Breaking the Gridlock: Rethinking Policy for Energy Abundance

"Instead of having the industry compete for “first place” among consumers, we decided to essentially assume what that looked like and give single companies entire franchises, in some cases entire states, and not let anybody else compete. That was a recipe for stagnation.

For a while, it was workable, and we got the predictable effects. We did have stable rates. A lot of people credit the expansion of the grid itself to that model working because we basically mandated it to.

We’re in a very different place now. The grid is expanded almost everywhere. We have pretty close to universal service. The question now is, can the industry move fast enough, and can it supply these new large customers, especially data centers?

We’re talking about customers that are as large, in some cases, as a nuclear power plant showing up to the grid now and asking for service under this paradigm of universal service.

What we’re seeing with this is the technological change and the new demands from the industry colliding headfirst. It’s almost like the tech industry is slamming into the regulatory brick wall that is the utility industry.

I think we should embrace a paradigm change; we should be flexible and move with it."

https://c3newsmag.com/breaking-the-gridlock-rethinking-policy-for-energy-abundance/