Energizing the Future: Future Load Analysis and Grid Modifications for the Texas Interconnect

Abstract

Texas is home to ten of the fifteen fastest growing cities in the United States. These dramatic and concentrated increases in population will place an increased strain on the Texas power grid, and maintaining its stability and resiliency is of upmost importance. Grid modifications, specifically the addition of high voltage transmission lines, are critical to designing a grid that will be able to provide ample power to these growth hotspots for years to come. Proposed here are a set of modifications to a synthetic model of the Texas grid that accommodate this increased demand. These modifications were optimized and validated using PowerWorld, which models the synthetic grid and tests its response to these increases in load under contingency failure conditions. This was all done given a reasonable constraint on the proposed length and capacity of these additional transmission lines with the goal of maximizing the length of time into the future the grid will be able to effectively handle the predicted load growth. Adding transmission capacity at these strategic locations produced a more stable, resilient grid that better handles peak demand hours and brought major contingency violations down 32% from the base case given a 10% load increase in the North Central Zone of the synthetic grid.