Before We Build More Grid, We Should Get More From the Grid We Already Have
Nearly every conversation about artificial intelligence, data centers, advanced manufacturing, electrification and economic growth eventually arrives at the same question: Where will the electricity come from, and how will we move it where it needs to go?
That question was at the center of a recent episode of Wood Mackenzie’s Interchange Recharged podcast, where host Sylvia Leyva Martinez sat down with CTC Global CEO J.D. Sitton and Chief Policy and Grid Strategy Officer Theodore Paradise. But Sylvia introduced the conversation with an observation that reframed the challenge in a particularly useful way: much of the capacity we need may already be “hanging over our heads.”
That idea deserves much more attention.
The United States unquestionably needs additional transmission infrastructure, and CTC Global strongly supports building new transmission where it is needed. But new transmission lines can require many years to plan, permit, approve and construct. The challenge facing utilities, grid operators, regulators and major electricity consumers today is that load growth is not necessarily willing to wait.
As Theodore explained during the podcast, the grid was already facing substantial pressure before the recent acceleration of AI and data-center development. Electrification, industrial growth, generation retirements and the changing location of new generation resources were already creating transmission challenges. What AI and data centers have changed most dramatically is the timeline. A major new load can potentially arrive in 18 to 24 months, while conventional transmission expansion can take many years.
That mismatch raises an important question: Before we wait years to build everything new, how much more can we get from what we already own?
An Enormous Investment Is Already Standing
Look at almost any existing transmission corridor and consider what is already there. The utility has secured the right-of-way. Towers or poles have been engineered and constructed. Access roads and substations may already exist. Environmental reviews have been completed. Interconnections have been established. Communities have lived alongside the infrastructure for years or decades. Billions of dollars of investment have already gone into creating the network.
In many cases, however, the conductor hanging between those structures remains one of the limiting elements.
Traditional steel-reinforced conductors trace their fundamental architecture back more than a century. As electrical load increases, these conductors heat up. As they heat, they expand and sag. Eventually, electrical resistance, conductor temperature, clearance requirements and the physical limitations of existing structures constrain how much additional power can safely and efficiently be moved through the corridor.
Advanced conductors change that equation.
As J.D. explained on Interchange Recharged, an existing conductor can often be removed and replaced with an advanced conductor of approximately the same size and weight while substantially increasing the capacity of the existing line. Instead of rebuilding every structure or developing an entirely new corridor, the utility can make much greater use of infrastructure that is already in place.
This is the essence of advanced reconductoring – and of The Capacity We Already Own.
Capacity Is About More Than Amps
There is an important distinction here. The objective is not simply to make a conductor hotter or give it a higher theoretical ampacity rating. What ultimately matters is how much useful electricity can be delivered safely, reliably and efficiently to customers.
CTC Global’s ACCC® Conductor uses a lightweight, high-strength carbon-fiber composite core that has a fraction of the thermal expansion of conventional steel. Its lightweight core also allows substantially more conductive aluminum to be incorporated into a conductor of comparable diameter and weight.
Those characteristics work together.
More aluminum reduces electrical resistance and associated line losses. Very low thermal expansion reduces sag at elevated operating temperatures. High strength supports demanding mechanical applications. And the ability to operate at elevated temperatures provides substantial capacity when utilities need it.
The result is not simply a higher conductor rating. It is an opportunity to move substantially more useful power through existing transmission corridors while improving efficiency and maintaining required clearances.
Theodore connected capacity and safety particularly well during the Wood Mackenzie conversation. He recalled the August 2003 Northeast blackout, where transmission-line contact with vegetation played an important role in the cascading outage, and explained how conductor sag and grid capacity are intrinsically connected. A conductor that maintains clearance at elevated temperatures can provide operators with considerably greater flexibility while also helping mitigate vegetation-contact risks.
In other words, capacity, efficiency, reliability and safety should not be considered independently. With the right technology, the benefits can stack.
The Resource We Rarely Put on the Balance Sheet: Time
Perhaps the most important part of the podcast discussion was not about carbon fiber or aluminum at all. It was about time.
J.D. described advanced reconductoring as a process that can often move from start to finish in roughly 18 months. He contrasted that with approximately five to seven years for rebuilding an existing right-of-way and potentially 10 to 15 years for developing an entirely new transmission line.
Those differences have enormous implications.
If a data center, semiconductor facility, manufacturing plant or new generation project can be developed in two or three years, telling that customer that transmission capacity may be available a decade from now does not solve the problem. Economic opportunities can move elsewhere. Generation can remain trapped in interconnection queues. Congestion can persist. Customers continue paying for losses and constraints that might otherwise have been reduced.
Time, therefore, is itself a grid resource.
Every year saved in delivering additional transmission capacity potentially represents another year of economic activity, additional generation access, reduced congestion and improved utilization of existing infrastructure. When viewed this way, advanced reconductoring isn’t simply an alternative conductor selection. It becomes a tool for compressing the timeline between identifying a capacity need and solving it.
The Capacity We Already Paid For
The economic argument is equally compelling.
