America’s electric grid is strained by higher demand than ever before. As our lifestyles become increasingly dependent on electricity, we need to make a major investment in our energy infrastructure to maintain the existing reliability of the system and to plan for the future. A modern grid will help solve our environmental and renewable energy challenges, improve overall reliability and lower the associated costs to the economy.

Lack of transmission development has led to transmission constrained areas. These are locations where the system simply cannot handle the demand which leads to significant inefficiencies and significant real-dollar costs to electricity customers.

Three primary problems exist with the grid today

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5.3.2 Reliability

  • Congestion

  • Inefficiency and Unreliability

  • Inability to Meet Growing Demand

 
3-year rolling averages

Outage Decrease Under ITC Ownership

ITC has steadily reduced the average number of outages on the three transmission systems we've acquired. These continuing improvements in system reliability track with ITC's system investments over the years and our ongoing operations and maintenance program.

Each of ITC’s high voltage transmission systems performed among the top 25% of utilities for reliability performance in the North American Transmission Forum (NATF) annual benchmark survey measuring sustained outages per circuit in 2017. The most recent NATF dataset covered 85 companies representing 74% of line miles at 100kV and above in the U.S. and Canada.

 
Average Sustained Outages Chart

ITC Comments to MPSC on Electric Supply Reliability Plans

Each year, the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) requires Michigan-regulated utilities to file an assessment of the utility’s ability to meet its customers’ expected electrical requirements for the next five years. Regional transmission organizations and transmission owners, including ITCTransmission and METC, were requested to submit comments on the issues that they believe are most relevant to this analysis. Read ITC’s comments submitted to the MPSC.