Building Tomorrow's Grid: Insights from Clean Grid Alliance
The electric grid is a dynamic system of energy generation and transmission. As Beth Soholt from Clean Grid Alliance reveals, most people only think about electricity during power outages and when paying bills. Yet behind the scenes, a complex infrastructure is constantly evolving. Wind, solar, and transmission lines are meticulously planned across the Midwest, driven by increasing power demands from data centers, electric vehicles, and emerging technologies. This intricate network requires collaboration between utilities, states, and communities to ensure reliable, clean energy delivery.
Transcript
[Yeager]
Hello and welcome to the MToM podcast. I'm Paul Yeager, inside the Market to Market production studios of Iowa PBS. We're in the podcast room and we are going to be connected via electricity. You know the grid. It's all over. And in the Midwest, there is an alliance that is working on keeping that grid going, and it's through clean energy. It's not the only source, but it's lots of different sources. And we're going to find out what it takes to make a grid work, what it takes to get something new done, how it's kind of like sticking your hand in sand and trying to keep as much, many grains of salt without letting them all spill over. And how much of a juggling act it can be. Or, as Beth Soholt told us, it's about commonality, finding common ground as different states have different ideas about clean energy and energy generation in itself. So that's the topic. Today we're going to talk about electricity in the grid. We all care about it for two reasons, Beth. I'll tell you why in this discussion. I didn't intentionally wear word orange, but I had forgotten in your previous look at your bio before we started going. Beth to Luther. Luther and Wartburg. That's kind of like for you and I were different than everybody else in agriculture where they talk about Iowa State, Kansas State or Oklahoma State. But it's a fun, friendly rivalry. Right?
[Soholt] That's right. But Luther is far superior. So there we go.
[Yeager] Well, that's so true. And you know how many people I work with would love to to hear that. So how does someone go from, a small school like that to working with with energy? What's been your career path?
[Soholt] I moved to Minnesota after I graduated from Luther. worked a variety of jobs before I got into energy. I did take a break and go to law school, at Hamline law school in Saint Paul. So I clerked for, I had worked a little while, before I went to law school. So I knew that I wanted to get back into energy. I had worked for the kind of the grid operator. prior to law school. And so I had five years of energy experience, clerked for a small boutique firm that was doing energy law, and then did a year working for a senator in the Minnesota legislature. And then really started doing what I'm doing today. So, 23 years later, here I am. And, when you look back, it all makes sense.
[Yeager] Well, and power is interesting because it's both broad and very local and it goes local from the switch that we have in our house to we see these ridiculously large, lines that go along an interstate or, wherever it is. So first tell me what Clean Grid Alliance is.
[Soholt] Yes. And I will just say that people never they think about power two times when it goes off and when they pay their bill, when they pay their electric bill. Other than that, not so much. so Clean Grid Alliance was launched in mid 2001 really to work on the infrastructure pieces. We were starting to need new generation types of clean energy, wind power in particular was really coming into vogue. and we needed to we needed to rewrite the rules of the road, as we call them, about how power is put on to the grid so that it would work for all types of energy. And so we started, with a few cases, we started with a seven state footprint. We're now a nine plus state footprint. and so we, we kind of, you know, did a little work, had a few successes, kept growing, formed relationships with the utility companies, who sometimes we, sometimes we work with and sometimes we, you know, gently prod. and so it's, it's really just been a blossoming over the years of our, of our work.
[Yeager] When you started in power, I'm guessing here that the companies that the clean side of things were strictly clean companies. Now, you have traditional power companies that have maybe, generated power from coal or other not as clean sources that have merged a little bit some of their holdings and have gone to clean. Is that an accurate, am I seeing how the industry has maybe changed a little bit, and who's generating power and putting it on the system?
