Advanced Transmission Technologies ─ the grid’s cool and wonky secret sauce

Editorial Note: When former Cipher reporter Amena Saiyid pitched me an article on advanced transmission technologies, I immediately said yes, and when I saw the piece, I knew it would be perfect for E/lectrify’s first Energy Literacy post of 2026. As noted, while industry insiders have been talking about ATTs for a few years, the average consumer may not know what they are or why they are critical right now. Again, many thanks to my paid subscribers, whose support makes it possible for me to pay Saiyid for her great work.

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It is common knowledge that the U.S. transmission grid has aged and is incapable of handling the unprecedented demand for electricity from artificial intelligence and data centers, advanced manufacturing and other energy-guzzling industries like chip making and electrified transportation.

The nation’s grid is in urgent need of supercharging ─ that is, building more transmission lines, substations and related equipment ─ a point of unusual bipartisan agreement at a recent discussion led by editors of Heatmap News, an online cleantech news service. What grabbed my attention at the D.C. event was not the idea that more must be built but rather how much can be achieved with already-available technologies.

What I am talking about here ─ in industry-speak ─ are advanced transmission technologies, which can increase the amount of electricity sent through existing wires to our homes. While ATTs are well-known in the industry, consumers may not know what they are or that they can allow new energy projects (natural gas, wind, solar, nuclear or geothermal) to come online without putting new poles and wires in the ground ─ all of which can help keep utility bills more affordable.

Another benefit: upgrading existing lines is less likely to stir the kind of local opposition new transmission lines almost universally face. Residents of Loudoun County in Northern Virginia where I live remain up in arms over Dominion Energy’s proposal to extend a high-voltage transmission line through their communities. Nearly all residents, save one or two, spoke against the proposal at a December town hall meeting held by U.S. Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.).

“Grid operators can deploy these solutions in a variety of strategic combinations to address local needs,” according to a Department of Energy (DOE) report from April 2024. In that report, DOE called for long-term strategic planning that recognizes the benefits of these technologies but at the same emphasized that “no one single solution will suffice."

More importantly, “most of these solutions could be deployed on the existing grid in under three to five years and are lower cost, greater value or both when compared to conventional technologies or approaches,” the report says.

(This report is one of 13 Pathways to Commercial Liftoff reports produced by DOE between 2023 and 2025, aimed at providing practical roadmaps for the commercialization of a range of key clean technologies. They are no longer available on DOE’s website, but can be found on the Climate Program Portal website here.)

 First, “advanced transmission technologies” is an umbrella term used to describe both hardware and software approaches to expanding how much power the existing grid can manage. (Industry jargon is somewhat unavoidable here, but I will do my best to translate.)

On the hardware side, we have high-performance conductors, or HPCs, which in simplest terms are wires made with “advanced conducting materials,” such as ultra-pure aluminum wires wrapped around a carbon fiber core. (See picture above, from CTC Global.)

“Conductor” is industry jargon for wires, and conventional conductors are wires made of aluminum encasing a steel interior. Advanced conductors can carry 50% to 110% more power than traditional wires and cost less.

Montana-Dakota Public Utilities has made use of advanced conductors, saving 40% on costs of replacing the entire wire, according to my former Cipher colleague Cat Clifford’s reporting.

Then we have a subcategory of ATTs called grid-enhancing technologies, or GETs, which use both hardware and software systems to adjust and redirect electricity to accommodate changing temperatures and bottlenecks along the transmission lines. They include:

▪ Advanced power flow controls, which use a combination of electronic devices and sensors to redirect electricity from congested transmission lines to underused ones; 

▪ Dynamic line ratings, which use strategically installed real-time sensors to predict weather outcomes and the true amount of power a transmission line can carry; and

▪ Transmission topology optimization systems, which use algorithms to reroute electricity around congested grid bottlenecks.

In the next five years, the nation’s peak electricity demand – that is, the electricity needed for times of highest demand, such as hot summer afternoons -- is projected to balloon six times to 166 gigawatts, according to industry consultants Grid Strategies.

 If that spike in demand occurs, it would be the equivalent of putting the electricity demand of 15 more cities the size of New York City on the grid, Neil Chatterjee, former chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, told attendees at the Heatmap discussion.

At the same time, the transmission grid ─ the big wires and pylons that send large amounts of power at high speeds within and between states ─ is in dire need of supercharging or modernization.

So, why not use ATTs, while streamlining the permitting and siting processes to build new lines?

Nearly all speakers at the Heatmap discussion ─ ranging from lawmakers to former regulators and hyperscalers to energy experts ─ emphasized that these grid technologies would help meet this massive, unexpected demand.

Ray Long, president and CEO of the American Council on Renewable Energy, called high-performance conductors “super critical” for meeting growing electricity demand.

“You can get HPCs built in six to 18 months,” Long said. “The typical long-distance transmission line can take anywhere from eight years to 17 years. …

“2030 is coming really fast … and we need to build all of the grid technologies,” he said.

Long’s intro was promising, but I held my breath, waiting to hear even one of the other speakers talk about how much of a dent ATTs would make in the projected demand growth and the amount of savings that would be realized from their use instead of revamping the entire transmission system. 

