Ian Magruder

How do the economics work out?

I asked the same thing to Ian Magruder.

He runs the Utilize Coalition, a grid policy group pushing to get more out of the wires we already have.

The report we put together with Brattle shows that if you can increase grid utilization, by 10 percent over the course of the next decade we could save over 100 billion dollars for americans there are technologies like advanced conductoring and dynamic line rating that can help us take the existing poles wires and infrastructure that we have and help us get more out of our transmission lines without having to build new ones and in some cases we will need to build new ones the grid is aging we're going to need to continue to make upgrades but in the context of the real demand growth moment that we're in we can't build power plants fast enough in this country and so the question is how do we get more power more quickly we just helped pass this law in virginia which received bipartisan support and what it does is it helps The utilities provide grid utilization metrics to their regulator for the very first time down to the substation and feeder level.

This is episode two, Gridlock.

The voice you heard up top is Ian Magruder.

I called him for this.

He runs the Utilize Coalition, a grid policy group pushing to get more out of the power infrastructure that's already built.