The U.S. Needs 230 GW of New Power. Where Will It Come From? #370

America may need more than 230 GW of new power capacity through 2030. Regulated utilities are expected to deliver only about 93 GW. So where does the rest come from?

Tim Montague takes that question to Sylvia Leyva Martinez, Director of North America Utility-Scale Solar at Wood Mackenzie, on a crossover with her show Interchange Recharged. They work the gap from opposite ends of the industry: utility-scale generation versus C&I, community solar, storage, and microgrids. 

They cover safe harbor strategy under the ITC phase-out, how projects get financed, and how the AI data center boom reshapes demand. Tim makes his case that distributed energy deploys faster than the interconnection queue allows, and lands on his thesis that the future grid is a grid of microgrids. 

Tim and Sylvia work the gap between what the U.S. needs and what utilities will build:

• Where does utility scale end and distributed generation begin?
• How does the ITC phase-out drive the safe harbor rush?
• Why do most C&I projects skip PPAs for commercial loans?
• What does the 230 versus 93 gigawatt gap mean for developers?
• Which states give community solar its strongest footing?
• Why does Tim believe the future is a grid of microgrids?

Links
Interchange Recharged | Wood Mackenzie
Climate Restoration Book — Peter Fiekowsky
Sylvia Leyva Martinez | LinkedIn 

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