Recorded Feb 6th 2026. Access to electricity and speed to power remain defining challenges, but the deeper issue emerging is how to ensure deliverable capacity at the exact moment demand peaks, which is increasingly critical for grid reliability.

With transmission projects often taking a decade, substation upgrades costly and contentious, and new generation facing interconnection delays, this week’s deal headlines centre on a core question: how do you create dependable capacity without simply building more generation?

The answers are emerging in layers - from grid-scale storage to distributed assets, orchestration software, market consolidation, and policy reform:

1. Grid-Scale Storage: Terralayr secured $72M in project-finance debt to deploy front-of-the-meter battery systems, highlighting grid-scale storage as one of the fastest deployable reliability resources. Batteries are increasingly treated as predictable infrastructure assets delivering dispatchable capacity without new power plants.
2. Distributed Capacity: Lunar Energy raised $232M in growth capital to scale residential battery deployment. Homes are becoming active grid participants, with distributed storage transitioning from backup resilience products to scalable capacity assets aggregated into VPPs. his shift places flexibility at the grid edge, helping defer costly infrastructure upgrades while improving utilisation of existing assets.
3. Orchestration Layer: WeaveGrid expanded its DISCO (Distribution-Integrated System Capacity Orchestration) platform beyond EV charging to include residential batteries through a partnership with SolarEdge. As distributed assets scale, software coordination is becoming critical, making flexibility visible, controllable, and dispatchable for utilities.
4. Market Validation: Storm Fern provided a real-world test of how storage, distributed assets, and market signals performed under stress, and at scale. Storage and demand response played a central role in maintaining reliability, with volatility increasingly tied to short flexibility gaps rather than prolonged generation shortages.
5. Market Consolidation: NRG’s acquisition of CPower as part of a $12B transaction with LS Power, signals incumbent adoption of flexibility as core infrastructure. The deal adds roughly 6 GW of commercial and industrial demand-response capacity, effectively expanding virtual power plant capabilities within mainstream utility operations.
6. Policy Signal: Virginia passed the first U.S. legislation explicitly focused on grid utilisation, requiring regulators and utilities to measure how effectively existing infrastructure is used before approving new buildout.

Then we move on to discuss:

• Data Centres & Speed-to-Power: Over 50 GW of on-site generation, much of it gas-fired, is being built ahead of grid connections, raising concerns about emissions lock-in.
• Overbuild vs Grid Integration: Off-grid renewables require significant overbuild reinforcing the continued value of interconnected grids that aggregate flexibility across regions
• New Procurement Models: Mechanisms like CTTs and BYOC allow large loads to contract power directly while leveraging distributed flexibility, accelerating deployment without full co-location.