[Soholt] We are in the middle of this energy transition from really fossil fuel driven, oil, natural gas, coal to clean sources, wind, solar storage, battery storage is coming on strong. because it can be, paired with wind or solar and, and have a different kind of more, 24 seven type of resource, not so weather dependent and then transmission of course, is has become a big part of what we're working on. So the utility companies that we work within, in a big footprint, are transitioning their fleets from not so fossil heavy to cleaner resources. They're learning along the way how to operate their system. It's very reliable. They know how to put it into the market. And they either own wind or solar farms, or they contract with a developer who has developed the wind or solar resource, and they are buying the power from those facilities.
[Yeager] When it's a fortune 500 company that's doing it to me. If they are getting into the clean energy business, that seems like an endorsement for clean energy. Is it?
[Soholt] It definitely is. They're listening to the marketplace. They're listening to their customers. They're looking at the economics of wind and solar and storage and transmission, which have, you know, the cost of wind and solar have fallen precipitously over the last decade or so. they're now, you know, wind is now the, the, most economic form of new generation, even without the subsidies. You know, we're at, $31 and new gas is 43. and so it is very economical, you know, people just have to get over the fact, or grasp the fact that wind and solar actually do work. Iowa is a prime example, gets an enormous amount of power from wind energy.
[Yeager] Well, you said a couple of things there. You clearly know, what, is always a question you get is about, well, that's just wind and solar only succeeding because of the subsidies. And that clearly has probably been a question you've had for easily 15 or 20 years working in the industry.
[Soholt] Yes. And I think that what people don't realize is that we subsidize all forms of energy. Some of the subsidies are just not as transparent as wind and solar. That has to be reauthorized by legislators every few years. Other subsidies are buried in the tax code. And so you don't see them as visibly and prominently and because renewable energy is a newer, source of energy than fossil fuels. it's the new kid on the block, even though we've been around for a while. and so, people are going to naturally be curious, they're going to want to know more about the resource. So it's a great conversation to have.
[Yeager] Is that conversation been easier just about clean power in general in your career?
[Soholt] Clean power versus….
[Yeager] Well, just I guess, just as the overall acceptance and the overall people willing to talk about it and listen to ideas that there is a different way to do, as we say, flip on the switch.
[Soholt] I think that as corporations who really have led the way in wanting clean energy, as utilities have recognized that they need to diversify their fuel mix, it's gotten a lot easier. electricity is something that, unless you're a wonk, like, I, you know, or the engineers I work with or the utilities or grid operators, you know, it's not something people think about, but but I think that, we've seen a lot more stories in the media about electricity, about, severe weather events that have really stressed our grid. And so people are thinking about electricity, about energy in new ways. It's becoming more a part of their life because they're seeing challenges to the way that we generate and deliver electricity. And so, while you could kind of put it in the background, before it's, it's become a lot more prevalent and, it's just in people's everyday lives. Additionally, you know, you can decide how many electric vehicles you want to drive. You can decide how many gadgets you want to power in your house. So there's just a lot more connectivity with the electric grid, if that makes sense. A lot more choices people can have these days.
[Yeager] Now, you said 8 or 9 states, I think is kind of what you're involved with. Let's break down a little bit about how the job works in grids that go across state lines or new transmission. I mean, are those federal rules that you have to navigate or is it state to state? And oh, yeah, the feds just kind of oversee things. Walk me through how that all works.
