Host Jed Dorsheimer welcomes energy markets advisor Brad Viator for a candid discussion on volatility in electricity pricing, the impact of data centers, and the evolving challenges and solutions shaping America’s power grid.
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Podcast Transcript
00:04
Jed
Welcome. My name is Jed Dorsheimer, and I will be your host to the “Plugged In” podcast, brought to you by William Blair. So, we have a special guest today, with expertise in the electricity, capacity markets or basically the energy markets. This is something that, for those paying attention to some of the reports we've talked about, is becoming a bigger and bigger deal.
I've talked about this “pain at the plug” concept, which I think is going to be very topical over the next year. So, I have Brad Viator, who runs B Consulting, and he is an expert that helps utilities, helps power providers, and also helps balancing authorities understand these challenges so that our “pain at the electrical plug” or on our bills, more importantly, aren't escalating like they are right now.
So, Brad - welcome.
01:04
Brad
Thanks, Jed. Thanks for thanks for having me.
01:06
Jed
Maybe just give a little bit of background in terms of how you got into this field and, you know, maybe, clean up anything that I may have mispositioned. How you see yourself in the role that you see in this industry?
01:24
Brad
Sure. So, Brad Viator, my firm is B Strategic. We're an advisory firm spending a lot of time working with electric utilities, helping them kind of understand the policy landscape. Also working with other, just people with power needs and energy users. I've been in the electricity space for about 15 years. I spent 11 or so years running external affairs for the trade group for the electric utilities called the Edison Electric Institute.
And then I've been in consulting on my own representing the clients that I just talked about for the last three years. Prior to that, I actually spent a lot of time in the political world helping people figure out how to how to get elected. So, the place “in the zone” for me is kind of the intersection of policy and politics.
And I've been very, very focused on electricity for the last 15 years as a result of sitting in these rooms and having a bunch of very wonky conversations. I just absorbed it, a little bit along the way.
02:30
Jed
So, I should mention we are recording this on September 23rd. And, you have just come off a pretty important meeting with the PJM. Have you ever seen a scenario, in your long career, where we've seen either the volatility or pricing type dynamics that we are now seeing in the market today?
02:52
Brad
Not in my career. I mean, there have been other moments in time where we've seen volatility, but not at the degree that we're seeing it right now. The meeting that you're talking about, I'll give a little bit more background on that.
The governors of the states in the PJM region held a technical conference yesterday. They invited PJM, they invited people like me, they invited a bunch of other stakeholders into a discussion to sort of figure out what we do about this very real problem that we're facing, which is high electricity prices and a lack of electric supply.
03:38
Jed
Now, PJM originally was Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland, but has since expanded its reach, which is largely the Mid-Atlantic.
And it's a capacity auction. And, so, twice a year there's bids for that capacity. And, the reason that it's topical is we have seen a spike in pricing, I think, in aggregate, close to 1,000% in terms of the increase.
Last year was 833%, which is resulting in a pain at the, you know, for people, particularly those on fixed incomes, in terms of their electricity pricing. So much so, that, I think Governor Shapiro has put a price cap on this market, which might question, you know, whether or not it can operate as a market if you've got a price cap.
So, it's very relevant, particularly if there's contagion. And this is the beginning of a trend to spread to the other ISOs or the other RTOs throughout the country. Do I have that correct?
04:44
Brad
You do. I want to talk a little bit, though, about PJM and its multiple roles.
So, it has this market oversight. It runs the wholesale market for that region of the country. It's 13 states and DC - is what exists in that region. It starts at the Virginia and North Carolina border, goes up to Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It goes west, it hits Ohio. It also hits parts of Illinois. So, Illinois is divided between two markets.
So, it's a pretty big swath of the country. And, I think PJM expresses itself as the largest wholesale market in the world. So, there are more people living in that wholesale market region than anywhere else.
In addition to running the market and the capacity auction, which is really the thing that's gotten a lot of attention lately, PJM is also the regional grid operator.
So, they manage dispatch of power, kind of, across that region. The organization has been around for almost 100 years, 98 years, and for the longest time, their primary function was managing that dispatch and figuring out how you were going to share power from, say, the western side to the eastern side and everywhere in between.
And I'd say writ large, it has done a pretty effective job of managing power supply, I'm sorry, of managing dispatch and ensuring that blackouts are pretty limited.
But, we're in a new moment and a new time. They added this, sort of oversight of the wholesale market and creation of the wholesale market, 25 or so years ago, maybe 30 years ago.
