INL/RPT-24-80253

Variable
Transmission
Line Ratings

November 2024
(Revision 0)

Idaho National Laboratory

Jake Gentle
S M Shafiul Alam
Mucun Sun
Zach Priest
POWER ENGINEERS
Chris Postma
Kevin Tetz

INL is a U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Batelle Energy Alliance, LLC

24-GA50457_03_R3
 DISCLAIMER

This information was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency

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nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, expressed or implied, or
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its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the U.S. Government or any
agency thereof. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not
necessarily state or reflect those of the U.S. Government or any agency thereof.

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CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION..................................................................1
2. STATIC LINE RATINGS............................................................2
3. AMBIENT ADJUSTED RATINGS...............................................3
3.1 Risk Associated with Ambient Adjusted Ratings...................5
4. DYNAMIC LINE RATINGS.......................................................6
5. RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH ADJUSTABLE RATINGS...................11
5.1 Operational risks.................................................................11
5.2 Cybersecurity risks..............................................................11
5.3 Failure of Measurement Equipment....................................12

FIGURES
Figure 1. Evolution of line ratings.......................................................1
Figure 2. Static Line Ratings use Conservative, Worst-Case Seasonal
Temperature Assumptions.................................................................2
Figure 3. Environmental Effects Affecting Transmission Cables...........3
Figure 4. DLR relative to AAR and SLR................................................4
Figure 5: DLR - AAR Duration Curves for selected overhead
transmission lines..............................................................................7
Figure 6. Comparison of static, ambient, and dynamic ratings for a
particular line over a 3-day period.....................................................8
Figure 7. Percentage of timeline during which DLR was below AAR...9

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VARIABLE TRANSMISSION LINE RATINGS
1. INTRODUCTION
This paper outlines the concept of variable-transmission facility ratings. This topic is of
heightened importance following the recent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
(FERC) Order No. 881a which requires the implementation of ambient adjusted
ratings (AARs) for FERC jurisdictional portions of the transmission system (Figure 1),
as opposed to the conventionally used static line ratings (SLR). Additionally, FERC
issued an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANOPR) soliciting comment
on future issuance of an order on Dynamic Line Rating (DLR) requirementsb.
The various types of facility-rating methodologies will be discussed with a focus
on how they can benefit the stability, capacity, and reliability of the grid.

Figure 1. Evolution of line ratings

a FERC Docket No. RM20-16-000; Order No. 881, Managing Transmission Line Ratings, 177 FERC ¶ 61,179, issued December 16,
2021.
b FERC seeks comment on potential DLR framework to improve grid operations & fact sheet. Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission. (2024, June 28) https://www.ferc.gov/news-events/news/ferc-seeks-comment-potential-dlr-framework-improve-
grid-operations-fact-sheet

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2. STATIC LINE RATINGS
The implementation of AARs for transmission-system operations has already taken place in
a number of areas across the United States, but many areas have historically only operated
under SLRs. SLR means that transmission facilities, like lines and transformers, are assigned
a fixed capacity, or static line rating. The SLR was defined as a conservative ampacity or MVA
loading limit, defined under the worst-case operating conditions. Within the United States,
SLRs for transmission lines are typically calculated per the processes defined in Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Standard 738-2023. SLRs are updated infrequently,
on a seasonal basis, and generally use the same conservative weather assumptions applied to
all lines across a utility’s footprint, regardless of their geographic or climatological variances.
Using this approach, the thermal rating of the conductor can be calculated based on the
maximum allowable operating temperature of the wire. Deratings are often applied to
overhead conductors for conditions as altitude, sag limitations, regional high temperatures,
conductor age, or conductor surface weathering. Surface weathering usually occurs with
age and can increase solar absorption and conductor heating. Summer and winter seasonal
ratings are often calculated at varying time durations where a continuous rating represents
the normal rating for the transmission facility when there are no system disturbances present.
Emergency ratings are also calculated based on these seasonal dependencies which typically
represent short-term (15 to 30 minutes) and long-term (2 to 4 hours) ratings under which
increased power flows can be tolerated before the system operator must make adjustments
to return power flows in the system to under the normal rating. In many regions the summer
rating is typically the more conservative rating which is often used to determine line
protective trip parametersc.

Figure 2. Static Line Ratings use Conservative, Worst-Case Seasonal Temperature Assumptions

c N. H. Abas, M. Z., A. Ab Kadir, N. Azis, J. Jasni, N. F. Ab Aziz, and Z. M. Khurshid, “Optimizing Grid With Dynamic Line Rating of
Conductors: A Comprehensive Review,” in IEEE Access 12 (2024), pp. 9738–9756, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3352595.

