Why the Electrical Grid Is a Civil Rights Issue

Stand by a substation at solar noon and you can hear the republic breathing: a dry chorus of fans, a smell of ozone, cables as thick as a forearm doing the humble arithmetic that keeps everything else lyrical—elections, novels, marriages. If the hum wobbles, the country stutters.

How to build the next American grid—and what our neighbors already proved

By a regulated optimist who grades in pencil, votes with both hands, and still believes maps should tell the truth.

I. Begin with a substation at noon

tand by a substation at solar noon and you can hear the republic breathing: a dry chorus of fans, a smell of ozone, cables as thick as a forearm doing the humble arithmetic that keeps everything else lyrical—elections, novels, marriages. If the hum wobbles, the country stutters. For a century we mostly forgot this, because the wires worked. Now demand is rising again—data centers, heat pumps, EVs, factories re-shored—and the old grid pants like a runner in borrowed shoes. The question is not whether to build; it is whether we can update the method and map of how we build—fast enough, wide enough, with enough courtesy to the people beneath the wires.

This essay is a field guide for that rebuild: the demand shock (AI and friends), the new law of wires (FERC's 2024 rules), the legal weather (post-Chevron), the money (federal grid programs), and the hemispheric hints (what Central America and Mexico already stitched together). Then I'll hand you a playbook.

II. The demand shock, annotated

For a decade the U.S. lived on flattish electricity demand; then, suddenly, it didn't. The Department of Energy's late-2024 synthesis—drawing on Berkeley Lab—put a clear number on one driver: data centers consumed ~4.4% of U.S. electricity in 2023 and are projected to reach ~6.7–12% by 2028 (≈ 325–580 TWh), depending on growth and efficiency. That's not a bloggy guess; it's a federal report pairing lab methods with agency data.

EIA's short-term and sectoral outlooks add the bigger frame: U.S. electricity use set a record in 2024 and is projected to climb again in 2025–2026, with commercial computing one of the fastest-growing end uses. Translation: the days of "do nothing and reliability will hold" are over.

If all you took from this section is one sentence, make it this: the load is back, and it is peaky, digital, climate-stressed, and politically impatient.

III. The new law of wires

In May 2024, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission adopted Order No. 1920, a landmark rule that forces the regions to plan long-term (think 20-year horizons), measure the multi-benefits of transmission (reliability, economics, resilience), and finally get serious about who pays. It is the closest thing to an adult in the room U.S. grid planning has seen in a generation. FERC later clarified and strengthened state roles in Order 1920-A, but the spine stayed intact: plan earlier, share fairly, build smarter.

On the same day, FERC issued Order No. 1977, updating its backstop siting procedures—the narrow authority Congress gave it in 2021 to permit certain interstate lines when states block or stall them in designated corridors. The rule is procedural, not imperial; but it matters because it finally specifies how and when the Commission will act if states cannot agree.

And those corridors? DOE's Grid Deployment Office began the designation process in May 2024 with a preliminary list of potential "NIETCs"—National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors—areas where congestion and reliability problems justify special federal tools (financing, coordinated permitting). By December 2024, DOE narrowed that list to three priority regions in Phase 3, aiming to focus resources where the payoff is greatest.

If you work in power, you know none of this is a magic wand. But it is a map—planning, corridors, a backstop—that didn't exist, in this form, eighteen months ago.

IV. The legal weather: after Chevron and with Corner Post

Grid rules now live under a different sky. On June 28, 2024, the Supreme Court ended the Chevron deference doctrine in Loper Bright v. Raimondo, instructing courts to use their own best judgment rather than defer to reasonable agency readings of ambiguous statutes. Two business days later, the Court held in Corner Post v. Federal Reserve that an APA claim's six-year clock often starts when a plaintiff is first injured, not when a rule is issued—inviting late-arriving challenges to long-settled regulations. Together, those cases mean big infrastructure rules (and permits) must be drafted like oak beams: text-tight, record-rich, and ready for maximal scrutiny.

Unsurprisingly, Order 1920 drew litigation from multiple sides—some states and utility regulators arguing federal overreach, others (and clean-energy groups) defending the rule as essential for reliability and affordability. The Fourth Circuit won the lottery to hear the combined challenges; rehearing orders in late 2024 expanded state roles but kept the rule's core. In a post-Chevron world, expect the briefs to read like constitutional literature.

V. The money: resilience as a line item

Rules are bones; money is muscle. DOE's Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) program totals $10.5 billion across three tracks (resilience, smart grid, and innovation). By October 2024, DOE had announced roughly $4.2 billion in Round-2 selections, with billions more moving through the pipeline—funding everything from wildfire hardening to dynamic line ratings and advanced distribution control.

