NARUC Vice President Hudson on Modernizing the Grid

Grid Forward’s GridPulse podcast kicked off season 7 featuring Virginia Commissioner Jehmal Hudson discussing state regulators’ role in modernizing the grid and coordinating with utilities.

• Main announcement/action: GridPulse (Grid Forward) released a season 7 episode where Commissioner Jehmal Hudson (Virginia SCC; Vice President of NARUC) outlined the responsibilities and challenges for state commissioners, emphasizing speed, coordination, and affordability; he cited concrete figures including over 2000GW of generation and storage projects in interconnection queues, average wait times that have more than doubled over the past decade, and the DOE finding that regional transmission may need to expand 20%–128% by 2035.
• Background and details: Hudson recommended concrete priorities: disciplined planning, risk allocation for large loads, and pacing/prioritization; he highlighted deployment of Grid Enhancing Technologies (GETs) (advanced power flow controls, dynamic line ratings, topology optimization) that the DOE estimates can generate over $5 billion annually in production cost savings and can increase line utilization by ~16% and reduce congestion by ~50%.