Transmission congestion

My guest today is Zach Zimmerman, director of research and policy for power sector consultant Grid Strategies.

Zach was a co-author of the new Grid Strategies report, Transmission Congestion for 2025, a decidedly unsexy title that describes really important findings that congestion costs to U.S. electricity users are high and quickly rising.

because regulators and transmission builders simply have failed to supply the transmission needed to meet demand.

Zach trained as a chemist, was a staffer for the Minnesota House of Representatives Energy Committee, and did master's degree research at UC Berkeley.

So Zach, I want to talk a lot about this congestion report.

It's really an important piece of work.

But let's start by defining transmission congestion for our listeners so that we're all on the same page.

And then I want you to describe what causes transmission congestion.

So how exactly does this bottleneck stall electrification and limit our economic growth?

Well, it comes down to timelines and grid congestion.

There is this massive time lag disparity right now.

You can build a hyperscale data center in, what, maybe one to three years?

There's a lot to cover today.

Load shedding, private solar, grid congestion, batteries.

Just a few small topics.

Exactly.