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3. AMBIENT ADJUSTED RATINGS
The next step beyond SLR, whether annual or seasonal, is typically seen in the implementation
of Ambient Adjusted Ratings (AAR), which adjusts line rating based on local ambient air
temperatures and the presence of solar heating (sun up/sun down). AAR is a limited form
of dynamic line ratings (DLR) and has been identified as a method that allows for relatively
simple implementation and is generally seen as low cost. Figure 2 shows some of the
environmental effects that go into an adjusted calculation, not all of which are required to be
taken into account in the calculation of AARsd.

Figure 3. Environmental Effects Affecting Transmission Cables

On December 16, 2021, FERC issued Order No. 881, which required jurisdictional transmission
providers to implement AARs that will govern the maximum transfer capability of their
transmission network for near-term transmission services. Under FERC’s definitions, near-term
capacity will be used to determine the ability to meet requests that will be fully completed
within a 10-day period. For FERC jurisdictional utilities that are operating within the footprint
of a balancing authority (BA), such as an independent system operator (ISO) or regional
transmission organization (RTO), rating-reporting requirements are presently being defined.
Public utility transmission providers will need to maintain an accessible, password-protected
database of the ratings and methodologies of transmission owners. Implementation of
AARs will be required by July 2025 for all FERC-jurisdictional entities that own or operate
transmission resources and have not been granted a delay.

d AI Estanqueiro et al, “A review of DLR models and their potential for a cost-effective transition to carbon-neutral power
systems,” in WIREs Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews

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The FERC defined implementation of AAR calls for these continuous and emergency ratings
to be calculated for the rolling 10-day period and updated on at least an hourly basis in
increments not exceeding 5°F. Beyond this window, it is acceptable to rely on the seasonal
SLR for longer-range system-planning efforts, such as available transfer capacity studies and
seasonal-congestion revenue-rights calculations. It is recommended that transmission owners
revisit other parameters used within the line rating calculation for both AAR and seasonal SLR
to ensure these reasonably reflect current industry guidelines due to the FERC Order No. 881
requirement that ratings methodologies must be shared with neighbors.

As real-time ambient temperature measurements, gathered from weather providers such

as National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weather stations, are the only
non-assumed input to AAR ratings, AAR is less accurate than and can be more conservative
than DLRs, which are described in the next section. AAR provides up to an average of 15%
higher capacity than SLR but still lags Dynamic ratings by up to 16% capacitye as can be seen
in Figure 4. Hence AAR is the “stepping stone” to the generally higher capacity Dynamic line
ratings. However, AAR may come with a significant risk as described below.

Figure 4. DLR relative to AAR and SLR.

e K. Engel, J. Marmillo, M. Amini, H. Elyas, B. Enayati, “An Empirical Analysis of the Operational Efficiencies and Risks Associated
with Static, Ambient Adjusted, and Dynamic Line Rating Methodologies”, CIGRE-US National Committee.

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3.1 Risk Associated with Ambient Adjusted Ratings
Caution is encouraged in the use of assumptions for the wind speed
AAR Risk – Capacity
and general recommendation is that, unless real-time rating systems
are employed, a more conservative effective wind speed should
Overestimation
be used than that used to determine the SLR in long-term analysis. AAR is sometimes considered a
In cool ambient temperature conditions with low wind speeds, low-risk and low-cost step between
constant windspeed assumptions inherent to AAR combined Static and Dynamic line ratings,
with accurate low ambient temperature inputs can result in an but can introduce equipment and
overestimate of actual line capacity. This represents risk for applying safety risk not inherent to the other
stress and damage to conductors, plus shock and fire hazards two rating methodologies. Ambient
relating to line sag issues triggered by unseen overload due to Adjusted Ratings may dip below
applied rating methodology. actual calculated line ratings 22%
Air temperature and solar irradiance are the two time-sensitive of the time in the summer and 27%
features considered for the current implementation of AARs. of the time in the winter, falsely
FERC does not require that wind speed or direction be treated conveying excess capacity.
as variable for AARs. However, industry guidelines from entities
such as International Council on Large Electric Systems (CIGRE)
and IEEE have indicated that it is prudent to consider a lower wind
speed for lower ambient temperatures during the night when implementing AARs.e Higher
ambient temperatures induce some wind flow; thus, the wind speeds used for SLRs are not
necessarily appropriate for AARs. It is also worth noting that a line’s current-carrying capacity
is most sensitive to wind speed and direction, with a heightened sensitivity to overhead
line's emissivity and absorptivity at higher temperaturef. For this reason, it is important that
transmission owners evaluate this value closely with the change to AARs.

f A. W. Abboud, J. P. Gentle, K. Parikh, and J. Coffey, "Sensitivity Effects of High Temperature Overhead Conductors to Line Rating
Variables" . 2020 CIGRE e-Session

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4. DYNAMIC LINE RATINGS
A more-accurate assessment of AARs has been seen to positively impact the efficiency of
market and system operations. Specifically, Dynamic Line Ratings (DLRs) have the potential
to expand practical line capacity, improve line utilization, reduce transmission congestion,
and enhance market efficiency. In North America, ISOs and RTOs are counting heavily on
mathematical optimization to dispatch generation resources and serve the net demand in
their corresponding market footprints.

