In July 2026 the United States Department of Energy released a draft National Transmission Needs Study for consultation and public comment under section 216(a)(1) of the Federal Power Act. The study identifies present or expected transmission capacity constraints or congestion that harm or may harm consumers and that transmission solutions could alleviate. It is framed against executive orders on grid reliability and energy dominance, and against operational challenges including accelerating load growth from data centres, cyber and physical security risks, aging infrastructure and a shifting resource mix.
Historical investment facts in the draft
DOE reports that transmission investments energised between 8,700 and 12,500 circuit-miles each year from 2016 to 2023, producing a national total of 85,000 circuit-miles of newly constructed, upgraded or rebuilt lines rated above 69 kilovolts between 2016 and 2024. About 40 percent of those circuit-miles were driven by reliability needs, with load growth, aging infrastructure and generation interconnection also important. Incumbent utilities or transmission owners built 98 percent of circuit-miles in that period. ERCOT installed the most circuit-miles among regions highlighted, while ISO-NE and NYISO showed high capital costs per unit of load.
Congestion costs and timing
The draft cites estimated United States transmission congestion costs of 11 billion dollars in 2023, down from a high of 21 billion dollars in 2022 associated with natural gas price spikes and severe weather such as Winter Storm Elliott. Most congestion costs concentrate in 5 percent of hours, especially with day-ahead to real-time variance, high net load, cold weather and high intermittent generation.
Interregional value
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory analysis summarised in the study finds the highest congestion value on links that cross market seams or interconnections. Cross-interconnection links from ERCOT to neighbours show average locational marginal price differentials of 31 to 48 dollars per megawatt-hour across 2012 to 2023; WestConnect to SPP links show 18 to 33 dollars per megawatt-hour. Within-region differentials are lower, with New York City versus the rest of NYISO among the higher intra-regional examples.
What planners should do with a draft needs study
Use it to pressure regional and interregional planning processes aligned with Order No. 1920. Do not confuse need identification with a construction permit. Pair it with large-load tariff reforms underway at FERC and with retirement deferral realities in the generator inventory. The draft's purpose, DOE states, is not to prescribe particular solutions but to assess need so industry and the public can propose timely fixes. That is the right humility. The wrong response is to file the PDF and change nothing on the rights of way.
The practical discipline is unchanged across fuel types and market constructs. Read the primary docket or statistical release before arguing about national destiny. Separate nameplate megawatts from accredited capacity, and contracted offtake from commissioned trains. Map interconnection and transmission lead times onto customer energisation promises rather than the other way round. Treat winter and summer extreme cases as design conditions. When federal policy shifts, update the slope of the forecast without rewriting physical laws. When state commissions push back on cost allocation, treat that push-back as part of the build path rather than as noise. United States energy infrastructure is financed, permitted and operated by people who must reconcile those constraints daily. Analysis that ignores them will not survive first contact with a peak day. Regional operators will continue to publish winter assessments, summer reliability outlooks and interconnection status reports. Those documents, read together with EIA inventories and FERC orders, give a clearer picture than any single speech. Investors should price execution risk honestly. Policymakers should resist the urge to treat one statute or one survey table as the whole system. The grid is a machine. Machines care about margins, not metaphors.