A thoughtful new report from Americans for a Clean Energy Grid (ACEG), based on a series of workshops convened in Spring 2026 and funded by the Connected Grid Initiative, raises an important question about how we value transmission infrastructure. Capacity Accreditation of Interregional Transmission Workshops, published in July 2026, brings together perspectives from academia, research organizations, engineering and policy consultants, utilities, RTO/ISOs, transmission developers, state regulators, energy offices, and FERC staff.
The resulting discussion deserves attention because it challenges a longstanding assumption embedded in resource adequacy planning: transmission is not simply infrastructure that connects resources to load. It can itself provide measurable capacity and reliability value.
ACEG and the workshop participants deserve considerable credit for advancing this discussion. Their work focuses particularly on the pooled capacity value of imports enabled by non-firm transmission service across interregional high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) facilities. Firm imports receive at least partial recognition in existing resource adequacy structures, but non-firm transfers that may provide substantial reliability support during system stress are largely excluded from current accreditation methodologies.
The report argues that recognizing this contribution could improve resource adequacy planning while reducing unnecessary capacity investment and ultimately lowering costs for consumers.
That observation has implications extending well beyond the specific question of HVDC capacity accreditation.
Transmission Is More Than a Delivery Mechanism
For decades, electric-system planning has tended to focus resource adequacy discussions primarily on generation: How much generating capacity exists? How dependable is it during peak conditions? How much reserve capacity is necessary? Transmission is obviously required to move that electricity, but its contribution to resource adequacy has often been treated differently.
The ACEG workshops challenge that convention. The report notes that resource adequacy modeling frequently fails to represent intra- and interregional transmission with sufficient granularity to understand the contribution of actual deliverability. Interregional imports may even be represented without adequate consideration of the underlying transmission facilities required to deliver them. Conversely, excluding the pooled capacity available from neighboring regions can overstate system risk and potentially lead to unnecessary capacity investment.
This is an important conceptual shift. Electricity sitting behind a constrained interface is not necessarily useful capacity to the region that needs it. Conversely, a strong transmission connection to a diverse neighboring system may provide substantial reliability value even when the energy flowing across that connection has not been committed through a traditional firm-generation arrangement.
In other words, deliverability has value.
And once we accept that principle, another question follows naturally:
Are we getting as much deliverability as we reasonably can from the transmission infrastructure we already have?
From Transmission Expansion to Infrastructure Productivity
The United States unquestionably needs additional transmission infrastructure, including new interregional connections. But building new transmission is only part of the solution. Existing rights-of-way, towers, substations, conductors, and transmission corridors also represent enormous investments that can potentially provide substantially greater value.
This leads to a broader concept of Infrastructure Productivity: evaluating transmission not simply according to how many miles of lines have been constructed, but according to how effectively those assets deliver usable capacity, reliability, efficiency, resilience, and economic value.
The ACEG report points toward this idea even though advanced transmission technologies are outside its principal scope. It calls for better representation of existing and expected interregional transmission in resource adequacy modeling and argues that neighboring systems should increasingly be considered together rather than as isolated electrical islands. If each region establishes its planning reserve margin as though neighboring systems do not exist, reserve requirements – and therefore ratepayer costs – can become unnecessarily inflated.
But recognizing neighboring resources is only useful if the network can physically deliver their power. The capability of the transmission system itself therefore increasingly becomes part of the resource adequacy equation.
That is where technologies such as advanced conductors can add another dimension to the conversation.
Increasing the Capacity of the Network We Already Have
Advanced conductors can enable utilities to increase the capacity of existing transmission corridors, often while making extensive use of existing structures and rights-of-way. In many applications, reconductoring can therefore complement – not replace – the development of new transmission.
This distinction matters. An interregional HVDC project may substantially increase transfer capability between two regions, but electricity entering or leaving that facility must still travel through surrounding AC networks. If those networks contain thermal, sag, congestion, or other capacity constraints, the full value of the interregional connection may be more difficult to realize.
CTC Global’s ACCC® Conductor provides utilities with a proven engineering solution for addressing many of these constraints. Its high-capacity, low-sag design can substantially increase usable transmission capacity within existing corridors while also reducing electrical line losses compared with conventional conductors in many applications.
With ACCC Conductor deployed on more than 1,600 projects in 70 countries, utilities have demonstrated that advanced reconductoring can be a practical tool for increasing transmission capacity while making greater use of existing infrastructure.
This does not change the central argument advanced by ACEG. It extends it.
If an interregional transmission facility can provide measurable resource adequacy value because it enables access to a broader pool of generation, then increasing the capability of the AC transmission system supporting that facility may also create measurable economic and reliability value. Determining that value deserves greater attention in transmission planning.
