There is a framing that technology and innovation moves at the speed of a hare while policy is the tortoise trying to keep up. Energy policy is often reacting to the main issues of the day, and consequently, whatever is the main issue of the day will dominate policy conversations and considerations.
The conversation now is all about hyperscalers and data centers. And, consequently, all the policy talk is about data centers. The North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) projects peak demand rising by about a quarter over the coming decade. PJM is having to contract with said data centers to keep the lights on, and ERCOT hit record peak demand of 91.1 gigawatts in July.
But in the background, there are some new technologies (thermal batteries, grid forming inverters, direct air capture and advanced chip factories, which are related to data centers but their own unique vector) that will require serious policy consideration for the impact they will have on the power sector. By the time one of these becomes the next crisis, we might have lost the window to address it.
Any new technology added to the grid will have to serve some need. And those needs are shaving (even lowering) peak demand, improving reliability, cutting emissions and sharing the economic cost of upgrading our grid. So here’s some future casting for what these technologies are and what impacts they will have.
