11 States Now Mandate Advanced Transmission Technology

The Pennsylvania House of Representatives unanimously passed HB 2233 on May 5, 2026, requiring utilities proposing transmission upgrades to study advanced transmission technologies and giving the Pennsylvania PUC authority to mandate their inclusion. The bill now sits in the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee. If it becomes law, Pennsylvania will be the 11th state with an advanced transmission technology mandate on the books.

Eleven states is no longer a trend. It is the regulatory baseline.

The procurement consequence is direct: utilities in mandate states can no longer file a transmission project plan that ignores high-performance conductors, dynamic line rating, power flow controllers, or topology optimization software. PUCs across these 11 states now have the authority to send a project back to the drawing board if the filing does not study an advanced transmission technology mandate as part of the proposed solution.

What HB 2233 Actually Requires

Sponsored by Rep. Elizabeth Fiedler (D-PA), HB 2233 covers PPL Electric, PECO Energy, and the four FirstEnergy Pennsylvania subsidiaries (Met-Ed, Penelec, Penn Power, West Penn Power). The bill defines advanced transmission technologies (ATTs) as five specific equipment and software categories:

• High-performance conductors: advanced and composite-core conductors, including ACCC, ACCR, and equivalents
• Grid-enhancing technologies (GETs): dynamic line rating systems most prominently
• Advanced power flow controllers
• Topology optimization software
• Other technologies the PUC identifies as avoiding new infrastructure or increasing capacity and efficiency

The mechanism is procedural. When a utility files for a transmission upgrade or new project, the filing must include an ATT study. The PUC then has the authority to mandate inclusion of an ATT to fully or partially resolve the identified need. The bill does not pick winners among ATT vendors. It picks ATTs over conventional rebuild as the procurement default.

A 2024 analysis cited in the bill’s record projected that grid-enhancing technologies could enable 6.6 GW of clean energy across five PJM states with $1 billion per year in cost savings. That figure is what gave the bill bipartisan cover for unanimous passage in a state where transmission politics are usually anything but.

The 11-State Pattern

Pennsylvania joins the following states with active ATT or GET mandates: Utah, Indiana, New Mexico, South Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Louisiana, Connecticut, Delaware, and Colorado (which passed mid-April 2026, roughly three weeks before PA’s House vote). The pattern crosses red, blue, and purple states, and it spans every major RTO footprint except CAISO.

That breadth is what changes the procurement math. A national OEM cannot treat ATT mandates as a regional carve-out. Conventional transmission equipment vendors have to assume that share-of-wallet for ACSR conductor, lattice tower retrofits, and conventional series compensation will compress as PUCs across these states redirect filings toward the GET equivalent.

It also closes the political escape hatch that utilities used in the 2022-2024 cycle, when a single state mandate could be characterized as an outlier. Eleven states with materially similar definitions and procedural mechanisms reads as a national policy direction.

Procurement Implications by Equipment Category

The ATT definition translates directly into a procurement bill of materials.

High-Performance Conductors

The shift from ACSR to advanced conductor in mandate states pulls forward demand for composite-core and aluminum-conductor composite-reinforced (ACCR) products. Vendor names include Southwire (C7 ACCC), CTC Global (ACCC carbon-core), Sterlite, ZTT America, and 3M (ACCR). Utilities that have built their transmission specs around ACSR for forty years now have to qualify alternative conductor types in their material standards, which is a 12-to-24 month internal process before an RFQ can even go out.

Procurement teams should expect ATT-mandate filings to drive new transmission RFQs that explicitly call out composite-core or ACCR alternatives against any ACSR baseline. The cost-per-amp framing rather than cost-per-foot framing covered in our composite versus steel transmission conductor analysis is the evaluation framework that wins these filings at the PUC level.

Dynamic Line Rating

DLR retrofits target existing lines to extract 5 to 30 percent more capacity through line-mounted sensors, weather-data integration, and EMS upgrades. Hardware deployment per line is small. Sensors run in the $5,000 to $20,000 range per span. The software, communications, and integration spend is where the dollars sit.

The DLR vendor field includes LineVision (line-mounted), Heimdall Power, Ampacimon, Lindsey Systems, and Ambient Solutions. The category overlaps with FERC Order 881 ambient-adjusted ratings, which PJM went live on March 4, 2026 and which the remaining RTOs are implementing through 2028. Procurement teams that have already standardized on one of these vendors for FERC Order 881 compliance will see incremental DLR spend layered on top of the AAR baseline. See our PJM FERC Order 881 procurement analysis for the RTO-by-RTO compliance timeline.

Advanced Power Flow Controllers

This is a higher-ticket category than DLR but a more targeted one. Smart Wires (PowerLine Guardian, SmartValve) and Mitsubishi Electric (UPFC) are the two names that appear in most ATT filings. These devices slot into specific congested corridors, and a single deployment can defer or eliminate a tower-and-conductor rebuild. Utilities with congested 230 kV or 345 kV corridors in mandate states should expect to see power flow controller alternatives in every filing reviewed by their PUC.

Topology Optimization Software

The software side of the ATT definition. NewGrid (Perch), GridBright, and OATI compete with PSS/E (Siemens) and PSLF (GE Vernova) add-ons. Topology optimization is a services-led sale, and the deployment unit is a study and integration contract more than a hardware shipment. Pennsylvania PUC is likely to look for utilities to demonstrate they have evaluated topology optimization before approving conventional rebuild, even where the eventual decision lands on conventional equipment.

