obsessed with & writing about the power grid of the future. @HeronPower @BCG @nationalgrid @USTreasury. tweets are my own. 🇱🇰
New York, NY
Joined September 2013
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I've spent the last ~3 yrs working in energy for major utilities, companies & federal agencies.
Excited to be at @nationalgrid & learning in public on my substack.
Wrote my favorite piece so far on the rise of electrostates & how the US is falling behind China.
Link below👇
Reshini Premaratne retweeted
Our latest white paper is here—Heron Link: A New Paradigm in Power Conversion for Utility-Scale Solar.
Levelized cost for utility-scale solar rose 18% in the last year, and developers need new levers to improve project economics. Power conversion is a new opportunity: solar inverter- plus- transformer skids have not fundamentally changed in decades. Heron Link replaces both with one U.S.-built system, adding 6.0% of NPV to a modeled 100 MW-AC project.
Explore the model and the assumptions behind it in our white paper: heronpower.com/heron-link-re…
Reshini Premaratne retweeted
Heron Power's summer interns worked across engineering and operations this summer, and we closed things out with lunch alongside our CEO, @baglino. Thanks for a great summer, we can't wait to see what you build next.
Reshini Premaratne retweeted
Today we are announcing Heron Factory One, our first large-scale manufacturing facility, in Morgan Hill, California.
We will invest over $100M to transform a former distribution warehouse into a facility that supports 600 jobs and builds 10,000 Heron Links a year.
Fully ramped, we will produce 40 GW of medium voltage power electronics annually, equivalent to roughly three quarters of the new utility-scale generating capacity added to the U.S. grid in 2025.
Read more: heronpower.com/news-stories/…
Reshini Premaratne retweeted
Electricity transmission isn’t a commodity and we shouldn’t treat it that way. It is *platform infrastructure,* like the highway system, and we should plan and build it ahead of demand to enable growth. More from me with @TheCLCouncil here: clcouncil.org/publications/b…
Reshini Premaratne retweeted
Read the latest coverage of Heron's data center solutions in the @FinancialTimes - ig.ft.com/transformers/
Reshini Premaratne retweeted
Permitting reform, anyone?
The timeline is wild. SunZia was first proposed in 2006. The turbines took two years to build. The permits took eighteen. This chart is what we lost in the meantime: eenews.net/articles/largest-…
Reshini Premaratne retweeted
BTM buildout for data centers is a symptom of a broken planning, permitting, and financing system. We need structural solutions, not just near-term affordability band-aids.
Reshini Premaratne retweeted
Latest data corroborates our finding last year that a data centre impact on electricity prices is rather hard to spot
economist.com/united-states/…
"Data center expansion is not currently the predominant driver of increased electricity prices in U.S. states"
spglobal.com/ratings/en/regu…
Reshini Premaratne retweeted
The US needs ~5,000 miles of new high-voltage transmission per year, the interconnection queue has 2,600+ GW waiting to connect, transformer lead times are 2.5-3 years. These are not utility profit problems.
Reshini Premaratne retweeted
Virginia, a long-time bellwether of state-level climate politics, is now a bellwether of state-level data center politics:
eenews.net/articles/data-cen…
Reshini Premaratne retweeted
This is a very smart and clear push from Governor Shapiro. Utilities should finance grid investment the same way a well-run infrastructure company would: with more debt! Anti-slop, we love to see it.
Reshini Premaratne retweeted
It’s the age of electricity and America isn’t ready.
Virtually every goal that Americans care about requires big changes to the power grid. I’m in @nytopinion today on why power bills are going up, whether AI is to blame, & what we need to do about it:
nytimes.com/interactive/2026…
Reshini Premaratne retweeted
This is excellent, including the discussion of leveraging the data center buildout for grid modernization—an idea I’ve written a lot about in the last few weeks!
1. American grid infra fund: searchlightinstitute.org/res…
2. Conditional state tax abatements: searchlightinstitute.org/res…
What can government actually do to make AI work for people?
Sat down with @ezraklein to talk through it—my AI safety bill in NY, the millions in PAC spending against our campaign, and how to stop Trump's megadonors and AI oligarchs from gaining unchecked power over us.
This is the conversation I've been wanting to have. nytimes.com/2026/04/21/opini…
Reshini Premaratne retweeted
Data centers and other big customers of Georgia Power have won a way to pay for their own new clean energy projects—a big win for BYONCE in the Southeast. But can this new clean energy offset the utility's massive and costly gas-fired power plant plans?
canarymedia.com/articles/dat…
Reshini Premaratne retweeted
New pod: SUDDENLY, EVERY NEWS STORY IS A FIGHT ABOUT ENERGY
-> The Iran War is about energy flows
-> The AI buildout is an energy project
-> The future of populism—i.e., AI, electricity prices, data center moratoria—is an energy debate
w/ @NatBullard
Plus:
- why politicians are wrong about the drivers of rising electricity prices
- is the US auto industry doomed?
- implications of the end of energy-demand stagnation
- if the renewables vibes are so bad, why is solar still soaring?
open.spotify.com/episode/2IB…
Reshini Premaratne retweeted
NEW US electricity data ⚡️
In March, renewables produced more than a third of US electricity for the first time ever, even overtaking gas generation!
Wind and solar combined reached over a quarter (26%) for the first time.
Reshini Premaratne retweeted
Hawaiian Electric, the utility that covers basically the entire state, says that the cost of a transformer has more than doubled since 2020:
Reshini Premaratne retweeted
This is a big deal as monopoly investor-owned utilities increasingly seek to own (as regulated assets incl. in rates) technologies associated with distributed energy resources.
Minnesota approves Xcel’s utility-owned battery program
Xcel will own up to 200 MW of energy storage under the second phase of its Capacity*Connect program. utilitydive.com/news/minneso…
Reshini Premaratne retweeted
Wise words from @JaneAFlegal: "We’ve got to find a better way to take advantage of the potential upside here and avoid the downside of them basically building a secondary grid behind the existing grid that benefits only them.”
grist.org/accountability/dat…
Reshini Premaratne retweeted
Illinois utility ComEd, solar developers and environmental groups collaborated to enable flexible interconnection to fast-track 50+MW of community solar in record time. Participants think other states and utilities can follow their collaborative lead:
canarymedia.com/articles/tra…
