Advanced Power Alliance

The program examines Texas power policy, market design, infrastructure development, project investment, and operations. Shared plenary sessions address the 90th Legislative Session and SB 6, PUCT rulemaking, ERCOT’s Batch Zero large-load interconnection process, load growth, data-center power supply, 765-kV transmission, siting and permitting, and local engagement. Headline speakers include State Representative Todd Hunter of the Texas House of Representatives (District 32) and Commissioner Courtney Hjaltman of the Public Utility Commission of Texas. Day Two has concurrent ERCOT Market Reforms and Investment & Asset Optimization tracks. Topics include resource adequacy, transmission cost allocation beyond 4CP, data-center development, battery state-of-charge rules, cybersecurity and energy security, renewable project strategy, dispatchable generation, electricity affordability, demand response, distributed energy resources and ADER, and inverter-based resource ride-through requirements. Other sessions examine battery project economics, powered-land siting factors such as water and cooling, and strategies for optimizing assets in changing market conditions. The closing plenaries cover advanced nuclear, geothermal and other low-emission dispatchable generation; project finance amid tax-credit, FEOC/PFE, procurement, interest-rate, EPC-cost and tariff risks; and energy-asset M&A and deal trends.

The program focuses on transmission and power markets, bringing together finance, technology, and utility leaders. Sessions include: • “1920s Vision: Is Grid Planning Ready for the Future?” — transmission planning reforms under Order No. 1920, expansion efforts, implementation results, and where transmission is being built. • “Capacity Markets: Diagnosing a Chronic Condition” — whether current energy and capacity-market constructs can be rehabilitated or require an overhaul. • “Power Struggle: Paying for the Grid of the Future” — funding interregional transmission, grid grants, price-collared compensation structures, the Transmission Facilitation Program, a proposed transmission investment tax credit, and transmission’s capacity value. • “Gridmaxxing: ATTs and the Art of Doing More With What You've Got” — deployment of advanced transmission technologies, implementation barriers, line-loss savings, and resilience benefits. • “Cost Allocation: An Immovable Object Meets an Unstoppable Force” — cost allocation for large loads, jurisdictional disputes, co-location and proximate resources, broader grid expansion, curtailable large load, clean energy, and storage. Named speakers include Laura Rauch of MISO; Aftab Khan of PJM; Suzanne Glatz of Glatz Energy Consulting LLC; Katie Siegner of RMI; David Lapp of the Maryland Office of Peoples Council; Evelyn Robinson of MAREC; Jennie Chen of RAP; Joshua Macey of Yale Law School; Madeline Gould Laughlin of Grid United; Brooke Keene of Southwest Power Pool; Zach Zimmerman of Grid Strategies LLC; Theodore Paradise of CTC Global; Georg Rute of Gridraven; Carla Pinzon of Expand Power Technologies, Inc.; Bryn Baker of CEBA; Jeff Bladen of Verrus; Matt Christiansen of Wilson Sonsini; Morgan Sipple of the Data Center Coalition; and Craig Sundstrom of Amazon Web Services.