Robin Millican
Director of research programs and strategic partnerships, Center on Global Energy Policy (Columbia) · Former head of strategic initiatives and integration, Breakthrough Energy
aka Robin Millikan
“if you look at the period from 2019 to 2025, you had 23 states that saw price declines in real terms, meaning adjusting for inflation, while 27 states saw [increases] ... the drivers differ by region, where you have wildfire costs ... California ... Fuel volatility in the Northeast, particularly natural gas prices and capacity market dynamics in the PJM interconnection.”
“There's a lot of latent capacity, industry estimates or something on the order of 260 gigawatts of incremental load that could be met just by using solutions like grid enhancing technologies.”
“you have roughly 70% of power transformers that are more than 25 years old. You have 60% of circuit breakers that are over 30 years old, and about 70% of transmission lines are more than 25 years old.”
“annual distribution CAPEX increased about 160% during that period of time ... that's reached nearly $51 billion and it currently accounts for about 43% of IOU, so investor owned utility, capital expenditures.”
“in the PJM interconnection ... an estimated $4.3 billion in transmission projects were approved in 2024 that were associated with data center load. And there are another 2.5 billion under consideration.”
“FERC issued a series of show cause orders to the regional grid operators, the RTO ISOs, to essentially ask them to justify why their existing tariff structure is quote, unquote, just and reasonable and if they find that it isn't to ... propose changes.”
“demand in and of itself is not a problem if supply can efficiently rise to meet demand. And demand is actually sometimes an asset ... if you can spread fixed costs over a larger customer base, it's actually quite helpful.”
Robin Millican
One-line summary: CGEP research director; tracked for regional electricity-price decomposition, GETs latent capacity, aging-grid capex, and the FERC large-load show-cause orders.
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Said
Speaker-attributed claims extracted from diarized sources. Each bullet mirrors one entry in quotes: frontmatter — keep them in sync.
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On electricity-price-drivers-decomposition:
"if you look at the period from 2019 to 2025, you had 23 states that saw price declines in real terms, meaning adjusting for inflation, while 27 states saw [increases] ... the drivers differ by region, where you have wildfire costs ... California ... Fuel volatility in the Northeast, particularly natural gas prices and capacity market dynamics in the PJM interconnection." — 2026-06-30-podcast-columbia-energy-exchange-doug-arent-and-robin-millican-on-what-s-really (2026-06-30)
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On grid-enhancing-technologies-latent-capacity:
"There's a lot of latent capacity, industry estimates or something on the order of 260 gigawatts of incremental load that could be met just by using solutions like grid enhancing technologies." — 2026-06-30-podcast-columbia-energy-exchange-doug-arent-and-robin-millican-on-what-s-really (2026-06-30)
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On aging-grid-replacement-to-td-capex-supercycle:
"you have roughly 70% of power transformers that are more than 25 years old. You have 60% of circuit breakers that are over 30 years old, and about 70% of transmission lines are more than 25 years old." — 2026-06-30-podcast-columbia-energy-exchange-doug-arent-and-robin-millican-on-what-s-really (2026-06-30)
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On aging-grid-replacement-to-td-capex-supercycle:
"annual distribution CAPEX increased about 160% during that period of time ... that's reached nearly $51 billion and it currently accounts for about 43% of IOU, so investor owned utility, capital expenditures." — 2026-06-30-podcast-columbia-energy-exchange-doug-arent-and-robin-millican-on-what-s-really (2026-06-30)
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On pjm-capacity-prices-to-nuclear-premium:
"in the PJM interconnection ... an estimated $4.3 billion in transmission projects were approved in 2024 that were associated with data center load. And there are another 2.5 billion under consideration." — 2026-06-30-podcast-columbia-energy-exchange-doug-arent-and-robin-millican-on-what-s-really (2026-06-30)
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On ferc-large-load-to-dc-gridscale-construction:
"FERC issued a series of show cause orders to the regional grid operators, the RTO ISOs, to essentially ask them to justify why their existing tariff structure is quote, unquote, just and reasonable and if they find that it isn't to ... propose changes." — 2026-06-30-podcast-columbia-energy-exchange-doug-arent-and-robin-millican-on-what-s-really (2026-06-30)
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On electricity-price-drivers-decomposition:
"demand in and of itself is not a problem if supply can efficiently rise to meet demand. And demand is actually sometimes an asset ... if you can spread fixed costs over a larger customer base, it's actually quite helpful." — 2026-06-30-podcast-columbia-energy-exchange-doug-arent-and-robin-millican-on-what-s-really (2026-06-30)
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