Transmission grid operators and planners are facing rising project costs, supply chain issues, and increasing pressure to expand infrastructure quickly enough to meet climate and energy targets. Effective grid planning is essential to cope with these challenges. But how can grid planning be improved?
In our short interview, we talk to Antonella Battaglini, CEO of the Renewables Grid Initiative (RGI), about the challenges and solutions of grid planning in the energy transition. Battaglini is chairing the session Tackling Transmission and High-Capacity Connection Challenges at the EM-Power Europe Conference in Munich on May 6–7, 2025.
Transmission grid operators and planners are navigating a rapidly evolving energy landscape. They must ensure grid reliability and stability while responding to fundamental shifts on both the demand and supply sides. The electrification of key sectors is changing demand profiles, which must be balanced with a growing share of variable renewable energy, particularly wind and solar. This requires a significant increase in system flexibility and grid capacity to maintain stability and transport clean electricity to demand centers.
At the same time, infrastructure must be built quickly enough to meet climate and energy targets - despite growing difficulties in securing affordable financing, rising project costs, and stagnating demand. Operators also face supply chain constraints, increasing climate-related risks, and the imperative need to align grid expansion with environmental considerations and meaningful public engagement.
Effective grid planning is the backbone of a successful and secure energy transition. It ensures that power systems can integrate renewable energy sources and accommodate for a growing electricity demand, while continuing to reliably deliver electricity at all times. As the energy transition is bringing significant shifts in the power system, effective grid planning is essential to optimize our choices and guarantee both affordability and energy security.
Today, digital tools can improve grid planning and open-source energy modeling can make them more accessible therefore enabling better collaboration across sectors and jurisdictions. Integrated system planning should include different layers, in addition to those specifically inherent to the energy system; I refer to environmental and climate data to increase resilience of infrastructure and reduce environmental impacts. Moreover, stakeholder participation in the planning process leads to improving the planning outcomes, increase the transparency, accountability and legitimacy of the process. By fostering collaboration between system operators, planners, regulators, civil society and other stakeholders, we can ensure that our grid planning is optimized and is on track for net-zero.
This session will tackle both the challenges and opportunities that come with planning of the future grid. Attendees can expect interactive discussions with grid operators and technology providers on strategies for optimizing grid planning and ensuring system flexibility. Highlights will include insights into leveraging battery energy storage systems as transmission assets, evaluating economic benefits of European balancing platforms, and addressing the technical and regulatory hurdles of expanding the grid. Overall, participants can gain a clearer understanding of how the energy transition is transforming grid operations and how this shift can be accelerated to deliver on net-zero targets.
You can find out more about the session Tackling Transmission and High-Capacity Connection Challenges at the EM-Power Europe Conference on May 7, 2025 at 9 a.m. here.