Advanced Conductors for New Transmission Buildout
Jason Huang is founder and CEO of TS Conductor, a U.S. manufacturer of next generation advanced conductors that enable utilities to increase capacity while reducing project costs and saving customers money. His career spans senior leadership positions at companies like CTC Global, BAE Systems, Owens Corning, and Solvay, as well as working with prestigious organizations such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and on critical defense aircraft projects.
Many utilities see advanced conductors as a reconductoring solution for niche use cases with special requirements such as river crossings or other long spans. In reality, today’s advanced conductors are a game-changer for everyday new builds, too. Every new transmission project is a long-term investment, and the conductors you choose today will lock in performance capabilities for decades to come.
Recent studies and utility deployments show that reconductoring with advanced conductors can vastly improve the performance of America’s existing transmission systems. But there’s no question about it: We also need substantial new-build transmission capacity to meet escalating demand, interconnect generation, and support reliability.
The U.S. DOE’s National Transmission Needs Study forecasts that in just the next decade — by 2035 — the country could need double the intraregional transmission capacity and potentially quintuple the interregional transfer capacity of today. Reconductoring is a partial solution. But clearly, substantial new-build transmission capacity is also required, and which conductors grid operators use will have ramifications for many decades to come.