End the Gridlock: Why Transmission is Ripe for New Technology

 

Recent advances in materials science promise a new, truly competitive paradigm for grid investment without land-use headaches or "big-iron" solutions.

It looks like high noon for electric industry restructuring. Price spikes and the threat of brownouts and blackouts have led to intense pressure to reverse course in California. Reform efforts in other states are stalling. Another Congress has adjourned with little headway on the issue. Prospects for the incoming session are highly uncertain, given an election that yielded virtual dead heats in races for the presidency, Senate and House alike. Some political commentators are suggesting that the "benign gridlock" of the past could give way to "detrimental gridlock" in the coming two years.

Few areas more urgently call for action than the safeguarding of customers' access to reliable, competitively priced electricity. More than ever, electric power is the lifeblood of our technology-dependent economy. Done right, competitive reform can strengthen both reliability and market price discipline. Indeed, after years of low commitments to new power generation, reforms in that sector have led to a huge infusion of capital and tremendous innovation in efficient, "green" distributed generation technologies.