2026 Mid America Regulatory Conference
Women Leaders
Reporting from the annual Mid America Regulatory Conference (MARC), this year held in Madison, Wisconsin, it kicked off with a fascinating panel of female leaders in and adjacent to our industry – male-dominated, I would add. Panelists included:
- Amanda Rome, Chief Customer Officer, Xcel Energy
- Maggie Gau, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers’ Chief of Staff
- Jeanine Cullen Schultz, Co-President (with her brother) JP Cullen
- Jennifer Anderson, Global Corporate Strategy and Development, Generac
To sum up the qualities of these fast-rising stars, they are hard-charging, driven women, mostly (three of four) former career elite athletes in D-1 college athletics, on successful teams in volleyball, basketball, and soccer. They attended top schools, including Penn State University, Dartmouth, Ohio State University, and Georgetown University.
They each described periods of questioning, like “Do I belong here?” being among others who went to elite prep schools, senior teammates with several years of experience and growth advantages, and academic accomplishments that weren’t even recognizable to these winners. They played, won, and succeeded, regardless. In the professional realm, they worked their butts off, right out of the gate. I can’t say from experience, but when you play at that level and achieve bona fide legit degrees in law, etc., while participating in D-1 athletics, you understand hard work and time management. A lot of this reminded me of nuke school in the Navy – six hours per day, five days per week, of intense, graduate-level engineering and physics instruction, two semester-like periods to be completed in six months. I had all I could handle without the athletics.
The bottom line, to use a phrase I took from my PT’s office, “there are no shortcuts to any place worth going.” Hard work, competition, and achievement began early in these leaders’ lives – before middle school. They climbed quickly and kept going. I guarantee they are not finished. They own their careers, drive relentlessly, and don’t expect favors. They’re used to putting themselves in situations and circles that are a bit or a lot above their level of performance at a given time. It is called drive and discomfort. That is what it takes.
Data Centers and Electricity Affordability
Next up, of course, was data centers and electricity affordability. Rant readers may recall that two years ago, the message at the MARC was that “We’re not going to build our way out of this.” That statement seemed like a warning: “We’d better get with it, or the lights will go out.”
It seems the surrender is on as data center developers of all stripes are bringing their own power to the mix. I’ll get into that more next week. For now, data centers and developers are more loathed than ever, and the intensity will soar as even heavy AI users hate the data centers that enable their AI slop, or as I prefer to call it, detritus. Detritus = scattered remains, debris, or waste left behind after something has broken down, been destroyed, or discarded.
The Institute for Energy Research recently reported that over half of Americans despise data centers and blame them for soaring electricity rates. At the MARC, Charles Franklin of Marquette University Law School said their polls indicate that 70% of Americans think AI is bad for society. That’s a much bigger statement, and it is up from 55% since October, just eight months ago. I’m sure it also has to do with the unprecedented (literally) concentration of wealth, which explodes the wealth gap between the tech bros and the commoners fighting for crumbs.
Feeding the Fire: World’s First Trillionaire
On the heels of SpaceX’s initial public offering, you may have heard it produced the world’s first trillionaire, AI provocateur, Elon Musk. Last week, the Wall Street Journal published an article to put the unfathomable scale of a trillion anything.
- A billion pennies stacked horizontally would get you from New York, through Charlotte, to Cape Canaveral – about 1,000 miles. Based on that, a trillion pennies stacked would be a million miles, or 40 laps around the Earth at the equator.
- A trillion pennies would go to the moon and back, twice.
- In other math from me, with a little help from AI, and based on his career starting in ~1995, and working 100-hour weeks, 50 weeks per year, Musk earned about $6.5 million per hour.
The torch and pitchfork crowd won’t like it, but good for him, I say. The man has grown the world’s first successful electric vehicle company, developed an AI platform/model, and launched (pun alert) a rocket company. That’s more amazing than the trillion perspectives. Oh, how much does a trillion one-dollar bills weigh? Find out at the end of this post.
Regulators and Utilities Wrangle Data Center Developers
But I digress, for a little trivia in the middle of this post. Carrying on, utilities are talking a big game to ensure data centers aren’t contributing to soaring electricity prices. They are in a hard spot because so many moving parts and factors impact electricity prices. I’ve written about it many times. Here are a couple of starters:
- When Cheap Power Gets Expensive: How Policy Built Today’s High-Cost Grid, and
- Electricity Price Drivers
Utilities and regulators are claiming, “if this [data center interconnections to the grid] doesn’t benefit customers, we’re not interested.” That was Justin Grady with the Kansas Corporation Commission. They are developing large load tariffs with 80% of revenue coming from demand charges, “plus hefty minimum charges” (take-or-pay, I guess). Another utility representative said, “We will not raise prices, full stop.” I didn’t get the owner of that quote, honestly.
Certainly, there is a lot of risk as technology progresses. Will AI catch on and eliminate 90% of the jobs, like the tech bros project? Where are the robotic UPS, FedEx, DHL, and Amazon drivers? How will technology and computing efficiency evolve? Remember vacuum tubes? Neither do I. But I do remember the introduction of the Texas Instruments Scientific Calculator, and their clunky 9-volt power plants, that would make math classes a thing of the past.
Eventually, there will be a shakeout among Meta, Google, Amazon, OpenAI, Anthropic, and others. Some will become the next Sperry Univac, IBM, Sears, Roebuck & Co., JCPenney, or Kmart. Then what? Gigawatts of load – poof!
Why not just add a 30% risk premium to their service costs? That could demonstrate savings for other customer classes, especially for energy efficiency and load management programs.
I will add more strategies that data center developers use to go online as quickly as possible next week.
Final Trivia Answer
One trillion one-dollar bills, each weighing 1 gram, would total 2.2 billion pounds, the payload of about 36,700 eighteen-wheelers. Each truck can haul 27.24 million dollars – about four hours of Elon Musk’s earnings on average, since 1995. Three times a day, a semi-load of dollar bills goes to Elon’s bank. Feeling small yet?
