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Whitepaper that covers transmission line ratings (SLRs, AARs, DLRs), FERC Order 881, and NERC CIP considerations for DLRs, covering Dynamic Line Rating (DLR) Systems & Associated Cyber Security Considerations.
The third session of the Idaho National Laboratory’s (INL) Technical Assistance for Digital Assurance (TADA) program, held on November 11, 2025, centered on High Performance Conductors (HPCs) and the formulation of action plans to address digital assurance risks associated with Grid-Enhancing Technologies (GETs). This session convened experts from utilities, vendors, and government agencies to examine the technical, operational, and cybersecurity aspects of HPC deployment. Discussions highlighted the benefits of HPCs, such as their ability to rapidly increase transmission capacity using existing corridors, improve grid resilience, reduce system losses, and align with FERC Orders 2023 and 1920. Participants evaluated supply chain and digital assurance risks, including reliance on imported materials, limited domestic manufacturing capacity, workforce shortages, and traceability issues. The session also emphasized the importance of digital trust, integration-layer cybersecurity, and unified risk frameworks, introducing tools like intrusion detection systems, encryption, zero trust networking, and firmware integrity. Recaps of earlier workshops on Dynamic Line Ratings (DLRs), Advanced Power Flow Control (APFC), and Transmission Topology Optimization (TTO) underscored institutional barriers and integration challenges. Action plans were proposed to mitigate issues such as inconsistent cybersecurity practices, SBOM usage, supply chain visibility, operator trust, and misaligned incentives. Additionally, INL presented its supply chain risk management tools and Cyber-Informed Engineering (CIE) principles to support secure procurement and system design. The session concluded with a commitment to share key takeaways, incorporate cohort feedback into future policy development, and continue collaborative engagement through upcoming pilot activities. Session 3 of 3.
This Summary slide deck summarizes the key outcomes of the Advanced Transmission Technologies (ATTs) supplier cohort, part of Idaho National Laboratory’s (INL) Technical Assistance for Digital Assurance (TADA) program. The program aimed to strengthen grid resilience through cybersecurity controls, supply-chain security, and Cyber-Informed Engineering (CIE) for advanced transmission technologies. The cohort brought together vendors representing the full range of Grid-Enhancing Technologies (GETs), including providers of Dynamic Line Ratings (DLR), Advanced Power Flow Control (APFC), Transmission Topology Optimization (TTO), and High-Performance Conductors (HPCs). Discussions focused on institutional, integration, and operational barriers limiting GET adoption; cybersecurity risks at EMS/SCADA, cloud, and network integration points; and supply-chain transparency issues such as semiconductor dependence and SBOM/HBOM expectations. Participants also addressed operator trust, human-in-the-loop requirements, and challenges with utility adoption, while exploring how CIE can support secure deployment of GETs. This deck represents a consolidated summary of challenges and risks identified by vendors, cross-cutting themes and technology-specific insights from three cohort workshops, and actionable mitigations to guide utilities, vendors, and the Department of Energy in advancing secure, trusted deployment of GETs.
Ambient Adjusted Ratings allow transmission line current ratings to be increased above static ratings while requiring minimal weather monitoring. However, Ambient Adjusted Ratings are still contingent on static parameters that may not match real world conditions. This poster examines how simulation methods can estimate the extent to which using Ambient Adjusted Ratings could result in the violation of a transmission line's thermal constraints.
Power lines, poles, and towers are the backbone of the United States (U.S.) electric-power grid. These transmission and distribution networks route electricity from generator to loads. The characteristics of these routes are rapidly changing -- trending towards decentralized renewable generation, electric heating, vehicle charging, and large data-center loads. Coupled with aging infrastructure and the increased frequency of extreme weather events, there is concern about the future reliability and transmission capacity of conductors and adjacent components. This scan report seeks to provide an overview of mechanical solutions to challenges caused by extreme weather events associated with components of transmission and distribution infrastructure, including conductor heat sag, ice accumulation, wind, and wildfire. Many options could increase transmission capacity or reliability, and these are at various stages of technological readiness. Some have only been lab tested, while some have been widely deployed in the U.S. or overseas for decades. The solution categories and providers featured in this report are intended to be comprehensive at the time of publication and to serve as a reference for decision-makers concerned about transmission and distribution reliability. There are two other categories of large, complex solutions, which are not covered in this report: replacing existing conductors with advanced conductors and implementing digital grid enhancing technologies. A separate scan report titled “Advanced Conductor Scan Report,” which discusses advanced carbon-core conductors, was published by the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) in 2023. Information on digital technologies, such as dynamic line ratings, power-flow controllers, and other power electronics and communications-based devices, can be found on the Grid- Enhancing Technologies landing page. Mechanical grid-enhancing technologies, or solutions covered in this report, often do not require full equipment replacement and do not rely on digital components. Mechanical technologies are overlooked because they may be older, simpler, or seemingly “more obvious” than digital or carbon-core technologies. However, it is wise to consider mechanical solutions in a thorough evaluation of grid enhancing technology solutions.
