Heading into the summer means that reliability assessments are dropping! And on that note, last week, the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) released its Summer 2026 Capacity Assessment. It’s 15 slides long, and every one of them should alarm Albany, which is currently struggling over what to do with its Climate Leadership and Community Protection […]

For the last decade, interconnection queues in regions across the country were largely populated by wind, solar, and battery storage proposals due to federal incentives, state renewable energy mandates, flat power demand, and healthy reserve margins that facilitated the growth of intermittent resources while limiting the perceived need for additional dispatchable generation. However, things have […]

A recent Gallup poll found that Americans’ rating of the environment has reached a new all-time low, with 66 percent of respondents saying the environment is getting worse. The only problem? The data show the exact opposite is happening. Perception vs. Reality According to Gallup, only 35 percent of Americans rate environmental quality as excellent or good, […]

The April 2026 edition of our newsletter, “Is Indiana the Next IT State?” features our most recent study: The Levelized Cost of Electricity in Indiana. Our analysis goes well beyond the traditional LCOE because we calculate the total system cost for each resource in Indiana’s generating portfolio, including but not limited to firming, infrastructure, and cost impacts on […]

Always On Energy Research’s policy analyst, Sarah Montalbano, joined WERC Alabama’s Morning News to talk data centers and how states like Alabama can welcome the economic opportunity without sticking residential ratepayers with the bill. The conversation covered bring-your-own-power frameworks, consumer-regulated electricity, and why market-friendly policy beats blunt instruments like moratoriums. If private capital is going […]

Always On’s Energy Policy Analyst, Sarah Montalbano, joined Fox 5 Live Zone with Guy Lambert on April 21, 2026, to unpack Governor Abigail Spanberger’s “Consumers First” framework, and why the slogan doesn’t match the policy. While data centers are a growing concern, Spanberger is scapegoating them to distract from the policies actually driving Virginia bills […]

by Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling We are currently working on an exciting new project called the Social Cost of Blackouts. In this upcoming report, we argue that regulatory agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and utility regulators should be required to determine whether proposed power plant regulations or integrated resource plans (IRPs) will result […]

Indiana’s electric grid is being asked to do a lot at once. Generation grew by more than 13 percent in 2025, the fastest jump of any state in the Midwest. Coal ran harder to meet that demand even as the national coal fleet shrank. Retail electricity prices climbed 10.5 percent in a single year. Even […]

Turn off your lights, shrink your bill. That’s the pitch utilities and efficiency advocates have sold for decades. Mitch Rolling, co-founder and director of research of Always On Energy Research, told KXEL’s Jeff Stein on News Talk that the math behind that is broken. On a grid increasingly built around wind, solar, and battery resources […]

Amy Cooke, President of Always On Energy Research, joined Harold Birzer on Hillsdale College’s WRFH (Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM) to discuss the devastating tornado that destroyed a $1 billion solar facility in Indiana and the questions it raises about the feasibility of powering America’s grid on wind, solar, and batteries. The untimely demise of […]