Utilities are entering a period of sustained load growth, with electricity demand projected to increase after decades of relative stability. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates an average annual electricity growth rate of 1.7 percent between 2020 and 2026. Yet, the ability to bring new energy infrastructure and power generation resources online is not keeping pace. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) and regional planning entities are warning of capacity shortfalls within the next year or so, depending on severity of weather conditions, even where resources are expected to be adequate under normal peak‐load conditions. Power producers will struggle to meet this demand through their usual methods of identifying and securing land to site new power generation. For electric utilities, the bottleneck is not just about meeting capacity needs, but also the ability to site transmission and distribution infrastructure to deliver power efficiently.
Chabot et al. (Mon,) studied this question.