Cory Anderson

Growth @ Base

[Alec Stapp @AlecStapp]

In Texas yesterday, solar provided >50% of the power to the grid for much of the day.

If solar is such a bad energy source, why is Texas investing so much in it?

They have the most competitive electricity marketplace in the country, and solar is winning more and more.

[Ramez Naam @ramez]

Everyone who cares about climate should understand this. Texas, with no pro-climate policies, has blown passed California in clean energy. In large part because Texas has less red tape and makes it easier to build.

[Robinson Meyer @robinsonmeyer]

It’s the age of electricity and America isn’t ready.

Virtually every goal that Americans care about requires big changes to the power grid. I’m in @nytopinion today on why power bills are going up, whether AI is to blame, & what we need to do about it:
https://t.co/wgJeAEzF8h

[Anthony Pompliano 🌪 @APompliano]

Wow.

The White House just announced that grid infrastructure is essential to national defense.

This includes transformers, transmission lines and conductors, substations, and high-voltage circuit breakers.

Companies working to electrify America will have a big tailwind.

[Cory Anderson @CoryBAnderson]

@MargeDean @basepowerco @austinenergy working on it!

[Base Power @basepowerco]

We're excited to announce that our partnership with GVEC is expanding across their full service territory, deploying 50 MW of residential battery storage across South Central Texas.

This expansion builds on a successful pilot and enables GVEC to bring significantly more dispatchable capacity online, further demonstrating how the utility-led distributed storage model can scale rapidly across a cooperative's full footprint.

[Cory Anderson @CoryBAnderson]

Big things

[Base Power @basepowerco]

Today we're announcing Base Energy, a new electricity plan open to any Texan that can choose their provider, battery or not.

Most Texans say they’re happy with their electricity provider. Our data shows 7 in 10 are overpaying and can save with our new plan. The reason is structural: our battery fleet generates revenue by supporting the Texas grid, and we pass those earnings back as a low, fixed rate that's guaranteed below market average, now and at renewal.

Renters, apartment tenants, homeowners not yet ready for a battery: if you're in Texas and can choose your provider, you're eligible.

Affordable, reliable power for all. That's the mission, and today we're a lot closer.

[Cory Anderson @CoryBAnderson]

@JLopas Standing room only

[Shanu Mathew @ShanuMathew93]

Three reports dropped in the last two weeks. All three land on the same thesis - the U.S. grid problem is partly a utilization and orchestration problem vs. purely a buildout problem. Shout out @TheBrattleGroup @FERC @energy_said @BrianJanous @CarolineBGolin @Stphn_Lacey

Brattle calcs that better use of existing infrastructure could unlock the equivalent of 100 GW of capacity (per the podcast's characterization of the findings) and save consumers $110-170B over a decade (similar to reports by Duke, Camus, etc.).

FERC's 2025 State of the Markets shows scarcity already clearing in prices. PJM capacity auctions hit the cap twice and still fell 6.5 GW short of reliability requirements. Wholesale electricity prices rose 25% YoY. 50 GW of data centers now in service.

Thunder Said Energy quantifies the operator side. A 2-3 year grid delay halves (-50%!) a data center's NPV. Flexible operation during the top 1% of grid-stress hours costs only ~6% of NPV. The math strongly favors accepting curtail-ability over sitting in the interconnection queue.

And the Open Circuit podcast with Brian Janous (Cloverleaf, ex-Microsoft) and Caroline Golin (NRG, ex-Google) puts it in operational terms. 60-80 GW of mega-projects have been announced with zero binding customer offtake. The workforce to build them at the pace required doesn't exist. And the regulatory structures to value flexible alternatives barely exist either.

Six overlapping themes across all four sources:

1) Load growth is real but "bankable load" is smaller than "headline load." AEP cut its 2032 forecast by 6.1 GW (15%) after filtering speculative data center demand.

2) The bridge power gap is the central tension. Hyperscalers plan on 18-24 month cycles. Utility infrastructure takes 5-10 years. DERs and flexibility tools deploy in 1-5 years. That timeline match is the whole value proposition.

3) Capacity scarcity is clearing in prices now. PJM and MISO auctions are repricing. 17 generating units (1.1 GW) canceled retirements after PJM's record auction. First beneficiaries of tightness are existing plants.

4) Gas is dominating the reliability fast lane. Regular interconnection queues are still 74% solar/storage. But in expedited and reliability-priority programs, gas runs 68-75% of selections across SPP, MISO, and PJM. Gas queue capacity rose 87% YoY.

5) Flexibility evidence is building from multiple directions. Google has 1 GW of flexible DC load. Emerald AI cut power 30% in 40 seconds in a UK trial. FERC documented a crypto facility going from 200+ MW to near zero on high-price days. But no one has yet gotten faster grid access because they agreed to be curtailable (yet!).

6) A binding constraint is market design. VPPs lack capacity value in most resource plans. PJM doesn't allow aggregated VPPs to participate in its capacity auction. ERCOT has no aggregated VPP price signal beyond energy.

[Cory Anderson @CoryBAnderson]

Let the games begin

[Zach Dell @ZachBDell]

2 down, 48 to go

Here we come IL

[Zach Dell @ZachBDell]

2 down, 48 to go

Here we come IL

[Justin Lopas @JLopas]

Lots of opportunity for @PUCTX to lower costs for households and lead the nation on energy affordability.

[Canary Media @CanaryMediaInc]

Base Power is putting its latest fundraise toward a 100 MW home battery fleet in Texas — and build it faster than a gas peaker plant.
https://t.co/FhAgWkVtsF

[Cory Anderson @CoryBAnderson]

@MorePerfectUS @grok what percentage of single-family home investors own more 349 homes?

More importantly, what percentage of single-family homes are owned by investors which own more than 349 single-family homes?

[U.S. Department of Energy @ENERGY]

https://t.co/DiTcCO7u3d

[Canary Media @CanaryMediaInc]

Base Power is planning a 100 MW home-battery fleet in Texas — a capacity that will rival a gas peaker plant.
https://t.co/FhAgWkVtsF

[Base Power @basepowerco]

Thanks to @mariogabriele and @thegeneralistco for having Zach on this week to talk about all things Base, grid, and American energy.

[Vincent Geloso @VincentGeloso]

No secular stagnation

[🇦🇺Craig Tindale @ctindale]

https://t.co/vWLN07swYq

[Alex Shaw @alexgshaw]

Evaluating agents on benchmarks is a pain. Each benchmark comes with its own harness, scoring scripts, and environments and integrating can take days.

We're introducing the Terminal-Bench dataset registry to solve this problem. Think of it as the npm of agent benchmarks.

Now you can use the Terminal-Bench CLI and harness to evaluate on SWE-bench and other popular benchmarks.