Christine Ho, christine.ho@sierraclub.org
Knoxville, Tennessee — Today, Sierra Club released a new report and analysis highlighting the urgent need for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to pursue new transmission infrastructure as part of its resource planning to protect consumers and enhance the strength of the grid amid increasingly frequent extreme weather. The report urges TVA to upgrade its “Integrated Resource Planning” (IRP) process by building connections to neighboring grids, adding battery storage and grid enhancement technologies to the system, and engaging new stakeholders by opening up the agency’s planning process to the public.
“The best time to make a plan for a stronger grid today was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. Infrastructure that works during severe weather doesn’t get built overnight and we need to think about the future right away. That’s why it’s so important for TVA to do this work now,” said David Rogers, Deputy Director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. “Until we have a reliable grid, communities will face more and more blackouts and higher and higher costs. We’re calling on TVA to do right by its customers and treat infrastructure with the attention it deserves.”
Illustrating its analysis with case studies from around the country, the report finds that ensuring the TVA system has ties to neighboring grid operators can significantly improve reliability and reduce costs. Already, TVA has been awarded $250 million in federal funding from the Department of Energy’s Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships program—resources to support dozens of local projects that will bring affordable clean energy online via new transmission projects and strengthen the electric grid for local communities. Building on this progress and expanding ties to neighboring grids could not only deliver lower-cost resources, including wind and solar energy, but also offer TVA more dependable electricity capacity because of a new diversity of sources. Pointing to the disastrous outages following Winter Storm Elliott, the report indicates that better connections to neighboring grids “could have reduced or eliminated the need to resort to rolling blackouts” because of available capacity in adjacent areas.
“TVA has a critical opportunity to ensure families and businesses across the region have access to affordable, reliable electricity by prioritizing transmission and interconnection in planning.That would mean new opportunities for economic development and grid resilience that can reduce costs for consumers while keeping the lights on when we need it most,” said Michael Goggin of Grid Strategies, the report’s author. “To make sure they don’t leave our communities in the dark, TVA has to stop operating behind closed doors. It’s time TVA starts ensuring the people impacted by their decisions have a seat at the table in planning a stronger, more connected, and more affordable grid.”
The Sierra Club’s analysis highlights how coordinated planning by public and private entities and other stakeholders can produce results more quickly and with better outcomes than black box-style planning conducted by a single organization—the model the TVA currently utilizes.
Entitled “Incorporating transmission into TVA’s IRP for truly ‘Integrated’ Resource Planning,”
the report was authored by expert analyst Michael Goggin of Grid Strategies. The report’s analysis makes clear that increasing population and business growth in the Tennessee Valley region necessitate not only enhanced transmission and interconnection on the grid, but a longer-term perspective on planning that takes into account fuel costs, emerging technologies, climate change, policy objectives and utility goals.
Currently, the TVA’s draft Integrated Resource Plan is out for public comment, with a comment period ending on December 11. Feedback on this plan is encouraged, and details for submitting comments are available on the TVA’s webpage. The public is also able to attend public hearings on the proposal through December, with a full schedule of hearings available here.
About the Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is America’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with millions of members and supporters. In addition to protecting every person's right to get outdoors and access the healing power of nature, the Sierra Club works to promote clean energy, safeguard the health of our communities, protect wildlife, and preserve our remaining wild places through grassroots activism, public education, lobbying, and legal action. For more information, visit www.sierraclub.org.