Congress subsidizes grid tech companies with ratepayer savings—no cap.
H.R. 2703 — Advancing GETs Act of 2025 · Filed by Kathy Castor (D-FL) · 12 cosponsors · Introduced Apr 8, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill requires the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to create a financial incentive program that returns 10–25% of the cost savings from grid-enhancing technologies (hardware or software that improves transmission efficiency) back to the companies that install them, over a 3-year period. It also mandates annual reporting on transmission congestion costs and requires the Department of Energy to publish a guide and provide technical assistance for deploying these technologies.
Why we flagged it
The bill's core mechanism is a shared-savings incentive that returns 10–25% of efficiency gains to private developers—a subsidy funded implicitly through ratepayer savings. The transparency and technical-assistance provisions are secondary and do not alter the primary financial flow.
What the text implies
- The 10–25% shared-savings return is not capped by total dollar amount, meaning large-scale deployments could generate substantial private payouts from grid savings that would otherwise accrue to ratepayers.
- The bill defines 'developer' as 'the entity that pays to install' the technology, which may include utilities themselves, creating a pathway for utilities to capture savings from their own investments while ratepayers bear the underlying grid costs.
- Congestion-cost reporting (Section 4) creates a public map of grid constraints but does not mandate that FERC use this data to prioritize grid-enhancing technology deployment, leaving the connection between transparency and action unclear.
- The 4x cost-to-savings threshold for eligibility is determined by FERC but applied uniformly across all technologies; this may exclude smaller, localized grid improvements that deliver real benefits but lower absolute savings multiples.
- The sunset evaluation (7–10 years post-implementation) is advisory only—FERC may 'maintain, revise, or suspend' the incentive, but the bill contains no mechanism to force termination if the program proves inefficient or captures excessive private value.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
The bill creates a public benefit (improved grid efficiency, transparency through congestion reporting, and technical assistance) but channels financial rewards to private technology developers and utilities, effectively subsidizing private investment in grid infrastructure through ratepayer savings. Citizens may see modest grid improvements, but the primary financial beneficiaries are the companies installing the technology.
Who stands to gain
- transmission technology developers and manufacturers
- electric utilities (if they install grid-enhancing technology)
- software and hardware vendors serving the grid-modernization sector
Named in the bill
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Department of Energy (DOE), transmission facility operators, grid-enhancing technology developers, electric utilities, FERC Order No. 1920
Where it stands
12 cosponsors: 12 Democrats.
- Apr 8, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- Apr 8, 2025 — Referred to House Committee on Energy and Commerce · Congress.gov: “Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
4 lobbying clients named this bill on 4 disclosure filings across 2 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $4,220,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 66 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 72% of bills with at least one filing.
Kathy Castor, the sponsor, reported $1,028,281 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- Google Client Services LLC — $3,570,000 on 1 filing
- Xcel Energy Inc — $370,000 on 1 filing
- Corporate Energy Buyers Association — $210,000 on 1 filing
- Ohio Municipal Electric Association — $70,000 on 1 filing
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 20, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (8,828 characters) on Aug 18, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
“Congress subsidizes grid tech companies with ratepayer savings—no cap.” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/hr2703 Report an error
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