Transmission grid expansion planning in an RTO environment within the Eastern Interconnection

Integrated planning has disappeared with the separation of generation and transmission entities. As a result, generation location is not necessarily taking place in locations that will provide for the most efficient development of both generation and transmission. Further, more generation is being considered for developed in certain markets than will be able to be accommodated. The transmission planner has a near impossible task of providing a system that will be able to deliver from an uncertain array of resources, with unspecified points of delivery. These problems have faced the transmission planners at transmission owning utilities for several years, and will be faced by the RTO as well. But through coordinated functions, the traditional transmission owners, emerging ITCs, and the developing RTOs can bridge some of these gaps in information and help bring order to the chaos.