Electri-Friday: Quite the Start to Wedding Season

Research evidence excerpt

Electri-Friday: Quite the Start to Wedding Season

rough bill credits and restrained

synergy disclosure to support regulatory approvals. We believe the transaction reinforces

the view that scale is becoming a structural competitive advantage in the utility sector amid

accelerating AI-related power demand, likely increasing strategic value for utilities with

embedded data center exposure and potentially driving further M&A speculation across the

group. Key watch items remain regulatory approvals, particularly in Virginia, the cadence of

equity issuance tied to the sizable CapEx plan, and conversion of the company’s large-load

pipeline into executed service agreements (see HERE).

◼ All Gassed Up: PJM Combines RBP and C&M (++for IPPs) and 2026 AGA Conference

Takeaways. The 2026 AGA Financial Forum reinforced the view that the utility sector is

transitioning from a demand adequacy story to an infrastructure adequacy story, with AI-

driven load growth accelerating investment needs across generation, transmission,

distribution, and grid resiliency. Utilities broadly emphasized that hyperscale data center

demand remains only the “first wave” of long-term electrification growth, while reliability,

affordability, and speed-to-power are increasingly outweighing decarbonization priorities in

regulatory and generation planning discussions. Vertically integrated utilities were viewed

by conference participants as structurally advantaged given greater visibility around

generation and transmission planning, while natural gas, storage, and transmission

investments emerged as the most practical near-term solutions to support accelerating load

growth. Separately, we view PJM’s decision to combine its Reliability Backstop Procurement