For years, America's electric power industry has studied the transmission challenge from nearly every conceivable angle. We have examined congestion, reliability, resilience, interconnection queues, extreme weather, electrification, data centers, artificial intelligence, manufacturing growth, permitting, transmission planning and interregional transfer capability. These studies have been valuable, and many have been excellent. But perhaps it is time to ask a more uncomfortable question: How many more studies do we need before we start building, upgrading and modernizing the grid at the speed our economy now requires?
America no longer appears to have a transmission knowledge problem. Increasingly, we have an execution problem.
We Know the Problem
Recent work from the U.S. Department of Energy, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Grid Strategies, Americans for a Clean Energy Grid, Energy Systems Integration Group, GridWise Alliance, ClearPath and others increasingly points toward the same conclusion: electricity demand is growing rapidly, transmission constraints are becoming more consequential, and grid capacity needs to expand much faster.
DOE's draft 2026 National Transmission Needs Study identifies pressing transmission needs as electricity demand accelerates from data centers, domestic manufacturing, large industrial loads and economic growth. FERC has focused attention on integrating data centers and other large loads, while Grid Strategies and ACEG have highlighted the continuing challenges associated with regional and interregional transmission planning. ClearPath's recent Amping Up the Grid report adds another important perspective: modeling suggests that cost-effective grid expansion will require both new greenfield transmission and reconductoring existing corridors.
Different organizations, different constituencies and different analytical approaches are increasingly reaching the same conclusion. We need more grid capacity, and we need it faster.
The Problem Has Changed
For much of the last decade, America's transmission discussion was closely associated with renewable energy development and decarbonization. Those remain important drivers, but the conversation has expanded dramatically. Today we are talking about artificial intelligence, hyperscale data centers, semiconductor manufacturing, industrial expansion, resource adequacy, energy security, affordability, reliability and America's ability to compete economically with the rest of the world.
Transmission infrastructure is therefore no longer simply part of an environmental or energy strategy. It is increasingly part of America's economic infrastructure. A factory that cannot obtain sufficient power cannot operate. A data center facing a multiyear power constraint may be built somewhere else. New generation that cannot reach customers has limited value. The grid risks becoming a constraint on the very economic growth it is supposed to enable.
That means we must ask not only what transmission system we should eventually build, but also: What capacity can we deliver now?
The Risk of Waiting
Electric utilities are understandably conservative organizations. They operate one of the most complicated machines ever created, and failures can affect millions of people. New technologies need engineering analysis, extensive testing, standards, trained crews, qualified suppliers and operating experience. That discipline has served our industry extremely well.
But there comes a point when caution can become inertia and, perhaps more importantly, when the risk of waiting becomes greater than the perceived risk of changing.
The utility industry is extremely good at identifying the risks associated with doing something. Perhaps we need to become equally rigorous about measuring the risks associated with not doing it. What is the cost of waiting another five years to increase the capacity of a constrained corridor? What is the economic value of a manufacturing plant that cannot connect? What is the consumer cost of congestion that could have been reduced through a relatively fast upgrade? And what is the opportunity cost of using an existing right-of-way to deliver essentially the same capacity it carried decades ago when modern technology could substantially increase its productivity?
In a period of rapidly rising electricity demand, inaction is not a risk-free decision.
Stop Making the Solutions Compete
Another habit worth reconsidering is our tendency to turn complementary technologies into competing camps. Should America build new transmission or reconductor existing lines? Should utilities deploy Grid Enhancing Technologies or build physical infrastructure? Should we strengthen transmission or develop distributed resources?
Increasingly, the answer is simply yes.
We need new transmission, advanced reconductoring, better interregional connections, GETs, storage, distributed resources, faster permitting, better planning and improved real-time visibility. New transmission creates pathways that don't exist today. Reconductoring can increase the capability of corridors that already exist. GETs can improve utilization of existing assets, while sensing, communications and analytics can help operators better understand how infrastructure is actually performing.
These aren't competing visions of the future grid. Together, they are the future grid.
A New Metric: Speed-to-Capacity
DOE's use of the phrase “Speed to Power” captures something important. From the transmission perspective, perhaps we should expand the concept and begin thinking more deliberately about Speed-to-Capacity: How quickly can an investment create additional usable, reliable transmission capacity?
That question changes how we look at existing infrastructure. An existing right-of-way is not simply land occupied by an old transmission line; it is a strategic asset. Existing structures may have capacity that can be unlocked through lighter, stronger conductors. Existing corridors don't necessarily need to remain constrained by the electrical and mechanical characteristics of technologies selected 40 or 60 years ago.
This is ultimately about infrastructure productivity — extracting more safe, reliable and economic value from assets that customers and utilities have already paid to build.
This is not an argument against new transmission. America needs substantial new transmission infrastructure. But while those projects move through their necessarily longer development cycles, we should aggressively pursue opportunities to increase the capacity, efficiency and visibility of the system already in place.
Not instead of building new transmission, but while we build it.
From Proven Technology to Deployment
Advanced conductors provide a useful example. Twenty years ago, utilities had legitimate questions about composite-core conductors: How would they age? How would they be installed? How would the hardware perform? How would the materials behave under high temperature, cyclic loading, vibration, ice and wind? Those were exactly the questions engineers should have asked.
But two decades of testing and field deployment change the nature of the discussion. @CTC Global's ACCC® Conductor, for example, has now been deployed on more than 1,600 projects in 30 U.S. states and more than 70 countries. Other advanced conductor technologies are also entering the market, creating additional choices and encouraging continued innovation.
The relevant question therefore shouldn't simply be whether advanced conductors work. It should be: Where can mature advanced conductor technologies solve problems better than the conventional alternatives we continue to specify?
Innovation should never be adopted merely because it is new. But mature technology shouldn't be ignored merely because older technology is familiar.
From Megawatts Planned to Megawatts Delivered
Perhaps this is ultimately the cultural change our industry needs. We are very good at announcing megawatts — megawatts of generation proposed, megawatts in interconnection queues, megawatts of projected load and megawatts of transmission capacity planned. But customers don't run factories, hospitals, homes or data centers on megawatts that exist in planning documents. They depend on megawatts that can actually be delivered.
Maybe that should become a more important measure of our progress. How many megawatts of additional capacity were actually created? How many constrained corridors were upgraded? How much congestion was reduced? How much additional transfer capability was created? How many years were removed from the traditional capacity-expansion timeline?
Twenty years from now, nobody will care how many transmission studies America published in 2026. They will care whether the lights stayed on, whether electricity remained affordable, whether factories and data centers could connect, whether communities could grow and whether America had the infrastructure required to compete in an increasingly electricity-dependent global economy.
We know how to build transmission, and we know how to upgrade existing corridors. We have advanced conductors, Grid Enhancing Technologies, sophisticated sensing and monitoring tools, storage, distributed resources and better planning methodologies. After years of studies, reports, pilot projects and policy debates, we also have an extraordinary amount of knowledge about what needs to be done.
The operational proof increasingly exists. The engineering maturity exists. The policy momentum is emerging. And the need is no longer somewhere over the horizon — it is arriving now.
The question is no longer whether we know what to do. The question is whether we are prepared to do it.