Results: Reconductoring Could Help Solve America's Looming Grid Crisis

Thousands of gigawatts worth of new clean energy projects have been proposed to meet this demand, but they are stuck waiting to connect to the grid, unable to come online without expensive, and time-consuming transmission system upgrades. Are you aware of this problem?

The United States must expand and strengthen our grid, but we're only expanding our transmission capacity at a rate of less than 1% per year, far below the 4-7% expansion grid experts including the U.S. Department of Energy say we need. New transmission lines can take up to 10 years to come online, and long-distance power lines can take even longer. Do you think it is important to solve this problem?

But what if a short-term fix to America's grid problems is hiding in plain sight? New research from Energy Innovation, GridLab, and the University of California-Berkeley shows reconductoring existing transmission lines with advanced conductors can double capacity on existing rights-of-way in just 18 to 36 months and help reach the country's 90 percent clean energy goal. Does this new approach sound promising?

Reconductoring is the utility industry term for re-stringing existing transmission towers with new cables, without having to permit and build expensive new transmission towers and power lines. Advanced conductors are a modern, commercialized technology that use composite cores instead of steel, making them stronger and lighter, and denser annealed aluminum for conductors instead of aluminum strands, increasing capacity up to 2x. Before today's survey, were you aware of what reconductoring is?

This technology could save American consumers $85 billion, quadrupling current rates of transmission capacity expansion, and hit 90 percent clean energy, all by 2035. Although this approach isn't a panacea for all of our long-term electric grid future shortfalls, it's a step in the right direction. Are you in favor of cost-effective approaches like reconductoring to solve current and future electric grid shortfalls?