[Soholt] The short answer is it's both. So we have an electric grid operator known as myself, the Midcontinent Independent System operator. We call them myself, not me. Select the suit myself. and they are, they, they're tariffs that they operate under is federal jurisdiction. And so the federal Energy Regulatory Commission is the arbiter of their tariffs. So Miso is in the wholesale market. What people are used to thinking about is the retail side of the bill. You pay, if you're a residential customer, some of the large corporations take power at the wholesale level. and so they will get wholesale rates, but we pay retail rates, as residential customers or commercial customers. And so the power lines are jointly studied and identified as needed by your local utility and by myself, the grid operator. There's a big process that we go through to kind of do the engineering work and look at kind of what does the grid of the future need to be, because we're building a grid for, you know, years from now to the grid we have is, you know, 50, 60, 70 years old. And so we're, we're thinking about what does a future look like. So, we come up with a plan that might so that is supported by all the various stakeholder classes, state regulators like the Iowa Utilities Commission and staff would be part of that conversation, as well as Mesdames and Alliant and, you know, a lot of your Iowa, utility serving customers, and that plan gets approved by the Minnesota board of directors, and that means that the utilities then are are obligated to go try to build the transmission lines. Then they go into a state regulatory process where they bring the transmission lines forward. They have, you know, community outreach that they need to do. They have rules and regulations they have to follow in each state and each state in the Miso footprint, which is 15 states have very different rules. And so, you know, we have Clean Grid Alliance has done a lot of legal regulatory cases to support new transmission lines. And every regulatory case that we get involved with across the footprint is different because we're just operating under a different set of rules. So, federal jurisdiction on some things, state jurisdiction on others.
[Yeager] Sounds very simple. Yes.
[Soholt] If you know what you're doing, it is.
[Yeager] Well and that's but how do you get to know what you're doing? Because yeah, there are certain I mean, states, even though we're all neighbors Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska, we all think differently on how we view things. And one state might say, you know, in Iowa, it's, you know, we got a lot of wind in Minnesota. They're starting to put some solar in South Dakota. They're like, we got wind to we think differently about renewable sources therefore. But not everybody even within landowners think the same. So when you talk about these shareholder meetings or you know they're stakeholder, they can be contentious. They can be contentious.
[Soholt] Yes. We have ten sectors in my show that come from very different viewpoints. We're looking for the commonalities we're looking for what are the no regrets things that we need to build that are going to facilitate whatever the state policy, you know, allows. so it is really my job is to I think of myself as the air traffic controller of our electricity system. So they are monitoring the grid in real time. They are sending power to where it needs, where it needs to go when it needs to go there. we could transfer power from a far away state, clear across our grid to another power pool just because they have a weather event or they've had some catastrophic failure of a generation source. So in the transmission planning process, we're looking for this commonality. What makes sense to build, keeping in mind that we have to pay for the, you know, the generation in the transmission of the new stuff that we're building. So, you know, I think utilities and other stakeholders are very conscious about everything new is going to cost something. So let's make sure we are really identifying things that are going to be needed long term. Both. You know, for what we have today, but really allow us to meet the goals and requirements of states, utilities, corporations and other consumers for years into the future.
[Yeager] How difficult does it become when a we'll say solar panel farm comes on in an area that's not heavily populated, and you have a large metropolitan area that wants clean power, but the two are nowhere close to each other. You're going to have to do some transmission. I mean, that's kind of the way source and Need don't always meet. And that's a tough conversation because you'd probably like to in Minneapolis have there's plenty of people in the state that want the solar panels on top of their building top their homes, but it doesn't work. The most efficient way is to have that farm somewhere else. Is that ever a discussion that you're involved with?
