IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - November/December 2017 - 93

power hub," an artificial island that would host converter stations to link regional offshore wind to the island and/or other
facilities, such as power-to-gas, to utilize surplus wind. Additionally, the governments of Germany, Belgium, and Denmark
together with the European wind industry signed a statement
aimed at deploying 60 GW of offshore wind between 2020 and
2030. Significant potential has been identified in this area, calling for HVdc solutions to connect markets and technologies.

China
There has been significant development in approaches to transmission system planning by both the SGCC and CSG. Key
driving forces behind this development are threefold. First, the
rapid urbanization of Chinese society, especially in eastern and
central China, means that per capita annual electricity consumption by 2050 is likely to reach 8,000 kWh, doubling current levels, and peak demand will rise to more than 2,000 GW.
Second, to meet China's commitments in response to climate
change, renewable generation will continue to see extremely
fast development (especially in the renewable-rich regions of
the remote northwest, north, and northeast of the country),
which must be transported thousands of kilometers to load
centers in the country's central and eastern regions. Third,
some regions of the country such as Shanghai are exposed to a
significant risk of cascading outage, a direct result of the large
number of HVdc transmission lines located there. These lines
are necessary to transport electricity from large generation
bases (including hydro and wind) in the west and northwest to
load centers in the central and eastern regions.
The SGCC has, therefore, investigated the option of interconnecting the existing five asynchronous transmission systems (which operate primarily at 500 and 750 kV) into two
asynchronous systems that operate at 1,000 kV and are interconnected by UHVdc transmission. This will enable much
higher levels of clean energy power transfer from the west
to load centers in the east and at the same time minimize
systemic risk. Figure 8 illustrates the planned transmission
network in the SGCC areas.

Looking Forward
Environmentally motivated policy together with the attractive
economics of renewables has motivated new processes, technical approaches, tools, and data needs when planning electric
systems. Obtaining and using meteorological attributes are
essential to ensuring the proper characterization of renewable
performance. Spatial and temporal relationships among these
attributes create opportunities that can be identified using
CEP; tools to quantify and ensure capacity adequacy and flexibility sufficiency are essential. Although the United States,
Europe, and China feature many differences, their great commonality is that renewable locations are distant from load centers; the benefits of long-distance HVdc power transmission
are therefore apparent in all three regions. Planning locally is

november/december 2017

no longer sufficient by itself; wide-area planning is needed to
identify the most economically attractive low-carbon designs.

For Further Reading
ENTSO-E. (2016). Ten year network development plan 2016
executive report, European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity. [Online]. Available: http://tyndp
.entsoe.eu/projects/2016-12-20-1600-exec-report.pdf
V. Silva and A. Burtin (June 2015). Technical and economic analysis of the European system with 60% RES. EDF
R&D. [Online]. Available: https://www.edf.fr/sites/default/files/
Lot%203/CHERCHEURS/Portrait%20de%20cherch eurs/
summarystudyres.pdf
(2017, Jan. 14). Rise of the supergrid: Electricity now flows
across continents, courtesy of direct current. The Economist.
[Online]. Available: www.economist.com/news/science-andtechnology/21714325-transmitting-power-over-thousandskilometres-requires-new-electricity.
(2016). MTEP16: MISO transmission expansion plan. [Online]. Available: www.misoenergy.org/Planning/Transmission
ExpansionPlanning/Pages/MTEP16.aspx
V. Krishnan, J. Ho, B. Hobbs, A. Liu, J. McCalley, M.
Shahidehpour, and Q. Zheng, "Co-optimization of electricity
transmission and generation resources for planning and policy
analysis: Review of concepts and modeling approaches," Energy Int. J., vol, 7, no. 3, pp. 297-332, 2015.
A. MacDonald, C. Clack, A. Alexander, A. Dunbar, J. Wilczak, and Y. Xie, "Future cost-competitive electricity systems
and their impact on US CO2 emissions," Nat. Climate Change,
vol. 6, pp. 526-531, Jan. 2016.
(2014). The power of transformation: Wind, sun, and the economics of flexible power systems. International Energy Agency.
[Online]. Available: www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/
publication/The_power_of_Transformation.pdf.

Biographies
James McCalley is with Iowa State University, Ames.
Jay Caspary is with Southwest Power Pool, Little Rock,
Arkansas.
Christopher Clack is with Vibrant Clean Energy, Erie,
Colorado.
Wayne Galli is with Clean Line Energy, Houston, Texas.
Melinda Marquis is with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Boulder, Colorado.
Dale Osborn, formerly with the Midcontinent Independent
System Operator, is now retired.
Antje Orths is with Energinet, Fredericia, Denmark.
Justin Sharp is with Sharply Focused, Portland, Oregon.
Vera Silva is with Electricité de France R&D, Paris-Saclay,
France.
Peter Zeng is with Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou,
China.
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http://tyndp http://www.entsoe.eu/projects/2016-12-20-1600-exec-report.pdf https://www.edf.fr/sites/default/files/ http://www.economist.com/news/science-and http://www.misoenergy.org/Planning/Transmission http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - November/December 2017