Oct 27, 2026 · 1h 15m

America’s grid faces a transmission bottleneck

Building America’s new power grid: Can the transmission network grow to keep pace with rising electricity demand?

Electricity demand is rising faster than the planning, permitting, financing, and interregional coordination needed to connect new supply and keep power reliable.

3 key takeaways

1Interregional transmission can improve reliability and affordability by sharing diverse resources across regional grids.
2Community partnerships, clearer revenue models, and better planning could make major transmission projects easier to finance and build.
3Permitting reform may accelerate progress, but states, regions, utilities, and FERC must act even without federal legislation.

Don't miss

Jenny Chen’s floor-and-cap model offers a concrete way to combine transmission revenue certainty with market incentives.

The brief

Rising demand from AI data centers, advanced manufacturing, and new generation projects is exposing a basic constraint: America needs more transmission, and it needs it faster.

Madeline Gould Laughlin of Grid United makes the case for long-distance HVDC links between regional grids, while describing community grants, direct payments, and rerouting as alternatives to relying primarily on eminent domain.

Jenny Chen outlines a floor-and-cap financing model that could give transmission developers revenue certainty without eliminating market incentives, while recognizing congestion, capacity, ancillary services, and insurance value.

Adam Stern connects crowded interconnection queues and uncertain upgrade costs to SPP’s consolidated planning process, which studies regional needs earlier and provides more cost information.

The episode’s broadest argument is political as much as technical: bipartisan permitting reform could help, but regional, state, and FERC action remains essential if demand keeps accelerating.

What was said on this episode

12 statements · 3 positive · 9 negative

Adam Sternon Renewable energy and independent power producersPositive43:15
Renewable energy and independent power producers have supply and market readiness.
“the supply is there. The market is there. We're all ready.”
Listen at 43:15
Adam Sternon Wind, solar and storagePositive43:29
Wind, solar, and storage can provide power at the lowest cost to ratepayers.
“wind, solar and storage can do”
Listen at 43:29
Adam Sternon Interconnection queuesNegative44:31
Interconnection queue problems continue to persist.
“The problems still persist”
Listen at 44:31
Adam Sternon Interconnection queues and regional transmissionNegative44:48
Interconnection queues and insufficient regional transmission constrain needed electricity supply.
“the supply that's needed to meet that demand is stuck. It's stuck in the queues, and it's also stuck because we are still not building the amount of regional transmission that's needed to connect those new resources.”
Listen at 44:48
Adam Sternon Interconnection costsNegative45:15
Developers generally cannot know interconnection costs before entering queues.
“you don't know what the cost that you're going to be faced. until you're in the queue itself.”
Listen at 45:15
Adam Sternon Interconnection and network-upgrade costsNegative45:55
Interconnection and network-upgrade costs can comprise a large share of project costs.
“those costs could be a huge fraction of your overall project cost”
Listen at 45:55
Adam Sternon Interconnection costsNegative46:00
Unexpected $20–30 million connection costs can make a project economically unviable.
“a surprise 20, 30 million that you see in your results could tell you that this project is no longer viable.”
Listen at 46:00
Adam Sternon Project submissions to interconnection queuesNegative46:48
Developers must submit many projects because interconnection costs remain uncertain.
“we sort of have to”
Listen at 46:48
Adam Sternon Interconnection cost certaintyPositive47:00
Greater upfront cost certainty would improve developers’ project-submission decisions.
“If we had more cost certainty ahead of time, we can make a more sound economic decision about which projects to submit”
Listen at 47:00
Adam Sternon Interconnection clustersNegative47:39
Larger interconnection clusters increase upgrades, modeling difficulty, and cost uncertainty.
“the bigger the cluster gets not only the larger the upgrades are but the harder it is for those models to solve and the more uncertain those costs are”
Listen at 47:39
Adam Sternon Interconnection cluster costsNegative47:50
When projects exit clusters, their assigned costs transfer to remaining projects.
“if eventually you know 70 of those projects drop out The costs that were associated or assigned to those projects now get transferred to the projects that remain.”
Listen at 47:50
Adam Sternon Interconnection cluster costsNegative48:00
Transferred costs create large unexpected expenses for remaining projects.
“that transfer becomes, again, a big surprising cost”
Listen at 48:00

Statements are attributed to the speaker as said on the episode and reflect their view at the time, not PodLume's. They are not advice.

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