Moving the Grid Forward
Charles Bayless is a retired utility executive and board member for TS Conductor, among many other industry affiliations.
As a longtime veteran of the utility industry, I know that I'm biased, but I've also seen enough in this business to say the following with confidence: transmission and distribution infrastructure is the backbone of this country's energy transition.
In all aspects of America's energy leadership, the towers, poles, and wires are crucial. They are vital for grid modernization, reliability, affordability, resilience, decarbonization to reach climate targets, scale our robust renewable energy sector, and meet the needs of the exploding electric vehicle revolution. T&D systems are the connective tissue behind the power that energizes the economy.
And yet, even though we're now more than two decades into a new millennium, T&D conductors remain grounded in technology that dates to the early 1900s, a century ago. It is an area of grid infrastructure ripe for innovation.
If we're going to operate a twenty-first century power grid, we need to vault the underlying conductor technology out of the twentieth century. I'm proud to say that the moment of innovation has at last arrived in earnest.