To be fair, the Heatmap event consisted of 15-minute lightning rounds in which each speaker responded to a series of questions from the moderators; so, the kind of details I was hoping for were not mentioned.

For a deeper dive, I turned to Julia Selker, executive director of the advocacy group Working for Advanced Transmission Technologies (WATT) Coaliton.

Unquestionably, GETs will make room for new generation to come out of the regional queues where these projects ─ largely solar, wind and storage ─ are waiting to connect to the grid. They could also cut energy costs by approximately $4 billion to $8 billion nationwide through lower-cost generation and reduced grid congestion.

“Additional savings from avoiding larger infrastructure investments like building or rebuilding transmission lines and related equipment could save billions more,” she added.

Selker referred to the 2024 DOE report, which estimates these grid technologies “can cost-effectively increase the existing grid’s capacity to support upwards of 20-100 GW of peak demand growth.”

In other words, anywhere from 12.5% to 62.5% of the projected peak demand growth of 166 GW can be shaved off with these solutions. That is huge.

The DOE report also noted that “dynamic line rating … can be scaled in fewer than three months … to increase effective transmission capacity by an average of 10-30% at less than five percent of the cost of rebuilding the line to expand capacity.”

Selker, however, quickly added that this estimate does not imply “no new transmission infrastructure is needed.” Rather, she said, it demonstrates “the general scale of the opportunity, not an analysis of discrete needs.”

Heatmap’s discussion could not have been more timely. In September, DOE launched its “Speed to Power” initiative,  with a request for industry input on how best to accelerate the buildout of the “large-scale grid infrastructure projects” needed to meet rising demand.  

In response, the WATT Coalition partnered with the Advancing Modern Powerlines Coalition ─ another ATT advocacy group ─ on comments, arguing that “optimizing the grid at a regional scale” should be considered a large-scale grid project worthy of federal support.

Although all four previously mentioned ATTs can be applied anywhere, Selker said some, like dynamic line ratings, are more suited to shorter distances, while longer or high-voltage lines could benefit from a combination of advanced power flows and high-performance conductors.

The problem or rather the challenge is no one has yet conducted a comprehensive study of how all four can be used, the coalitions wrote in their comments.

Some utilities, certain states like Oklahoma and Kansas, regional grid operators like PJM Interconnection and ERCOT and think tanks like RMI have attempted to study how certain technologies can expand the grid without building new transmission.

For instance, a joint Quanta-RMI study in 2024 said GET installations could free up 5 GW on PJM, the largest regional grid in the nation, for new power hookups in three years and save $1 billion.

PJM operates the interstate grid across 13 Mid-Atlantic and Midwest states and the District of Columbia.

Presently, 15 states have enacted ATT policies that range from studying the use of these technologies to mandating their use, according to the Climate Policy Dashboard (see map above). For instance, Indiana will require utilities to incorporate ATTs  into their plans starting this year, while Minnesota has a law on the books requiring entities with more than 750 miles of transmission lines to evaluate the use of grid enhancing technologies.

Getting these projects from the drawing boards to shovels in the ground will require a wholesale change in how operators plan for transmission though.

Until now, the regional grid operators have based their transmission planning exclusively on utility reliability needs, looking at future scenarios based on weather conditions, potential outages and congestion, Selker said. In California, for instance, transmission planning prioritizes reliability, state policies and economics, but doesn’t consider ATTs. 

Likewise, the default at many utilities has been to go with familiar solutions such as replacing lines.

“Utilities and regional transmission operators both need to work ATTs into their modeling processes and also invest in unlocking economic efficiency on the grid, which is not something that is currently part of their business model,” she said.

In California, for instance, Pacific Gas and Electric has been able to find room on its grid for over 100 GW of new generation just by using advanced power flow control systems.

The problem is that utilities have no financial incentive to adopt ATTs and need policy support to incorporate them into their planning processes, said Devin Hartman, energy and environment policy director for R Street Institute, a libertarian think tank. Hartman was one of the speakers at the Heatmap discussion.

In many cases, upgrading existing lines is considered a maintenance cost that cannot be paid back through rate increases. The DOE report calls for state regulators to come up with new compensation plans.

“I think there’s a really important role for Congress to give direction to encourage these kinds of solutions; so, utilities can bring these ATTs [online] more expediently,” Hartman said.

The Trump administration is giving mixed messages to utilities and regional transmission operators. In October 2025, both Latitude Media and Canary Media reported that DOE axed a $600 million grant given to the California Energy Commission to upgrade 100 miles of electric transmission lines with advanced conductor technologies, delivering an estimated $200 million in savings.

At the same time,  the DOE is supporting 15 projects across the nation. including Dominion’s dynamic line rating project and Georgia Power’s grid-enhancing program. As with other program cuts, projects in blue states appear to be the primary targets, while red state projects continue to be funded.

DOE has $3 billion remaining in its Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships program that the WATT and AMP coalitions say could be spent on prioritizing projects that can come online in the next two years, as well as providing technical assistance. But the Trump administration has to send a clear message that funding grid solutions is as necessary as building new lines through all states.

According to Long, “ATTs are the true speed to power.”

They sure are.