Heinrich Questions FERC Commissioners on Advanced Transmission Technologies and Improving Generator Interconnection Processes to Efficiently Deliver Energy to Customers

VIDEO: U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Ranking Member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, questions FERC Commissioners during FERC Oversight Hearing, July 22, 2026.

On Incentives for Advanced Transmission Technologies:

Ranking Member Heinrich began his questioning by asking the Commissioners, "We all know that there haven't always been the built-in economic incentives to put some of those things onto the grid, despite the fact that they can often have very outsized and efficient impacts on how we utilize the existing grid in a way that doesn't require enormous economic upgrades. So I wanted to ask if you wanted to add anything to that conversation, and also what would be helpful from Congress in terms of congressional action to reinforce a posture of incentivizing these technologies? Commissioner See, do you want to jump on that first? You were the first to mention it."

Commissioner See answered, "Happy to, Senator Heinrich. I think when we look at our reliability and affordability challenges, it's certainly necessary that we need to build new infrastructure, and that's expensive, so nobody's denying that. But there's also a really important moment for us to make the most out of the existing infrastructure, and that's when ATTs, GETs, these technologies can be incredibly helpful. They're not always the best solution, but they are, and they can give significant speed and cost savings to customers. I was really grateful that my colleagues and I were able to come together and include more language about that in the 206 orders we talked about to make sure that utilities take a hard look at these options when they're considering transmission upgrades. In terms of what more can be done, you know, FERC has limited authorities in this area, so we can encourage, we can incentivize. But if Congress, if this is an issue Congress wants to take up and gives FERC more clarity and authorities, I would love to see us to be able to run in this direction because I think it can be so helpful for both reliability and affordability."

Heinrich followed, "Very helpful. Do either of you, the Chairwoman..."

Chairwoman Swett followed, "Thank you for the question, Senator. I fully agree with you and Commissioner See on this one. We're looking at GETs from every angle, and we recently had a software conference where I had a panel added to have... panelists specifically who have experience implementing GETs in their utilities and their markets to see how that's playing out, the economics associated with it, and I think it's getting a lot of traction. The biggest barrier, to answer your question at a point, the Federal Power Act prohibits FERC explicitly from mandating building of any particular transmission facility, except for the backstop siting authority, and it is my personal opinion as a lawyer that GETs fall under that category. So until Congress changes that prohibition, FERC's not really able to instruct anything more aggressively."

Heinrich followed, "But you can force the analysis, which can then show the most efficient economic path."

Swett followed, "And we have required that type of analysis in our June orders.

Heinrich followed, "Commissioner Chang?"

Chang answered, "Great, thank you very much, Senator, for that question. I too support the use of advanced transmission technology more than support. I think it's time that we take pilot projects and the industry takes pilot projects and really implement the most advanced technologies to save consumers' money. Again, if the U.S. wants to be a leader in technology, this is another set of technology that we can lead in the industry. When it comes to, certainly, I think if Congress wants to work on this, we would be very happy to implement any particular changes under the current authority when transmission owners and developers come to FERC and request for incentives. I think there is some room for FERC to ask the transmission owners and developers to demonstrate to and illustrate, or to explain what technologies they're implementing and what else they have considered and why they are not adopting the best technologies."

Heinrich answered, "I appreciate that."

On Generator Interconnection Process Reform and AI:

Heinrich asked, "According to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, at the end of 2025, there were more than 8,200 proposed power plants trying to connect to the grid, but only 13% of the capacity that has attempted to get on the grid between 2000 and 2020 has actually reached commercial operation. I recently introduced the Grid Connection and Congestion Management Act, which would allow generators to interconnect even faster to the grid. But I want to ask you, Commissioner Rosner, what steps beyond Order 2023 should FERC take to further improve generator interconnection processes? In particular, you mentioned automation and AI tools, and I think that's a space that we're just beginning to see the potential of. And if so, if you could touch on that, I would appreciate it."

Commissioner Rosner responded, "Thank you for the question, Senator Heinrich, and yes, I think it's obvious to me that there's a huge opportunity to be smarter about how we run our interconnection processes. The Texas model is one example. Implementing automation on our current queue cluster study process is another example. In the SPP region (Southwest Power Pool) region, we had a proposal from them that they brought to us with unanimous support from their states that reimagined how to do both generator interconnection and transmission planning together. But back on automation, there's a huge opportunity there in MISO. Their old way with pen and paper and engineers doing the power flow studies, it took them 686 days to process their 2021 cluster, over 100 gigawatts of generation. Using automation, the new way-less than 10 days. And there's open public benchmarking on how well this worked. It was very, very close and continues to get better. And from my perspective, this is all about, let's give applicants, people who want to connect new power plants to the grid, let's give them the answer on whether it makes sense to connect to the grid in that location or not. And also, I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't already say appreciate your leadership on transmission, regional, interregional. None of these interconnection queue reforms work if there isn't a grid to plug the power plant into, and we can talk more about some examples of how that hasn't worked so well recently, and that's a huge problem."

A video of Heinrich's questioning can be found here.

###