Support bill to upgrade power grid

The U.S. power grid system is in urgent need of upgrades. Our sagging and outdated power lines support this fact.

One of the main issues is the wire. Most of the power lines are wired with a core steel surrounded by strands of aluminum. These old wires heat up when power passes through them or when the outdoor temperatures are extremely warm, causing them to sag, thus restricting the amount of power through the lines resulting in fires and outages. A new type of wire was designed using a core made of carbon fiber and surrounded by trapezoidal pieces of aluminum. These wires don’t sag as much in the heat and can take up to double the amount of power going through them as compared to the old lines.

This upgrade to the new wires would allow for more wind and solar farms to plug into the grid without having to wait for new rights-of-way and towers, which take many years to approve and build.

So why hasn’t this been done when this seems like such an easy fix? The answer is profits. The big utilities profit more by building new transmission lines for large infrastructure projects than it does for upgrading or replacing the existing wires.

The Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act (SB2473/HB3779) introduced in the Illinois legislature in May 2025 includes Grid Enhancing Technologies (GETs) such as upgrading the wire for the transmission lines. The revised version of this bill is currently being debated and expected to be voted on this fall.

Please write your state representatives ask them to support the Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act.

Joseph Reitmeyer

Mount Prospect