Newton | From capital to delivery
No single organization controls all these dependencies, yet all influence delivery speed and energization timing. These interconnected ecosystems are beginning to operate as part of a broader industrial complex: an interdependent infrastructure system spanning utilities, regulators, supply chains, financing institutions, technology providers, large-load customers and public stakeholders. The challenge is no longer simply optimizing individual parts of the system. It is orchestrating the industrial complex as a whole. Delays in one part of the system propagate across all others. This changes the nature of execution risk itself. The challenge is orchestrating decisions, approvals, financing, supply chains and delivery activity across the integrated industrial system at a pace the sector has not previously required. The challenge is now systemic rather than functional. Utilities are recognizing that scale alone is not the advantage. The advantage is the ability to coordinate capital, supply chains, engineering, financing and infrastructure delivery across increasingly interconnected systems.
This is driving greater emphasis on systems thinking across the sector. Utilities are recognizing that infrastructure performance can no longer be evaluated solely at the individual project level because demand growth, grid capability, permitting, financing, supply chains and delivery timing are now deeply interconnected across the broader system. Utilities are therefore rethinking how accountability, incentives and orchestration are structured across development, engineering, procurement, construction and energization. In many cases, utility operating models were designed for a slower, more sequential infrastructure environment than the one now emerging. The future of the grid may depend not simply on building more infrastructure, but on orchestrating the existing system more intelligently and dynamically.
We need to build at a pace of generation and transmission that we haven’t seen in the past decade.” Bob Frenzel Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Xcel Energy
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