GRIDsilience: System Planning

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E2Tech's new GRIDsilience series brings together regulators, electric utilities, generators and storage developers to discuss the challenges and opportunities of building the grid of the future with an affordable and resilient energy supply. May's GRIDsilience event featured three panels, this is the first panel focused on system planning with ISO New England's Melissa Winne, Maine Public Utilities Commission's Phil Bartlett, and Maine Department of Energy Resources' Ethan Tremblay (click here for slides from the event).

There are moments when an infrastructure conversation can become something much larger. What appears, at first glance, to be a discussion about transmission lines, load forecasts and interconnection queues can gradually reveal itself as a conversation about how a society imagines its future. The energy leaders at E2Tech's GRIDsilience event described a transformation underway in how New England thinks about electricity and infrastructure that deserves much more attention.

For decades, the electric grid was an engineering achievement that seemed almost invisible it was so defined by stability. Large power plants produced electricity. Utilities built poles and wires to deliver it. If demand increased, it appeared gradual and predictable. Planning could seem like a simple exercise in extending an existing system.

Today, the complexity of the power grid, the world's largest machine, is beginning to receive the attention and appreciation it deserves. Electricity no longer moves in one direction. Homes generate power. Batteries store it. Electric vehicles become mobile loads. Heat pumps shift seasonal demand. Data centers grab headlines seemingly overnight. Climate change introduces weather patterns that historical models struggle to predict. The system seems less like a railroad and more like a living organism—needing to continuously adapt and evolve. Planning has become less about predicting a straight line to the next forecast than preparing for many possible futures.

Melissa Winne of ISO New England illustrated how significantly regional planning has changed. For decades, ISO-NE's mandate largely focused on maintaining reliability over a ten-year horizon. That timeline made sense when change was incremental. It no longer is enough. The region now studies its transmission system through 2050, working less towards a single precise forecast and more towards vulnerabilities that appear across multiple scenarios. One of those vulnerabilities is also an opportunity: transmission constraints limiting the movement of electricity from northern New England into the population centers farther south.

Maine possesses abundant renewable energy resources but faces challenges moving that power efficiently to where it is most valuable. The Maine Public Utilities Commission is taking a regional leadership role to connect 1,200 MW of new renewable generation, primarily onshore wind, in Aroostook County. This first regional solicitation for long-term transmission investments is a huge opportunity to address physical, cultural and affordability changes.

Phil Bartlett, chair of the Maine Public Utilities Commission, described Maine's new integrated grid planning process as an attempt to replace fragmented decision-making with collective vision, bringing together nearly one hundred stakeholders—utilities, developers, consumer advocates, regulators and energy companies. A single planner or institution would make little progress navigating the new complexities of the power grid alone, they require networks of organizations sharing information, coordinating investments and acknowledging uncertainty rather than pretending it does not exist.

Ethan Tremblay of Maine's new Department of Energy Resources described the state's energy plan not as a fixed blueprint but as a living document—recognizing that technological innovation, geopolitical events, federal policy and consumer behavior are likely to continue to surprise us. For decades, energy policy was focused on supply. Now there is an important emphasis on adaptability. Resilience extends beyond keeping electricity flowing. Tremblay emphasized it includes helping communities recover from disruption, coordinating among agencies, investing in microgrids and understanding how increasingly severe weather affects both infrastructure and people.

While poles and wires are important, the foundation of resilient infrastructure also requires ambitious investment in something less visible: the capacity to work together over long periods of time.

Special thanks to event sponsors ⁠The Roux Institute⁠⁠⁠ at Northeastern University, ⁠Central Maine Power⁠, ⁠Cianbro⁠, and ⁠Drummond Woodsum⁠. E2Tech programs are supported by our members and sustaining partners like the Maine Technology Institute which offers grants, loans, equity investments, and services to foster Maine’s innovation economy.