Operational and Strategic Implementation of Dynamic Line Rating for Optimized Wind Energy Generation Integration

​Idaho National Laboratory (INL) has been developing the essential Dynamic Line Rating (DLR) System to enable electric utilities to integrate current and future expansion of wind energy into the delivered energy portfolio. The development includes necessary software and hardware components, as well as assisting vanguard utilities in adoption of the DLR System. Wind-power generation derives the maximum benefit from DLR, because wind-power generation is most correlated with the dominant variables for calculating weather-based increases in line ratings. R&D with industry supported validation will include: computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for estimating cooling wind attributes, the integration of DLR into the control room, and inclusion of human factors in control room additions. This effort supports the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) - Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium (GMLC). An independent outgrowth of DLR considerations is a planning and routing toolset.