Perspective

“Galloping is a type of low-frequency, high-amplitude vibration in power lines. It’s when the wires start bouncing up and down, sometimes to an extreme degree. It’s a big deal because it can cause serious damage.”

“Zach and I are hitting on the ways that engineers can expand their thinking to set up craft labor for more successful and safe execution.”

“The key takeaway is understanding the evolving approach to traditional refurbishment projects. That’s where advanced conductors like ACCC come in. These all-aluminum composite conductors offer higher capacity and performance without requiring changes to the existing line design.”

“The biggest takeaway is the importance of building a stronger bridge between the engineers in the office and the crews out in the field. It’s about understanding what’s happening on site — what tools are being used, what challenges they’re facing — and making sure that insight makes its way back into our design process.”

James Duehning, Mark Van Dyne, Kent Herzog, Alex Lee, and Andrew Schulte: “We need to shift from a deterministic planning model to something more probabilistic, especially with all the uncertainty around future load and generation. The way we identify project needs today doesn’t fully reflect the realities we’re facing.”

From the sidelines of its Annual Transmission Symposium, conversations with Burns & McDonnell’s Alberto Ruiz, Chih-Hung Chen, Jess Kurpius, Zach O'Toole, JC Perkins, Matt Ingram, Matt Lind, Kyle Combes, Michaela Nickell, Brent Windsor, Brad Gardner, Paul Barker, Danny Serrano, Vinny Montemurro, James Duehning, Mark Van Dyne, Kent Herzog, Alex Lee, and Polsinelli law firm’s Andrew Schulte.

Respondents describe an industry grappling with accelerating load growth, infrastructure vulnerability, and policy uncertainty – even as they continue to work toward clean energy goals and distributed resource integration.

“All these resources coming on have a lower accredited capacity than traditional resources. You have to make sure you’re meeting that supply-demand balance in an already tight market. That’s what we’re focused on. We’re also focused on getting more transmission built.”

“Regulatory incentives focusing on improving overall system utilization create a net downward pressure on rates, just as prioritizing rate impact benefits over other benefit-cost tests helps lower rates more readily than do traditional avoided capital cost tests.”

“Leading utilities’ resiliency programs are also typically ahead in their digital journeys by developing geospatial asset registries, accessible outage management systems, and digitized inspection data.”