The U.S. transmission grid needs a facelift and a little reconstructive surgery. Efforts are underway to construct new long-distance high-voltage lines, but construction takes time, prompting states to explore additional ways to quickly meet growing electricity demand.
The low-hanging fruit? Getting more out of the system we’ve already got.
Readily available, affordable, and quick-to-deploy advanced transmission technologies (ATTs), including grid-enhancing technologies (GETs) and advanced conductors, are proven tools for quickly increasing the capabilities and capacities of transmission lines and could complement transmission build-out while saving consumers money and bolstering grid reliability. By one estimate, GETs could have saved consumers $8.3 billion in 2022 alone, had they been more widely used. Yet these technologies remain largely untapped in America today, in part due to outdated electricity business models and state public policy.
But modern problems (like the aforementioned load growth) require modern solutions, and there’s been a recent uptick in support for ATTs across the country, with bipartisan interest in policies that ensure ATTs are being considered, including at the federal level.
On this edition of the Factor This Policycast, presented in partnership with Advanced Energy United, host Paul Gerke is joined by Theodore Paradise, chief policy & grid strategy officer at CTC Global, Brian Berry, chief product officer at Heimdall Power, and Leah Rubin Shen, managing director at Advanced Energy United, to explore everything ATTs, including:
- Real-life use cases and problems ATTs can solve
- How lawmakers are crafting legislation to ensure utilities consider ATTs
- Updates on efforts in states considering bills encouraging their adoption
- Policy and implementation barriers to deployment
- What the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) can do to help
Listen to the audio-only version of the episode:
New episodes of the Factor This Policycast go live at 6 am ET every other Thursday.
ATTs having a moment
Two years ago, Advanced Energy United launched Transmission Possible, a coalition campaign to raise awareness of the need to build more long-range transmission lines and make better use of existing ones. With a focus on state legislative action, Transmission Possible educated and supported state decision-makers so they could take the steps needed to improve grid reliability and lower consumer costs by leveraging the capabilities of ATTs.
Since then, this suite of technologies, long-underutilized in the U.S., is finally getting the attention of state decision-makers. The legislative fix that has become popular among state lawmakers is to require electric utilities to at least consider using ATTs, including GETs and advanced reconductoring, when planning transmission upgrades, and to show their work.
One of the first states to pass legislation requiring ATT consideration was Virginia, when Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin signed H.B. 862 into law. California’s version, SB 1006, sponsored by Advanced Energy United and passed in 2024, requires utilities to analyze opportunities for both GETs and advanced reconductoring deployment, so the state can incorporate them into its transmission planning processes. In New Mexico, Advanced Energy United successfully led a coalition to pass similar legislation in 2025. This year, Advanced Energy United is celebrating legislative successes in Colorado, Minnesota, Ohio, Indiana, Maryland, and Connecticut.
“One of the things that’s been very encouraging is that these bills are passing in states across the political spectrum,” said Advanced Energy United’s Rubin Shen on the Factor This Policycast. “We’ve seen bills pass in Colorado and California, in Maryland and New Jersey. We’ve also seen them pass in Utah, Indiana, and Montana. So they really are having a sort of a bipartisan moment.”
Comparing continents
Heimdall Power, which does business in both North America and Europe, has noticed differences in the way each continent has handled the core questions around ATTs, including who benefits and who pays.
“I think that there are two distinct methodologies. I think Europe tries to do the incentive-based approach, and I think America, for lack of a better word, sort of the carrot versus whip,” Heimdall’s Berry reckoned. “Now, it’s not really a whip; it’s legislation. It’s saying you should consider this, you should try it. What Europe is trying to do is: Listen, there’s a problem in the grid. It costs X. At the end of the day, it’s going to consumers. It’s this amount per annum. Here are the key points in trying to put a price to that, and then saying if you’re able to solve this price in a non-traditional way or a cheaper, cost-effective way or whatever, then you can have a share of those.”
That in itself is quite complicated, Berry admits, but it’s an interesting process to watch play out. If there’s one thing he has learned from the European experience, it’s that getting the numbers right is crucial.
“People don’t get up in the morning for certain amounts of money,” Berry laughed.
Federal intervention?
Federal support of ATTs would not only be helpful, argued CTC Global’s Paradise, but needed.
“If I’m a utility, I’ve been told for decades that if I do anything that looks like it’s more than the bare minimum (of transmission planning standards) that I’m doing something called gold plating, and that is frowned upon,” he explained. “And we have gone from a mentality of incremental load growth- please don’t overbuild the grid- to, oh my gosh, we can’t add capacity on the grid fast enough. Why haven’t we optimized right-of-ways? Why aren’t we making the most of the current grid? Why can’t we add lines faster? All of that.”
On the Factor This Policycast, Paradise discusses FERC Order 1920 and shares details on other bills moving through Congress in various forms that could bolster ATTs, including the High Capacity Grid Act, which recently passed out of committee unanimously.
“I think whether it’s the FERC orders or draft legislation like that at the federal level, it’s all aiming towards that friction point of culture to say, don’t worry about this. This is what we want you to do. Not only do we want you to do it, but the point of lesser friction is going to be to look at advanced transmission technologies. So I think that is game-changing, and it really augments what the states are doing.”
“This is Republicans and Democrats, red states and blue states. This is bicameral, bipartisan in Congress. All five commissioners singing from the same hymnal in those four quarters,” he added. “So I think all of those pieces moving together make it much more likely that we are at a moment in the U.S. where we will really start to see more of the adoption of these technologies.”
