Powerstack: Trump’s new live wire for T&D

Before we jump in on grids, we just released new research on the geothermal land rush. Utah's latest BLM geothermal auction smashed records -- again. Guy Cohen breaks down who bought what and what it signals for the next wave of greenfield development. Currence clients can access it here.

President Trump issued a new executive order that trips up compliance risk for transmission systems, but might open up the door for distribution. Currence’s principal for grids & utilities, Elta Koliou, is taking over Powerstack again with a deep dive below.

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What happened

Last week, President Trump signed EO 14420, declaring a national emergency over foreign-made equipment in the US bulk-power system. The order directs the DOE to prohibit or impose conditions on transactions linked to “Covered Foreign Entities,” principally China, but also Russia, Iran, and North Korea. The covered equipment is wide and includes transmission over 69kv, substations, generation, utility-scale batteries and inverters, transformers, turbines, protection and control systems, plus associated software, and firmware. The distribution grid is explicitly out of scope. 

The DOE has until December 24 to publish the rules identifying covered countries, vendors, and equipment, and enforcement will follow sometime after that. The broad authority also extends backward: it can impose conditions on covered equipment already in service before August 26. The White House is invoking IEEPA authority and framing the order explicitly around AI infrastructure growth, citing increased US dependence on foreign components to meet surging power demand.

The EO lands in an already politicized, pressurized environment. This compliance risk hits from the federal level on the supply chain side. At the state level, return compression is building amid affordability fights. This summer, in at least three states, governors and legislatures moved to cut utility returns, and the investment community has started pricing the risk by jurisdiction.

In Indiana last month, Jefferies flagged that an unstable regulatory environment meant that “investor confidence in the state has materially deteriorated” after Indiana Gov. Braun fired a utility commissioner for voting to approve a rate increase. Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, a bill capping utility ROE at roughly 6.5% against a 9.69% national average passed the state House unanimously and is sitting in the state Senate with no scheduled vote. And as we covered two weeks ago in Georgia, the ratepayer affordability fight is reshaping how regulators approach the data center buildout. 

Elta’s take

Two weeks ago, I called that election season was sharpening the affordability fight about data centers in Georgia, and said there’d be more. With Indiana and Pennsylvania, three’s a pattern. 

But firing commissioners, capping ratepayer increases, and squeezing shareholder returns doesn't just hit the Big Bad Utility’s bottom line. When authorized returns compress, borrowing costs rise, capital programs slow, and the infrastructure investment that would have kept bills down gets deferred. Ratepayers pay for it anyway -- just later, and with interest. And the projects with the longest payback periods get deferred first, like transmission projects.

This EO lands on top of that. The stated goal is grid security, which the industry can get behind, but the near-term effect could be a slower build than the one already underway. Utilities will have to wait for the final guidelines in December, but in the meantime, the order adds a compliance risk layer that utility procurement teams cannot yet price on top of an equipment market already constrained on lead times.

The biggest EO utility exposure sits in all things transmission, where the buildout is already hampered by delays. That uncertainty on the transmission side may open a door to lean harder into distribution, and that may not be a bad thing: Distribution takes three to five years to build, depending on the rate case cycle, versus roughly 10 years for transmission. That means more capacity, faster and possibly a shift towards smaller more distributed data centers in the near term as ‘bridge capacity’.

The numbers already speak for themselves, and the EO is another reason to double down on distribution. Distribution system spending by investor-owned utilities continues to outpace transmission on an annual basis, a trend that is expected to continue through 2030.

This EO narrows where growth can move quickly. If transmission equipment sits in compliance limbo while distribution is fair play, utilities and regulators have a real incentive to shift focus on capacity additions toward the grid layer that can move in service of speed-to-power.

Clients can read our gridtech and distribution research here.

A quick read on the numbers shaping the market. The capex, the contracts, the regs, all anchored in the so-what.

396MW // Fervo and Google's new enhanced geothermal PPA, the largest to date, at Cape Station in Utah. The project is slated to come online 2028, with a ~600MW expansion option exercisable through June 2030, bringing the pair to ~1,011MW contracted. For the first time, an EGS contract is sized to replace a gas block and deliver inside the window where new turbines cannot be bought, a tailwind for the now-public Fervo. 

