T&D Grid Planning

Our advisors at Quanta Technology can provide your organization with a wide range of solutions for Transmission and Distribution Planning. Our team combines industry-leading technical expertise and business acumen, enabling us to provide solutions that are both technically robust and practical to implement. Our approach is to create and leverage best-in-class software tools and processes to support our clients and long-term partners in solving the toughest challenges facing the industry today.

  • Quanta Technology uses a variety of economic planning tools (e.g., GridView, PROMOD, GE-Maps) to perform Market Power simulations to evaluate and justify transmission and generation expansion projects, asset valuation of existing and new transmission and generation assets, plant siting, and power transaction valuation.  We have developed proprietary software tools to efficiently analyze the shifting economics of generation technologies and fuels, the intermittency of renewable resources, and the behavior and effects of energy storage all of which have a profound impact on locational energy prices and resulting prices of ancillary services.   
  • Distribution systems planning is a vital activity for the successful modernization of the grid. Modern distribution planning is expected to become an even more complex activity, largely due to the need to integrate DER and new technologies. Grid Performance Planning is the foundation of a modern distribution plan and it combines forecasts of both loads and DER, including weather normalization, transformer loading, feeder loading, urban re-development, regression models, and spatial land-use models.  Quanta Technology has assembled a team of leading experts from the utility industry and developed state of the art tools to deliver a rigorous and comprehensive approach to address modern distribution planning system challenges.
  • In this age of climate impacts and extreme weather events, Quanta Technology provides services to evaluate and improve transmission system resiliency.   Our capabilities encompass a spectrum of resiliency elements including wildfire risks, earthquake vulnerability, gas/fuel disruption scenarios, CIP-014-2 requirements (R1 & R2), extreme weather, and aging infrastructure.  Our approach is based on a combination of in-house tools and commercial software that cover a broad range of resiliency subjects.   
  • Quanta Technology performs hosting capacity studies to determine the ability of a utility to accommodate and integrate future distributed energy resources (DER) on its grid. The results of these studies are used to develop hosting capacity maps for the utility’s service territory and its distribution feeders. In general, hosting capacity analysis considers the effect of DER proliferation, specifically photovoltaic distributed generation, on thermal limits and voltages of distribution feeders. We also have experience with hosting capacity studies that consider additional variables in developing hosting capacity maps; these variables may be incorporated progressively into the calculation process to increase result accuracy and comprehensiveness. Quanta Technology also supports our client partners with creating general guidelines that identify areas of the distribution system that are more vulnerable to the potential effects of DER adoption based on further analysis of capacity maps. We can also support updates to hosting capacity maps, periodically and automatically, to account for actual changes in DER penetration levels (driven by new interconnection requests), changes in system configuration, customer load growth, etc.
  • Quanta Technology has extensive industry experience conducting distributed generation (DG) integration and planning studies for transmission and distribution (T&D) systems, including identifying and evaluating the severity of impacts and proposing mitigation measures. Our team performs interconnection, impact, and engineering studies (steady state, dynamic and transient analyses, protection, power quality, insulation coordination, arc flash, etc.) of DG and battery energy storage plants for many major utilities and developers. We work with major solar PV inverter manufacturers, wind turbine vendors, and energy storage suppliers to develop and verify computational models of emerging DG technologies for use in various transient analyses. We also review and update utility standards, guidelines, and procedures for DG interconnection to T&D systems.
  • Load forecasting in now part of grid performance planning which is the foundation of a distribution plan. Without a good load forecast, it is likely that unnecessary projects will be funded and needed projects will go unfunded. Our experts have experience in all aspects of load and DER forecasting including weather normalization, transformer loading, feeder loading, urban re-development, regression models, and spatial land-use models. We have helped many utilities in the U.S. and around the world refine forecasts, develop forecasts, and institute improved load forecasting and grid performance.
  • The planning of transmission grids faces increasing challenges due to factors such as the proliferation of distributed energy resources (DER) and the need to find economical solutions to reliably integrate large renewable plants. Quanta Technology serves the transmission analysis needs of electric utilities with services ranging from long-range master planning to detailed technical studies such as validating models. We frequently use customized software and routines to complement standard transmission planning tools such as PSS/E and PSLF.

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