Assertion Supported
Norris: 0.5% data center curtailment unlocks 98 gigawatts of capacity
“At 0.5% flexibility or curtailment of the new data center load, you could add up to 98 gigawatts of new data centers across the U.S. And at 0.25% curtailment of the new load, you could add 76 gigawatts.”
Opinion
Norris: Proactive transmission planning matters even more than interconnection queue reform
“The biggest Additional piece is improving the proactive transmission planning process and not relying as much on the interconnection process.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Mar 2032
Norris: AI data centers could drive 44% of US electricity load growth
“Yeah, I think what really opened our eyes were some of these forecasts suggesting that AI specialized data centers are going to be likely the single largest driver of U.S. Electricity load growth for the next five to seven years, with some numbers suggesting a…”
Assertion Supported
Norris: Roughly half of all US generation and transmission is unused
“And so what that basically means is that in any given hour,
On average, approximately half of all generation and transmission infrastructure is unused on average in the U.S., and it's actually worse than that because you're not counting for all the reserve ma…”
Opinion
Norris: Faster interconnection is the key value proposition for flexible data centers
“What would really present a value proposition for the hyperscalers and the large co-location data centers would be if you can actually interconnect them to the grid more quickly if they're able to offer this flexibility.”
Assertion Supported
Norris: Data center curtailment requires only partial load reduction in most hours
“When we ran the numbers, so like at that, that 0.25% load curtailment rate on average, we found that the number of hours in which Curtailment would be required. Some amount of curtailment would be 85 hours, but in 73 of those 85 hours, at least 50% of the new …”
Assertion Supported
Norris: Data centers are not constant 24/7 flat electrical loads
“I don't know where this idea came from of 24 seven. They are not 24 seven loads, and it's critical to clarify this. So the servers may be 24 seven, right, the chips themselves, but there's an enormous amount of cooling infrastructure and other infrastructure a…”
Assertion Supported
Norris: Duke Energy mandates demand response for new 100-megawatt loads
“Duke Energy said at a public event that they are now going to require all new hyperscale loads above a hundred megawatts that participate in demand response.”
Opinion
Norris: Cluster studies lack proof of speeding up grid interconnection queues
“What I think is fair to say is that we don't really have good empirical evidence, ah, to prove or disprove this hypothesis yet. There have been, ah, transmission providers that have shifted to cluster studies in recent years. I was very involved in one of thos…”
Assertion Supported
Norris: ERCOT connects energy projects 2.5 times faster than PJM
“The overall peak load in PJM is approximately two times that in ERCOT, and yet PJM's interconnection rate overall for all resources over the past two years has been approximately 2.5 times less than ERCOT.”
Assertion Supported
Norris: ERCOT decouples grid upgrades from interconnection to speed up projects
“The defining feature of ERCOT's interconnection process is that they don't rely on the interconnection process itself to identify and pay for grid upgrades. And this enables them to interconnect projects much more quickly and at much lower cost.”
Opinion
Norris: ERCOT's planning process pursues fewer proactive grid upgrades than needed
“It's worth noting that there are some really significant limitations to ERCOT's transmission planning process, and there are a lot of concerns that it doesn't Incorporate the longer-term benefits of these upgrades, and the result is that they aren't, they prob…”
Prediction Held up
Norris: State Regulators and Utilities Will Oppose DOE Interconnection Jurisdiction Expansion
“There's this jurisdictional question, and on that one, I think there's obviously going to be a variety of perspectives, and there will be concerns on the part of, especially of some state commissioners, officials, and certainly the investor-owned utilities.”
Assertion Supported
Norris: Most grid stress events fall in the two- to six-hour range
“I think there it's widely recognized that in the vast majority of events that you're talking about that, you know, the two to kind of six hour range is sort of the sweet spot when you just kind of look at, you know, most of these periods of system stress.”
Prediction Held up
Norris: Data centers will pair batteries with diesel backup generators going forward
“My sense is that all those two-hour battery storage deals that we just mentioned at data centers, they still have gensets, likely diesel for those longer duration emergency events, and they're not at all mutually exclusive, and in fact, it may be that predomin…”
Assertion Supported
Norris: ERCOT gets generation online faster by waiving upfront deliverability
“And, right, that's exactly what ERCOT does, right, for generation. They don't require upfront deliverability, and it allows them to get generation online much more quickly and at much higher rates.”
Assertion Supported
Norris: US interconnection queue grew 40% in 2022 to over 2,000 GW
“So, in twenty-twenty-two alone, the backlog of projects in interconnection queues waiting to connect to the grid Grew by 40%. It brought the total to just over 2000 gigawatts. 80% of this growth, growth was driven by solar and storage projects, and for compari…”
Assertion Supported
Norris: US power project interconnection time has doubled to four-plus years
“And at the same time, we've seen, and this has been documented by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, the time required to interconnect has approximately doubled from around 15 years ago. So it used to be that the typical duration from interconnection requests to …”
Insight
Norris: High ERCOT interconnection rates are driven by generators accepting curtailment risk
“What we're seeing is that a very, very large number of generators Believe that they are able to manage this risk, and that's contributing to this high interconnection rate.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Sep 2028
Norris: Non-ERCOT US power markets are unlikely to adopt energy-only models
“So we're unlikely to see other markets go in an energy-only direction, and the question is whether we can incorporate some of
The learnings and the process improvements that ERCOT has achieved into this alternative framework where you have both energy and capa…”
Insight
Norris: Proactive transmission grid upgrades save ratepayers money over queue-driven ones
“We're, what we're seeing more and more is that, ah, it will save rate payers money if we pursue these upgrades via separate proactive process, and that's for a couple reasons. One is, you don't have to go back incrementally and continue upgrading the system in…”
Assertion Supported
Norris: UK Curtailable Connections Program Compensates Customers for Excess Curtailment
“The UK has this whole curtailable connections program, and they actually remarkably, if they end up curtailing either the generator to the load more than what their sort of guarantee says, that they actually compensate the customer.”
Assertion Supported
Norris: Most demand response loads were initially planned as firm loads
“The vast majority of the loads that participate in demand response, they were planned as firm loads, right? So when the transmission provider ran their interconnection study, and the transmission plan for that jurisdiction, and then the reserve margin planning…”
Assertion Supported
Norris: ERCOT, PG&E, and SCE offer programs trading flexibility for interconnection
“ERCOT has this controllable load service, which does make that sort of trade-off explicit. PG&E is doing it with their new FlexConnect program, primarily at distribution scale for EV chargers, but the hope is to expand it. Southern California Edison has a simi…”
