THE GRID
FERC Just Put the Grid on a 60-Day Clock
Five people sat at a table last Thursday. They voted. It was done in an hour. And it may be the most important thing that happened to the U.S. power grid this year.
FERC runs the rules for how power flows across state lines. Last week, it told all six regional grid operators one thing: prove your rules still work. Or change them.
You have 60 days.
The vote was 5-0. Not even close.
"Each market must show that it has adequate safeguards against cost shifting, or take steps to create them."
The target? Large power users. Data centers. Big factories. The new wave of AI plants that need as much power as small cities. Each grid operator will define the threshold for its region. But the direction is clear.
Right now, it can take years for one of these loads to get hooked up to the grid. FERC wants that to change. Fast. The agency calls it "speed-to-power."
The orders also require each grid to file a reliability report within 30 days. How will they keep the lights on while adding these loads?
All six grid operators got the same order. PJM. MISO. SPP. CAISO. ISO New England. NYISO. Explain why your rules are still fair. Or file new ones.
Final Hours
The download link for my Simple Options Trading For Beginners book is about to expire.
Once it goes, the book goes back to $29.97 on the website — same book, same content, just no longer free.
This is one of those things where the people who grab it in the next sixty seconds will have it on their computer forever. The people who don't will be staring at an order page tomorrow, wishing they'd taken the twenty seconds.
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P.S. This link will expire without warning.
The orders affect regions serving about 200 million Americans across more than 30 states. That's nearly two-thirds of the nation's electricity load. More than 3,500 pages of comments poured into the docket over the past year. The vote settles it.
I've been covering grid stress all year. The data keeps getting bigger. But FERC's move is different from past talk. It's not a study. Not a report. It's an order.
Why does that matter? Building new power plants takes years. Building new lines takes years. But changing the rules for how loads connect? That can happen in months.
Five categories of reform are on the table. Faster study processes. Cost transparency. Co-location rules. Flexible load standards. And new rules for how generation serves nearby large loads.
The agency also drew a line on costs: if you want fast access, you pay for it. Costs go to the load, not to all the other folks on the grid. That protects your bill from paying for the next AI mega-campus.
This is the federal government saying: the old grid rules are too slow for the AI age. Fix them now. The clock is running.
The Sleep Window That Closes After Midnight
There's a specific 90 minute window each night when your body does 70% of its physical recovery.
Miss that window and no amount of sleep makes up for it.
You wake up tired. You feel foggy. You crash by mid afternoon. Sound familiar?
A sleep doctor from Johns Hopkins found that one simple 30 second routine before bed helps the body hit this recovery window consistently. He tested it on 2,400 men and the results were clear:
Faster time to deep sleep. Fewer middle of the night wake ups. More energy on waking.
Over 36,000 men have already tried it. It costs nothing and takes less than a minute.
P.S. The researcher says missing this window is the single biggest reason men feel exhausted no matter how long they sleep.
VOLTAGE
Google Bets on Atoms. GM Bets on Salt.
Meigs County, Ohio. Population: 22,000. Cows. Corn. The Ohio River. Not the first place you'd pick for a tech hub.
But Elementl Power just chose it for a 1.5-gigawatt nuclear plant. Five small reactors. GE Vernova Hitachi's BWRX-300 design. And Google is backing the project.
1.5 GW is enough to power more than a million homes. Construction could start in 2030.
Elementl says it will be privately financed and not funded by electricity ratepayers. That tells you how strong the demand signal is. A private firm thinks it can raise the capital, build five small reactors, and sell the power at a profit.
Now look 400 miles north. A very different bet is taking shape in Michigan.
GM and Peak Energy announced a deal on June 9 to build sodium-ion battery cells for grid storage. Not lithium. Sodium. The stuff in table salt.
Why sodium? Cheaper. Safer. No cobalt. No nickel. No supply chain that runs through Congo. GM will make the cells in its own Michigan labs. Peak will pack them into storage units for the grid.
Peak plans a 4-gigawatt-hour factory in the U.S. The location is due this summer. The goal is to sell cells by 2028.
Two bets. Two paths. One for steady base-load power that runs day and night. One for fast, cheap storage that fills the gaps. The grid of 2030 won't run on just one fuel. It will run on all of them.
WIRED IN
Signals From the Wire
GE Vernova Hitachi had a week to remember. Elementl Power chose its BWRX-300 for a 1.5 GW plant in Ohio — one of the first SMR projects in the U.S. The same week, Sweden picked rival Rolls-Royce SMR for its own 1.5 GW project. Two competing designs. Two continents. The SMR race is real.
From reactors to wires: Leidos (LDOS) closed its $2.4 billion buy of ENTRUST Solutions in March. The deal doubles its energy arm. Leidos now does end-to-end grid work — design, build, and manage. A defense giant, turned grid builder.
VOLT ETF keeps growing. Tema's grid-focused fund now holds about $788.5 million in net assets. It's gained roughly 65% in the past twelve months. The builders are full. The fund is tracking. And FERC just gave the whole trade a 60-day catalyst.
