Grid Enhancing Technologies Do Exactly What They Say

The world’s electricity grids are facing unprecedented strain as demand surges from electrification, data centers, and renewable energy integration, while aging infrastructure struggles to keep pace. Traditional approaches to grid expansion—building new transmission lines and substations—face mounting challenges including sometimes decade-long permitting processes, escalating costs that can reach billions per project, and growing public resistance to new infrastructure. This mounting pressure has created an urgent need for innovative solutions that can unlock the hidden capacity already embedded within existing transmission networks.

What Are GETs and What Do They Do?

Grid enhancing technologies (GETs) represent a transformative approach to this challenge, offering utilities the ability to safely increase power flows on existing transmission lines by up to 40% in some cases without the need for new construction. These advanced technologies—including dynamic line ratings (DLR) that adjust capacity based on real-time weather conditions, high-temperature advanced conductors that can carry significantly more current, and sophisticated power flow controllers that optimize electricity routing—work by maximizing the utilization of current infrastructure. Rather than building around bottlenecks, GETs eliminate them through smarter, more responsive grid management.

On an episode of The POWER Podcast, Anna Lafoyiannis, program lead for the integration of renewables and co-lead of the GET SET (Grid Enhancing Technologies for a Smart Energy Transition) initiative with EPRI, explained that GETs can be either hardware or software solutions. “Their purpose is to increase the capacity, efficiency, reliability, or safety of transmission lines. So, think of these as adders to your transmission lines to make them even better,” Lafoyiannis said.

“Typically, they reduce congestion costs. They improve the integration of renewables. They increase capacity. They can provide grid service applications. So, they’re really multifaceted—very helpful for the grid,” she said. “At EPRI, we think of them as kind of like a tool in a toolbox.”

The economic and environmental implications are profound. Deploying GETs can defer or eliminate the need for costly new transmission projects while accelerating the integration of renewable energy resources that are often stranded due to transmission constraints. As utilities worldwide grapple with the dual pressures of modernizing their grids and meeting ambitious clean energy targets, GETs offer a compelling path forward that leverages innovation over infrastructure expansion to create a more resilient, efficient, and sustainable electricity system.

Advanced Power Flow Control and How It Works

Smart Wires, a company headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, has seen its grid enhancing technologies deployed across four continents. In collaboration with its customers and partners, Smart Wires says it has unlocked nearly 4 GW of capacity and provided additional operational flexibility to grid operators. Recently, the company announced that Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) will deploy Smart Wires’ advanced power flow control (APFC) technology at its Los Esteros electric substation to mitigate thermal overloads, redirect power flow, and increase available capacity. The project is expected to boost capacity by more than 100 MW at the substation, which is located adjacent to new data centers under development in the Alviso community of San Jose.

Ted Bloch-Rubin, director of Business Development for the Americas at Smart Wires, explained on the podcast how APFC technology works. “Really, what we’re doing is changing the physical characteristics of the transmission circuits that we’re installing on,” he said. “We’re providing a firm—irrespective of weather and ambient system conditions—change in power flow.”

APFC refers to modular power electronics-based devices that can control power flows on transmission and distribution grids by physically changing the characteristics of the lines on which they are deployed. This allows utility operators to “push” power off overloaded lines and “pull” power onto underutilized ones, significantly increasing power delivery through the existing network. This novel approach is essential in meshed grids where, increasingly, a few congested lines act as regional bottlenecks, limiting the capacity of the surrounding network even where spare capacity exists. In addition to this core functionality of power flow control, APFC can provide dynamic services such as improving voltage stability and transient stability.

“What our device is doing is it’s actually injecting a voltage in quadrature with line current—so in series with line current at a 90-degree angle—emulating what folks might consider a series capacitor or a series reactor, which do two opposite things,” Block-Rubin explained. “Series capacitors incentivize flow—transmission power flow—onto their circuits. Whereas, series reactors sort of act as roadblocks—pushing power off of those circuits.”

APFC is designed to be modular and voltage-agnostic. This means that more APFC devices can be easily and quickly added to existing deployments over time or relocated to an alternate site if the network need changes. This makes it a flexible grid solution that can also be rapidly deployed to support the connection of new generation when other equipment may still have been in the permitting or delivery phases.

“We’ve had projects move over a gigawatt of power without building a single new line,” Bloch-Rubin said. “That’s really exciting. And that speed and control and affordability and flexibility—both in deployment and dispatch—create a whole host of interesting applications that I think are really exciting for planners, for utilities, and certainly for customers.”

Collaborating on Complementary Solutions

EPRI is keenly focused on four GETs that it believes have very high potential to alleviate grid strain and that are very close or already capable of being deployed at large scale. In addition to APFC, DLR solutions, advanced conductors, and topology optimization are in EPRI’s toolbox.

“There isn’t a silver bullet—I wish there was—but there is a really good approach of using all of the technologies, all the options, complementary,” Lafoyiannis said. “I’m not going to pick a favorite. I will say that as I’ve been working on grid enhancing technologies, my personal favorite technology has changed over time as I’ve learned about each of them—each of their use cases. You just find out more and more cool ways that people think of applying them and different ways to use them.”

Yet, with projections that load could grow greatly in coming years as data centers expand and electrification continues, GETs won’t solve all of the problems. Lafoyiannis suggested utilities must also add more traditional transmission infrastructure and collaborate on other solutions.

“When we think of data center growth, it’s mostly very local, very regional—big data centers in certain spots,” Lafoyiannis said. “So, because of that, it requires this even deeper collaboration than you might have with other types of loads. We’re seeing this need for collaboration between the owners and the developers, utilities, government, all of those stakeholders,” she said. “It’s about making sure that we are ready for the future and working all together.”

To hear the full interview with Lafoyiannis and Bloch-Rubin, which contains more about GETs and power grid optimization, listen to The POWER Podcast. Click on the SoundCloud player below to listen in your browser now or use the following links to reach the show page on your favorite podcast platform:

For more power podcasts, visit The POWER Podcast archives.

—Aaron Larson is POWER’s executive editor (@AaronL_Power, @POWERmagazine).