A new report from Grid Strategies LLC and WIRES, The Cost of Delayed Transmission (November 2025), has put a hard number on what America’s slow pace of transmission development is costing consumers - and it’s staggering.
For every $1 billion in well-planned transmission investment that gets delayed, the study finds that consumers lose $150 million to $370 million annually in net benefits that are permanently unrecoverable. Those benefits include lower fuel and congestion costs, deferred generation investments, and greater system reliability.
“Operational savings do not accrue retroactively,” the authors write - a clear warning that every year of delay locks in higher costs and inefficiencies across the grid.
A Wake-Up Call for Grid Expansion
Authored by Zach Zimmerman, Rob Gramlich, and Michael Goggin, the report synthesizes eight major transmission benefit-cost analyses from across the U.S. and translates delay into tangible consumer and economic losses.
Beyond lost dollars, the findings reveal systemic risks: each billion dollars in deferred investment also postpones 11,000 to 25,000 job-years, slows economic growth, and undermines national competitiveness.
The authors highlight a dangerous timing mismatch across the power sector. It can take just one or two years to connect new load, roughly five years to connect new generation, and six to ten years or more to complete new transmission. That lag threatens the balance of supply, demand, and reliability - especially as electrification, industrial expansion, and data center growth accelerate.
As the report notes, “The time it takes to develop large-scale transmission is one key reason why proactive transmission planning is critical.”
Transmission Is Economic Policy
The report rightly reframes transmission not as a purely engineering challenge but as a pillar of economic policy.
Transmission enables access to lower-cost, cleaner energy and enhances regional diversity of both generation and demand. It strengthens resilience and provides the backbone for industrial growth and national security. In a grid increasingly defined by AI-driven energy demand, data centers, and electrified transport, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Each year of inaction is not simply a missed opportunity - it’s a measurable loss to consumers and the broader economy.
Reducing Delay Through Smarter Deployment
While the report focuses on quantifying delay, its implications point toward the solution: we must build smarter, faster, and more efficiently.
One of the most effective ways to do that is through advanced reconductoring - replacing existing steel-core conductors with high-performance composite technologies such as CTC Global’s ACCC® Conductor.
Reconductoring with ACCC® Conductor can double the capacity of existing transmission corridors without expanding rights-of-way or triggering lengthy environmental and siting reviews. In many cases, utilities can complete these upgrades in a fraction of the time required for new transmission projects - capturing benefits years earlier.
That speed directly addresses the timing mismatch Grid Strategies identifies. Faster deployment means fewer lost benefits, faster integration of renewable generation, and improved reliability for customers.
Capturing Efficiency and Reliability Gains
The report underscores that transmission delays permanently forfeit operational savings. Advanced conductors like ACCC® Conductor directly reverse that trend by making existing infrastructure more efficient.
ACCC® Conductor’s carbon-fiber composite core allows operation up to 180/200°C with minimal thermal sag, enabling greater current-carrying capacity while maintaining clearance and reliability. It also cuts electrical losses by 25–40% compared to traditional ACSR or ACSS conductors, reducing fuel consumption, emissions, and congestion costs - the very benefits that Grid Strategies identifies as most critical to consumers.
For utilities facing long interconnection queues and surging load growth, these efficiency gains are immediate and permanent.
From Analysis to Action
While the report does not prescribe specific technologies, it sets the stage for action. Based on its findings, several next steps become clear:
Accelerate Grid Modernization Through Reconductoring
Federal and state agencies should prioritize high-capacity, low-impact upgrades using advanced conductors to unlock grid benefits faster.Integrate Cost-of-Delay Metrics Into Planning and Approval
Regulators should explicitly consider consumer losses from project delays when evaluating timelines, permitting disputes, and cost recovery.Incentivize Timely Execution
Utilities should be rewarded for deploying proven, cost-effective technologies that deliver capacity and efficiency ahead of schedule.Make Advanced Conductors a Planning Standard
Transmission planning models at RTOs and ISOs should include advanced conductor options as baseline solutions for reliability and economic assessments.
The Time Value of Action
The central message of The Cost of Delayed Transmission could not be clearer: time is money - and in the power sector, delay is a form of loss that compounds across the economy.
Every year spent waiting on new lines is a year of higher costs, deferred jobs, and reduced resilience. The flip side is equally true: every year of accelerated action yields measurable, lasting value.
By using highly proven technologies like CTC Global’s ACCC® Conductor, utilities can modernize existing infrastructure at record speed, bridging the growing gap between energy demand and transmission capacity.
Acknowledgment
The authors - Zach Zimmerman, Rob Gramlich, and Michael Goggin - along with Grid Strategies LLC and the WIRES Group, deserve strong recognition for translating years of policy debate into actionable economic insight.
Their findings transform a familiar story into a quantified imperative: America can’t afford to wait.
With the right tools and technologies, we don’t have to.
https://gridstrategiesllc.com/wp-content/uploads/GS_WIRES-Cost-of-Delayed-Transmission.pdf