The Black Box at the Center of the Grid: Rebuilding Trust and Accelerating Timelines in Energy Planning Through Open-Source Modeling

Grid planning has never been harder - or more consequential. Variable renewables, distributed resources, vehicle electrification, data centers, and industrial decarbonization are compounding in real time, turning the grid into a dynamic, multi-sector nervous system for the entire economy. Yet the tools guiding these decisions remain proprietary black boxes: artifacts of a simpler era, too slow to innovate and too closed to build the stakeholder trust that decisions of this scale require. A century of regulatory layering and institutional fragmentation built this quagmire. Getting out of it demands a new approach - one where modernizing planning tools and restoring trust are pursued as a single mission, enabling the faster, more credible decisions the energy transition cannot afford to delay. 

Speaker: Alice Jackson, Breakthrough Energy

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