The Electric Reliability Council of Texas in December completed the 2024 Regional Transmission Plan.
The 2024 RTP addresses the significant reliability needs of the ERCOT Transmission Grid resulting from an unprecedented increase in forecasted load growth in Texas, with over 150 gigawatts (GW) of load forecasted for summer 2030, which represents a 35.7% increase over the 2029 load forecast in the 2023 RTP.
The 2024 RTP load forecast includes more than 50 GW of individual loads larger than 75 MW.
Overall, ERCOT identified a need for 274 transmission projects and approximately 6,000 circuit miles of line upgrades, rebuilds, conversions, and additions, among many other transmission enhancements, to reliably serve the forecasted load growth in the traditional 345-kV plan. (By comparison, ERCOT identified 173 transmission projects in the 2023 RTP and 89 projects in the 2022 RTP.)
Prompted by this substantial load growth, ERCOT also considered a 765- kilovolt (kV) plan in the 2024 RTP as an alternative to the traditional 345-kV plan to meet future ERCOT System growth, reliability, and the need for increased power transfer between major generation locations and load centers.
ERCOT intends to file a comparison of the 345-kV and 765-kV options for the 2024 RTP, along with a dynamic analysis and congestion analysis, with the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) in mid- to- late January 2025. ERCOT will also host a 345-kV vs 765-kV comparison workshop on January 27, 2025.
The plan is available on the Planning page of the ERCOT website.