To take advantage of more accurate wind speed measurements DLRs sensors are typically
installed on either the conductor or the transmission tower. These sensors collect and process
location-specific wind speed and temperature data to calculate an operationally informed
line rating, typically updated on ten-to-fifteen-minute intervals. Implementing large-scale
programs and selecting vendors was seen as a burden to utilities, so a staged implementation
approach can be seen through the implementation of AARs, which can be determined
without the requirement to install new sensor equipment in the fieldg. However, due to
increased accuracy of DLR over AAR and the risk of capacity overestimation associated with
AAR, DLRs will likely soon be required as demonstrated by the recent DLR Advanced Notice of
Proposed Rulemaking (ANOPR). The FERC ANOPR considers two different implementations of
DLR: 1) time of day solar tracking to more accurately represent the impact of solar heating for
all jurisdictional transmission facilities, 2) time of day and wind monitoring for transmission
facilities that meet congestion and wind exposure metrics.

Presently the industry is seeing specific, targeted use of DLRs as pilot projects on facilities that
have been identified as frequently triggering system constraints, which have demonstrated
effective mitigationsh. Comparing costs from the winter the year before installation to
the winter after installation, Pennsylvania Power & Light (PPL) Electric saw a reduction in
congestion costs on the order of $64 million following the installation of DLRs on a targeted
transmission line. PPL installed DLRs on three transmission lines, which resulted in an increase
of the normal line ratings of approximately 17% relative to equivalent AAR implementation.
New York Power Authority (NYPA) identified capacity increases up to 20%, reductions in wind
power curtailment requirements, and identified hotspots and limiting line spans using DLR
combined with machine learningi. This agrees to the generic comparison of DLR with SLR and
AAR (Figure 4 on Page 4).

g The FERC ANOPR solicited feedback on the viability of wind monitoring DLR implementations using sensor-less techniques,
but the majority of current installations of DLR which incorporate the impact of convective cooling from wind use line or tower
mounted sensors.
h E. Howland, “GETs could facilitate 6.6 GW of clean energy in five PJM states, saving $1B a year: RMI,” Utility Dive, February 15,
2024, available online: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/gets-grid-enhancing-technology-dlr-pjm-rmi/707612/.
i Windsim Power, RA Rights Analytics, NYPA, “The NYPA Pilot and Results,” NYSERDA PON 3770 High Performing Grid.

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While Figure 5 illustrates the duration of weather based DLRj exceeding beyond or falling
below AAR at four locations, each at Georgia, Tennessee, New York and Pennsylvania.
The respective transmission lines are presented by their object IDs from the Homeland
Infrastructure Foundation-Level Database (HIFLD)k.

Figure 5: DLR - AAR Duration Curves for selected overhead transmission lines in four locations (top). Transmission lines
are identified by their respective Object IDs. Ampacity of the Transmission line in Georgia (Object ID 34661) has been
being overestimated by AAR and not accounting for temperature (bottom).

j B. P. Bhattarai et al., "Improvement of Transmission Line Ampacity Utilization by Weather-Based Dynamic Line Rating," in IEEE
Transactions on Power Delivery, vol. 33, no. 4, pp. 1853-1863, Aug. 2018, doi: 10.1109/TPWRD.2018.2798411..
k HIFLD. (n.d.-a). https://hifld-geoplatform.hub.arcgis.com/

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Figure 6. Comparison of static, ambient, and dynamic ratings for a particular line over a 3-day period.l

As seen in Figure 6, on average, AARs and DLRs exceed SLRs; however, there are notable
instances where the DLRs fall below either AARs or SLRs. Something similar can be said for

l Goodwin, T., “Oncor Portends a Dynamic Future,” T&DWorld, March 4, 2014, Oncor Portends a Dynamic Future | T&D World
(tdworld.com).

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the early hours of August 26th when the AAR rating fell below the SLR. In these instances, this
presents as operational risk—i.e., instances where the line is potentially being operated above
rated capacity using the SLR or AAR values. Only DLRs can provide this level of granularity
with the facility’s true rating. Under other such scenarios, this could translate into risks such
as decreases in conductor-rated breaker strength, sag violations, or premature aging of the
resource. Figure 7 provides an assessment of periods when the DLR rating was below both the
AAR and SLR for a specific 345 kV in the Midwest that had line-monitoring sensors installed.