Better Capacity Should Also Mean Better Visibility
Another important theme running through the ACEG workshop findings is the need for better information. The report notes that utilities and RTO/ISOs often lack sufficient data about neighboring systems to accurately model import and export interactions. Without adequate data exchange and analytical cooperation, resource adequacy assessments become less credible.
That observation points toward another important evolution in transmission engineering. Increasing physical capacity is valuable, but understanding how infrastructure is actually performing can make that capacity more useful.
CTC Global’s GridVista™ System represents another step in this evolution by integrating distributed fiber sensing capabilities with advanced conductor infrastructure. This approach can provide utilities with substantially greater visibility into transmission-line behavior and asset condition, helping move the industry from periodic inspection and static assumptions toward a more continuous understanding of critical transmission assets.
The broader principle extends beyond any single technology:
A grid that is expected to carry more power should also become a grid that utilities can understand more clearly.
As planners increasingly quantify transmission’s contribution to reliability and resource adequacy, improved knowledge of the condition and performance of the underlying infrastructure should become increasingly valuable as well.
Put a Dollar Value on What the Grid Can Deliver
Perhaps one of the most compelling recommendations emerging from the ACEG workshops is also one of the simplest. The report suggests that regulators ask utilities to model a load zone under two scenarios – one recognizing non-firm interregional imports as a capacity resource and one without them – and then calculate the resulting cost difference.
The authors suggest framing the result as lost savings: what are ratepayers giving up because the capacity value of interregional transmission is not being recognized?
That is a powerful analytical approach, and the industry could apply similar thinking more broadly.
What is the cost of leaving an existing transmission corridor constrained when reconductoring could substantially increase its capacity? What is the economic value of reducing transmission losses over the remaining life of an asset? What generation or storage investment might be deferred because additional deliverable capacity becomes available? How much congestion could be reduced? How much faster could new generation or large loads be connected? And how much additional value might be created when enhanced transmission capacity is combined with improved monitoring and asset intelligence?
These questions shift the discussion from the cost of transmission technology to the value created by transmission capability.
That is an important distinction.
Moving From Installed Capacity to Deliverable Capacity
The ACEG workshops also correctly recognize that some of the greatest obstacles are institutional rather than technological. Coordination among utilities, RTO/ISOs, states, NERC, and FERC remains challenging. The report identifies RTO/ISO tariff amendments under Section 205 of the Federal Power Act as perhaps the most actionable near-term pathway for establishing transmission capacity accreditation frameworks. It also highlights the particularly important role state regulators can play through IRPs, procurement requirements, analytical directives, and engagement with regional grid operators.
Importantly, the report does not call for a single rigid national methodology. It recognizes regional differences while advocating sufficient alignment to ensure that neighboring regions evaluate shared transmission facilities consistently. NERC could play an important role in developing that methodological foundation, while FERC can help catalyze or ultimately formalize change.
These recommendations reinforce an increasingly important distinction between installed capacity and deliverable capacity.
Generation capacity has limited resource adequacy value if transmission constraints prevent it from reaching load during the hours when it is most needed. Conversely, stronger transmission connections can allow geographically diverse resources to support one another, potentially reducing the need for every region to independently build enough resources to address every conceivable condition.
The grid itself therefore becomes part of the capacity solution.
A Broader Definition of Grid Modernization
ACEG, the Connected Grid Initiative, Grid Strategies, and the many utility, regulatory, academic, RTO/ISO, research, development, engineering, policy, FERC, and other experts who contributed to this effort deserve recognition for helping advance a more sophisticated understanding of transmission’s role in resource adequacy.
Their work also opens the door to a broader discussion.
Transmission has value not simply because it exists, but because of what it enables the power system to do.
At CTC Global, we believe that principle should also influence how the industry evaluates existing transmission corridors, selects advanced transmission technologies, monitors critical assets, and calculates the economic return created by grid modernization.
If transmission is increasingly recognized as a capacity resource, the industry should not stop at determining how to accredit the capacity available today. We should also ask how engineering innovation can increase that capacity, how improved sensing can make it more visible and dependable, and how better planning can translate those improvements into measurable value for utilities and consumers.
That brings the discussion back to three deceptively simple questions:
What capacity do we have? What capacity can we deliver? And how much more value can we create from the infrastructure already in place?
At a time of rapidly growing electricity demand, increasing interconnection requirements, and mounting pressure to improve affordability and reliability, answering those questions may prove every bit as important as deciding where the next transmission line should be built.
https://gridstrategiesllc.com/capacity-value-of-interregional-transmission/
