The End of Natural Monopoly – A Schumpeterian Shift in the electric power sector

“The data-center moment is exposing the mismatch between our institutional form and our technological reality. Hyperscalers need power delivered on timelines that feel like the speed of light in the current regulatory structure.

That is why the CREU model matters. It creates the possibility of full-stack power companies – privately financed systems in which generation, transmission, and load are assembled under a single capital structure and governed by contract.

This is a Schumpeterian shift.

For a century, innovation in electricity has occurred inside a fixed institutional structure. Now innovation can occur at the level of firm architecture itself – financing, construction speed, risk allocation, and pricing.

We move from a world in the utility rate base determines the pace of infrastructure, to one in which multiple infrastructure platforms compete. And to be honest, I would love more entrepreneurs to build more transmission and distribution companies.

In the Heatmap piece, Travis Fisher joked that only four people – himself, Glen Lyons, Joseph Schumpeter, and Wayne Crews – believe transmission might not be a natural monopoly.

He is wrong. The natural monopoly in electricity is not a physical law. It is a legal artifact. And there are more than four of us.

I am one of them.”

https://gridlockedunlocked.substack.com/p/the-kv-weekly-digest-7