Load Growth And The Demand Side Revolution

Trillions of dollars of AI capital are chasing roughly 100 gigawatts (“GW”) of electric power, and the nation’s electric-sector regulators – the policymakers at the federal and state levels, as well as the administrators of the various RTOs/ISOs – have a critical role to play in helping them secure it.

In this piece we discuss the potential for a conduit between capital in search of incremental grid capacity and those best positioned to provide it: the companies, governments, and markets focused on unleashing the “demand-side revolution.” These actors are working to identify and utilize the latent capacity currently hiding in plain sight across the nation’s electric grid, capacity that can be “unlocked” through the deployment of demand-side resources (resources that reduce demand for power, shift it across time, or inject supply at the grid’s edge) and well-designed market signals.