Here, in order to be cost-effective.... When evaluating the study, you have to look beyond just some of the energy savings of transferring a megawatt hour from one region to another and the differential energy price in one region versus the other. You have to look at and evaluate some of those other benefits in quantifying what are the capacity benefits of that increased intertie. Capacity benefit means ensuring you have enough firm generation capacity to meet the peak load at all times.
Typically, the power system in many regions has generation capacity that's built and installed only to serve load on a few hours or a few days of the year with the highest peak demand. In using transmission as a tool to broaden that portfolio, you can potentially defer investment in peaking generation capacity in lieu of using the resources across a wider network more reasonably.
There are another couple of benefits. Again, it's not about looking at just energy or capacity but also at some of the ancillary services, such as regulation and contingency reserves being provided, and then looking at things that are a little harder to quantify, like resource diversity or what the risk is of there being a low hydro year in one region or a natural gas shortage in another. Using that risk analysis, that's a little harder to quantify as well.
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