During the podcast, J.D. described stewardship in terms broader than the cost of the conductor itself. The resources utilities are managing include time, capital, previous infrastructure investments and opportunities for economic growth. His underlying point was simple: we should get the most from assets that have already been built and paid for.
That principle should resonate with utilities, regulators and ratepayers alike.
Reusing existing towers and rights-of-way can eliminate substantial portions of the cost associated with building entirely new infrastructure. But the economic benefit extends further. Increasing transmission capacity can reduce congestion and allow lower-cost generation to reach consumers. Reducing conductor resistance can decrease electrical losses. Accelerating projects can allow those savings to begin years earlier.
Theodore emphasized this system-level perspective during the podcast. Transmission should not be evaluated solely by asking what an individual project costs. The more meaningful question is what that investment enables across the grid.
Can it reduce congestion? Can it connect lower-cost generation? Can it support new load? Can it improve reliability? Can it defer or eliminate more expensive infrastructure? Can it accomplish those things sooner?
Those are fundamentally different questions from simply comparing the purchase price of one conductor with another.
Communities Have Already Made an Investment, Too
One of the most memorable moments in the podcast had nothing to do with engineering.
J.D. recounted stopping at a coffee shop while traveling through Amarillo, Texas, where a casual conversation quickly turned to data centers. The people he met were concerned that new data centers in the surrounding area would consume local resources and ultimately leave residents paying the bill.
Regardless of whether every concern was technically well founded, the story illustrates something important: energy infrastructure is no longer an abstract issue discussed only among engineers, utilities and regulators. People are paying attention.
And communities have already made an investment of their own in the transmission system.
They have accepted existing corridors, towers, substations and other infrastructure as part of their landscape. Building new transmission will remain essential, but where existing corridors can accommodate substantially greater capacity without adding another right-of-way or another line of towers, that opportunity deserves serious consideration.
As Theodore observed, reconductoring can avoid many of the friction points associated with major new infrastructure because the corridor already exists. That doesn’t eliminate the need for careful engineering, planning and stakeholder engagement, but it can fundamentally change the scale of the undertaking.
Sometimes the least disruptive transmission project is the one the community barely notices.
From More Capacity to a More Intelligent Grid
There is another dimension to “The Capacity We Already Own” that is only beginning to emerge.
During the podcast, J.D. and Theodore discussed CTC Global’s InfoCore® System and the newer GridVista™ System. By incorporating optical fibers within the composite core, these technologies can provide information about conductor integrity and, with GridVista, continuously sense conditions affecting the line.
That changes the conversation from simply asking how much capacity a transmission asset was designed to carry to understanding much more about what is actually happening on that asset.
Theodore described the potential to detect conditions such as ice loading, vegetation contact and physical damage. J.D. then recounted a recent conversation with a utility where, after hearing about the information GridVista could provide, a senior utility leader offered a remarkable response: give him that information and he could provide 30 percent more capacity immediately while having greater confidence in the safety of the system.
Think about what that represents.
Advanced conductors can help unlock physical capacity from existing corridors. Advanced sensing can provide greater insight into the condition and operating environment of those assets. Combined with increasingly sophisticated grid-management tools, the transmission system begins moving from a collection of largely passive assets toward a network that can be better understood and more intelligently utilized.
The capacity we already own may therefore be greater than even the physical characteristics of the conductor suggest.
Proven Around the World — Ready to Scale
Perhaps the most provocative part of the Wood Mackenzie conversation came at the end, when Sylvia asked J.D. and Theodore what the industry might say five years from now about this moment.
J.D.’s answer was straightforward. We may look back and realize that the solution was easier than we thought – and that much of the rest of the world had already demonstrated it.
Theodore reinforced the point. CTC Global is approaching 2,000 projects with more than 300 utilities in approximately 70 countries, with the overwhelming majority of that deployment occurring outside the United States. Advanced conductors are not an experimental technology waiting for their first meaningful field experience. They have been operating on transmission systems around the world for two decades.
The challenge now is scale.
New transmission corridors will be needed. New generation will be needed. New substations, energy storage, grid-enhancing technologies and other infrastructure will all have important roles to play. This isn’t an either-or proposition.
But while we plan and build the grid of tomorrow, there is an enormous opportunity sitting in plain sight.
It is in the rights-of-way we already secured.
The towers we already built.
The capital we already invested.
The communities that already host our infrastructure.
And the conductors already hanging above us that can be replaced with technology capable of doing substantially more.
The fastest path to more power may sometimes begin not with asking what else we need to build, but with asking a much simpler question:
How much more can we get from the grid we already own?
That is a conversation worth continuing.
Listen to J.D. Sitton and Theodore Paradise discuss advanced conductors, reconductoring, affordability, reliability and the changing demands on the electric grid with Sylvia Leyva Martinez on Wood Mackenzie’s Interchange Recharged: “The Fastest Path to More Power.”
https://www.woodmac.com/podcasts/interchange-recharged/the-fastest-path-to-more-power/
