It's Friday. The cheapest way around a transmission bottleneck may be to change which wires carry the load. SPP now has federal permission to try it with circuit breakers instead of concrete.
In today's edition:
🔀 Big Story: FERC clears SPP to reroute congestion in software
⚡ Quick Hits: a megawatt-class solid-state transformer, a German queue rewrite
💰 Capital: Anthro breaks ground on the electrolyte bottleneck
📋 Policy Watch: NERC prunes its rulebook
📊 Chart of the Day: batteries set Australia's price one hour in six
The Big Story
FERC clears SPP to reroute congestion with topology optimization
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Wednesday approved Southwest Power Pool's plan to use topology optimization, which relieves congestion by opening and closing circuit breakers to reroute flows instead of redispatching power plants. Market participants or SPP itself may propose reconfigurations, and SPP will screen each for whole-market benefit and reliability first. SPP, which runs the grid in all or part of 17 states, filed the plan on May 21.
"It is an example of the type of advanced transmission technologies that can readily help the U.S. power system quickly integrate more load and generation while reducing costs to all consumers." Commissioner Judy Chang, FERC concurring statement, August 19, 2026
A NewGrid, SPP and Brattle Group study found operating limit violations could be eliminated for 75% of the constraints analyzed, worth $18 million to $44 million a year, SPP said.
MISO began economic reconfiguration in 2024 and has saved $95 million so far this year, per an August 18 staff presentation to its Reliability Subcommittee.
SPP's congestion costs averaged $1.6 billion a year over the last three years, and it curtailed an average of 1,382 MW of wind and solar through 2025, per an Evergy, Enel and EDF filing.
ERCOT implements its own topology optimization mechanism early next year, SPP noted, and Chang and Commissioner David Rosner urged other grid operators to follow.
Source: Utility Dive
Quick Hits
Technology milestones from across the grid
Five stories from across the stack, from power-electronic transformers to nuclear paperwork.
NC State, NYPA and EPRI demonstrated a megawatt-class solid-state transformer, moving the technology from lab prototypes toward utility service, where it controls voltage and power flow directly. T&D World
Bloom Energy launched a deployment platform it says cuts on-site power installation time by more than 40%, aimed at time-to-power as the binding constraint on data center siting. Data Center Dynamics
Bayernwerk is dropping first-come, first-served interconnection for batteries and large consumers in favor of a more transparent capacity-allocation method, a distribution utility rewriting its own queue rules. ESS News
Enel Green Power started building a 100 MW grid-forming battery at its Finis Terrae solar plant in Chile, pushing grid-forming inverters from pilot duty into utility-scale procurement. Energy-Storage.news
Atomic Canyon released a virtual assistant for US nuclear operators aimed at licensing and compliance paperwork, the layer that sets much of the schedule on reactor projects. World Nuclear News
The Capital Stack
Anthro Energy breaks ground on the solid-state battery bottleneck
Anthro Energy started construction on a Louisville factory targeting 25 GWh of annual electrolyte output, an upstream bet that the constraint on solid-state cells is materials supply rather than cell design. The plant is pitched as a supplier into future solid-state manufacturing, putting a dated capex milestone on a chemistry that has mostly produced roadmaps.
Source: TechCrunch
Also in the capital stack:
Microsoft expanded its Qcells agreement to cover virtual power plant development, tying hyperscaler procurement to distributed flexibility rather than bulk generation. Data Center Dynamics
Policy Watch
NERC's Standards Committee voted to shutter 12 low- and medium-priority standards projects, trimming the reliability rulebook's development pipeline just as large loads reshape the system it governs. RTO Insider
The NRECA is pressing the White House budget office to move EPA's stalled repeal of gas plant emissions standards, arguing gas is already the default for new generation, hardening the mix cooperatives build this decade. Utility Dive
Virginia advocates and officials are pushing net-metering and affordability conditions onto the proposed NextEra and Dominion combination, which would set rooftop solar terms in the largest US data center market. pv magazine USA
Chart of the Day
Batteries set the price one hour in six across Australia's market
Utility-scale battery output in Australia's National Electricity Market hit 6.1 GW at the end of 2025, up from 261 MW across five systems in early 2021. Counting discharge and charging together, batteries set the NEM wholesale price 16.3% of the time in 2025, and 25.5% during the Queensland evening peak.
Source: Australian Energy Regulator, Wholesale Electricity Market Performance Report 2026, via Energy-Storage.news · August 20, 2026
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