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Connor

@waldoch.bsky.social

2.8K followers 1K following 1.3K posts

Energy and other stuff. Some coding, some reading. Graphs and maps, birds and sports

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Connor @waldoch.bsky.social · Apr 20

the weather is nice, so we are back in the bird zone 🧵

all taken in a kayak with a canon r6 mk2 and the RF 800mm f11

I use a waterproof flyfishing bag from fishpond for the camera, but it's still a fraught endeavor

first up, some osprey action

#birds

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Connor @waldoch.bsky.social · 5h

In other words, I can’t bring 2016 energy Twitter back, but just maybe

a group of people are sitting around a table and a man is saying now what we might be able to

ALT: a group of people are sitting around a table and a man is saying now what we might be able to

media.tenor.com

Connor @waldoch.bsky.social · 5h

Insights is us, more Grid Status, but freed from the constraints of “has to be a blog or work on LinkedIn”.

Specific humans and quick notes filtered through our own experiences and perspective.

In my case, that means wide ranging energy items and even historical backfill as it comes to mind

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Connor @waldoch.bsky.social · 5h

Finding new space in the "analyst" realm is challenging. There are decades of codified business rules, from teams on a desk up to purpose-built consulting practices, or the wave of new niche media, and today everyone is trying to sell you an AI bot built on aggregate knowledge, good or bad.

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Connor @waldoch.bsky.social · 5h

This is now live at www.gridstatus.io/insights

The blogs will continue until morale improves, but we wanted to lean in on more timely notes on the markets.

Check it out and let us know what you’d like to see! 🔌💡

Couple other notes below

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Connor @waldoch.bsky.social · 7h

RTO expansion presentation from August, nothing special, more of a guide doc for their new members (which can definitely be useful!, but it wasn't some big interesting thing haha)

Connor @waldoch.bsky.social · 8h

same, SPP, same

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Connor @waldoch.bsky.social · 8h

particularly interesting since they just finished the first part of a very large campus that is essentially next door and is continuing forward afaik

southeastern Wisconsin has been a big bet for Microsoft

wonder if the massive mystery project nearby soured locals more

bsky.app/profile/wald...

Connor @waldoch.bsky.social · 21d

Microsoft wrote a blog post about a new (or perhaps fully operational?) datacenter of theirs in Wisconsin today

curiosity got the better of me and I bought the most recent high quality satellite image I could find (from March) 🔌💡

/1

blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2025/09...

Inside the world’s most powerful AI datacenter - The Official Microsoft Blog

This week we have introduced a wave of purpose-built datacenters and infrastructure investments we are making around the world to support the global adoption of cutting-edge AI workloads and cloud ser...

blogs.microsoft.com

Connor @waldoch.bsky.social · 14h

There will be overlap between this and the energy side of my feed

Expect an eclectic mix of market events, news, and stakeholder materials from our own specific perspectives, not faceless analysts or aggregate LLM output

Looking forward to figuring out what folks want to see in this context

Grid Status @gridstatus.io · 15h

A little teaser of our next product release: Grid Status Insights.

Insights is a real-time feed of expert commentary on energy markets and the electric grid — straight from our team of talented analysts.

If you’ve enjoyed our blogs or social posts, you’re going to love this. Stay tuned 🔌💡

Connor @waldoch.bsky.social · 1d

thanks google, I'll be sure to check out the Electric Digital Authority Market that doesn't exist after I'm done reading about the Extended Day-Ahead Market (EDAM) that I was searching for something on

this is such a weirdly specific fuckup

Connor @waldoch.bsky.social · 1d

the people at the top of these will make their money while absolutely demolishing credulity and momentum for other new nuclear along the way

or, they would, but the market seems willing to throw an awful lot of money at anything that can be related to data centers atm

Reposted by Connor

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

i desperately want everyone involved in the destruction of USAID to have to, st the very least, answer to the american people for the suffering and misery they have caused apnews.com/article/myan...

