Electricity (and Natural Gas) Transmission under Transformation – An Introduction

There may exist various factors that could potentially hinder the efficient development of electricity markets, such as poorly defined property rights, incomplete markets, increasing trade of electricity among different control areas, inefficient operation, and maintenance, as well as bottlenecks in transmission capacity due to lack of investment for grid expansion. This introduction to the EEEP-symposium on “transmission investment” is dedicated to issues on transmission network policies, mainly focused on the electricity sector, but also touching on the natural gas and the natural gas–electricity network nexus. Recent experiences and future challenges are highlighted, with a particular focus on cross-border questions (or “seams” issues), and the challenges of expanding the scope of transmission planning beyond national and/or state borders. The symposium brings together deep analyses on incentive network regulation and planning, cost and benefit allocation methods, comparison of electricity and natural-gas network institutional regimes, lessons from transmission pricing that can be learned in pricing electricity distribution networks under distributed energy resources, as well as various international experiences on transformation of the energy networks in North America, Europe and Oceania. Likewise, transmission expansion planning is analyzed taking into account future lower carbon electricity mix, and the change of focus from central to distributed resources. All these topics lie at the heart of the analytical and practical nature of the expansion dilemma for energy networks.