Transmission into $avings: Better Connection for Better Rates?

Thank you, Jeff.

I'm Melissa Winne.

I'm a lead state policy advisor on the external affairs team at ISO New England.

And thank you to E2Tech for the invitation to speak today.

My slides are going to provide an overview of the ISO's longer term transmission planning or LTTP process, kind of a timeline of how we've gotten to where we are today, and then the related first 2025 LTTP procurement.

So before we get into that, I wanted to just briefly introduce ISO New England for folks who may be less familiar.

So we are the independent system operator for the New England Bulk Power System.

We are a nonprofit organization that is regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, which you'll hear me mention in my presentation.

And we serve three critical roles for the region.

So we operate the high voltage transmission system.

So we ensure that supply and demand are met at all times.

Within that, it's helpful to clarify that we do not own any of the infrastructure.

So we don't own the poles and wires, and we just operate the system from the building that we do own in Western Massachusetts.

We also administer the wholesale electricity markets.

And similarly, we don't have a financial stake in the companies, but we administer the market platform for entities to buy and sell power on the wholesale markets.

And the area that I'll focus on today is planning.

So we study and analyze the system to ensure that it remains reliable into the future.

So we're required to study the system at least 10 years out.

We also study resources that are seeking to interconnect to the system.

Most recently, we now conduct longer-term studies, so looking out beyond that 10-year horizon, and that's what I'll be speaking to today.

This is a map of the New England high-voltage transmission system.

If you zoom out, we are part of a larger Eastern interconnection that goes out to the Rockies, part of Eastern Canada, and down to Southern US.

But looking just at the New England system, we have about 9,000 miles of high voltage transmission lines.

This almost looks like we're looking at the highway system.

You can see the blue lines are the higher