Vedeni Energy’s Deep Dive

Late-Spring Congestion and Market Readiness Watch

Wholesale power markets across North America remained broadly orderly during the seven-day period ending May 22, 2026. The week’s clearest stress points were localized transmission constraints, operator notices, and ongoing market-implementation work—not broad emergency conditions. Real-time pricing reflected typical late-spring fundamentals: moderate load across most regions, recurring congestion-driven price separation, and episodic nodal volatility around outages and facility constraints. Public postings highlighted ERCOT manual action for an unsolved contingency in the Taylor County area; PJM post-contingency local load relief warnings on May 20; CAISO daily real-time market and EDAM reports; MISO pricing approvals and report-availability notices; ISO-NE daily market postings; IESO renewed-market engagement activity; and AESO REM readiness work.

The Grid You Already Own

When load growth accelerates, the industry’s reflex is familiar: build the next substation, the next line, the next major capital project. In many cases, that is the right response. But not always. One of the most important questions for utility leaders today is simpler and more consequential: are we using the grid we already have as effectively as possible?

Stop Waiting for the Annual Review

Performance management should be one of the simplest parts of a manager’s job. Set expectations. Watch the work. Give useful feedback. Correct problems early. Help good people get better. Instead, many companies have turned it into a ceremony. Managers spend days collecting notes, filling out templates, assigning ratings, and preparing for a single formal conversation that tries to do too much at once. Employees walk in expecting judgment, politics, or surprise. Managers often arrive tired and late, hoping to get through the meeting without a fight.

Shoulder-Season Calm as Structural Pressures Build

Wholesale power markets across North America moved through the week ending May 15 in a generally stable shoulder-season pattern, with little evidence of broad regional reliability stress in the reviewed materials. Public daily market publications across the organized markets showed a routine operating cadence, while available real-time price reporting suggested that peak pricing was driven mainly by localized congestion, renewable ramps, and ordinary weather-related load variation rather than systemwide scarcity. In the West, CAISO and the WEIM footprint remained focused on market-integration execution and stakeholder processes, while SPP and Markets+ continued to advance western governance and large-load-related work rather than responding to acute operating events.

Transformer Shortages Are Now Running the Build Schedule

If you work in the U.S. electric power industry, you are used to hearing that everything takes longer than expected. Permits take longer. Interconnection studies take longer. New generation takes longer. Transmission siting takes longer. What has changed is that a single piece of equipment can now derail an otherwise sound plan on its own: the transformer. That is why transformer shortages have shifted from a purchasing headache to a leadership problem. When a utility, developer, or grid operator cannot get the transformer it needs, the schedule on the wall no longer means much.