And, they did that, that sort of happened at a deregulatory moment in time. And it happened and they did it because there was a bunch of, I guess, resiliency built into the system. There was a lot of oversupply of electric generation. And so, they built this market that was really designed to constrain and strangle excess supply, so that customers don't have to pay extra money.
And it turned it into a system that, as a friend of mine says, is sort of living and operating on the edge of scarcity. And it worked. Some costs came down. But really, since the advent and explosion of AI, we're just running into an entirely new problem that PJM doesn't have the tools to solve. And that new problem is we need to bring new generation online.
And, I just don't believe that PJM is really equipped to do that.
07:19
Jed
And for those who have never experienced a, you know, I don't think a lot of people, think about how their electrons are being generated. You know, when I go to turn my light switch on, well, maybe I do, but most people aren't thinking, you know, is this coming from nuclear or solar or gas? You know, hydroelectric?
And you don't think anymore. I mean, early days of hotels in New York here, Thomas Edison and the Edison Electric had to put a sign saying “Not to worry. You can turn the switch on and the electricity is going to work,” as we shifted from candles to lighting.
When things go wrong, like what happened in Spain in April, things can go really wrong.
And it doesn't take a blackout for, you know, a prolonged period of time where society does, you know, get stressed. So, what we are talking about here with this PJM that most people probably never heard of, that are listening, is really holding together the social structure through the grid system. And now with these data centers, we're seeing, and by the way I think the heart of all the data centers is in Virginia, and so you're seeing this demand that, we haven't seen in 50 years.
08:42
Brad
Yeah. It's wild. When I was at Edison Electric Institute, the longtime CEO was this guy named Tom Kuhn. He was there for 40 years, old investment banker.
What Tom always said is that, you know, the electricity sector only represents 5% of the economy, but it's the first 5% because everything else is dependent upon it.
If the power's out, nothing else is really working. And so it's important.
The power system has a bunch of rules that govern it and, sort of, help us figure out how we're going to deliver electricity into your home. And that's really the fundamental debate that's happening right now. Are we going to continue to do it the way that we're doing it?
Are we going to prioritize connecting these large data centers, that are, you know, producing an unbelievable amount of technology and innovation? And are we going to, sort of prioritize them, at the expense of everybody else?
We believe, at the highest level, that we actually just need to do both. We need to connect to these data centers and ensure they have, the computing power to bring this new technology online.
And we need to ensure that people are held harmless and are not, sort of, “traded in” for these technology companies. And I think that's fundamentally what's happening.
And it’s accelerating a conversation that probably needed to happen for quite some time. We just went from a place where we had flat and declining demand for 40 years, driven by energy efficiency and sort of everything else.
And now we're at a moment where we've got the electrification of everything, and that is increasing demand. And then we just stack this “AI-building juggernaut” and data centers writ large and our, you know, unending appetite for cat videos on top of it. And, here we are.
10:33
Jed
Well, I mean, one of the other things we're doing is we're unwinding the structural systems post-World War II in terms of, globalization, going back to more of a national or protective-ism type of economy.
And, so, with that, you're going to twist the dial down on efficiency, naturally, in order to increase that on resiliency. And, so, I guess this begs the question, if we look at our demand profile for electricity, we're forecasting a doubling over the next ten years. But China is looking at a forex increase there.
So, if we kind of look at this structural competitive environment, you know, how does the U.S. - do we take a China approach and just throw everything all generation? Or is it going to be more of a rifle shot in terms of how we build out this capacity? What are your thoughts there?
11:33
Brad
I think that, like most things in the U.S., we will try out a bunch of different ways. We will use, sort of, states and regions that will attack the problem differently. And we'll kind of look at it, ten years from now, and make a determination as to who was successful, who did well. There are a couple of places that are doing pretty well right now as it comes to making investment in -
11:56
Jed
Such as?
11:57
Brad
So, the southeast is doing great. I was sharing the stat earlier. 70% of all data centers - I think this stat is right - 70% of all data centers in the world are in Loudoun County, Virginia.
40% of all new data centers are in the Atlanta metro. So, there are two places right there. You know, the Virginia piece is sort of a historic issue.
Al Gore invented the internet, you know, over in that part of the country, and there's a bunch of infrastructure that was there to support it. And so, data centers have grown. There’s, sort of like, structural advantages to it. And so, the data center world really developed to support the CIA, the NSA, the Department of Defense in suburban Washington. And that's the Virginia.