[Soholt] Sure. When we plant transmission at Miso, or clean grid alliances involved in the process, we're not doing the actual planning. That's those are all factors taken into consideration. So you're right. Utilities states, landowners, you know, residential customers. I mean, everybody has different thoughts about about the pathway, about the right way to meet our energy needs. There is no one right way. There's many ways to do this. And so you have to make some choices. So what we often find is we do a little bit of some of all of it. And how do we enable, you know, how do we build a grid. talk about the policies that are going to enable, utilities, states, residential customers and everyone to do what they want to do? Now, the residential customers, you know, putting, rooftop solar that's really on the distribution system. So that is a little bit different than the high voltage transmission. But when we do planning for the high voltage transmission, it is looking at where is that alignment in, local resources versus more distant resources, building transmission or not building as much transmission. So we really look I don't really like the the phrase sweet spot, but that's that's what we're looking for is where where does that where do those things intersect? Where do we find the most commonality? Where do we find economics? And, you know, the need for, for long distance transmission. So we're looking for that intersection point of what is going to be able to meet all the needs cost effectively, efficiently. And it allows for people to have different opinions and states and utilities to, decide, oh, I'm going to purchase from a distant resource or no, I'm going to put something, you know, more locally, all those possibilities are taken into consideration. You know, you talked about there's a different process if you want to hook up a wind farm or a solar plant. they go through a Q process and that is a little bit different than the transmission plant process. But there is an overlap between the two. and the big question always becomes, who should pay for the new grid that we're building? Is it project specific and the upgrades really need to go to that project, or is it needed for delivering electricity kind of writ large, and we should spread the cost of that new transmission among everyone. I mean, I'm an Xcel Energy ratepayer here in Minnesota. 12% of my bill is for transmission. The rest is for distribution and generation. So transmission is the small part on your bill.
[Yeager] Okay. I have to write down that because, you're kind of you're kind of setting up where I wanted to go and that's, that's the, the, the place I have, relative who is next to a wind turbine. It's not on his land. He doesn't benefit from it financially, from the generation, but yet he has to look at it. He doesn't necessarily get the power from that to his house that goes somewhere else. Therefore, he has told me he doesn't feel like he should have to pay for anything because he doesn't benefit in a roundabout way. And I know he's not the only one that thinks that way, but those who have to see whatever it is that's being generated on a given day. I would imagine Beth trying to have a conversation with them. Some of those people is like, stick in your hand and sand and pulling it up and trying to keep all the sand, and it's all these pieces fall out, and it's kind of hard to keep everybody together. Is that accurate? Yeah.
[Soholt] So let's think about this for a second. Does he have kids in school?
[Yeager] He did. He's a granddad now. So no, his kids aren't even in school.
[Soholt] It does use local services like fire or police.
[Yeager] Yeah. Exactly.
[Soholt] Yeah. Does he use, you know, other community benefits that, that the wind farm is, paying taxes, that the local commission then can decide how to use that money? I mean, there are other benefits than just receiving the power or getting land up owner payments that accrue to, to communities, and that's often how communities look at it. We have a case in southwest Minnesota where 18 counties have banded together, and they have a county commission that meets known as the Rural Minnesota Energy Board. And their philosophy is that any development of renewable energy within those 18 counties is a win for all of us, because we're going to see development, we're going to see jobs, we're going to see tax base, we're going to see landowner payments. And those land owners who get paid are going to buy new trucks, and they're going to buy new, you know, farm equipment and they're going to go to their local cafe and maybe it will become a tourist destination. So we get, you know, visitors from afar coming to see what's going on here. So, you know, when we look at even whether it's local or across the micro footprint, not everyone is going to get the same amount of resource, the same type of resource, if they're all going to benefit in some way. If a severe weather event comes through, if a the ratio comes through Iowa, you know, we're going to maybe have to get power from somewhere else or, you know, if it's if an ice storm takes the power lines down in a certain place, you know, maybe we have to get power delivered from somewhere else. you know, most of the tax taxes that renewable energy developers pay go to lower, you know, people's taxes. Maybe there's not an increase, that that would have happened to have that would have had to happen. But for the, the new development, coming from renewable resources. So everything is local. People look at, you know, living next to a wind farm, very personally. But there's lots of different perspectives. And I think unless people understand kind of more of those perspectives, you can get stuck on just one perspective.
[Yeager] It's hard. And it's the nature of a farmer more times than not, that doesn't impact me. And it's hard to think in a larger picture that you have to do that. And that's not, I shouldn't say just farmers, that's anybody. We all see. We all see that as a thing. All right. That's, one of the other things I wanted to talk about. And you're gonna have to see if I get this wrong. Is it trance or tranche 2.1?
[Soholt] Tranche?
