For more than twenty years, I have worked at the intersection of transmission engineering, materials science, and utility planning. As one of the early developers of composite-core ACCC® Conductor technology at CTC Global, I have watched Advanced Conductors move from skepticism, to pilot projects, to mainstream adoption in many parts of the world.
Today, the conversation is no longer about whether Advanced Conductors work. It is about whether we are prepared to deploy proven solutions at the scale required by the electrification era.
Transmission is no longer a background constraint. It is rapidly becoming the gating factor for economic growth, data center expansion, industrial reshoring, electrification, and decarbonization commitments that policymakers have already set in motion.
Demand Is Accelerating Faster Than Infrastructure
Electricity demand is no longer growing gradually. Artificial intelligence, hyperscale data centers, manufacturing investment, and electrification are compressing decades of expected load growth into just a few planning cycles. Generation projects are delayed or canceled not because solar, wind, or storage technologies fall short, but because power cannot move efficiently across constrained corridors.
Interconnection queues lengthen. Congestion costs increase. Utilities face increasing pressure from regulators and customers to deliver both reliability and affordability under tightening timelines.
The real tension is not that the grid is constrained. That was predictable. The tension is that we are still approaching transmission planning with assumptions shaped in an era of slower demand growth and less permitting friction.
Independent Modeling Confirms the Opportunity
A 2024 study from the Energy Institute at Haas modeled the impact of large-scale reconductoring using advanced composite-core conductors across the United States transmission system.
The findings are significant.
Under realistic constraints on greenfield transmission development, reconductoring within existing rights-of-way could meet more than 80 percent of the new interzonal transmission capacity required to reach over 90 percent clean electricity by 2035. The study also shows that permitting constraints dramatically limit new-build expansion, but when reconductoring is allowed, nearly four times as much transmission capacity can be deployed by 2035 compared to scenarios restricted to historical new-build rates. System-wide savings approach $180 billion by 2050.
Even without explicitly valuing the schedule advantage of leveraging existing rights-of-way, reconductoring was found to cost less than half the per-mile cost of new transmission construction due to avoided land acquisition and structural costs.
These results do not come from vendor brochures. They are derived from system-level capacity expansion modeling under realistic policy and permitting assumptions.
The implication is clear: reconductoring is not a niche strategy. It is a scalable capacity expansion pathway.
Are Legacy Steel-Core Solutions a Modernization Strategy?
This brings us to a difficult but necessary question.
Are traditional high-temperature steel-core conductors, such as ACSS, sufficient as a primary modernization pathway?
ACSS was introduced decades ago to address a real issue - aluminum annealing at elevated temperatures. By allowing higher operating temperatures, ACSS enabled incremental ampacity gains relative to conventional ACSR. That was an important development at the time.
However, ACSS and similar steel-core designs remain fundamentally tied to steel’s high coefficient of thermal expansion. As temperatures increase, sag increases predictably. Clearances tighten. Structural loads intensify. In many cases, utilities must reinforce or replace structures to fully capture the thermal rating, or they operate below theoretical ratings to maintain required clearances.
Operating at higher temperatures also increases resistive losses. Over decades, that translates into real energy cost and additional generation requirements.
In an era marked by wildfire scrutiny, decarbonization targets, and heightened regulatory examination of capital efficiency, simply pushing more heat through steel does not represent a structural solution. It represents accommodation of legacy material constraints.
Composite-core conductors were engineered to address those constraints directly. By replacing steel with a carbon and glass fiber composite core, thermal expansion is dramatically reduced, sag is tightly controlled at elevated temperatures, and strength-to-weight ratios improve. More conductive aluminum can fit within the same diameter envelope, enabling substantial capacity increases - often approaching a doubling of thermal capability within existing corridors.
Just as important, these increases can frequently be achieved without extensive structural modification, preserving the primary advantage of reconductoring: speed.
Time Is the Scarce Resource
Capital matters. Cost allocation matters. Regulatory prudence matters.
But in today’s grid environment, time may be the scarcest resource of all.
A transmission investment earns nothing until it is energized. Projects that take eight to twelve years to permit and build do not solve near-term congestion. They do not relieve growing interconnection backlogs. They do not immediately reduce wildfire exposure or deliver incremental capacity to serve rapidly expanding loads.
Greenfield transmission expansion remains critical. However, if planning frameworks default to building outward before fully optimizing existing corridors, we inherently choose slower and more contentious pathways.
The risk calculus has shifted. Historically, deferring advanced technology adoption felt conservative. Today, deferring deployment of proven reconductoring solutions carries measurable risk: higher congestion costs, delayed generation, stranded investment, and increased operational exposure under extreme weather events.
Haas modeling makes clear that reconductoring can provide the majority of near-term transmission expansion required under constrained build environments
. Continuing to treat it as an auxiliary option rather than a foundational planning tool effectively transfers risk forward to customers and investors.
From Evaluation to Integration
At CTC Global, ACCC® Conductor has been selected for more than 1,450 projects across approximately 70 countries and 30 U.S. states. Utilities have deployed composite-core conductors in coastal environments, extreme deserts, long-span crossings, and heavily loaded urban corridors. Field performance is well documented. Installation methods are mature. Manufacturing capacity spans multiple global partners.
The engineering debate is largely settled.
The remaining hurdle is institutional momentum.
Transmission planning is currently being reconsidered at both federal and state levels. Regulators are increasingly focused on affordability, resilience, and prudent capital allocation. This is precisely the juncture at which advanced reconductoring should move from “evaluated alternative” to “required scenario” within long-term planning processes.
Not because it replaces the need for new transmission corridors, but because the data now show it can materially reduce, defer, and reshape those needs.
A Defining Moment
The grid is not lacking solutions. It is lacking the consistent, system-scale integration of modern ones.
Electrification will not slow while we continue re-validating established technologies. Capital markets will not indefinitely absorb inefficiencies embedded in legacy assumptions. And consumers will increasingly expect that existing infrastructure is fully optimized before new footprints are pursued.
The question before utility leaders, regulators, policymakers, and system planners is no longer whether advanced composite-core conductors work.
The question is whether we are prepared to integrate them decisively into the transmission strategy required by the electrification era.
The modeling supports it.
The field performance supports it.
Now the planning frameworks must catch up.