Figure 7. Percentage of timeline during which DLR was below AARm

The equipment needed to implement AAR and DLR can have a wide range of requirements
for locally installed or remote equipment. For AAR, implementation can be done by using the

m Caspary, J. “It’s Time to Use Accurate Line Ratings,” Watt-Transmission, https://watt-transmission.org/its-time-to-use-accurate-

line-ratings/.

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transmission line location, altitude, and ambient weather conditions. Weather conditions can
be gathered from resources such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA), AccuWeather, staff meteorologists, private vendors, and other sources. The 10-day
projection requirement means that one of the sources used for determining AARs would
require a 10-day-ahead forecast, provided on an hourly basis. To avoid spurious inputs,
incorporating multiple sources into the determination method might be considered. AARs
do not require line-mounted or even locally placed equipment to develop the variable
ratings; however, DLRs typically utilize direct monitoring of the lines and the ambient weather
conditions to which they are exposed.

DLRs can be determined using local measurement devices, such as weather stations, line-
mounted or tower-mounted sag sensors, tension sensors, vibration sensors, conductor
temperature sensors, current flow sensors, and also fiber-optic cables with data-processing
equipment. Remote sensors that could support this implementation would include a wide
area weather model that is used by the entity to evaluate ambient weather conditions.
For DLRs, three-dimensional modeling of the surrounding line terrain could be used in
conjunction with computational fluid dynamics to evaluate site-specific wind conditions
measured from local weather stations and wide area weather models to determine wind
conditions at every span of a transmission line without needing line sensors at every span.
This approach is sometimes used as a supplemental step to help equipment vendors
identify the critical spans where line sensors should be mounted, particularly in areas
with complex terrain.

It should be noted that AARs and DLRs only pertain to lines that have a sensitivity to ambient
conditions, which means that underground lines would generally be exempted. Lines with
underground segments may have these segments act as the limiting element, depending on
design and the segment’s rating.

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5. RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH ADJUSTABLE
RATINGS
The risks listed below apply to both AAR and DLR, and in many cases to all grid
additions requiring communications and data processing. Best practices for
mitigating these risks exist and should be considered in any AAR or DLR project.

5.1 Operational risks.

The implementation of AARs and DLRs on a system means that the system could be operated
closer to its design limits, which can magnify the effect of outages when lower system
margin is available to absorb these outages. AARs and/or DLRs should not be used to offset
or obscure progress on longer-term transmission-system solutions that might be needed
because AARs and DLRs may not dependably mitigate reliability violations, although they can
defer longer term transmission upgrades and new builds. A thorough understanding of the
transmission constraint is required to determine the necessary mitigation to address it. AARs
and/or DLRs can be used to support lower-cost economic dispatches, make better use of the
true available capacity of the transmission system, and alleviate false transmission constraints.

Some transmission lines have other pre-existing constraints, such as sag, voltage, or angular
limits, that would not be superseded by higher capacity limits. At the same time, the facility
rating would be equal to the most-limiting applicable equipment rating of the individual
series-connected equipment that comprises a transmission facility per North American
Energy Reliability Corporation (NERC) FAC 008, such as breakers, cables, switches, current
transformers, jumpers, or wave traps. These other pieces of equipment can also have ambient-
temperature dependencies that can be incorporated into the variable rating. Special mention
will be provided here for taking additional care if power transformers are considered for AAR
implementation. Coordination with the transformer manufacturer should be pursued to
ensure that the transformer could be operated beyond the nameplate rating. The intent is
both to make the best use of the existing transmission facilities and to maintain a practice of
safe operation of these facilities.

Additionally, automatic relaying equipment protecting transmission lines would need to be

reviewed and possibly adjusted to take into account higher and varying line ratings. This may
necessitate upgrades to hardware and networks to securely protect against conductor and
equipment damage while allowing for capacity increases.

5.2 Cybersecurity risks.

Additional equipment feeding into an energy management system will increase cybersecurity
risk to some degree, but the risk is generally seen as low and one that can be mitigated. This

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can provide a potential point of entry for malicious actors—for example,
digitally or physically manipulating sensor parameters such that ambient
temperature reads lower than reality, potentially leading to overloading a
transmission facility. However, sufficient system architecture using a defense-
in- depth strategy can remedy much of this risk.

5.3 Failure of Measurement Equipment.

In the event that a component measurement system fails or an AAR/DLR
component or weather-collection system is compromised, measurement
gathering can be inaccurate. This can force reversion to the applicable
seasonal SLR, causing sudden capacity re-routing requirements, curtailment,
or redispatch. This reinforces the need for proper data-quality checks to
address the risk of either cyberattack or component failure. Another specific
risk has been observed in adjacent fields; namely, if a vendor is selected to
provide equipment used to implement AARs or DLRs, this can lead towards
functional obsolescence issues as equipment ages. Similar concerns are
present for vendors that may go out of business.

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