Berkeley Lab’s “Energy Market Value Tool” shows 2025 transmission link value
Transmission planning debates can feel abstract—until you have a way to see how wholesale market patterns translate into value for moving power across a network. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) is offering that kind of starting point through its Energy Market Value Tool, Stage 1: Transmission Value.
This public visualization is built to help readers explore study results—not to function as a project approval list. (Think of it as a way to ask better questions about why certain transmission paths show up as higher or lower “value” in modeling.)
What this tool is (and what it pulls from)
LBNL describes the Stage 1 tool as an exploration of the data and results from two studies: one published in Nature Communications and another report supporting the National Transmission Needs Study. In the tool, the studies use equivalent methods, but they analyze different sets of transmission links (the maps shown in the visualization).
What “links” means in the visualization
In this tool, a “link” is tied to the transmission network elements represented in the visualization—LBNL explicitly describes the transmission links as the maps used in the analysis.
Importantly, the tool includes a specific control called “Choice of transmission links”, which switches between two sets of analyzed transmission links.
What the July 1, 2026 webinar covered
On July 1, 2026, LBNL hosted a webinar titled “Exploring 2025 patterns in transmission value across the U.S. with LBNL’s Energy Market Value Tool.” The webinar is designed to introduce the tool and demonstrate how to use it, with a focus on 2025.
LBNL says the session includes case studies that investigate geographic patterns, seasonal trends, and shifts in expected trade balances, followed by a live demo and Q&A.
What the slide deck adds for readers
The downloadable webinar slides frame the session around three objectives: explaining recent trends and patterns in transmission market value, introducing and demonstrating the visualization tool, and showing how users can explore the transmission value data analyzed in the two referenced publications.
If you want to move from “clicking a map” to understanding what the tool is doing and what questions it can help answer, the slide deck is the best companion.
What to watch next (and what not to over-claim)
Because this is a modeling-and-visualization staging resource, it’s best used as context for planning discussions—not as proof that a particular upgrade is guaranteed, funded, or imminent.
What to take seriously instead: when you see arguments about congestion, reliability, or market outcomes, look for what transmission link set is being referenced and what the underlying study results are trying to show. LBNL points readers back to the cited publications for the full methods and interpretation.
Sources
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