Grid Enhancing Technologies (GETs): More Megawatts, Same Wires, Less Land
Sensors, smarter routing, and the invisible upgrade that saves land.
The grid does a very human thing. It’s cautious. It operates like today is always the worst day: peak heat, no breeze, everyone cooking dinner at once. That caution keeps the lights on. It also leaves a lot of capacity and clean energy on the table.
Essentially, wasted energy.
Lets start with the plain physics. In the U.S., about 5% of electricity is lost in transmission and distribution on average. It turns into heat on the way to you. That’s not scandal. It’s a reminder that the wires are not free.
Then there’s the more painful waste: clean power we already built but can’t use. In 2024, the California grid operator curtailed 3.4 million megawatt-hours of utility-scale wind and solar, and solar was 93% of what got shut off. That’s not “solar failed.” That’s “the system couldn’t absorb or move it when it showed up.”
Side note: That stat seemed crazy to me. Let’s push for more solar + battery solutions as well.
Then there’s the money bonfire: congestion. When cheaper power can’t get through a constrained path, the grid buys more expensive power closer to load. A Grid Strategies report found nationwide congestion costs have stayed above $10 billion for years and surpassed $12 billion in 2024.
So the problem isn’t just building clean energy. It’s delivering it. And that’s where Grid-Enhancing Technologies (GETs) quietly change the story.
Here’s what’s new: GETs treat the grid less like plumbing and more like logistics. They don’t require a new corridor across a ridgeline. They upgrade how we run the corridors we already have.
First is Dynamic Line Ratings. Today, many transmission lines are limited by “static” ratings based on conservative assumptions rather than real-time conditions. Dynamic ratings use up-to-date weather and operating data to calculate what a line can safely carry right now, instead of what it might carry on a brutal day. FERC’s own explainer is blunt about the point: fixed ratings can underutilize transmission; dynamic ratings help use it more efficiently.
Second is power-flow control. Electricity follows physics, not your preferred route. On a stressed system, one corridor can choke while another has breathing room. Power-flow devices act like steering. Nudging electricity away from the bottleneck so the network shares the load.
Third is topology optimization. Same wires, new play calls. Operators change which lines are in service (within reliability rules) to re-route flow and relieve constraints. It’s the grid learning to use its own map better.
None of this is a silver bullet. It won’t replace the need for new transmission forever. But it can be fast, and it can be big, because you’re improving existing infrastructure rather than starting a fresh fight over new right-of-way.
And that’s the conservation payoff. Every new transmission corridor is a land story: clearing, roads, access routes, fragmentation. Sometimes those tradeoffs are worth it. Sometimes they’re avoidable. GETs are the rare lever that can reduce pressure for “build it anywhere, quickly” decisions by extracting more capacity from the lines we already have. Less panic planning. Fewer rushed scars.
However they are some blockers.
Incentives + cost recovery: GETs save the system money, but nobody wants to be the one holding the bill, so “smart operations” keeps losing to shiny, rate-based steel in the budget line.
Reliability + operator conservatism: GETs ask grid operators to trust live data instead of worst-case rules, and when the penalty for being wrong is an outage, caution wins by default.
The win is not that GETs make the grid perfect. The win is that they make it less wasteful. Less congested. Less prone to turning clean energy into a rounding error. When the grid runs closer to its true capability, we can be choosier about where the big stuff goes. And being choosy is how you protect places.
If you want me to do deeper dives into these technologies please comment. Thanks!
Thank you for reading! I highlight threats to public lands and the energy industry’s impact. I believe clean energy is the future, and ALL energy projects should prioritize private land first to keep wild places wild. When energy extraction is needed on public lands all projects must restore the land after extraction. Public lands are unique and once lost, they’re gone forever.
Sources:
FERC - Explainer on the Implementation of Dynamic Line Ratings
Grid Strategies - Transmission Congestion For 2024
US Energy Information Administration - How much electricity is lost in electricity transmission and distribution in the United States?
US Energy Information Administration - Solar and wind power curtailments are increasing in California