12:45
Jed
The more interesting one that you bring up is Atlanta, though. Usually Atlanta is, you know, Georgia is used as “stalking horse” for why not to do nuclear as it's been, you know, Vogtle reactors three and four. And, yet, what you're saying is the data centers might be attracted?
13:01
Brad
Incredibly attracted to it. Right.
13:03
Jed
Why?
13:04
Brad
A couple reasons. Right now, you've got data centers that are essentially looking for any capacity. And what capacity do they want more than anything else? They want dispatchable clean capacity and the dispatchable clean, the sort of, resources that do not emit carbon are nuclear power and hydropower. We haven't built new dams in this country in, what, 100 years?
Maybe that's wrong. Maybe it's 60 or 80, but it's been a long time. We just brought two new nuclear plants online and 2023 in 2024 in Georgia. And, those data centers are out there saying, like, “All right, I want a piece of that. I want to be a part of that story,” because those plants were produced and, sort of, pushed onto the Georgia grid.
And that means that, practically speaking, I think, I don't know if it's the majority of their supply is nuclear now or if it's a significant minority. But whatever it is, it's the 40 plus percent of the electric supply in Georgia is now nuclear.
So, if you're a data center, you go to connect in Georgia. There's excess capacity. And, a lot of that capacity is carbon free.
It makes a lot of sense as to why you'd want to be there. So, while it might have been a rocky road for the Vogtle plant to get built, now that it's built, everybody's lining up to, sort of, buy and access that power. You've also got other things that I think are helpful from a regulatory perspective, like speed to market.
Georgia has been, I think, the number one state in the country for business for like 11 years in a row. And, that helps.
Like, you've got a bunch of people, sort of, at the top in the governor's office that are running economic development, that are doing whatever they can to get these customers connected. And I think these large data centers appreciate that.
And they know, when they're sitting down to negotiate a deal, that they're going to be connected quickly.
14:59
Jed
Well, Georgia gets a lot of sun. Why wouldn't we do that with solar, which would be, you know, clean?
15:06
Brad
So, there's a lot of solar in Georgia, too. I think it's actually a top five solar state in the country. So, there's a significant amount of solar that's there.
But, you know, solar doesn't provide power all the time. And these data centers want access to power all the time. So, they want solar to be a part of it, but they need to ensure that, you know, they're still powering the data centers at night and when it's cloudy.
So, solar exposure is good, but it does not solve the problem entirely.
15:36
Jed
I think the stout - what's the effective load carrying capacity? About 20%?
So, if we look at PJM. What do you think is the reason for the volatility? Is it the variable assets that have been added to that grid? That's one of the things that I've been seeing is that, you know, while the grid can absorb low penetration rates. As you get above 10%, we put a paper with a statistically significant data set out there, that that starts to really wreak havoc on the pricing volatility.
16:11
Brad
That's part of it. I think the other part is resources are going offline.
In Maryland, there are Brandon Shores, and there's one other. There are two coal plants that are slated to retire, and they were supposed to retire this year. But, there's not enough energy on the grid for them to retire. So, there's a FERC order, a resource must run order that's been pushed forward on both of those plants to keep them operating.
And so, it's two things. You've got the sort of, high penetration of solar, which has a capacity factor of about 25%, meaning 75% of the time you need to rely on another resource to produce power. So that's part of it. But the other part is, you've got these other baseload or dispatchable resources that are falling off, and it becomes a pretty significant challenge.
And then you have these data center customers. They famously tried to do this with a nuclear plant, the Susquehanna plant that Talen Energy owns, where, essentially,
Talen attempted to take that plant offline, and take it out of the PJM system, and sell it directly to Amazon. FERC weighed in, and they're sort of renegotiating exactly how that's going to go.
But, there's a fair amount of that out there, where the data center customers are trying to purchase power in a bilateral way, and it never actually go into the PJM marketplace. So, you've got fallout capacity all over the place.
17:37
Jed
So, we talked about nuclear, a little bit about solar, what are your thoughts on nat gas? I mean, we have two pretty big reserves being Permian and Marcellus. What are your thoughts on nat gas? It looks like most of the turbine companies are sold out for the next several years. A lot of the utilities have put out announcements in front of the meter. How do you rank order these different technologies, starting with nat gas?
18:02
Brad
So, natural gas is the belle of the ball right now. That’s what everybody wants.
