2027 Event Agenda

As electric load growth accelerates due to large data center interconnections and generation retirements, utilities face increasing pressure to deliver transmission upgrades that often require years to plan and construct. At the same time, distribution-sited battery energy storage systems (BESS) are being deployed at scale, creating opportunities to relieve transmission constraints and defer network investments. This session presents a novel, replicable planning methodology for quantifying the transmission value of distributed storage through integrated generation and transmission planning. By combining year-long security-constrained production cost simulations with hourly AC power flow and contingency analyses, the methodology captures how BESS dispatch affects thermal loading on constrained transmission facilities under changing system conditions. The approach is currently being demonstrated through a GridLab-funded project in partnership with Xcel Energy, which is providing planning data for the study for one of its utility service territories, and encoord, the developer of the integrated planning platform used for the analysis. Presenters from GridLab, Xcel Energy's transmission planning team, encoord, and a storage or data center developer will share preliminary findings on how strategically deployed storage can mitigate congestion, improve transmission system utilization, and defer upgrades triggered by new large loads or generation retirements. Attendees will gain practical insights into the modeling framework, data requirements, and planning processes needed to evaluate distributed storage as a transmission resource and support more cost-effective, reliable grid expansion decisions.