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Today the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a rule through Order 1920 that will bring regional transmission planning into the modern era. This rule is a particularly big deal for the Southeast, as it will now require regional utilities to plan for the future and find ways for transmission to lower costs, improve reliability, and improve utilities’ ability to connect clean energy resources to the grid at the pace required to decarbonize the electricity sector.

Currently, regional transmission “planning” in the Southeast is conducted by an entity called the Southeastern Regional Transmission Planning (SERTP). The SERTP process is run by utilities, and meets the bare minimum of requirements from FERC’s Order 1000. That means that SERTP’s current process does not result in any transmission plans that provide regional benefits, but instead stack each utility’s transmission plans together like layers of a cake.

Under Order 1920, SERTP will have nearly a year to file a compliance plan outlining changes to its process to meet Order 1920 requirements.

Comparison of current SERTP process to requirements under FERC Order 1920

This order will change regional transmission planning in the Southeast by requiring SERTP to: look out farther into the future (at least 20 years); look at multiple potential futures (at least 3 scenarios); and look at multiple benefits. FERC requires consideration of seven specific benefits:

  1. Avoided or deferred reliability transmission facilities and aging infrastructure replacement
  2. Either reduced loss of load probability or reduced planning reserve margin
  3. Production cost savings
  4. Reduced transmission energy losses
  5. Reduced congestion due to transmission outages
  6. Mitigation of extreme weather events and unexpected system conditions
  7. Capacity cost benefits from reduced peak energy losses

FERC Chairman Willie Phillips stated that the Order’s number (1920) was chosen as a tribute to the creation of the Federal Power Commission (FPC), FERC’s predecessor, which was created by Congress in 1920. He goes on to state that the FPC was formed “to solve the urgent national challenge of how to develop energy infrastructure… needed to meet the demands of an emerging global superpower. Why did Congress do that? Because in 1920… Congress had fully grasped that large-scale development of the nation’s power infrastructure was essential.” Phillips continued, saying that “even in 1920 we as a country recognized that, when it comes to the electric system, we are all in this together.”

FERC also issued a second rule related to transmission today: Order 1977, focused on streamlining the permitting process for electric transmission. This order will also be impactful in the Southeast, however it is Order 1920 that will more likely address the first roadblock to transmission: shifting from piecemeal transmission within utility fiefdoms to holistic regional transmission planning for the common good.

We at SACE look forward to working with utilities and state regulators across the Southeast to find the best way to implement this rule and get the region on a path to transmission planning for the future.

The post FERC Puts the “Planning” in Regional Transmission Planning in the Southeast appeared first on SACE | Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

FERC Puts the “Planning” in Regional Transmission Planning in the Southeast

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As Europe Shuns Chinese Turbines and Components, Who Will Fill the Gap?

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As Europe Shuns Chinese Turbines and Components, Who Will Fill the Gap?

While most of Europe has spent most of this year itemizing reasons it cannot, should not, and will not use Chinese wind turbines or components, accusations and arm-twisting tactics have garnered most of the attention.

But we invite you to consider a future – maybe just five, or ten years from now?- in which those same countries and companies are eagerly awaiting orders from wind turbine manufacturing facilities in… India.
What?!
You know that the country has a lot of installed wind.

You may think – and many in the industry would agree – that India’s blade manufacturers are a few revs behind blade-makers elsewhere in the world. But the country is newly committed to manufacturing and it’s busy installing more – provided that it’s made in India, with Indian technology, by Indian workers.
Of course, similar domestic-focused policy currents are running through European countries – where wind OEMs are almost inarguably a decade ahead of Indian manufacturers. But there’s an important reason why we say, “watch India” in wind turbine manufacturing.

It’s because you might learn something.

If you follow The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, you probably heard this discussion a few weeks ago. It wasn’t the headline story – we try to highlight as many major news items and trends that we can, and follow up as credible information becomes available. India’s quiet moves to strengthen its own renewable energy industries didn’t grab the headlines. But it comprised a good bit of our panelists’ discussion.

