Special Reports & Commentary

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La. Energy Leads Say Determined Approach Lands Data Center Contracts
Louisiana utility players described their pull-out-all-the-stops, gas-propelled campaign to attract data centers as another hyperscaler announced plans for a new artificial intelligence-training facility in the state.
Colonial Pipeline
The Co-location Quandary: The Cybersecurity Risk to Nuclear
Opinion writer Shahid Mahdi worries about the cybersecurity risks of co-location, and asks if a co-located data center is hit with ransomware, does the nuclear plant have to trip offline?
NRDC
PJM’s Reliability Backstop Auction: Fixing Half the Problem
PJM, with prompting from 13 governors, is trying another solution to resource adequacy: the “Reliability Backstop Auction.” While details still are being negotiated, this boils down to throwing money at new power plants, says Tom Rutigliano of the NRDC.
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ISO-NE CEO Chadalavada Talks Winter Operations, Market Reform
Just a few weeks after taking over as CEO of ISO-NE, Vamsi Chadalavada faced a trial-by-fire introduction to the job.
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FERC Commissioners: Solutions Emerging to Large Load Conundrum
Data centers’ demand and speed-to-power prerogatives continue to dominate discussions in the electric industry, but some commonsense policy answers are starting to emerge, FERC Commissioners Judy Chang and David Rosner said.
The Century Foundation commentary with data from UC-CCP
Electricity Rates are the Political Livewire Threatening the Industry
Residential electricity bills have moved from being background noise in discussions about resource adequacy, decarbonization, and transmission expansion to being the loudest political and business risk, says Dej Knuckey.
Windy.com
Navigating Extreme Winter Storms: A System-of-systems Perspective
With Winter Storm Fern, we learned, once again, that our nation’s power grids rely on a significant fossil mix when the weather turns nasty, writes columnist Peter Kelly-Detwiler.
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In 1st Year Under Nickell, SPP Learns to ‘Boldly Lead’
Faced with the same demand from data centers and crypto miners as other grid operators, SPP responded by putting together a 30-person team to come up with a process to interconnect the large loads.
CAISO
Collaboration, Engagement Key for CAISO’s Elliot Mainzer
Elliot Mainzer said working at BPA taught him two critical lessons that he's applied at CAISO: the importance of "robust stakeholder engagement" and "collaborative working relationships."
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NARUC Focuses on Large Loads’ Impact on Reliability and Affordability
NARUC’s Winter Policy Summit focused on the main issue facing the power industry — how to reliably and affordably interconnect new large load customers.

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