One year into a new federal administration, utilities are confronting a more volatile policy environment at the same time electricity demand is rising faster than most systems were designed to handle.
That tension was the focus of a panel discussion Wednesday at DTECH 2026 in San Diego, where regulators, utility experts and technology providers examined how federal policy shifts, supply chain constraints and data center growth are reshaping grid planning and investment decisions.
The session, “One Year Later: Managing the Large Load Surge in a New Federal Policy Era,” was moderated by GridWise Alliance CEO Karen Wayland and featured speakers from state regulation, grid modernization and industrial technology.
Wayland opened the discussion by outlining the pace of change in Washington over the past year, including early executive actions emphasizing domestic energy production, infrastructure acceleration and an “energy emergency” framework that has been used to advance certain projects. She said long-standing challenges around siting and permitting remain unresolved despite renewed attention from both the administration and Congress.
“For decades, every administration has tried to streamline siting and permitting through the various federal agencies that have some piece of siting and permitting, and it doesn’t work,” Wayland said. “It’s going to have to happen with the action of Congress.”
Wayland said uncertainty has also been heightened by the repeal of some clean energy tax credits and the cancellation of previously awarded grid projects. While those cancellations returned funding to the U.S. Treasury, she said the Department of Energy still has access to billions of dollars that could be redeployed under new priorities, particularly through its “speed to power” initiative focused on bringing generation online more quickly.
Federal policy is also beginning to influence interconnection practices. Wayland said DOE has formally asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to initiate rulemaking aimed at accelerating interconnection for large loads, with an emphasis on projects that can demonstrate operational flexibility. FERC is expected to respond later this year, though legal challenges are ly.
For state regulators, the combined effect of policy shifts, cost pressures and load growth is increasingly visible at the customer level.
Kerrick Johnson, a commissioner with the Vermont Department of Public Service, said rising equipment prices, extended procurement timelines and more frequent extreme weather events are driving costs higher, particularly in already expensive regions such as New England.
“Disconnect rates are going up,” Johnson said. “Arrearages, how much people owe before they’re cut off, are going up, and that’s an early warning sign of stress.”
Johnson said tariffs and supply chain disruption have created not only higher costs but also widespread uncertainty around sourcing grid equipment.
“For markets to be able to understand which tariff is going to be in effect for which product at which time has caused chaos, not just higher costs” he said. “The waiting line now for transformers, for anything associated with grid, now is expanded by two years.”
Weather-related impacts are compounding those pressures, Johnson said, as utilities confront conditions that existing infrastructure was not designed to withstand. He argued the industry must shift from a primary focus on emissions mitigation toward adapting systems to current and future realities.
“We failed. We’re not going to make that,” Johnson said, referring to global temperature targets. “So what do we do? The evidence is in. We have to start adapting.”
Large-load growth, particularly from data centers, is intensifying those challenges across the country, according to Jason Handley, vice president of distribution grid modernization at Danovo Energy Solutions, formerly Quanta Technology.
“In one year, [the U.S.] put 500 more data centers in,” Handley said, citing national data. “The exponential curve there is pretty high.”
Handley said utilities are seeing unprecedented increases in load forecasts, with some receiving more requests from data centers than their systems can currently support.
“Load growth forecasts for individual utilities is going up between 50 to 100 percent in the next five to 10 years,” he said, adding that some utilities are receiving more requests for data center load than they have in capacity today.
He noted that the issue extends beyond hyperscale facilities to include smaller data centers connecting at the distribution level, along with other emerging large loads such as advanced manufacturing, hydrogen production and cryptocurrency mining.
That uncertainty has made interconnection queue management a growing concern. Panelists said regulators and utilities are increasingly focused on deposits, milestone requirements and other mechanisms designed to ensure developers have capital at risk before consuming significant planning and study resources.
Behind-the-meter generation and co-located power plants are often proposed as a solution to speed large-load connections, but panelists cautioned that those arrangements still carry system-wide implications.
“The idea that a co-located power plant behind a meter will not have impacts on the rest of electricity customers is just false,” Wayland said, calling the conversation around co-location “woefully immature.”
Flexibility emerged as a recurring theme throughout the discussion, particularly as regulators and grid operators seek ways to integrate large loads without exacerbating reliability or cost pressures. Johnson said flexibility commitments are increasingly viewed as a condition for approval, but they must be enforceable.
Handley added that flexibility must be treated as a defined product rather than an informal expectation.
“If flexibility isn’t going to be monetized, then it won’t scale ever,” he said.
From a technology perspective, Ann Moore, global industry principal for power and utilities at AVEVA, said utilities are moving beyond pilots and proof-of-concept projects toward real-world execution.
“This is not the pilot or vision,” Moore said. “So now it’s all execution reality.”
Despite the challenges, panelists said collaboration among utilities, regulators and large-load developers has improved over the past year.
“I have been at least pleased from last year to this year,” Handley said. “Utilities and third parties and these developers are actually starting to talk a lot more and starting to compromise a lot more than they had in the past.”
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