With India’s expanding manufacturing capacity, and Suzlon’s strategic offerings for the European market (Blue Sky), there are reasons for European developers to take a closer look at Indian manufacturers.

If Europe continues to squelch deals with Chinese manufacturers due to data security issues, India is a relatively obvious candidate to fill the void, for several reasons:

  • The country has depth and breadth in R&D: India (Suzlon, specifically) has a track record of involvement and relationships across the continent, as it operates research and development centers in Germany, the Netherlands, and Denmark.
  • Indian service providers have reach: Inox and Adoni Wind operate multiple wind turbine manufacturing plants and wind farms throughout several Indian states, and Apraava Energy has been commissioning wind projects, working with multiple OEMs, for more than 16 years.
  • The country’s energy sector has size: Tata Power is estimated to be worth about US$16 billion and employs 22,000 people.

And major manufacturers from other countries have had a strong presence in the country for years:

  • GE Vernova has turbine blade and nacelle manufacturing operations and multiple tech/R&D centers in India;
  • Vestas has a R&D technology center in Chennai; and
  • China’s SANY Wind has had assembly facilities in India since 2017, and in 2024, it signed a licensing agreement with JSW allowing SANY to manufacture blades and generators for JSW – enabling JSW Neo Energy to produce wind turbine generators and major components in-country.

So while there is hard data suggesting that India is already a global hub for wind turbines, sometimes the real strength comes from soft skills. Like sharing information.

We’ve noticed that Indian manufactures aren’t stingy with information. They share what they learn in the field and on the shop floor, so that the whole industry can move faster to solve problems. That bodes well for the industry overall, and particularly well for companies who figure out how to solve problems that some manufacturers aren’t even ready to admit to having.

We’ll be watching India with a great deal of interest in the coming months. Subscribe to The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast and follow along with us.

We’re not financial analysts. We’re engineers who watch the wind industry very closely. This is what we’ve noticed, and we thought it was worth sharing.

Where do you think you’ll be looking for solutions, components, and service providers in the next few years or the next decade? Tell us what you think. We’d love to hear from you.

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As Europe Shuns Chinese Turbines and Components, Who Will Fill the Gap?

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When You Write for Idiots, You Can Get Away with Anything

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To the author of the meme here:

“Either” refers to two choices; “any” refers to three or more.

More importantly, it’s amazing how shamelessly the ultra-right wing exaggerates.  The left side of the Democratic party would like to see the United States look like social democracies in places like Scandinavia.  Having government programs that benefit the common person, e.g., Social Security, public schools, emergency relief, libraries, environmental responsibility, etc., does not equate to Stalinism.

When You Write for Idiots, You Can Get Away with Anything

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Are Muslims “Dangerous?”

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Some of my old prep school chums from the Class of 1973 convene via Zoom approximately every six weeks for a 90-minute discussion of current events, science, and anything else that sounds interesting.

Our professions range from medicine, law, finance, and business management. All from highly ranked colleges.  Over 50% hold doctorate degrees.

Here’s something I find fascinating about the group: it includes one right-wing conservative.  I don’t mean a Reaganite; I mean a Trump supporter.  This guy is incapable of any thought that doesn’t come directly from Nexsmax.

It’s almost eerie how closely he toes the line of the far-right.  Yesterday he echoed the Newsmax talking point and told the group that all Muslims holding public office are “very dangerous” and should be removed.

Now, the rest of us are sitting there, dumbfounded at this idea, unwilling waste our breath on this racist and utterly preposterous concept.

All this raises the question: How are our political viewpoints formed?  How much of this is genetics?  Epigenetics?  Early childhood experiences? How do take a boy from among the best environments and turn him into someone who struggles to understand the most basic principles on which our country was founded?

https://www.2greenenergy.com/2026/11/09/principles-country-was-founded/

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