California Gov. Gavin Newsom enacted a law requiring utilities to assess the potential of grid-enhancing technologies and advanced conductors on their transmission systems, touted as critical tools for the state to speed deployments of new clean energy resources to meet rising power demand.
Senate Bill 1006, signed Sept. 25, requires transmission utilities to prepare an initial round of feasibility studies for projects using grid-enhancing technologies — including dynamic line ratings, power flow controllers and topology optimization — by Jan. 1, 2026. It also requires assessments by that deadline of which lines can be reconductored with high-performance conductors.
Utilities must then submit the studies to the California ISO for review as part of the annual transmission planning process. Utilities are required to conduct new assessments of projects using grid-enhancing technologies every two years and advanced conductors at least every four years.
"This bill says you're on a timer," Julia Selker, executive director of transmission technologies trade group WATT Coalition, said in a Sept. 26 interview. "It's time to get the benefits from these technologies."
The use of dynamic line ratings, for instance, relies on sensors to optimize and expand infrastructure capacity. The technology can boost capacity by an average of 10-30%, needs only a few months to deploy and costs "less than 5% of the price of building new transmission," the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said in a recent report.
"These technologies have been available for a long time," Selker said. "The question is: why haven't they been used yet significantly in the United States?"
One primary reason, according to Selker and other advocates of advanced transmission technologies, is that utilities lack incentives to invest in such inexpensive approaches when they make regulated returns on major capital investments like building new transmission and distribution infrastructure.
But with datacenters, electric vehicles and other new sources of power demand, "the need for transmission far exceeds what they can build," Selker added. "They understand now that grid-enhancing technologies are going to help them solve their other challenges ... they are ready to make it a top priority."
'Still some major obstacles'
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) and Southern California Edison Co. (SCE) are participating in a public-private partnership that in August secured a $600 million grant from the US Energy Department to upgrade 100 miles of transmission lines using advanced conductors and dynamic line ratings, with California participants adding over $900 million.
PG&E is also exploring the use of advanced transmission technologies as part of a study on how to accommodate up to 3.5 GW of new datacenter demand in the San Francisco Bay Area.
"Some of that will be enabled with more smart transmission conductors," PG&E Corp. CEO Patti Poppe said in a recent interview. "So it might be just replacing the conductor on existing transmission towers that have more capacity to serve that new load."
Advanced conductors, which use carbon fiber and composite cores to enable lines to carry more capacity, have already seen some use in California, noted a legislative analysis of SB 1006, pointing to SCE reconductoring projects in its Big Creek-Ventura 220-kV network.
SCE is an affiliate of Edison International.
Despite the growing enthusiasm for advanced grid technologies in California, "we do need to nudge utilities and regulators along," said Edson Perez, California lead at business group Advanced Energy United. "There's still some major obstacles."
Another measure considered this session in California, Assembly Bill 3246, would have required the California Public Utilities Commission to streamline its process for permitting advanced reconductoring projects. But the legislation stalled in the state Senate.
AB 2779, a measure that would require CAISO to report cost or efficiency savings from grid-enhancing technologies to the utilities commission and lawmakers, awaits Newsom's signature.