18:07
Jed
Why?
18:08
Brad
Because of how flexible it is. And because you can construct it relatively quickly because it's pretty efficient. So, natural gas sort of wins. Where natural gas loses is, you know, it does have a carbon profile and it requires some other infrastructure to support it. You have to have natural gas distribution that can get to that power plant.
18:35
Jed
Pipelines?
18:36
Brad
Yeah, right. You got to have pipelines. And so, the natural gas plants are tending to get built in places that are close to existing pipelines with existing capacity. That's not unlimited, right? Like that is a that is a significant limiter. But, natural gas is as flexible a resource as we've got. And so we, you know, at a high level, we want to add a bunch more of that stuff into the system so that when the solar falls off, the natural gas can be there to support it.
I'll say that another resource that I think a lot about, which has some similar characteristics, although different limitations, are batteries.
The biggest limitation in the battery space, like. Well, well, let me start with the positive attributes. Batteries are great because you can store energy over a relatively short time horizon and dispatch it later. You can use it in a similar way as you would use natural gas.
If you pair a battery system to solar, you can dispatch solar even when the sun's down, because you've stored some of that power in a battery, right? The project and the process makes sense.
I think the challenge with it is, you know, a lot of the focus on batteries has been for two hour and four-hour duration and storage cycles, and that's just not enough to get us through 12 hours of nighttime or 14 hours or nighttime in the winter.
But, it's really, really great to get us through some of the most expensive times of the day. So, I think we're going to continue to see more and more storage dispatched. And as the technology improves and we're able to get longer and longer duration batteries at lower price points, I think it's ultimately going to become a pretty big winner.
20:22
Jed
One of the trends that I'm seeing is with, single cycle turbines sold out, I'm seeing the battery storage, mega packs, etc. that are being used to replace a peaker plant, which means that to actually nat gas or coal, for example, that's actually charging that battery.
But they’re used in a surge capacity to deal with that volatility. That opens the market quite a bit. I mean, that means it's actually larger than just tying directly to solar plants. Are you, you know, thoughts around that?
20:57
Brad
I think it's great. I think it makes a ton of sense that they're using it this way. I mean, it's a resource that's agnostic to supply. It just stores electrons and dispatches it.
I don't think a battery cares what electron is used to sort of push it into their system, right? And, I think it's cool to see the innovation and people utilizing it that way.
And it might be a, sort of, significant solution in a significant way to really drive down some of the costs of storage, right? If you've got all these developers and gas plants that are purchasing a bunch of batteries, that should put downward pressure on the price of those battery systems and kind of get us to the place where we need to go.
21:26
Jed
Do you think that the data centers go to where the gas is? Do you see a co-location trend here because that would solve, you know, pipeline issues?
21:46
Brad
Yeah, I think so. I've seen whispers of this where, you're starting to hear oil and gas companies, like, trying to figure out how they're going to build data center campuses.
I think we'll see more of that. I think it makes a lot of sense. “If I don't have to build gas pipeline infrastructure if I’ve already got it. All right. Cool. I can put a gas plant up there.” I think there are other, sort of, interconnection things that you have to deal with, which is, is there adequate electric transmission in those places?
Because these data centers, I think it’s pretty rare that they actually want to be islanded. They, for the most part, want to be connected to the broader grid because they want to ensure that they can deliver power all the time. So, they might do this whole “bring your own resource” thing, where, you know, they have a gas plant on site, they have solar on site, but they're still going to want to connect.
22:47
Jed
I want to ask a provocative question that most of the audience is probably going to gasp at, but do you think coal comes back?
And the reason that I will ask that is not from a supply demand of the electricity. But if we start to reshore or have plans to reshore steel, the coking is really important.
And so, if you shut down your supply of coal from an exhaust stream perspective, that's going to make it hard, I think. Unless, please correct me if I'm wrong, in terms of bringing back steel. So, it almost seems like, does the tightness allow an opportunity where you might see this clean coal vernacular, to bring some coal back, around reshoring manufacturing?
Or, do you think that that ship has sailed?
23:45
Brad
Yeah. I think that existing coal got a pretty significant shot in the arm. And I think existing coal will be around longer.
New coal, I don't know. I mean, I think the problem with the construction of new coal plants are that we're in a political moment right now where, you know, the Trump administration has a very favorable view of coal. But, I don't really have a ton of certainty that the next administration's going to have that view.
