NOVI – In MITech TV’s Nov. 25 episode, Tim Greenen, director of operations engineering at ITC, joined us to discuss proactive planning for the electric transmission grid to ensure the power flows to our homes and communities no matter the conditions.
Greenen leads a team that supports operations for ITC’s transmission lines through any extreme weather or service interruptions throughout the year. While ITC Operations is monitoring the lines around the clock, Greenen’s team is completing long- and short-term studies to determine whether ITC will have adequate capacity during peak load, when new manufacturing operations are onboarded or during maintenance work on the system.
Some of this monitoring is automated – the grid does a self-check every five minutes for N-minus-one contingencies, which determine whether the system will stay in operation if one element of the grid goes offline. However, the team must manually analyze the current situation at all times based on these checks and other data to be prepared if more than one part of the grid goes offline.
Through their work, Greenen’s team is planning for “what-if” situations; current conditions; and weeks, months and years into the future. In the summer when area residents run their air conditioning, he and his team plan for peak demand. They also plan for increases in demand as data centers and new manufacturing operations are built.
Finally, they complete assessments surrounding their own upgrades to the grid. The Operations team also monitors the weather constantly and is prepared to change plans at any moment based on conditions that may arise. Sometimes, when a storm or extreme temperatures are in the forecast, Greenen’s team reschedules maintenance work to protect ITC’s crews and ensure all redundancies are in service to help prevent weather-related outages.
Greenen emphasized that as states and local utilities move toward decarbonization goals, transmission must be part of the conversation, especially since it will be more critical to have this infrastructure with increasing reliance on renewables. He also talked about an increase in electricity demand as people plug in everything from appliances to cars. Artificial intelligence and data centers are also expected to use more electricity in the coming years.
An increased demand requires increased investment in the grid to ensure it can reliably meet our new and changing needs. The most effective approach is proactive, not reactive, he said, knowing it takes 7-10 years to build a new transmission line. ITC works to build and maintain a system with enough redundancy to prevent outages. Even when there are interruptions, its system can reroute power almost instantaneously, so customers don’t feel them.
To learn more about ITC, visit itcmichigan.com.