[Yeager] Tranche. So tell me what that is.
[Soholt] So tranche 2.1 is a group of transmission lines that have gone through this planning and stakeholder process. And the engineering work to identify that they're kind of the next right set of lines to build across the footprint. They build on tranche one, which is in the state regulatory permitting process right now. They build on a set of lines that was approved in 2011, all of which are in service today and delivering power. So it is the multi Valley portfolio, tranche 12.1. And then whatever comes after that. So tranche 2.1 gets us into some pretty high voltage transmission lines that really are setting us up for the future. So most of our transmission lines in the Midwest are, at the voltage of 345 kilovolts. 345 KB is what we say. Those are high voltage transmission lines. Your distribution lines, you know, in your neighborhood are 38, five or lower. so we're talking about very high voltage. So this is the grid that is meant to not deliver to your neighborhood, but to send power long distances to, to be able to have this web of reliable and robust wires to deliver energy when and where it's needed. it is 21 plus billion dollars worth. so it's a big portfolio of lines, but it is spread among I don't even know how many states, nine. and, so there will be lines up in almost every state or sections of lines, but they are the next right portfolio that has been identified as needed, for the electric system.
[Yeager] From idea to realization. I think you've said it's years. I mean, I did, I hear you say it could take 20 years from the first idea to the implementation. And it's transmitting. It's moving.
[Soholt] And, that would be on the outside. You know, the study takes a couple of years, 2 to 3 years to go through the stakeholder process. you've got to get it into the regulatory process in the state, which could take another couple years and then, you know, maybe three years to construct. So we think of the transmission kind of phase in 7 to 10 year chunks.
[Yeager] Okay. That seems, I feel better about that. It's just for you. I mean that because I mean you're living this day in and day out. And if you could never see a finish line, at least that to me gives me a finish line. And, and we have customers who are waiting to be interconnected and get the type of energy they want, you know? So, the sad fact is we're all behind the eight ball trying to deliver, trying to build the grid that we need. That's not to say the one that we have isn't reliable, but we're trying to get ahead. We're trying to take a 10 to 20 year look ahead because it is such a long process. And and so, you know, we have to go within this bandwidth of what we think is needed. And as we've always seen in my 23 year career, what we've always seen is the new grid that we plan, the new transmission lines that we plan are full before they're even put in service. And so we're always behind. So that's why we're encouraging utilities. We're encouraging myself to be bold, to really, build the grid of the future that we're going to need for electrifying homes, businesses. and, and really, you know, kind of get ahead of the curve because we're always behind.
[Yeager] It's like building the interstate or the road. It's already filled. Once you cut the ribbon and open up the ramp, how many times there in the cities, when I94 gets worked on, the minute they add a lane, it's full. It's the same. It's the same concept.
[Soholt] That's right. And I would just say, you know, back to the conversation about farmer landowners. You know, we don't, we don't eat all the corner soybeans or any other crop in Iowa that we produce. It's got to go somewhere. Same with electricity. You have an abundance of resources in Iowa. You can send it to other places to people who really need it, who really want what you have to offer. But it's got to have a road to market. It's got to have a highway to drive on for these electrons. So there's a lot of corollaries between, transportation, to get goods and services to market and electricity to, to get our electrons to where they're needed.
[Yeager] Beth, I want to talk about the grid for a minute. you mentioned the nine state there. and you kind of alluded to it earlier. A little bit about what we saw in Texas a few years ago when they had a system. Texas is its own animal when it comes to the grid. And I'm guessing you're always having to help people understand this topic. But why is it that this system has worked for you on, on, on a grid that you have other than that state and that look, how is it that this regional approach to this topic has worked as well as it has?