If we're sort of continuing to be in this place where we're, you know, a very tribal political moment. If the pendulum swings the other way, like, the pendulum could swing the other way, and they could easily stop construction. Like, if you started the process of building a new coal plant today, it would not be done in this term, in this Trump term.
24:44
Brad
And so, I think there's too much risk there to build new stuff.
24:48
Jed
That's an important point.
24:50
Jed
Where do you think there's bipartisan support? It seems like it's agnostic in terms of which side of the aisle that you fall for nuclear. It seems like nat gas, you know, probably leans a little bit more towards the right than the left. And it seems like solar, whether it's utility scale or whether it's distributed, leans a little bit more towards the left. Coal is all the way on the right, hydroelectric right down the middle. Wind is all the way to the left. Is that an appropriate assessment of the different generating technologies that you see?
25:33
Brad
I think so. Maybe I'll nitpick a little bit.
25:36
Jed
Yeah. Please.
25:37
Brad
I think nuclear power has a lot of support right now. It is a fantastic resource that's able to deliver with, you know, no carbon emissions, which is unbelievable. But, there are some on the left that don't like nuclear power. And, particularly, some of the renewable folks don't like nuclear power because they think it, in part, is a competitor to the product that they're providing.
And there's construction risk and, like, all this other stuff that sort of does that. So, the far edges of the left maybe don't like nuclear, but the heart of the left, I think do. Republicans tend to support nuclear, too. So, I think it's got pretty broad support. I think natural gas has more detractors on the left.
26:39
Brad
But, there are the moderate what we, you know, the sort of “business friendly” or, you know, the old “Blue Dog Democrats,” I think they're supportive of natural gas and kind of understand it. So, it's kind of next on the spectrum. Hydro, I agree that there's pretty good support. Extremes on the left kind of want to get rid of it, but they, you know, want to get rid of a lot of things.
26:59
Brad
And I don't think there's a real conversation about building new hydro right now. I think it's about maintaining the existing fleet. And then I think you're right with, I think you're right with solar, although there are a fair amount of conservatives that are fans of it because, not so much for its relative cost, but because its absolute cost is somewhat low.
27:23
Jed
Do you think that those costs are fair? One of the pushbacks that I have is if you have variability, that's a function of, a cloud cover, for example. And you're spiking up your peaker plants and you're taking that start stop data and you're attributing it to the gas. Well, is that really being accounted properly, in terms of association with gas, if your variable asset is what caused that to come on?
27:52
Brad
Yeah. Look, I think the way that we consider costs could be updated, but I think that solar has some significant relative value because it's absolute costs for the construction are lower and the construction timelines are faster. And, I think those two things make it attractive. Wind is a whole different deal, but it's sort of like, you know, I'm a Texan and, you know, we used to say that if you, you know, if you look at the oil derricks out in the farmland, like, that's how farmers were actually making money. There's a pump track on their farm.
They're getting some direct payments. It helps them sort of, like, stabilize their farm and their ag operation. Those pump jacks have been replaced by wind turbines and, sort of, the payments that are coming from that. So, there is an element in the ag community and in, you know, what a lot of us would consider or what many consider flyover country.
There are some pretty significant supporters of wind power out there. And, so, I think it's not something that should be altogether discounted. But, this administration is not a big fan of it. And I think we saw some of those actions in the last couple of weeks, really express themselves.
29:17
Jed
Yeah. Do you think that the PJM is a canary in the coal mine? Or, in the, I guess, the electricity grid?
29:24
Brad
Yeah, I do.
I think that the problems in PJM can express themselves in other markets. If we had any growth in ISO New England, I think we would be seeing a different story. But because we don't, we're not. New York ISO has some similar problems although they’re not as, exacerbated as what we're seeing in PJM.
MISO and SPP are in better position because in MISO, in particular, and in every SPP state, all of the generation, other than Illinois in MISO, the generation still regulated. So, a regulated utility goes out, builds a power plant, they used a cost-of-service model to finance it, so, it's easier for them to bring new supply on.
KISO has some problems that are similar to PJM. ERCOT is just a whole different ball of wax.
But, yeah, this this fundamental flaw in PJM of not really being able to bring new, dispatchable generation online is a pretty confounding problem. And, I think that's something that we will see in places like in New York ISO and in ISO New England at some point in the future.
30:48
Jed
Well, wouldn't that just mean that you're going to see commerce move to the states that have lower costs, lower taxes? Which seems to be Wyoming, Idaho, Texas, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia.