What This Means for Distribution Buyers

Most distribution buyers serve municipal utilities and cooperatives that are not directly bound by IOU-targeted ATT mandates. The pattern still matters for two reasons.

Interconnection capacity benefit. Munis and co-ops that interconnect to IOU transmission in PA, OH, IN, NM, UT, SC, OR, LA, CT, DE, or CO will see capacity gains as the IOU complies with the mandate. That changes the load-serving headroom calculation on the muni or co-op’s own distribution system. A muni that was planning a substation expansion to handle a 15 MW industrial customer may discover that DLR-driven capacity gains on the upstream IOU corridor change the timing of that expansion.

Political cover for the same equipment on the muni system. A muni or co-op transmission planner who wants to deploy GETs on their own 69 kV or 138 kV system now has 11 states’ worth of PUC-blessed precedent to cite at a board meeting. ATT-mandate compliance has moved from “what is this new technology” to “what the IOU next door is being required to do,” which makes board-level capex approval substantially easier.

The procurement angle for distributors selling into mandate-state munis and co-ops is to lead with reference to the IOU-side procurement that the same PUC has already directed. That conversation lands very differently than a cold pitch on a vendor’s product line.

Adjacent Distribution-Side Signals

The ATT mandate trend is one of three distribution-side procurement signals that emerged or extended in the May 2026 cycle. The other two reinforce the same general direction.

Front-of-meter storage as an ATT alternative. Jigar Shah and Arnab Pal of Deploy Action argued in a May 7 op-ed that the fastest grid expansion path is front-of-meter (FOM) storage on the distribution system, deployable in 6 to 18 months at substations and feeders that need relief. The argument is consistent with the ATT direction: stop assuming that every new megawatt requires new poles, wires, substations, and peakers. The procurement BOM for a 1-to-10 MW community-scale BESS at a feeder relief point uses padmount transformers in the 1-to-10 MVA range, 15 kV-class metal-clad switchgear, BESS-interconnect protection relays, and reclosers and sectionalizers, much of it on shorter lead times than transmission equipment. Distributors with strong padmount transformer and MV switchgear inventory can position against transmission-rebuild lead times the same way DLR positions against tower replacement.

Muni-scale wildfire undergrounding reference design. The City of Palo Alto Utilities is roughly 80 percent through a 9-mile undergrounding of the Foothills neighborhood, a state-designated High Fire Threat District zone, with completion targeted for June 2026. The project includes a computer-vision-based fire-detection sensor network that the California Wildfire Safety Advisory Board flagged as not yet widely deployed. CPAU is a 30-employee public-power utility, which makes the project a procurement reference design for smaller western munis that have HFTD overlap but not IOU-scale engineering staff. Burbank Water and Power, Alameda Municipal Power, Healdsburg Electric, Plumas Sierra REC, Trinity PUD, Northern California Power Agency members, Roseville, Lassen MUD, and Truckee Donner all sit in the buyer set that watches a muni-scale undergrounding template. The procurement BOM is 12-to-25 kV underground primary cable, padmount transformers, padmount switchgear, junction cabinets, sectionalizers, polymer-concrete vaults, and the fire-detection sensor adjacency. Cable cost runs $80 to $200 per foot installed, which puts the 9-mile Foothills cable spend in the $4 to $10 million range before transformers and switchgear.

The connection across these three signals is that distribution-side equipment categories are being pulled into the conversation that transmission rebuild used to own. Eleven states with ATT mandates is the political signal. FOM storage on substations and feeders is the engineering signal. Muni-scale undergrounding is the reference-design signal. All three compress the procurement timeline from “next IRP cycle” to “this year’s RFQ.”

Procurement Action This Week

For procurement teams in any of the 11 ATT-mandate states (PA pending Senate action), three actions belong on the desk this week:

1. Audit the next two transmission filings on your system. If the project plan does not include an ATT evaluation, expect PUC pushback. Front-load the GET study so that filing timelines hold.

2. Qualify at least one composite-core or ACCR conductor in your transmission material standard. The 12-to-24 month internal qualification process is the bottleneck. Starting it now keeps your RFQs open to ATT-compliant alternatives by 2027.

3. Get a DLR pilot scoped on a known-congested corridor. A 5-to-30 percent capacity gain on an existing line is the cheapest capacity you will procure this decade, and PUC review of any future rebuild filing on the same corridor will look for the data the pilot generates.

The federal-level REWIRE Act analysis covers the permitting tailwind that compounds the state-level mandate trend. Together, the federal NEPA categorical exclusion and the 11-state ATT-mandate pattern point to compressed reconductoring procurement timelines through 2028.

Related Reading

• Hyperscaler Utility Capex Q1 2026: Three Strategies
• PJM Goes Live on FERC Order 881: 15-40% Capacity Gain
• Composite vs Steel Conductor Cost Analysis
• Grid Modernization Procurement Guide

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The procurement BOM for ATT-mandate filings, a state-by-state compliance calendar, vendor-by-vendor pricing benchmarks, and the contract-language redlines that hold up at PUC review live in the full DistroForge intelligence report. Request a sample.