Pair that with DOE's National Transmission Needs Study (Oct 2023), which says plainly what practitioners whisper in meetings: every region benefits from more transmission, and the largest payoffs come from interregional ties (think Plains ↔ Midwest, Southwest ↔ Texas, Texas ↔ Delta). Needs accelerate by 2030, and by 2040 almost every regional pairing shows significant gains from additional capacity. Translation: the cheapest kilowatt-hour is often the one you move.

VI. What the map already knows (Central America & Mexico)

Americans sometimes act as if interconnection were exotic. It isn't. Central America built SIEPAC, a ~1,800 km, 230 kV backbone that links Guatemala to Panama, governs a regional market, and—crucially—proved that countries can trade reliability and price without surrendering sovereignty. The operator's materials are boring in the best way: kilometers of line, fiber in the guard cable, dispatch rules, market reports. Boring is what you want from your grid.

Mexico and Guatemala tied their systems with a 400 kV interconnection (Tapachula–Los Brillantes) tested in 2009; it moves hundreds of megawatts when conditions warrant. In North America, U.S.–Mexico electricity trade is small (on the order of tenths of a percent of U.S. consumption), concentrated in California–Baja, New Mexico–northern Mexico, and Texas border ties—limited interties that nonetheless prove a point: physics respects neighbors more than politics does.

The lesson is not to paste Central America onto the U.S.; it is to copy the administrative humility: define corridors, agree on governance, and then let the electrons do their honest work.

VII. Three American projects we should build (and can)

1) The Southwestern Connector (high-capacity AC/DC with NIETC scaffolding)

DOE's preliminary NIETC process points to corridors where the math is obvious: move cheap Plains and Southwest generation into hungry metros and data-center clusters; relieve congestion that punishes consumers in the Mid-Atlantic, New York, California; and create redundant paths for extreme-weather rerouting. The Needs Study names the pairs; Order 1920 says "plan them." Now pick two corridors and put steel in the air.

2) California–Baja integration (the modest intertie with immodest benefits)

California and Baja California already trade power at the margin; formalize and incrementally expand the cross-border transfer capacity with HVDC back-to-back and coordinated markets. The prize is flexibility: evening ramps smoothed with sunlight that peaked an hour earlier, outage support during fire-driven islanding, and a sandbox for continental balancing that keeps prices sane. EIA's trade snapshots confirm how tiny the volumes are now; start where politics is easiest and physics is forgiving.

DOE's Phase-3 focus includes a Tribal Energy Access Corridor; FERC's siting rule now expects robust Tribal engagement. Treat that as a design constraint, not a box-check: revenue sharing, equity stakes, workforce ladders, and route control by the sovereigns the lines cross. The corridor becomes not a scar but a civic wage—and the project survives court.

VIII. Statecraft for engineers (and vice versa)

The best grid writing of 2024 wasn't poetry; it was FERC's fact sheet. It tells providers to identify long-term needs, quantify multiple benefits, and lock in cost-allocation before the political weather turns. It is boring on purpose; boring is fast. Pair it with Order 1977's backstop procedures and DOE's NIETC playbook and you have, at last, a way to sequence projects: plan regionally (1920), unlock corridors (NIETC), and, if all else fails, apply a federal permit with an engagement record that can stand after Loper Bright.

But law is not enough. Money must land where the outages live. If you run a utility or a city: chase GRIP for wildfire hardening, for reconductoring (raise the amps on the poles you already own), for dynamic line ratings (use the weather to move more power), and for advanced distribution (microgrids at clinics, libraries, shelters). This is not boutique work; it is the new civil defense.