750MW // PJM pulled Oklo's Meta-backed hybrid campus in Ohio from the queue, citing failure to demonstrate voltage ride-through, and Oklo just filed an emergency FERC complaint. The campus is 150MW nuclear, 300MW fuel cells, 300MW gas -- and Oklo argues the inverter ride-through test PJM applied doesn't apply to a project that's 450MW synchronous. A FERC ruling here would set a precedent for how mixed-technology projects get tested, which matters for all of the hybrid campuses in the queue.

$2.2bn // US Army contracts for five FOAK microreactors across five installations, with $750m going to Radiant Industries alone to build 15 reactors at Fort Benning. The other four -- Antares (Fort Bragg), BWXT (Fort Campbell), General Atomics (Fort Hood), and Westinghouse Government Services (Fort Drum) -- split the remainder. The military’s deep pockets, need to run critical operations off-grid, and ability to push through the NRC queue make it a strong demand anchor for the nascent sector.

3.2GW // OpenAI's Project Camellia and Georgia Power's now-approved 25-year contract. The state PSC gave it the go-ahead after ratepayer protections added an hour before the deadline. Georgia Power says the deal creates projected residential savings of $15/month starting 2029 because OpenAI pays its own infrastructure costs, but the contract is fully redacted, and it still depends on OpenAI's load showing up as contracted and staying.

Explore more Signals on Currence here.

The policies, rulings, and company moves worth watching.

Five more governors oppose the NextEra-Dominion merger. Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, and Rhode Island joined Virginia Gov. Spanberger in opposing the $67bn deal before state PUC and FERC reviews have even opened, citing NextEra's history blocking the New England Clean Energy Connect line and the prospect of a single owner controlling nuclear plants Seabrook and Millstone.

MISO filing to make voltage ride-through mandatory for all 25MW+ loads. The RTO filed with FERC to require ride-through capability, ramp-rate control, and PMU telemetry grid-wide for large load interconnection requests, starting December. Future development would need updated design specs, but existing projects are grandfathered, though MISO retains authority to intervene on reliability grounds.

Scrutiny on NDAs for data center power deals. North Dakota's special session opened this week with SB 2406, a law that would bar public officials from signing NDAs with data center developers through June 2027. Meanwhile, Entergy Arkansas is suing to keep Google's $526m Cypress Solar contract details sealed. Hyperscalers want NDAs to protect competitive positioning and negotiating leverage before a deal closes; the problem is that it builds rate cases that fund grid upgrades on terms ratepayers can't see.

DOT's plan to turn highways and railways into transmission corridors. "America's Great Corridors of Commerce" lets state transportation agencies and railroads lease roadside land to private companies for transmission wires, weeks after the DOE killed a $4.9bn transmission loan and three national interest corridor proposals.

The latest research, features, and data drops on the Currence platform.

Ormat comes in hot as latest BLM auction smashes records — again. Guy Cohen digs into the August Utah BLM geothermal lease auction, where total spend hit $24.7m (up 51% from June's record) and the top bid reached $1,207/acre. Clients can read the full analysis here.

Data center development in China. Julia Attwood, in partnership with ACT, maps out how China's data center industry actually works. China has 58GW in its pipeline since 2024, but the development model is structurally different from anything in North America or Europe, and may preview where the US market heads as training demand cools. Clients can get the deep dive here.

Where the market is meeting, and where to find us

📅 Future Currence // New York, 21 September // Currence’s flagship New York Climate Week event brings the leading utilities, hyperscalers, developers, financiers, and innovators into one room to build a vision for how the AI buildout can create a better grid future. Attendance subject to approval.

📅 Currence Geothermal Breakfast // Houston, 22 September // We're hosting a breakfast September 22nd during Geothermal Rising's 2026 conference to dive into the state of commercialization of advanced geothermal. Register here.

📅 Yotta 2026 // Las Vegas, 28-30 September // Network and learn at the biggest AI infrastructure conference of the year. With 6,000+ leaders across data centers, energy, compute, and capital, the conference is bringing industry leaders together to solve the cross-stack challenge of sustainable, scalable growth in the age of AI. Use code CURRENCE20 for 20% off passes

Interested in diving deeper? Talk to our team and learn how the teams that finance and build the energy system use Currence to stay ahead in the energy and AI buildout, including Southern Company, Tokyo Gas, Jefferies, Galvanize, B Capital, and others.