[Soholt] I think there's something about the kind of the Midwest collegiality and understanding that we really do need to depend on one another. You know, the utilities have built generation coal plants, gas plants, and they've maybe three utilities that have gone together to build a big new plant because they each only needed a portion of the plant. So there's this history of utilities working together. You know, when you think about how to cross the state lines and do this stuff together, it gets more complicated. we've thought about a state compact, where two states can work together, but it's really tough to do because, like you said, states have different philosophies, they have different goals. They have different, frameworks that they're starting from already. So, you know, the best thing we know how to do is really get decision makers in one process at myself to work well together and to find that common ground. What is going to meet the needs of everyone, and that you drill down until you have the best of the best. for the transmission portfolio. Texas is very different. There are standalone one state, on their own. we have a lot of geography we have to cover in the Midwest, and we have resources in one area, and we have the people in another area. And so you got to connect those two. You can't locate everything near big load centers or big cities. And so in our in the early years of Clean Grid Alliance, we looked at where are the best resources, the most cost effective resources, and where's the big load and what do we need to do in between those. And kind of had a plan that we put on the table for, to look at to get started. And so then we started really in the miso process to look at where's the intersection of doing things locally and doing things more remote and connecting them through transmission? Where do we get the cost effective mix of both of those? And that's really what we've come up with today. So I think there's this Midwest spirit of that to work together. Maybe it's kind of the hearty got to survive survival. But utilities have done a really good job. They have a long history of delivering, you know, reliable service. and we certainly at Clean Grid Alliance are working to encourage collegiality and, and finding common ground because we do have this big grid and we have to work together. And so, I feel like I'm getting out my pompoms sometimes, but it's really finding those linkages, and encouraging people to, kind of get it done. And, and, and then, you know, once we decide on the plan, get to it. We got it. We got to build this stuff, you know, we're we're we're in an infrastructure building time right now, whether it's generation or transmission. Having done it for a long time, 50s and 60s, it's a cycle. We're back at it. We need more power. Many people can read reports of how demand is going up from data centers. And I and stuff that we're all using. We want to put information in the cloud, and we need to be able to store it. That storage takes more electricity. So hold on. I got to figure out how to meet that need.
[Yeager] Hold on. I got to do a search here on the internet, and use all of that power, because I've heard that the AI, the bots are just absolutely during generating and have a more of a need of power. So, yeah, we do have to worry about it. That's why Google comes, Microsoft and Amazon and Facebook come to Iowa or the Iowa and Minnesota's of the world because we have the resources of water to cool those centers. And then we have to get that power and energy and information out. So, yeah, we are in the middle of it, whether we think we are or not.
[Soholt] Right. And there will be a lot more discussion before those data centers are located. They're shopping many different states. You know, who can supply what I need when I need it. and so we're in this growth phase of we gotta we gotta meet it. We have to figure out how much is real, how much are we going to actually see? So we might have to have kind of a range of what do we think we're going to see and, and to be able to plan for that. But it is, it's keeping us all busy every day to, to build the grid that we need and to really serve the growing load and, and existing low.
[Yeager] Well, I appreciate you making time. Say that again. I'm sorry I cut you off.
[Soholt] And do it with clean resources.
[Yeager] There you go. And that is, we didn't even get into the politics of the day. But we do know that solar and wind have come under target in many, many areas, and that's going to be a continued fight. But that is part of your load. Every day Beth is trying to navigate that.
[Soholt] That's right. We're really good at navigating conflict. And also showing the benefits that accrue to the states and utilities. You know, the energy transition is happening. The Trump administration may have their ideas that we may, you know, take a little detour or slow the pace down a little bit. But there is no doubt that the demand is there for wind, solar storage and transmission. And, and I'm bullish on, you know, what we're going to get done.
[Yeager] Beth, I appreciate you making time for us and giving us some insight. Beth, thank you so much.
[Soholt] Thank you.
[Yeager] If you have a topic for me you'd like me to look into or expand upon, hit me up. MarkettoMarket@IowaPBS.org is the best email to use. New episodes of this podcast come out each and every Tuesday. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.