Transmission Lines and Fiber

There is an unprecedented boom of construction for electric transmission lines. These are the giant towers that are used to carry electricity for long distances. The boom was kick-started in the last few years as transmission lines have been built to support solar farms, wind farms, and some new nuclear power plants. But the boom went into overdrive by the sudden explosion of new data centers being created to support AI. The International Energy Agency predicts that in the U.S. that the growth of data centers will consume 6% of all electricity generated in the country by 2026, up from 4% in 2022. The new transmission lines are a natural place to hang fiber optic cables, which can be manufactured to be electrically neutral and non-conducting. There are some issues involved with placing fiber on transmission lines. Many of the proposed transmission lines don’t go to places where there is a demand for fiber, and from an operational perspective, there are issues for technicians. Since there are transmission lines being built with fiber, we’ll have to wait and see in practice how attractive the fiber routes are to broadband companies. There will be a huge number of miles of transmission lines built over the next decade, and it would be a shame if we can’t figure out a practical way for this to benefit our middle-mile and long-haul fiber networks.