Canary Media’s Jeff St. John published a detailed look at OATI’s PowerNow initiative, examining how our Department of Energy ‘SPARK’ proposal could deliver a 10–20% increase in available transmission capacity across participating systems — without building a single new line or tower.
The article, titled “This software firm has a plan to take grid-enhancing tech nationwide,” describes the core logic behind PowerNow: OATI’s transmission management software is already used by nearly every grid operator in North America. By deploying AI-driven enhancements through that existing platform — including real-time and forecast line ratings, automated inter-operator coordination, and smarter congestion management — PowerNow can unlock capacity that’s already there on the physical grid but isn’t being commercially utilized.
The coverage also highlights the DOE’s $1.9 billion SPARK grant program, through which OATI has submitted its PowerNow proposal. SPARK funds projects that can deliver measurable increases in transfer capability using existing infrastructure— exactly the kind of rapid, software-driven deployment that PowerNow is designed to deliver.
What PowerNow delivers
- Automated inter-regional coordination that replaces manual constraint exchanges with near-real-time updates between neighboring operators, eliminating the conservative defaults that artificially restrict capacity today.
- Software-based Dynamic Line Ratings that calculate how much power lines can actually carry based on real conditions, not worst-case assumptions — providing both real-time and days-ahead forecasts.
- AI-enhanced congestion management that integrates flexible resources into dispatch optimization to relieve bottlenecks faster and at lower cost.
The PowerNow coalition includes the California ISO, Southwest Power Pool, PacifiCorp, Dominion Energy, Duke Energy, Florida Power & Light, Portland General Electric, Santee Cooper, Great River Energy, East River Electric, Lakeland Electric, and EPRI— spanning all three U.S. Interconnections.
Want to get involved? We continue to recruit transmission owners and regional grid operators to the initiative.