Analyst Insight: The Consumer's Role in Non-Wires Alternatives

Non-wires alternatives (NWA) make use of distributed energy resources (DER) to provide grid relief necessary to avoid or defer traditional grid infrastructure investments. The largest NWA market is in the US, partly because of the growing number of regulatory requirements at the state level. A larger push is underway worldwide, resulting from cooperation among all key stakeholders including regulators, legislators, utilities, customers, and consumers.

NWA projects have the potential to connect consumer DER, provide a resilient source of energy, and lower costs for ratepayers. Grid resilience can add economic and social value by shortening periods of downtime for businesses and other essential operations during extreme weather events. NWAs can bolster the grid’s ability to deliver needed electricity to an area of interest consistently, because many projects are not subject to the same outage shortfalls as traditional transmission and distribution (T&D) infrastructure. Should NWA projects be a less costly alternative to T&D projects, lower energy bills may be passed along to consumers; however, new deployments are often challenging due to existing market frameworks, technology regulations, and legacy incentive structures.

The Guidehouse Insights Non-Wires Alternatives Tracker provides a comprehensive and up-to-date database of global NWA projects. Information provided for projects tracked includes project name, location, utility, capacity, cost, included technologies, status, and more details where available. The most recently updated tracker was published in 2Q 2022. This accompanying Analyst Insight report focuses on The Consumer's Role in Non-Wires Alternatives.