The Future of Power May Not Run Through the Grid - But Alongside It.
“The U.S. electricity bottleneck isn't generation. It's market design.
3–7 year interconnection queues. Regulatory frameworks built for 1–2% annual growth. An institutional ecosystem with no incentive to move faster.
Meanwhile, AI and data center loads are arriving in chunks equivalent to plugging in a new Philadelphia.
I spoke with Travis Fisher (Cato Institute, ex-FERC/DOE) and Glen Lyons — the architects behind Consumer-Regulated Electricity (CRE) — about a parallel path gaining real traction:
Privately financed, islanded power systems serving new industrial loads entirely outside the regulated grid.
Three takeaways:
1. The barrier is institutional, not technical. States are solving it faster than Congress — five already have active CRE frameworks.
2. Scale is here. Joule Energy Partners is building at 12 GW. This isn't conceptual.
3. The model is evolving. "Island-of-islands" — interconnected private systems with optional grid backup — is emerging as the architecture for reliability-critical loads.
CRE doesn't replace the grid. It creates a second lane — shifting infrastructure risk from ratepayers to private capital.”
