Building an Interregional Transmission Overlay for a Resilient U.S. Grid

Examining how a U.S. Interregional Transmission Overlay could address aging grid infrastructure, surging demand, and renewable integration challenges.

What Attendees will Learn

  1. Why the current regional grid structure is approaching its limits — Explore how coal-fired generation retirements, renewable integration, aging infrastructure past its 50-year lifespan, and exponential large-load growth from data centers and manufacturing reshoring are creating unprecedented pressure on the U.S. transmission system.
  2. How an Interregional Transmission Overlay (ITO) would work — Understand the architecture of a high-capacity overlay using HVDC and 765 kV EHVAC technologies, how it would bridge the East/West/ERCOT seams, integrate renewable generation from resource-rich regions to demand centers, and potentially reduce electric system costs by hundreds of billions of dollars through 2050.
  3. The five major challenges facing interregional transmission — Examine the obstacles of cross-state planning coordination, investment barriers including permitting and cost allocation, energy market harmonization across regions, supply chain limitations for specialized equipment, and political and regulatory uncertainties that must be navigated.
  4. Actionable steps to begin building the ITO roadmap — Learn how utilities and developers can identify strategic corridors, form multi-stakeholder oversight entities, coordinate regional studies, secure state and federal support through FERC Order 1920 and DOE programs, and develop equitable cost allocation frameworks to move from vision to implementation.

Designing Broadband LPDA-Fed Reflector Antennas With Full-Wave EM Simulation

A practical guide to designing log-periodic dipole array fed parabolic reflector antennas using advanced 3D MoM simulation — from parametric modeling to electrically large structures.

What Attendees will Learn

  1. How to set design requirements for LPDA-fed reflector antennas — Understand the key specifications including bandwidth ratio, gain targets, and VSWR matching constraints across the full operating range from 100 MHz to 1 GHz.
  2. Why advanced 3D EM solvers enable simulation of electrically large multiscale structures — Learn how higher order basis functions, quadrilateral meshing, geometrical symmetry, and CPU/GPU parallelization extend MoM simulation capability by an order of magnitude.
  3. How to apply a systematic three-step design strategy with proven workflow starting with first optimizing the stand-alone LPDA for VSWR and gain, then integrating the reflector, and finally tuning parameters to satisfy all performance requests including gain and impedance matching.
  4. How parametric CAD modeling accelerates LPDA design — Discover how self-scaling geometry, automated wire-to-solid conversion, and multiple-copy-with-scaling features enable fully parametrized antenna models that streamline optimization across dozens of design variants.