The U.S. Urgently Needs a Bigger Grid. Here’s a Fast Solution. (hint: high performance conductors)

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1. Replacing existing power lines with cables made from state-of-the-art materials could roughly double the capacity of the electric grid in many parts of the country.

   By [Brad Plumer](https://www.nytimes.com/by/brad-plumer)

   One of the biggest obstacles to expanding clean energy in the United States is a
   lack of power lines. Building new transmission lines can take a decade or more
   because of permitting delays and local opposition. But there may be a faster,
   cheaper solution, [according to two reports released Tuesday](https://www.2035report.com/reconductoring/).

   Replacing existing power lines with cables made from state-of-the-art materials could
   roughly double the capacity of the electric grid in many parts of the country,
   making room for much more wind and solar power.

   This technique, known as “advanced reconductoring,” is widely used in other
   countries. But many U.S. utilities have been slow to embrace it because of
   their unfamiliarity with the technology as well as regulatory and bureaucratic
   hurdles, researchers found.

   “We were pretty astonished by how big of an increase in capacity you can get by
   reconductoring,” said Amol Phadke, a senior scientist at the University of
   California, Berkeley, who contributed to one of the reports released Tuesday.
   Working with GridLab, a consulting firm, researchers from Berkeley looked at
   what would happen if advanced reconductoring were broadly adopted.

   “It’s not the only thing we need to do to upgrade the grid, but it can be a major part of the solution,” Dr. Phadke said.

   Today, most power lines consist of steel cores surrounded by strands of aluminum, a
   design that’s been around for a century. In the 2000s, several companies
   developed cables that used smaller, lighter cores such as carbon fiber and that
   could hold more aluminum. These advanced cables can carry up to twice as much
   current as older models.

   Replacing old lines can be done relatively quickly. In 2011, AEP, a utility in Texas, urgently needed to deliver more power to the Lower Rio Grande Valley to meet soaring population growth. It would have taken too long to acquire land and permits and to build towers for a new transmission line. Instead, AEP [replaced 240 miles of wires](https://www.quantaenergized.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/EEI-Energy-Biz_pages.pdf) with advanced conductors, which took less than three years and increased the carrying capacity of the lines by 40 percent.

   In many places, upgrading power lines with advanced conductors could nearly double the capacity of existing transmission corridors at less than half the cost of building new
   lines, researchers found. If utilities began deploying advanced conductors on a
   nationwide scale — replacing thousands of miles of wires — they could add four
   times as much transmission capacity by 2035 as they are currently on pace to do.

2. Better conductors plus real-time temperature monitoring of the lines I think can do a 3x capacity increase, don’t remember where I read it. If you put batteries on the far end that you can fill up during non-peak usage times (like overnight), then it’s more like 5-6x more.

   Then we still need to build the lines to the new solar plants and wind farms, but then hopefully are able to push power more effectively across the grid without significant internal build-out once its on the main grid.

3. The CEO of TS Conductor has been making the rounds on podcasts. [The most recent episode of Energy Insiders had some particularly insightful discussion, the host has actually worked on the Australian grid.](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/energy-insiders-a-reneweconomy-podcast/id1198375045) Basically, high voltage lines are aluminum wrapped around a steel core. Most of them are a relatively low strength steel, which requires an aluminum alloy optimized for strength rather than conductivity. High strength steel core enables better aluminum, and a bit more of it, but the steel is brittle and difficult to work with in the field. TS Conductor claims that their carbon fiber core is so light and strong that it can enable twice as much aluminum on existing towers, increasing current capacity. They claim that the cost of their product is easily offset by avoiding new tower construction while upgrading a line.

   The devil is always in the details, and I’m not capable of evaluating whether this particular product is good, but I think something like it is going to widely deployed soon.