This is a guest post by Blake Newcomer, founder of Philadelphia go-to-market firm Earth Onward, host of The Grove podcast and producer of the Utility Innovation Summit, for which Technical.ly is a media partner.
Pennsylvania is the country’s third-largest electricity producer, following only Texas and Florida, and it sends more of that electricity to its neighbors than any other state in the nation.
In 2025 it shipped out close to 89 million megawatt-hours, according to the US Energy Information Administration. That’s almost double the next-highest state in the 13-state PJM power grid. PJM is the largest regional grid in the country, serving more than 67 million people, and Pennsylvania generates close to a fifth of its total electricity.
Want one more? The state produces about 70% more electricity than it uses, per the latest update from PA’s Independent Financial Office. Seventy percent!
Across the energy generation, transmission, delivery and consumption network, innovations are popping up to address the need.
The commonwealth is the engine room of America’s largest power market. Shouldn’t be surprising, then, that Pennsylvania is considered by some analysts to be the fastest-growing data center market on the PJM grid.
In case you haven’t heard: Data centers of the hyperscale kind, the ones being built to support cloud computing and AI, use lots of energy. The current system will struggle to support this.
How will the grid handle new electric demand?
The old answer was to build more plants and physical infrastructure. This is too slow for modern day. A new transmission line can take up to a decade to permit and build.
Enter novel technologies. Across the energy generation, transmission, delivery and consumption network, innovations are popping up to address this need. Exciting examples include:
New energy technologies are relevant to Philly right now
Dynamic line ratings use sensors to read real conditions on a power line, generating real-time reports on things like wind, temperature and line sag. That’s important because when it’s cool or breezy, a line can safely carry more power than its static rating allows.
Traditional methods, on the other hand, measure total transmission capacity on a worst heat-of-a-windless-summer-afternoon case to maximize buffer to outage risk. Not at all efficient, but good for preventing outages.
In 2023, Allentown-based PPL Electric became the first US utility to run dynamic line ratings in live market operations. It reportedly cut congestion costs by more than $60 million in a single year. In March of this year, PJM flipped its entire footprint to ambient-adjusted ratings, the first grid operator in the country to do it system-wide. This simultaneously lets more electricity flow and buffers against outage risk.
PPL is also installing radio-frequency sensors across its distribution network. These sensors listen for the faint electrical signatures of equipment starting to fail or vegetation creeping into a line.
Demand-side management (DSM) software, meanwhile, is relevant anywhere there is large commercial activity. A wave of startups is building software that helps electricity users — factories, commercial buildings, even clusters of small businesses — shift and flatten when they draw power so the grid sees a smoother curve. Thola Energy works this category, smoothing the demand peaks of commercial sites to decrease utility strain.
Can we innovate faster?
Utility-scale innovation takes agreement across dozens of teams and receives high scrutiny as utilities are expected to operate at nearly 100% uptime. Sales cycles are normally 12-18 months if not more. GTM here requires communication and intense collaboration.
Here lies Pennsylvania’s gap. We have the pieces, but they’re far less connected than we need.
The Utility Innovation Summit is built to solve this. The first one happens Wednesday, July 22, in Philadelphia, at The Post on the first floor of the Curtis Building, right next to Independence Hall.
It’s focused on innovation in electric utilities, and brings together major stakeholders to discuss this, including PPL Electric, PJM (tech implementation) Thola Energy.
The technology to modernize the country’s biggest power grid is here. The people who can deploy are here. The time is now.