Writing from the grid.

Essays on power markets, physical infrastructure, and the product systems that make both easier to reason about. For analysis built from real ISO records, see Data stories.

October 17, 2026 · Grid · 9 min

Transmission Planning With AI Agents: A Study You Can Check

A three-bus transmission planning study: a 200 MW request fits one bus and not the other. What an AI agent should keep, and what a DC screen leaves out.

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One-line diagram of the synthetic Cedar–Mesa–Ridge 345 kV network and the Ridge generation screen: a 126 MW limit less 60 MW existing flow, divided by a 0.6 participation factor, gives 110 MW.

October 14, 2026 · Markets · 7 min

Day-Ahead vs Real-Time Electricity Prices: ERCOT Example

The day-ahead market sets a price the day before; the real-time market charges for every megawatt-hour you miss. One ERCOT evening shows how the two meet.

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ERCOT North Hub on September 17, 2026: a flat blue day-ahead price line and an orange real-time line that spikes past $450 between 6 and 7 p.m., with a bar chart showing a $75.67 day-ahead receipt, a $109.09 real-time adjustment and a $33.42 net loss.

October 14, 2026 · Markets · 6 min

Basis Risk in Energy: Node vs. Hub Prices Explained

A hub hedge leaves the node-to-hub gap open. In September 2026 that gap was $1.79/MWh on average and $4.11/MWh for a solar-shaped output profile.

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October 14, 2026 · Markets · 8 min

ERCOT Battery Arbitrage: Why Price Spread Overstates Revenue

Multiply a day’s price spread by a battery’s size and you overstate arbitrage by about a quarter. Real ERCOT prices show where the money goes.

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ERCOT North Hub real-time prices on September 17, 2026 with the battery’s charging window shaded blue from 9:00 to 11:30 a.m. and its discharging window shaded orange from 5:45 to 7:45 p.m., a stored-energy line, and bars comparing a naive $44,900 estimate with a $34,080 constrained margin.

October 14, 2026 · Grid · 7 min

Data Center Power Capacity: What Public Records Show

Riot’s Rockdale site: 700 MW of gross power, 25 MW delivered to AMD, 25 MW contracted, up to 200 MW optioned. What each figure does and doesn’t mean.

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Horizontal bars for Riot’s Rockdale site: 700 MW gross site power, a separate 191 MW tenant lease, AMD options up to 200 MW, a 50 MW AMD contracted plan and 25 MW delivered to date.

October 5, 2026 · Platform · 6 min

September 2026 Update: Forecasts, Bonneville and Baja Maps

What shipped in September: Metis forecast charts you can step back through, Bonneville and Baja California on the map, and richer asset context.

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Recorded Chart Studio session showing North Hub real-time prices and an earlier Metis forecast distribution.

September 19, 2026 · Markets · 8 min

Probabilistic Forecasting in Energy: Reading a Missed Tail

What quantiles mean, how to score them, and what a real miss looks like: an archived ERCOT price forecast whose outcome landed 2.5× above its p95.

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Archived forecast for ERCOT North Hub on September 17, 2026: a flat orange median near $54 with a narrow p10–p90 band from 3 to 9 p.m., a dashed line at 5:50 p.m. rising to the observed $336, and a quantile ladder showing the outcome 2.5 times above the 95th percentile.

August 29, 2026 · Grid · 9 min

Neural Network Power Flow Solvers: Speed After Correction

CANOS, GridSFM and GENCO are fast on a prediction and slower once corrected. What each paper shows about AC power flow and optimal power flow.

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Horizontal bars of CANOS timings at 500, 2,000 and 10,000 buses: neural inference of 33, 34 and 54 milliseconds, 85, 488 and 18,810 milliseconds after power flow, and AC-IPOPT reference times up to 869 seconds, above GridSFM speedups of 0.63×, 0.48×, 2.86× and 7.42×.

August 12, 2026 · Grid · 5 min

US Power Grid Map: The Electricity Network From Orbit

74,190 transmission line records, 19,762 substations and 13,640 power plants, rendered as one orbital image of the contiguous US grid. Free high-resolution download.

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Wide orbital rendering of the contiguous United States on a curved, dark Earth, with mapped transmission lines glowing across the country, bright points marking substations and power plants, faint state boundaries, mountain relief, and a pale atmospheric rim.

July 26, 2026 · Platform · 7 min

ERCOT Interconnection Queue Near Data Centers: West Texas

Pecos city is in Reeves County, not Pecos County. A West Texas case shows how to read the ERCOT generation queue without confusing it with data-center load.

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County map showing Pecos city inside Reeves County next to Pecos County, with bars for active proposed generation and storage in the June 2026 ERCOT queue: Pecos 16,600.58 MW, Milam 7,069.27 MW and Reeves 6,635.56 MW.

July 23, 2026 · Platform · 7 min

How an AI Agent Answers a Grid Question: A Real Trace

A catalog-to-query trace behind an ERCOT price comparison: the dataset, the time semantics, the returned rows and the failures an agent has to keep visible.

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A five-step vertical trace: search_data finds ercot_prices_rt, describe_data reads its contract, ercot_locations resolves HB_NORTH and HB_WEST, run_sql pins one dispatch timestamp, and a final check shows $499.60 minus $15.60 equals $484 of congestion.

July 16, 2026 · Markets · 8 min

Transmission Congestion in ERCOT: A $484/MWh Price Split

At 6:15 p.m. on September 17, 2026, ERCOT’s North and West hubs were $484/MWh apart. Price components, named constraints and a dated estimate show why.

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ERCOT North Hub and West Hub real-time prices from 5 to 8 p.m. on September 17, 2026. North peaks at $499.60 while West is $15.60, a $484 gap shaded between the lines, above a diagram of the PKRSW to HCKSW constraint 35100__A at its 1,694.3 MW limit.

July 9, 2026 · Platform · 6 min

Forecast Vintages: Why Backtests Need a Decision Time

The last forecast before delivery is not the forecast you had when you decided. ERCOT demand vintages show a 653 MW gap from using later information.

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Three ERCOT forecasts of 6 p.m. demand on September 17, 2026 placed by ingestion time: 83,168 MW at 7:58 a.m. before the 8 a.m. decision cutoff, 83,292 MW at 9:03 a.m. and 82,515 MW at 5:58 p.m., with realized demand of 81,572 MW below them.