Paul Kjellander speaks with Maine Chair Phil Bartlett on the New England Conference of Public Utilities Commissioners, Mississippi Chair Chris Brown on the Southeastern Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, and New Mexico Commissioner Patrick O’Connell on the Western Conference of Public Service Commissioners.

“In Vermont, a state-commission-established working group was tasked with estimating resources that could be flexibly managed. That work found that nearly 20% of residential demand and 20% of commercial and industrial demand could be flexibly managed.”

Responding to robust industry interest in VPPs and their potential benefits, the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) and N.C. Clean Energy Technology Center (NCCETC) are collaborating to help states, utilities, and other stakeholders understand the ever-evolving policy and industry landscape.

“New substations, transmission lines, and distribution infrastructure represent enormous capital commitments. If assets are sited without rigorous flood risk assessment, utilities are not just exposing existing infrastructure to harm; they are locking in new exposure for decades.”

“There is now a dynamic where vastly different and sometimes competing goals are in the same room. Our role is to align those disparate objectives into an executable strategy.”

“Much of the existing transmission system was designed for gradual, predictable growth, yet today’s load is concentrated, time-sensitive, and increasingly tied to firm delivery commitments.”

“While spreadsheets can represent data, email becomes the primary way that data moves, which creates problems like lost records, data entry errors, or missed deadlines.”

“The real question is what happens after the data is collected. Utilities do not need to be just data collectors. They need to become data orchestrators.”

“By requiring large loads like data centers to pay their share up front, we are preventing those investments from being shifted onto our broader membership.”

“What has changed is that it is no longer sufficient to plan exclusively from the top down. We must now plan from both the top down and the bottom up.”