Robert Vary).

“From pri­vate rooftop solar sys­tems to large off­shore wind farms and solar parks, more and more elec­tric­i­ty will have to be fed into the grid in the future.”

Robert Vary, CEO and Pres­i­dent at Rein­hausen Man­u­fac­tur­ing

This is where pro­grams to mod­ern­ize the grids, such as the Fed­er­al-State Mod­ern Grid Deploy­ment Ini­tia­tive or the Bipar­ti­san Infra­struc­ture Law, come in: These ini­tia­tives aim to increase grid capac­i­ty and resilience sim­ply by mod­ern­iz­ing the exist­ing infra­struc­ture and deploy­ing mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy such as grid-improv­ing tech­nolo­gies. The aim is to dou­ble the trans­mis­sion capac­i­ty of the exist­ing elec­tric­i­ty grid with­out adding new lines.

State­ments from the Inter­na­tion­al Ener­gy Agency (IEA) and the Nation­al Renew­able Ener­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry (NREL) indi­cate that the mod­ern­iza­tion of infra­struc­ture, espe­cial­ly through dig­i­tal­ized trans­form­ers and switch­ing trans­form­ers, could play a key role in improv­ing grid sta­bil­i­ty. These tech­nolo­gies enable bet­ter con­trol of the flow of elec­tric­i­ty and help to make grids more flex­i­ble and resilient to load fluc­tu­a­tions and extreme weath­er events.

130

gigawatts

is the installed wind capac­i­ty in the USA.

44

percent

This is the share of renew­ables in the US elec­tric­i­ty mix by 2050.

In its report on pow­er sys­tem trans­for­ma­tion, the IEA empha­sizes that grid flex­i­bil­i­ty can be improved through dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies. Trans­form­ers can be mon­i­tored and make a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the sta­bil­i­ty, reli­a­bil­i­ty and resilience of the grids. The NREL also empha­sizes the pos­si­bil­i­ties for pre­dic­tive main­te­nance. Dig­i­tal­ized trans­form­ers can reduce fail­ures and increase effi­cien­cy. Con­tin­u­ous mon­i­tor­ing of oper­at­ing para­me­ters is also pos­si­ble. The advan­tage: few­er fail­ures and low­er main­te­nance costs.

Increasing the efficiency of grids with digital transformers

Anoth­er fac­tor is that the work­force in the US ener­gy sec­tor is cur­rent­ly expe­ri­enc­ing a demo­graph­ic tran­si­tion, with many sea­soned pro­fes­sion­als approach­ing retire­ment, high­light­ing the val­ue of their exper­tise and the impor­tance of prepar­ing for the next gen­er­a­tion of tal­ent. Accord­ing to the U.S. Depart­ment of Energy’s 2023 U.S. Ener­gy Employ­ment Report (USEER), many employ­ees in tech­ni­cal posi­tions in the ener­gy sup­ply sec­tor are close to retire­ment. Over the next ten years, com­pa­nies will lose many expe­ri­enced spe­cial­ists and their exper­tise, which can­not be eas­i­ly replaced due to the short­age of skilled work­ers. Here, too, trans­former dig­i­tal­iza­tion can make an impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion.

Dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies there­fore also play a key role in the USA in accel­er­at­ing the tran­si­tion to a sus­tain­able ener­gy sys­tem by sup­port­ing both grid sta­bil­i­ty and the inte­gra­tion of renew­able ener­gies. Rein­hausen is mak­ing its con­tri­bu­tion to this.

© Jere­my Ras­nic
Interview with Robert Vary CEO and President of Reinhausen Manufacturing

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