Paul Kudrowski

So that's already beginning to play out in the strangest possible ways.

The most obvious way is that we're already seeing energy inflation in part driven by, again, consumers being outbid, if you will, by data centers.

Because it's almost like the private equity phenomenon.

If I'm a utility, I would love to have a bunch of large people I can put on, large buyers I can put on the grid because I can manage them.

They're good for payment.

They're not going to go away.

But a bunch of people in some exurb in rural Virginia, yeah.

I don't know.

Maybe they'll pay their bills.

Maybe they won't.

So again, it's the same phenomenon that's happening at the larger scale in terms of the capital allocation.

I'm perfectly happy to put these large buyers onto my network, meaning the power grid, because I feel like there's some security of payment.

But there is this perverse thing happening at the same time.

And we saw this in the PJM recent regulatory filing that got kind of ditched.

But they were proposing to add people to their network.

They're an interconnect provider in

Northeast, one of the largest.

And they were proposing to add data centers to the grid with the proviso that any time the utility is under utility, the grid is under stress and I have to cut back because of a heat wave or because of heating or whatever else.

I can disconnect the data centers because, you know, it's fine for a few hours if they disconnect the data center.

And so they're trying to have their energy cake and eat it too by connecting these large buyers, but saying, it's okay, don't worry consumers, because we have a provision in our agreement with these data centers