Open Circuit

Electricity affordability has become the defining energy issue of 2026. As policymakers scramble for solutions, two very different playbooks are taking shape.

On one side, a blunt-force federal approach led by the Trump Administration that treats affordability like an emergency. Keep coal plants open. Force markets to change. Make large power users pay directly for new power plants through market interventions.

On the other, a quieter, asset-light strategy is emerging at the state level. In places like Illinois, Virginia, and New Jersey, governors and legislatures are increasingly looking to virtual power plants to meet growing peaks and avoid overbuilding the grid.

This week on Open Circuit, we break down these two paths. What actually lowers costs, and on what timelines?

We start with the federal push to reshape PJM capacity markets and make big energy users pay for new supply. How would that actually work? Is it real market reform, or political signaling?

Then we turn to the state level, where VPPs and distributed resources are increasingly central to affordability plans. We compare how Illinois, Virginia, and New Jersey are approaching the problem.

Join Latitude Media, April 13-14, in San Francisco for Transition-AI 2026, our flagship event on the AI-energy infrastructure buildout. The two-day conference will bring together developers, utilities, regulators, and hyperscalers to align on what’s real, what’s possible, and what can get built to meet AI infrastructure demand. Our podcast listeners get a 10% discount on this year’s conference using the code PODS10. ⁠Register today here⁠!

It’s been nearly a year since a national energy emergency was declared, with big promises on prices and reliability. So we’re asking a simple question: how’s that going?

In this live episode of Open Circuit, recorded at the Power Resilience Forum in Houston, we take stock of a power system under growing strain. Outages are up, prices are up, markets are stressed, and grid reliability experts are warning of a “five-alarm fire.”

We’ll start with a look at how accelerating load growth, tighter reserve margins, delayed interconnection, and extreme weather are colliding — and what breaks first if current planning assumptions don’t change.

Then, we’re joined on stage by Wilson Rickerson, president and co-founder of Converge Strategies, to explore grid resilience through a national security lens. As the military increasingly depends on the civilian grid, what happens when that system is under sustained stress?

Wilson explains why thinking about the grid in a wartime context leads to familiar priorities: flexibility, transmission expansion, regional markets, and better coordination. And we talk about a report from Converge on lessons from the grid at war.

Join Latitude Media, April 13-14, in San Francisco for Transition-AI 2026, our flagship event on the AI-energy infrastructure buildout. The two-day conference will bring together developers, utilities, regulators, and hyperscalers to align on what’s real, what’s possible, and what can get built to meet AI infrastructure demand. Our podcast listeners get a 10% discount on this year’s conference using the code PODS10. ⁠Register today here⁠!

Meta just unveiled the biggest-ever corporate deal for nuclear power. It’s a sprawling set of contracts for both existing plants and next-generation reactors that totals 6.6 gigawatts.

Just a few years ago, the conversation in the U.S. was about which nuclear plants were going to shut down next. Now, some of the world’s largest technology companies are trying to lock them up under long-term contracts, while building new ones.

But critics argue that parts of Meta’s deal don’t add new capacity fast enough — possibly pushing electricity prices even higher in an already-tight market.

And that concern is suddenly political. This week, President Trump said tech companies need to pay their own way when it comes to electricity, signaling just how central data centers are to the national debate over affordability.

This week, we have a breakdown of Meta’s nuclear push. We’ll look at what it means for power markets, how it compares to what the rest of the hyperscalers are doing, and whether this moment actually changes the future of advanced nuclear.

Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Caroline Golin. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand.

With resilience now a leading driver of grid investments, Latitude Media and The Ad Hoc Group are hosting the Power Resilience Forum in Houston, Texas on January 21-23, 2026. Utilities, regulators, innovators, and investors will all be in the room — talking about how to keep the grid running in this new era of heatwaves, wildfires, and storms. Register today here!

This is an episode with a lot of firsts: the first show of the year, the first full show on video, and the first with our new co-host, Caroline Golin.

In 2026, we’re launching a new chapter for Open Circuit as we sharpen our focus on the physical constraints shaping the energy transition — exploding power demand, grids that can’t keep up, tech companies reshaping electricity markets in real time, and investors trying to figure it all out.

This is no longer a conversation about whether clean energy can scale. It’s about whether the systems around it can move fast enough to support the next wave of industrial demand.

To kick things off, we dig into some of the forces redefining the power sector: the fight over capacity, the rise of co-located and merchant power, the limits of data center flexibility, and what Alphabet’s acquisition of Intersect Power tells us about the race to buy power.

We also officially introduce Caroline Golin as our new regular co-host. Caroline brings a unique perspective to Open Circuit: she spent the last seven years inside Google, where she served as global head of energy market development and innovation. 

Caroline helped shape how Google procures electricity, engages utilities, and navigates capacity constraints across global markets. That experience puts her at the center of many of today’s most urgent questions around energy.

Welcome to the new Open Circuit, where we decode how clean energy actually gets built. If you want to watch the episode, subscribe to the show on YouTube!

With resilience now a leading driver of grid investments, Latitude Media and The Ad Hoc Group are hosting the Power Resilience Forum in Houston, Texas on January 21-23, 2026. Utilities, regulators, innovators, and investors will all be in the room — talking about how to keep the grid running in this new era of heatwaves, wildfires, and storms. Register today here!

After more than 40 years in the energy industry, Katherine Hamilton is retiring. And that means she’s also retiring from the podcast after a decade behind the microphone.

In this farewell episode, Katherine shares insights into a career that spanned one of the most transformative periods in energy history. We’ll reflect on her accidental entry into grid engineering at Dominion Virginia Power in the 1980s, where she learned to design distribution circuits, calculate load, and build early efficiency projects. 

She talks about how those experiences gave her an intuitive grasp of how the grid works — a foundation that shaped her roles at NREL, in federal advocacy, in leading industry associations, and becoming a trusted policy voice in clean energy.

We’re deeply grateful for the clarity and optimism Katherine brought to every conversation. Over the years, she helped listeners make sense of policy upheavals, market shifts, and the messy, unpredictable reality of the energy transition. 

This is a chance for us to say thank you. Katherine was an incredibly effective translator for the clean energy industry, and we’re going to miss her deeply. 

This is our final episode of the year, but we’ll be back in January with fresh episodes.

Nextracker is now Nextpower. As electricity demand surges with AI, data centers and electrified infrastructure, solar is the only power source that can scale fast enough to meet this moment. Nextpower is the technology platform built for this future, delivering connected systems that unify the structural, electrical and digital technologies of a solar power plant. Powering what’s next at Nextpower.com. 

Open Circuit is brought to you by Natural Power. Natural Power specializes in renewable energy consulting and engineering, supporting wind, solar, and battery storage projects from concept through financing. Discover how we're creating a world powered by renewable energy at naturalpower.com.

With resilience now a leading driver of grid investments, Latitude Media and The Ad Hoc Group are hosting the Power Resilience Forum in Houston, Texas on January 21-23, 2026. Utilities, regulators, innovators, and investors will all be in the room — talking about how to keep the grid running in this new era of heatwaves, wildfires, and storms. Register today here!