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Imagine unlocking 30% more power from our existing grid overnight. That’s the potential we’re ignoring, and it’s costing us billions. The demand for energy is rising, and utilities are struggling to serve this growth. In the U.S., congestion costs have increased from $8 billion in 2021 to more than $11 billion in 2023 despite record investments into transmission. Wild swings in power prices, like a recent instance in ERCOT where one node hit $28,000 per megawatt-hour, demonstrate the severity of the congestion problem. We can’t build infrastructure fast enough—new transmission lines take a decade on average to complete, and we can’t afford to wait.
The heart of the issue is not a physical lack of capacity. A recent Duke University study highlighted that nearly 100 GW of large new loads could be handled by U.S. power plants, as long as those loads do not add to the few hours of peak demand in a year. But transmission constraints threaten to wipe out this additional capacity, also at non-peak times, by limiting the delivery of the power to where it’s needed.
The real problem lies in grid management, and there’s only one way to meet load growth here and now: maximize America’s existing grid. Grid-enhancing technologies (GETs) are mature solutions, but unlike in Europe, they simply aren’t being deployed at scale in the U.S. Utilities need to embrace these immediate solutions, or Americans can expect energy costs to continue to rise.
The Grid’s Hidden Potential
GETs reduce congestion by either re-routing power through less congested lines or by increasing the “speed limit” in any particular line. Taking the actual operating conditions into account presents an enormous, untapped opportunity to boost transmission capacity by a third nationwide—quickly.
The physical ability of a transmission line to carry energy varies enormously over the course of a day based on the weather conditions. When it’s cold or windy, a transmission line can transmit up to twice the amount of power due to being cooled, which over the course of a year would add up to 40% more capacity. Dynamic Line Rating (DLR) solutions help utilities account for this effect.
The reason DLR is not widespread is that until recently, precise weather forecasting specific to individual power line sections has not been possible. If even one short section of a line is sheltered from the wind then that part would be at risk of overheating. As a result, grid operators have had to make worst case assumptions for wind, calculating ratings for the cooling conditions of a hot summer day with no wind across the entire network, which leaves significant capacity unused.
Utilities Are Slow to Adopt Grid-Enhancing Technologies, and Ratepayers Foot the Bill
GETs are the obvious choice for enabling this capacity boost, but there’s a catch: utilities are typically not rewarded for reducing congestion. It is the system operator, not the utility, that pays congestion costs. The system operator might have to dispatch a gas turbine to alleviate congestion, but that additional cost is then passed on to ratepayers.
As noted in the U.S. Department of Energy’s report on Innovative Grid Deployment (p.43), a utility is not economically motivated to install DLR, because “the investment brings limited financial value under current regulatory frameworks.”
In Europe, where transmission owners often act as system operators and directly shoulder congestion costs, the economic benefits of DLR are clear. As a result, multiple European transmission networks have implemented DLR in their full grids without regulatory mandates; Finland is a recent example. Adoption of GETs could similarly help serve load growth and alleviate congestion costs in America.
To be clear, GETs should not be an alternative for building more lines. Utilities do need to build as much transmission and distribution as possible. However, building those lines takes years, and in the meantime GETs would help significantly boost grid capacity to meet load growth.
Mandates and Missed Potential: The DLR Disconnect
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has tried moving the industry in the right direction with Order 881. This order mandates utilities to adopt Ambient Adjusted Ratings (AAR) by July 2025, although many have asked for extensions even into 2028. Per the order, utilities must move away from using Static Line Ratings (SLR) and account for the grid cooling effect from the forecasted air temperature (AAR).
AAR still leaves a lot of untapped capacity on the table, because wind has a much greater cooling effect on line capacity than cold temperatures. Even a light wind can double the capacity of a line, but winter temperatures might add 20%. Knowing this, FERC has already issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANOPR) on DLR.
Despite the potential capacity gains, many utilities are resisting it in public discussion, pointing primarily to concerns over the undemonstrated benefit of DLR, particularly as the hardware required to scale the solution is very expensive.
Beyond Sensors: The Role of Software in Grid Modernization
The ROI debate over any new grid solution becomes more complicated when hardware is involved. With DLR, large fleets of sensors are inherently slow and expensive to roll out, and difficult to maintain. But software-driven grid solutions are easier to justify, pricing at a fraction of the cost of hardware with the ability to scale immediately to entire grids.
European utilities have opted for software-based DLR with minimal hardware support. Finland is covering its entire grid with sensorless DLR with the only piece of hardware being the server in a basement. Until recently, that no-hardware freedom has been the missing piece to scaling DLR.
Now, purely software-based DLR solutions have entered the market. Precision weather forecasting is now possible, since the location of every tree, building and hill in America has been scanned by airborne LiDAR and satellites. Machine learning enables weather predictions with confidence intervals that are learned from measurement histories from tens of thousands of weather stations.
With an accurate and reliable forecast, utilities can increase power flow for day-ahead energy markets, reducing congestion and dispatching the lowest-cost power plants. Utilities are then able to serve load growth and make higher profits while keeping consumer energy prices under control.
This turns the DLR debate on its head. Rather than a cost-benefit risk, DLR is a way for utilities to make more money here and now by serving load growth. Instead of requiring expensive and time-consuming sensor installations, it is available immediately and can simply be turned on in the entire network. There’s a public, real-time tool that shows the enormous untapped capacity of the U.S. grid with DLR.
Accelerating Load Growth Through Grid-Enhancing Software
Rather than being a burden, rapid load growth is actually an opportunity for utilities to make more money. If utilities want to produce and sell more power, they should rush for GETs. There are no obstacles, just boxed-in thinking.
The technology is here, the need is urgent, and the benefits are clear. It’s time to move beyond outdated thinking and embrace the power of software to build a smarter, more resilient U.S. grid.
