Nexus Team Paves Way for Energy Transition with Grid Upgrade Program

Electrification will impact electricity demand in the future and put pressure on the nation’s current electrical grid. Modernizing the grid will be critical to the energy transition and achieving sustainability goals.

Overview

The electric grid in the United States is comprised of three smaller grids: one in the East, one in the West, and one in Texas. There are only a few points where the grids are connected, making the transfer of power between regions a challenge. Investment in new, renewable energy sources has increased in the last decade. The current grid structure is unable to transfer power from these renewable sources the long distances needed to reach customers.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 is the single largest investment in climate and energy in the country’s history. The package includes a capital investment of $369 billion over 10 years for energy in the form of solar, wind, hydropower, and other renewable sources. It addresses the impacts of extreme weather conditions and reduces risks from attacks on substations by hardening and securing grid assets.

These dynamics result in an increase of investment in grid modernization and improvements across the United States.

Challenge

Nexus began working with one of the nation’s largest investor-owned utilities with thousands of miles of transmission lines and a regulated generating fleet. The firm was challenged with developing a multi-state program to harden, enhance, modernize, and expand the client’s transmission and distribution assets.

Our Team worked to address new and existing substation capacity, in addition to the development of green field substation projects. The client’s substations primarily serve industrial, commercial, and residential customers so reliability is crucial.

Solution

When working on a program of this scale, serving thousands of locations across the Midwest and Mid Atlantic, there is a level of precision required to drive high quality work forward. Our Team leverages the Nexus Project Delivery System to accurately scope projects, track timelines and budgets, estimate project and construction costs, manage change, and capture performance KPIs. Performance data is fed back into the system to make improvements in the program execution.

Within a year of the multi-state program’s launch, Nexus is being recognized as a top-rated engineering partner. The firm is known for its response time, quality, and in-depth knowledge of the client and its business operations. This high level of execution allowed Nexus to expand its program support to include more substations and other assets, further helping the client achieve its goals.