The power industry landscape is changing dramatically recently. You need the knowledge and expertise of the field to be able to navigate the treacherous waters of this dynamic industry. Not only it is necessary to grasp the overall picture of the landscape, it is also important to look deeper and closer to the ground to make a balanced, risk-appropriate decision for your next power project, be it generation or transmission or other power equipment or even energy storage. Good decisions will help you in the long run while the bad ones will bring unpleasant surprises.
Whether you are an ardent advocate for mitigating the climate change impact or not, the generation landscape in the power industry in the US and elsewhere is shifting more towards renewable energy resources particularly wind energy and solar energy. You can see that trend everywhere. Additionally, due to the intermittent nature of these resources, which makes the task of controlling and dispatching these resources very challenging, energy storage has come into playing a very important role. And even, the combination of wind and storage or solar and storage will become more and more prevalent in some market areas. This is just one piece of the puzzle in this ever changing industry.
The transmission landscape is also changing, though slowly. In many market areas, the transmission buildout process was already opened to non-incumbent transmission entities so the competition for the right to build and operate a new transmission project or projects will be more intense in the near future. The home turf mentality of the incumbent transmission owners will be tested in both near term and longer term. Of course, it will be an open competition in the arena of the power grid, so both defensive and offensive strategies should be tried.