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A Smarter, More Connected Grid: How BAAJA Helps Transmission

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The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026 (or BAAJA for short) is a transformative bill and an essential step to speed up the deployment of clean energy and transmission in the United States.  

It includes provisions that will spur the development of much-needed transmission infrastructure by improving planning across states and regions, deploying advanced transmission technologies (ATTs) to get more out of existing power lines, and speeding up the process to connect new generation and storage waiting to come online. 

A bigger, smarter, and more connected grid is how the country gets more affordable, more reliable power. 

BAAJA includes a wide range of provisions that make the permitting process more efficient. This blog post breaks down why the key transmission provisions matter.

Interregional Planning  

Extreme weather is testing the grid like never before. When one region is pushed to its limits, drawing power from neighboring regions is often what keeps the lights on. 

Millions of customers lost power during Winter Storms Uri and Elliott, in part because when power plants failed, the grid couldn’t transmit available power from other regions to where it was needed. During Winter Storm Uri’s freezing temperatures, millions of Texans were in the dark for more than four days, while neighboring grids with stronger connections lost power for just a few hours. With temperatures in the single digits for most of the storm, hundreds of Texans died. 

During Winter Storm Fern, by contrast, improved transmission prevented mass blackouts even as the Midwest experienced spiking power demand, demonstrating the benefits of transmission investment to American factories and families. 

We need to build new transmission across many different regions. BAAJA requires regions to plan together and writes long-term interregional planning into law, so one region can back up its neighbor in a crisis. While the bill recognizes the wide array of cost savings and reliability benefits of transmission, it also ensures that the cost of those lines is paid for only by the regions that benefit from them.  

BAAJA also streamlines FERC’s authority to permit certain long-distance, high-voltage lines that deliver national cost savings and reliability benefits. 

Advanced Transmission Technologies  

Not every grid upgrade requires building new lines on new land. ATTs let operators safely move more power through existing lines and are some of the fastest and cheapest ways to add capacity and reduce congestion on the grid.  

BAAJA requires transmission owners to conduct evaluations of ATTs during operations planning and, if they prove cost-effective, to deploy them, with potential penalties for non-compliance. It also ensures that upgrading existing transmission lines to improve their efficiency is not subject to onerous permitting requirements.

Faster Interconnection  

At the end of 2025, there were more than 2 terawatts of generation and storage capacity trapped in U.S. interconnection queues waiting to connect to the grid. This represents 1.6 times the total operating capacity of the entire domestic grid.

BAAJA requires grid operators to adopt and share best practices for using computing tools to speed up interconnection studies, and to provide standardized grid data and methodologies to inform them. It also requires transmission to be planned holistically with the interconnection process, rather than piecemeal and reactively, and along with more certainty about what it will cost to connect new resources.

These reforms would help much-needed generation and storage come online faster.

How to Stay Engaged  

Want to learn more? We’re hosting a webinar on October 7 to share more details about what’s in, what’s out, and what’s next when it comes to the bill.  

We’re also hosting a Grid Forum on October 22 where industry experts will discuss what the bill means for the future of America’s power grid. 

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