Starving children screaming for food as US aid cuts unleash devastation and death across Myanmar

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly said “no one has died" because of his government’s decision to gut its foreign aid program.

apnews.com

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Connor @waldoch.bsky.social · 2d

$700M for Crypto.com to have the naming rights to the Lakers arena, feel like that's sufficiently tech and wildly more

Connor @waldoch.bsky.social · 2d

I’m not surprised by the presence of people in American politics that fundamentally don’t believe in the American project, but I am perpetually shocked that their will is being carried out by so many variants of “that one weird dude in the forum that everyone dunks on for being insane”

Reposted by Connor

Grid Status @gridstatus.io · 3d

We’re early in the process of rolling out a new app— Nodal Analysis. DM if you’d like to test it and share feedback 🔌💡

We built it with two key upgrades:

1. A new database that runs on-demand analysis of years of data in seconds
2. An enhanced process for organizing the metadata for 75k+ locations

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Connor @waldoch.bsky.social · 3d

it's a reference to the duck curve

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Connor @waldoch.bsky.social · 3d

it's a little extra confusing because the total clear was ~$16B this year, but the $16B they attribute to datacenters is ~$9B last year and ~$7B this year.

Next year no longer has the current price cap agreement, so 🤷‍♂️

Kevin J. CREATURE @kevinjkircher.com · 3d

$16 billion. That's how much the PJM market monitor estimates that electricity ratepayers will pay via increased utility bills to subsidize interconnection of data centers owned by Big Tech. A massive give-away to some of the most profitable companies in the world.

www.eenews.net/articles/dat...

Data center boom sparks sticker shock for PJM ratepayers

New analyses show that costs passed on to utility customers to guarantee future electricity demand are rising rapidly.

www.eenews.net

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Connor @waldoch.bsky.social · 4d

"trespassers"

sheesh

Connor @waldoch.bsky.social · 4d

There’s a range here from ~100% crypto to ~100% data center

ND is on the crypto end, VA is on the data center end

This does matter quite a bit in terms of their actual relationship with the grid

Not here is that electrification of o&g has driven more demand than compute where it occurs 🔌💡

Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 4d

Yet data centers do not just need computers to train AI—they also require industrial-scale levels of electricity. US commercial power consumption has risen 7% since 2020, with faster increases in more data-center-heavy states like Virginia, Texas, Oregon, and North Dakota.

A graph depicting electricity sales to commercial users in major states and across the US

Connor @waldoch.bsky.social · 5d

After some time in Boston this week and taking the T, being back in DC on the metro feels like jumping into the space age

Connor @waldoch.bsky.social · 6d

Arlington (Ballston) as well

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Connor @waldoch.bsky.social · 6d

unbelievable levels of stupidity and lazy work on display in these DOE clawbacks

they 100% ctrl+f searched for blue states to cancel things, but this MISO-SPP seams transmission project affects 7 states (including 6 red ones) and they clearly didn't read anything 🔌💡

yardsale.energy/doe-terminat...

DOE Terminates $464 Million for Midwest Transmission Expansion – Yardsale Energy

yardsale.energy

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Reposted by Connor

Grid Status @gridstatus.io · 6d

It’s duck hunting season as California’s summer fades away and demand from batteries takes firm grasp of CAISO’s daily demand curves 🔌💡

chart showing load with and without battery charging in CAISO

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Connor @waldoch.bsky.social · 7d

the financial markets reporting is all like "they cashed in", "these people are ultra rich now", "the stock popped", lots of "wow, how amazing" vibes, and then buried at the very end, "but questions remain"

idk, maybe it was better 12 years ago, I was in sleepy hydro and no one cared about energy

Connor @waldoch.bsky.social · 7d

instantly made a handful of people paper billionaires

I was joking about this just a few weeks ago, how ridiculous the whole thing is, 4 AP100s, etc., and yet I still completely underestimated the greed in the market and how valuable people think a certain political affiliation is

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Connor @waldoch.bsky.social · 7d

takes me back to being freshly out of undergrad, what great times those were on the job market 😍

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 7d

“.. weakest September for job creation since 2011 ..”

> @weisenthal.bsky.social