Electrification, domestic manufacturing, electric transportation, AI. Every one of these depends on a grid that can carry more than it carries today.
The default assumption is that meeting that demand means building an enormous amount of new transmission, which takes a decade or more and is exactly the kind of timeline this moment can’t support.
There is a less obvious answer sitting alongside it. A significant amount of capacity already exists on lines that are being operated conservatively, because the tools to know how much they can safely carry at any given moment did not exist when the rules were written.
In this episode of Optimistic Outlook, Stacy Mahler of Siemens is joined by Gordon Bitko, Executive Vice President of Public Sector Policy at the Information Technology Industry Council, to look at grid modernization as the near-term half of the answer. Not instead of building, but ahead of it.
The conversation covers:
• Where new demand is actually coming from, and how much of it is not what people assume
• What it means in practice when a project waits years for an interconnection, and how that changes where companies decide to build
• Why existing transmission lines are often carrying less than they safely could, and what changes that
• Who pays for grid upgrades, and how residential customers are protected from absorbing costs driven by large industrial loads
• ITI’s recommendations to policymakers, and what would have to happen for them to move
From the growth of AI to the return of American manufacturing, nearly every major technology and economic trend depends on access to reliable power. This is a practical look at how we can get more from the grid we have today while building the grid we’ll need tomorrow.
