California filings sequence transmission planning against procurement orders
The documents describe the planning cycle and the procurement orders it references.
Transmission planning in California must anticipate resources that state procurement processes have not yet selected, while procurement must assume transmission that planning has not yet approved. The California Public Utilities Commission and the grid operator have addressed this by tying planning scenarios to policy-driven portfolios.
The mechanism works when the portfolio is stable. It fails when procurement outcomes diverge from the portfolio, which they routinely do, because procurement responds to price and interconnection availability while portfolios respond to policy targets.
Zonal constraints in the interconnection process are the visible symptom. They ration study capacity to zones where transmission is expected, which in turn steers development toward those zones, which validates the plan. The circularity is deliberate and, within limits, useful.
The limit is offshore wind and long-lead transmission, where the investment must precede the resource by years and cannot be justified by observed interconnection demand.
What to watch: whether planning approvals for long-lead facilities proceed in the absence of contracted resources behind them.
Sources
- 01
California Public Utilities Commission · retrieved 2026-08-08
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