When tech ethos meets regulated reality

You’re probably not surprised to learn that “move fast and break things” is not, in fact, one of the guiding principals of the power industry. Nor, for that matter, of aviation, medicine, structural engineering or a slew of other regulation-intensive sectors. These industries are regulated because the downside risk can be catastrophic, and often irreversible, not just because “bureaucrats hate innovation.” Regulation is the encoded memory of previous disasters and the determination by those in the industries to avoid repeating them.

‘Ship now, fix it later’ may be acceptable when rolling out a new social media feature. However, that mindset is dangerous when it can trigger costly systemic failures or even risk human life.

The real challenge, then, is to move faster and innovate more aggressively while treating real-world harm as a non-negotiable constraint rather than optional drag.

That shift must ultimately take shape at the intersection of Silicon Valley’s data center driven push to quickly add resources to the grid and utilities’ mandate to deliver reliable, affordable power. Bridging those priorities requires rethinking how we procure new generation and demand-side resources to keep pace with large load growth while maintaining safe, reliable and affordable operations.

Key Procurement Strategies for Responsible Speed

• All-source procurements allow technologies to compete on total system value, reducing the risk of locking into a non-ideal portfolio.

  
  

• Parallel workstreams. Procurement groups can set up a “supply feasibility” team to score projects on transmission, interconnection, siting, permitting, and developer strength, while, a “deal structuring” team identifies the right instruments, such as PPA, utility ownership, build-transfer, hybrid supply, behind-the-meter, or a dedicated customer arrangement.

  
  

• Pre-qualifying projects beyond standard proposal compliance and into more detailed feasibility criteria, including interconnection progress, development maturity, siting controls, and financing readiness.

  
  

• Improved evaluation tools. Procurement platforms can organize bids around consistent scoring criteria, automate comparisons, and surface the tradeoffs across price, risk, timing, and deliverability instead of forcing teams to do that analysis manually.

  
  

• Scoring projects on both value and deliverability. Value includes cost, emissions, and reliability. Deliverability includes schedule certainty, interconnection risk, and permitting risk. If a project has high value but low deliverability, it should not form the anchor of a new resource portfolio.

  
  

• More transparency. Shared workflows and audit trails make it easier for internal teams, regulators, and stakeholders to see how a decision was made.

  
  

New approaches and platforms can help responsibly speed power procurement by making the process faster without making it slap-dash. The goal is not speed for its own sake. It is to help utilities meet rising demand safely and reliably while reducing the friction that slows down procurement decisions. In practice, that means using software to remove manual handoffs and duplicated work so people can focus on judgment, risk, and strategy. By automating repetitive work, structuring bids and inputs, improving traceability, and providing teams with a shared, audit-ready view, procurement teams can move quickly while still meeting reliability, compliance, and cost goals.

Move fast and scale responsibly.