IX. The near-solarpunk ledger (twelve moves for the next 36 months)

Write like a judge will read it. Every planning filing, corridor designation, and permit must assume no Chevron cushion and late-arriving plaintiffs. Quote the statute. Show the record. Use verbs that survive scrutiny.
Pick two interregional projects and finish them. Use Order 1920 to pick winners; use NIETC to speed; use GRIP to modernize the receiving ends. Measure prices reduced and outage minutes avoided as often as megawatts added.
Treat data centers as grid assets, not just loads. Make firm interconnection agreements that require on-site storage, demand response, and islanding capability; the DOE/LBL numbers justify the ask.
Reconductor before you bulldoze. New lines are vital; so is squeezing existing corridors with high-temperature low-sag conductors and advanced ratings. (GRIP pays for boring, thankfully.)
Bury the most fragile miles. Use resilience funds to underground targeted spans (fire paths, storm-surge reaches). Don't romanticize overhead lines where the forest disagrees.
Elect the meter. Publish a public "grid ledger": load growth vs. capacity added, by county; interconnection queue wait times; minutes-out by feeder; bilingual. Accountability makes steel.
Cross the border on purpose. Start a California–Baja capacity expansion pilot with HVDC back-to-back and synchronized market rules. Keep it small; scale if the economics hum.
Build a Tribal corridor the right way once. Use DOE's Phase-3 focus to pioneer a consent-first template (royalties, equity, route power). One good project beats a dozen press releases.
Don't strand Puerto Rico. Fold PR100's community-microgrid logic into mainland grantmaking; when the big grid blinks, little grids keep people alive. (Your hospitals will thank you.)
Integrate wires with water and heat. Where stormwater programs and heat offices already exist, co-site distribution upgrades under shade corridors; resilience is a bundle, not a silo.
Use SIEPAC as precedent. When skeptics say "regional markets are fantasy," show them 1,800 km of 230 kV that already works—and the governance that keeps it boring.
Practice the politics of courtesy. Translate every rate case, route map, and outage plan into plain English and Spanish. Infrastructure is only legitimate at the speed of understanding.

X. Scenes from the near future (because policy is a room you can walk into)

Pueblo, August 2, 4:11 p.m.

A summer thunderhead smothers solar output; a Plains HVDC tie hums harder and a price spike dulls to a shrug. At the clinic, the vaccine fridge doesn't notice. The line exists because a docket once used the word "benefits" in the plural and meant it.

San Diego–Tijuana, February 18, 8:03 p.m.

An HVDC back-to-back station sends a quiet river north as California's evening ramp bites. The operator glances at a dashboard where MW, $/MWh, and minutes saved share the same font. The border here is a comma, not a period.

Northern Plains, December 9, 7:26 a.m.

A wind lull, a frost warning, a substation that's two years newer than the arguments about it. The line cut through three ranches; it also paid three college tuitions and a Tribal apprenticeship program because the corridor agreement said so and the lawyers meant it.

XI. The method, repaired

If you've read this far, you may be thinking: this is all circuits and statutes; where's the romance? Here's mine: boring is moral. A line that doesn't fall in a windstorm; a permit that survives court; a corridor that pays the people it traverses; a bilingual outage text that arrives in time—these are forms of courtesy that keep a democracy from fraying. We have rules now (1920 for planning, 1977 for backstops, NIETCs for corridors), money to start (GRIP), and a hemispheric proof-of-concept (SIEPAC). We even have the proper fear: courts that will demand our best drafting in a post-Chevron world.

So let's build the meridian—the north-south and east-west wires that make prosperity audible again. Noon is when shadows shrink; it's a good hour to decide what kind of grid we want to hear.

References (validated)

FERC Order 1920 (regional transmission planning & cost allocation) — fact sheet (May 13, 2024) and later clarification expanding state roles (Nov. 21, 2024)
FERC Order 1977 (backstop siting procedures) — final rule summary (May 13, 2024)
DOE National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors (NIETC) — preliminary list launch (May 8, 2024) and Phase-3 narrowing to three priority regions (Dec. 16, 2024)
DOE National Transmission Needs Study (Oct. 30, 2023) — key findings: universal benefits of more transmission; largest benefits interregional; needs accelerate by 2030–2040
GRIP program — $10.5 billion total; Round-2 selections ≈ $4.2 billion announced Oct. 18, 2024; additional grants to harden grid
Data centers & electricity — DOE release (Dec. 20, 2024) and LBL report: 4.4% of U.S. power in 2023; 6.7–12% by 2028 (≈325–580 TWh)
EIA demand outlook — record consumption resuming growth in 2025–2026
Post-Chevron landscape — Supreme Court opinions in Loper Bright (June 28, 2024) and Corner Post (July 1, 2024)
Order 1920 litigation — challenges consolidated in the 4th Circuit; mixed state responses; NARUC statements and analysis
Central American interconnection — SIEPAC operator (EPR) notes: ~1,800 km, 230 kV regional backbone; regional market operations
Mexico–Guatemala tie — 400 kV Tapachula–Los Brillantes interconnection and synchronization tests (2009)
U.S.–Mexico electricity trade — small but growing; concentrated at California–Baja, New Mexico, and Texas border interties

This is the ninth in the Sol Meridian series exploring the hidden continuities that shape American public life. A technical and policy guide to rebuilding America's electrical grid with federal authority and hemispheric cooperation.