Advanced grid solutions are comprised of advanced transmission technologies and grid enhancing technologies. In this webinar, experts will provide participants with insights into eight advanced grid solutions. The advanced transmission technologies that will be discussed include point-to-point high voltage direct current and advanced conductoring and the grid enhancing technologies that experts will explore include topology optimization, advanced power flow control, dynamic line rating, energy storage, virtual power plants, and advanced flexible transformers
IEEE/CIGRE standards provide a base for overhead transmission line ratings Steady State Ampacity industry standard for Static Ratings using conservative environmental assumptions Measurement of many types of sensors provide a possibility to provide more capacity as a time varying capability Direct sensors of line temperature, tension, or sag provide critical, location specific information. Require complex transformation to determine line ampacity rating Are direct measurements sensors placed at key location(s)? Testing and careful calibration of sensors required Need to understand impact of uncertainties on sensors/measurements/ and forecasts
This document has been developed as a resource for the electric power industry to rapidly understand the scale and history with which certain new technologies have been installed on or otherwise simulated to impact the transmission system. This document is attempting to address the findings of the 2022 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Report "Grid Enhancing Technologies: A Case Study on Ratepayer Impact", which identified the need for workforce development and training materials to transition new technologies from a state of “pilots” and “case studies” to “business-as-usual.” The authors go beyond typical survey-style literature reviews in that the key details and notes about each project are identified. Still, as will become evident, there is a need for more work to be done to increase the industry’s public knowledge on important topics related to the implementation of grid enhancing technology on the transmission system.
The Transmission Optimization with Grid Enhancing Technologies (TOGETs) project is funded by the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Electricity (OE) and Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO). Idaho National Laboratory’s TOGET Task force consists of regulatory, utility, system operator, vendor, academic, and other industry participants, who will guide a two-pronged approach to fill in gaps on publicly available knowledge of GETs and conduct a full scale, multi-faceted field exercise. Ultimately the project aims to test, verify, and validate deployed GETs in a transmission system.
The Transmission Optimization with Grid Enhancing Technologies (TOGETs) project will guide future research to fill in gaps on publicly available knowledge of Grid Enhancing Technologies (GETs) and conduct a full scale, multi-faceted field exercise. Ultimately the project aims to test, verify and validate deployed GETs in a transmission system.
This document contains a detailed interoperability profile outlining how the components of the CIM can be used to implement DLR in support of the two use cases identified in the Use Case Document. An interoperability profile is defined by the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) as a document that “specifies standards-based requirements for interfaces or applications that are accepted by the user-community, testing authorities, and other stakeholders. It specifies configuration options within a standard’s requirements sufficient to deliver the desired level of interoperability and functionality.” To that end, this document is not in itself a standard, nor has it been approved by any formal body. Rather, it is an example of how to implement the CIM standard and has been reviewed by industry, including transmission operators and DLR vendors.
Data center demand growth in Virginia will need to met with many options - GETs and/or reconductoring have the potential to be part of the solution suite in the short-term and medium-term. Almost all GETs and reconductoring technologies have more favorable economics than transmission wires investments considering relatively low levels of existing wide-scale deployment. Deployment of GETs and/or reconductoring is not a one size fits all - requires detailed analysis. The complementary nature of GETs and/or reconductoring impacts have the potential to be synergistic (more congestion relief, more transfer capability, more cost savings - when implemented together).
On July 28, 2023, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued Order Number 2023, targeting an improved generation-interconnection process in the United States. FERC Order No. 2023 requires transmission providers to evaluate transmission technologies, other than network expansion, that could provide system improvements and help expand bulk-power system capacity. Transmission providers must consider technologies that would fall under the category of Grid Enhancing Technologies (GETs), which provide capacity-expansion options other than conventional transmission expansion.
This presentation describes an approach to include grid enhancing technologies (GETs) in long-term transmission planning, demonstrating benefits beyond use in operations.
Computed torques for pointing and tracking require compensation for slew-induced structural, forebody/aftbody, or optical train alignment deformations. Thus even if only line-of-sight variables are to be commanded, full state feedback is needed. The solution proposed is to decouple by feedforward of the line-of-sight slew dynamics into the deformation control loop. It is shown how arbitrarily few actuators are needed for such deformation shaping, at the cost of higher differentiability of the reference line-of-sight dynamics. The low-rate, single-axis case is developed in detail, and its extension to high rates and multiple axes by global feedback linearization is outlined.
A wide range of observations has shown that active region phenomena in the photospheric, chromospheric and coronal temperature regimes are dynamical in nature. At the photosphere, recent observations of full line profiles place an upper limit of about + or - 20/msec on any downflows at supergranule cell edges. Observations of the full Stokes 5 profiles in the network show no evidence for downflows in magnetic flux tubes. In the area of chromospheric dynamics, several models were put forward recently to reproduce the observed behavior of spicules. However, it is pointed out that these adiabatic models do not include the powerful radiative dissipation which tend to damp out the large amplitude disturbances that produce the spicular acceleration in the models. In the corona, loop flows along field lines clearly transport mass and energy at rates important for the dynamics of these structures. However, advances in understanding the heating and mass balance of the loop structures seem to require new kinds of observations. Some results are presented using a remote sensing diagnostic of the intensity and orientation of macroscopic plasma electric fields predicted by models of reconnective heating and also wave heating.
The Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP) is a follow-on to the Differential Microwave Radiometer (DMR) instrument on the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE). Due to the MAP project's limited mass, power, and budget, a traditional reliability concept including fully redundant components was not feasible. The MAP design employs selective hardware redundancy, along with backup software modes and algorithms, to improve the odds of mission success. This paper describes the effort to develop a backup control mode, known as Observing II, that will allow the MAP science mission to continue in the event of a failure of one of its three reaction wheel assemblies. This backup science mode requires a change from MAP's nominal zero-momentum control system to a momentum-bias system. In this system, existing thruster-based control modes are used to establish a momentum bias about the sun line sufficient to spin the spacecraft up to the desired scan rate. Natural spacecraft dynamics exhibits spin and nutation similar to the nominal MAP science mode with different relative rotation rates, so the two reaction wheels are used to establish and maintain the desired nutation angle from the sun line. Detailed descriptions of the ObservingII control algorithm and simulation results will be presented, along with the operational considerations of performing the rest of MAP's necessary functions with only two wheels.