I mean, I may be missing some, so it's not exhaustive, but it seems like you're seeing a trend where, high electricity prices is affecting commerce in terms of… I'm just not seeing a lot of data centers opened in, you know, high states with high pricing,
31:29
Brad
I spent a lot of time trying to find data centers in New England, and I can't find any. And so, I think that's right.
31:37
Jed
And land cost is probably going to be high, too.
31:39
Brad
Well, that's the thing that I think about, though, amid this discussion, like, and it's a little bit of a chicken or egg question. Like, the movement of commerce to the southeast, in Texas, in the southwest has kind of been going on in this country for, what, 20 years?
And now we're seeing that express itself in energy costs, too.
And so, I don't know if it's causation or correlation. It's hard for me to, sort of, separate those two. But, it seems like the rich keep getting richer. I think that's, sort of, the meta trend.
32:13
Jed
But ultimately, wouldn't that result in job creation?
32:17
Brad
Yeah, and It's happening. I mean, I think we're seeing that all over the place.
I just think that the places that were the historic center and economic engines are in a precarious spot. And so, I'll be curious to see how they navigate it.
32:32
Jed
Well, any wild predictions, in terms of, what do you think is the most provocative either question or thoughts that you've had in terms of how the U.S. electricity markets play out?
32:48
Brad
Good question. Let's see, what have I been thinking about a lot that seems impossible, but might actually happen? I think you brought one up. And I've heard other people bring up the concept of maybe new coal coming online. I think, though, the thing that very well may happen that nobody would have expected is I think we see large scale nuclear.
I think that a lot of people thought, in the wake of the Vogtle projects, a lot of people thought that, you know, that was going to prevent other capital from sort of coming to that party given the, sort of, like, delays and timeline. But, it's funny, now that that plants built, we've got a bunch of economic development that's going to that state because that plant was built.
I think other states and other regions are going to pick up that ball and run with it.
I mean, I still think that the small modular reactor thing is going to accelerate. But there's still NRC approval timelines that we're trying to get through. It looks like this Tennessee project, the Clinch River one, everyone's going to move forward so that one may be first in queue, but I think the unexpected thing is large nuclear.
I think we're going to see some large nuclear because our power demands are big. They're not small. I don't know why we're focusing all of our attention on small reactors when we could gobble up every bit of power that came on to the grid.
34:25
Jed
Yeah. I mean, I think the SMR case is probably more on a safety and efficiency, you know, to run higher enrichment. And, and also, the modular approach to that.
34:40
Brad
I think the modular is the case, and I get it. I think it makes sense once you reach scale.
But, right now, I just, I don't know. I tend to think there needs to be some consolidation on that side. I think that we need to figure out, and we're just not far enough into that, to figure out which technologies are the best.
35:00
Jed
That's what will be, I think, incredibly interesting is given Vogtle probably represents a worst case scenario in terms of cost escalation and bureaucracy within a new regime. What the NRC is going to be able to do in terms of, lack of, you know, LNT models and permitting China is building large scale PWR reactors in a, I think it's like a fifth of the cost of, what we are here and in half of the time frame, which obviously, you know, equates to a cost scenario.
So, there's really no reason that we shouldn't be cost competitive there. It's just sad that, and I guess the optimistic side of me is, is that with these EOs, let's see what we could do to solve this problem together. I mean, it should be there.
36:06
Brad
Yeah, I think that's right. And I also think that, like, even as it relates to the Vogtle project, which took longer and was more expensive than we anticipated, it was also built with yesterday's dollars. And we've been in a pretty crazy inflationary environment over the last four-ish years. So, I think those costs, looking back, don't look as crazy, especially when you're seeing all the economic growth that they're getting down there in that region.
So, I think somebody's going to take that bet. I don't know who it is. Texas. There's a lot of stuff that's going on in Texas, but I think you're going to see a couple other states come to the table and really evaluate, and look at, and consider, doing that, doing a large scale nuclear project.
36:49
Jed
In a regulated market?
36:51
Brad
I think so, yeah, I think in a regulated market. You'll see the stuff that was retired brought back online in those restructured markets.
But I could really see it happening in a regulated market.
37:06
Jed
All right. Well, there we have it, a prediction. So, Brad, thanks for coming and sharing with us your insights. Really appreciate it.
37:15
Brad
Yep. Thanks, Jed.