The Untapped Grid: How Better Utilization of the Power System Can Improve Energy Affordability
The Brattle Group (prepared for GridLab and the Utilize Coalition)Ryan Hledik, Long Lam, Kate Peters01 Mar 2026all-rights-reservedRead the original
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This Brattle Group report argues that the affordability problem in US electricity is partly a utilisation problem. Because the system is sized for infrequent demand spikes, less than half its capacity is used across the year: average US generation capacity utilisation sits at about 50 percent and has been roughly flat for at least a decade. The authors model adding new load without regard to system utilisation, which raises rates for all customers by about 1.4 percent, against a scenario in which annual utilisation improves by 10 percent, allowing new load to be integrated at below-average cost and cutting rates by about 3.4 percent — or 4.8 percent relative to a status quo load growth case. Scaled nationally, they estimate consumer savings of 110 to 170 billion dollars over ten years, and argue utility earnings would still grow in absolute terms.
Contested
Quotation
“"US consumers could save $110 to $170 billion over 10 years on their electricity bills due to system utilization improvements."”
The Brattle Group (prepared for GridLab and the Utilize Coalition) · all-rights-reserved · Read the original
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The MyGreenSuit briefing
Commentary by MyGreenSuit, not the words of The Brattle Group (prepared for GridLab and the Utilize Coalition).
Fifty percent utilisation, flat for over a decade. Every argument about whether America can build fast enough starts from an assumption that the existing system is being used, and it is not — it is sized for a handful of hours a year and idle through most of the rest.
The report's cleverest move is political rather than analytical. It models a case in which utilities still grow earnings while customer rates fall, which is an attempt to route around the obvious objection: utilities earn on capital deployed, so they have no structural reason to work existing capital harder.
Whether that actually resolves the incentive is the real question, and the report does not answer it. Regulatory design is the binding constraint here, not arithmetic.
Disclose the sponsorship if you write this up. It was commissioned by GridLab and the Utilize Coalition, both of which advocate for the demand-flexibility measures it recommends. The modelling looks sound and the framing is not disinterested; a reader can hold both thoughts at once.