We are at a tipping point for America’s energy infrastructure. U.S. peak load is projected to grow by 166 gigawatts between 2025 and 2030, the equivalent of 15 times New York City’s peak load. Electricity prices are already rising more than twice the rate of inflation.
Michael Wu, Converge Strategies, chats with Rachel Ross, the new Vice President of Energy Policy at the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), about the technologies that could ease the grid’s capacity crunch and the challenges that have kept them from scaling.
What’s Happening? Rachel outlines the tools available now: Grid Enhancing Technologies (GETS), which increase the capacity of existing power lines; advanced conductors, which carry more power with less thermal sag; AI-enabled software that improves operational efficiency; and flexibility solutions like batteries that relieve stress on the system.
Why It Matters. A primary barrier is misaligned incentives. Regulatory structures tie utility earnings to guaranteed returns on capital expenditures, which typically incentivizes building new infrastructure over software and operational efficiencies. Getting legacy systems to work with new data also takes training and time.
A Brattle Group analysis estimates that improved use of the existing grid could save consumers more than $100 billion over the next decade. Which isn’t a substitute for the longer-term work of building new generation and transmission infrastructure. It’s what can be done while that longer-term work is underway.
What’s Next? Rachel points to real momentum already underway, including conversations at FERC’s recent technical conference on software and GETS , and to the Department of Energy’s SPARK program as a model worth scaling. She also cites the Energy Dominance Financing Office’s recent loan to AEP Texas, involving roughly 100 transmission projects, some involving reconductoring, at a lower cost of capital.