Building more is no substitute for building smarter. At times, this has been a challenge for America’s energy infrastructure, particularly transmission. It is evident that the U.S. needs more transmission, but which transmission lines it builds matters for protecting ratepayers and keeping costs in check. An overwhelming number of House Members just reaffirmed this guiding principle for how America should approach the development of electric transmission. 

In a rare 49-0 showing of complete bipartisan consensus, the House Energy and Commerce Committee just cleared Representative Julie Fedorchak’s (R-ND) High-Capacity Grid Act, which would ensure the next era of grid development uses the best available power lines, known as advanced conductors, for both new construction and line rebuilds. As utilities race to expand their networks of poles and wires to meet surging electricity demand, the bill responds to the evasive challenge of getting utilities to deploy best-in-class grid materials.

Most of us will never think about the type of metal core that sits inside the insulation of a power line. Yet that core determines exactly how much electricity a line can carry to homes and businesses. Most of the country’s high-voltage lines still rely on a conductor design that is more than a century old. Continued use of this aged conductor technology for line replacements and new builds is often an inefficient decision for serving ratepayers at the lowest-possible cost.

Swapping that core for an advanced conductor, known as reconductoring, can roughly double the line’s carrying capacity when replacing an old core, and commonly costs a fraction of building a new line and can be deployed on a much shorter timescale. The underuse of this commercially mature technology thus has little to do with reliability or cost and instead relates to how utilities plan and are paid for what they build.

This dynamic centers on a mechanism called prudence review, through which state and federal regulators decide whether a utility’s spending is passed on to customers’ bills. Today, this review asks whether the utility followed a reasonable planning process when it made its decision, and it does not ask whether a better option was available. Because conventional conductors have long been the default choice for the prudence checkbox, opting for an advanced core can invite extra scrutiny simply for deviating from convention. 

Two additional dynamics, planning and financial incentives, reinforce this bias toward familiar solutions. Reconductoring projects often fall outside the scope of utilities’ routine planning process, meaning they compete on an ad hoc basis rather than as a standard option planners can default to. Furthermore, monopoly transmission owners earn a regulator-set return based on new capital project spending, so choosing reconductoring, which is cheaper than building additional lower-current lines, is not in their financial interest either. These biases enforce process complacency over optimal outcomes for ratepayers.

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And the risks historically cited by utility companies about these new conductors, predominantly higher upfront costs and technical unfamiliarity, are now outweighed by the opportunity. Advanced conductors have matured precisely as demand for grid capacity is climbing, creating a rare opportunity to innovate on these planning incentives.

The High-Capacity Grid Act answers this call directly. Under the legislation, using the best-available transmission conductor, defined by performance characteristics like capacity, electrical efficiency, and thermal sag mitigation, is presumed prudent, meaning the utility can recover those costs from customers by default. A utility that opts for a lesser conductor can still do so, but it has to show why that choice actually served customers better under its specific circumstances to recover that investment’s costs. This flips the norm that consumer advocates or regulators have to prove a better option went unused, instead requiring the utility to justify sticking with an inferior conductor. This shift would structurally nudge interstate transmission owners’ planning toward the frontier of affordable, innovative grid technologies.

Consumers could see savings in the near term, as smart planning standards bring capacity additions online with greater cost and schedule discipline than utilities observe today. The upside extends further out too. Efficiently added transmission catalyzes economic activity in the industrial and digital infrastructure sectors and stimulates local job growth.

Yet, other opportunities can be and are being pursued to create regulatory parity between advanced and traditional conductor offerings. For instance, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has taken steps to ensure that advanced transmission technologies, including advanced conductors, are evaluated fairly in federally regulated transmission regions through regional planning and interconnection processes for large power consumers. Separately, state-level legislation to exempt reconductoring from additional certificate requirements and environmental reviews could accelerate its cost-effective implementation in state grid planning.

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Deploying advanced conductors, especially for replacements on existing towers, can directly complement the much-needed greenfield transmission development set to take place over the next several years. For the vast mileage of existing lines running well below their potential across rights-of-way with secured permits, reconductoring is one of the fastest, cheapest ways to add grid capacity today. The full House floor should move to take up the High-Capacity Grid Act next. Securing this legislative victory would send a clear message: America’s grid doesn’t just need to grow; it needs to work harder with the network already in place.

The views and opinions expressed are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of C3.