Transmission Planning & Strategy for Utilities

CRA’s Transmission Planning and Strategy experts help utilities plan, evaluate, and justify transmission investments that support long-term system reliability, resilience, and economic efficiency. We combine detailed power-system analysis, market modeling, economic analysis, and regulatory expertise to develop transmission plans that are technically sound, cost-effective, and supportable with regulators and stakeholders.

Our work spans regional and interregional transmission planning, system needs assessment, project evaluation, cost-benefit analysis, and policy and regulatory analysis. CRA uses industry-standard transmission and market modeling platforms, including TARA for power flow, contingency, and reliability analysis and EnCompass for capacity expansion, production-cost, and nodal price modeling. We supplement these platforms with other power-system, market, and economic tools as needed to evaluate transmission needs, alternative solutions, system reliability, congestion and nodal price impacts, resource additions and retirements, production costs, and customer impacts.

This combination allows CRA to evaluate transmission investments from both the physical grid and economic market perspectives, including how changes in generation, load, and transmission infrastructure affect reliability, congestion, nodal prices, resource adequacy, system costs, and the value of alternative transmission solutions.

Our services include:

• Transmission needs assessment and system planning
• Power flow, contingency, and reliability analysis
• Capacity expansion, production-cost, and nodal price modeling
• Economic and cost-benefit analysis
• Regional and interregional transmission planning
• Transmission investment prioritization and scenario analysis
• Regulatory support and testimony
• Stakeholder engagement

Please contact energypractice@crai.com for more information.