While permitting and long delays are a problem, I think the biggest argument is over who pays for the new lines, whether they are separate lines or reconductore

While permitting and long delays are a problem, I think the biggest argument is over who pays for the new lines, whether they are separate lines or reconductored lines. The utilities want the solar and wind farm owners to pay, the farm owners want the utilities or state or federal government to pay. Still haven't heard of any big national or state efforts to double the capacity of their existing electric infrastructure, no matter which way it's done. So if they leave it up to the utilities and the utilities push the costs to businesses, then businesses will be less interested. Also, more than lines are needed, transformers in particular currently take years to build and doubling the line capacity does not double the transformer capacity. It does sound like reconductoring isn't being considered as often as it should though, particularly as a way around permitting problems, so it would be good if that changed. I've wondered if adding sensors to power lines so they can be run at higher capacity is actually a good thing. It means running more of the grid at the very edge of its capabilities, which seems certain to cause more failures. The power engineers would know better than I what the risks are there. You have to wonder why power line sags are causing wildfires in the West when the utilities there could just add some relatively inexpensive sensors to prevent them. It sounds like the utility companies have no incentive to change anything for any reason so change will have to either be mandated or incentivized (or both). High tension lines could also be replaced with DC interconnects or someday with superconducting lines, so there may be other possibilities also. Large capacity storage could play a role also; a line could be run at full capacity off-peak to charge/build up the storage, and then the stored energy used to supply more capacity than the lines can carry at peak. Distributed generation should be part of the solution also. Solar and wind don't have be built as large centralized farms. You don't need a bigger grid if the power is generated close to where it is used.