IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - July/August 2016 - 67

After the transmission improvements are discussed
publicly in stakeholder meetings, they are reviewed and
approved by the PJM board before being included in PJM's
expansion plan. Ultimately, the decisions made by PJM are
subject to the judgment of federal, state, and local siting and
permitting agencies. Once the most cost-effective solution
has been selected, the sponsor is designated to construct the
project through the execution of a Designated Entity Agreement detailing the rights and obligations of parties, including a mutually agreed developmental schedule. If the sponsor is not already a transmission owner within PJM, it also
will be required to execute the Consolidated Transmission
Owners Agreement detailing the rights and obligations of
PJM transmission owners with respect to the ongoing function of the transmission grid.

performance of the proposal, detailed cost estimates and
any applicable cost-capping or cost-containment terms and
conditions, and construction schedules, as well as analysis
that demonstrates the extent to which the proposal mitigates
the identified need.
Prior to the opening of a window, all prospective developers must also submit packages detailing a range of organizational qualifications to construct, own, operate, and maintain
the transmission infrastructure should they be designated as
the successful sponsor of a project.
At the close of every window, PJM evaluates each submitted proposal using the same analytical testing procedures
that were used to identify the need in the first instance. This
process not only validates the performance postulated by
the project sponsor and identifies additional operational and
planning criteria-related benefits that may result from the
proposal; it also identifies any adverse system interactions
that require additional infrastructure costs to ensure compliance with all reliability criteria.
Projects that perform adequately are then assessed
against a range of cost, siting, and constructability issues
defined by PJM in the request for proposal. Typically, PJM
planning staff will engage legal, financial, and engineering
consultant assistance, in addition to meeting with relevant
federal, state, and local permitting agencies, to understand
the impacts and risks associated with each proposal.
The ultimate selection of the most cost-effective solution to an identified need does not follow a formulaic process. There is no specific, predetermined scoring system or
weighting by which individual factors will be judged and
tallied in making the selection. Rather, judgment must be
applied as to which factors, after electrical performance, are
most critical to the likely success or failure of the chosen
solution. This is necessarily an iterative process that involves
vetting with stakeholders and considering much input. It can
be (and has been) contentious, but the process also illustrates
the need for an independent entity, such as PJM, to consider
a range of factors and impacts and arrive at a decision that is
in the best interests of the grid.

Over the past two years, PJM has conducted a number of
competitive solicitations using the process outlined in the
previous section. The solicitations ("windows") have been
focused on reliability criteria violations (thermal and voltage), as well as operational performance and market efficiency. The windows have resulted in over 450 proposals
being submitted, ranging from simple substation equipment
upgrades to new 230-kV and 500-kV transmission lines (as
in Figures 3 and 4). Table 1 summarizes the window results.
Most notable among the window results is the Artificial Island project, which was the subject of a window that
opened in April 2013. Artificial Island is the common name
for a nuclear-generation complex in southern New Jersey,
comprised of the Salem and Hope Creek stations, with a
total net electrical output of approximately 3,600 MW. The
purpose of the solicitation was to resolve long-standing operational performance issues that periodically resulted in the
curtailment of power output from this multiunit nuclear generation complex due to stability limitations. A total of 26
proposals were submitted, with developer-estimated costs of
approximately US$100 million-US$1.5 billion.

figure 3. A transmission corridor. (Photo courtesy of Dominion, Virginia Power.)

figure 4. Transmission lines. (Photo courtesy of Dominion,
Virginia Power.)

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PJM's Experience with
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