The initiative’s goal is to improve efficiency and stem losses of electricity that would otherwise flow to the end user. T&D losses account for about 300 billion kilowatthours in the US, and reducing such losses will allow utilities to generate less power and lower the industry’s carbon footprint, EPRI said.
The collaborative is outgrowth of efforts by EPRI, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), independent system operators and utilities to identify and implement practices in the US and abroad to make transmission systems efficient.
Arshad Mansoor, vice president of Power Delivery and Utilization sector at EPRI, said: “Improving the technology and efficiency of the transmission system is a key component in developing a smarter national grid. This collaborative will go hand-in-hand with on-going efforts to extract new efficiencies – from generation to end-use – throughout the entire industry.”
