March 9, 2026
There has never been a stronger case for upgrading America’s electrical grid than our circumstances today — and distributed power generation plays a leading role in that transformation.
That was the launchpoint for Monday evening’s New Power Paradigm, a panel discussion hosted by Onyx Renewables exploring the intersection of economics, policy, and innovation shaping America’s transition to a 21st-century electrical grid system. The hour-long panel, moderated by Emmy award-winning journalist Byron Pitts, featured perspectives from across the power sector, including Onyx CEO Mary Beth Mandanas as well as experts from C3 Solutions, Addition Capital, BuildQ, and Energy Vault.
U.S. power demand is surging
As moderator, Pitts started the conversation with a simple question: Why now?
Panelists pointed to a myriad of factors: Electricity bills are rising, demand is growing faster than utilities can build new power plants, and inadequate grid infrastructure has made this sudden surge in electricity use all but impossible to accommodate. Meanwhile, geopolitical instability contributes to volatile prices for traditional energy sources as well as a growing need for energy independence, accelerating America’s shift to renewable energy sources.
While data centers and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) have taken much of the blame, hyperscalers aren’t the only energy users contributing to America’s growing power crunch. Panelists pointed to the electrification of homes and industrial businesses, reshoring of manufacturing, and growth in autonomous vehicles as other contributors to the country’s skyrocketing energy demand, signaling that the need for a more robust, modernized electrical grid is not short-lived.
That demand-side diversity instills confidence across the power sector in renewable energy’s long-term future. The next question then becomes: How do you put power on the grid as fast — and as cheap — as possible?
Several panelists pointed to solar as the obvious answer, given its low cost per electron and speed to deploy. But building new distributed solar power alone is not enough: When centralized players continue to broker electricity generation and grid management, our existing electricity system will continue to face shortages, blackouts, and other grid issues.
By embracing a new power paradigm in which distributed energy resources (DERs) play a pivotal part in powering the grid — not just a supporting role — the U.S. power sector can fundamentally reimagine both the business model and infrastructure that shape the industry.
Distributed generation is the future of the electrical grid
By embracing distributed solar power paired with energy storage as a key focus to modernize the grid, the power sector can deliver more reliable, affordable, and resilient electricity to customers across the country.
“There are more opportunities today to finance distributed-scale clean energy than ever before,” BuildQ founder and CEO Maryssa Barron told the panel, adding that to seize more of those opportunities — and faster — requires the clean energy industry and its financiers to find efficiencies. One key source of time and cost savings? Data-driven intelligence.
“AI, for the first time — and technology, really, by extension — is able to adapt to the nuances, the idiosyncrasies of the [distributed generation]-scale project, just like it can with the utility-scale project, meaning that there are opportunities to create efficiencies on a scale never before seen,” she explained. “And that's not just making your contract review faster. We're talking about a fundamental change in the digital infrastructure that embeds trust, that recognizes human relationships in the process and helps enable them.”
As a power producer, Onyx Renewables CEO Mary Beth Mandanas sees these technological innovations providing benefits to both solar energy system operators and customers seeking renewable energy for businesses.
“Never before have we had access to so much data and the need to drive reliability, redundancy and predictability,” she said. “If we take that data every day, our business economics become more efficient. We can help customers reduce their cost. We can help them with reliability. We can help them with redundancy.”
Policy poses challenges — but economics win out
While policy shifts and stalls have made an impact on the power sector this year, Energy Vault’s Marco Terruzzin emphasized the need for approaches that align with the buildout of distributed renewable energy.
“In the medium to long term, if you have regulation that will provide incentives to decentralized generation, everybody will benefit,” he said.
There was also broad agreement across the panel that the economics still make a strong case for more distributed solar power. Even with federal investment tax credits (ITCs) disappearing, C3 Solutions’ Drew Bond sees a future where the solar industry continues to thrive. “Because [solar] is the cheapest form of energy, it's going to be a hard case to make to Congress to bring the ITC back, but I think it's time to move on and just compete on terms,” he said.
Permitting, however, remains a larger policy hurdle. Though panelists held mixed opinions on whether the federal administration might make headway on much-needed permitting reform, Onyx’s Mandanas remained optimistic that there is bipartisan recognition that solar is “cheaper, faster, more redundant, [and] more reliable.”
Meanwhile, Barron from BuildQ pointed to the role other jurisdictions can play in streamlined permitting processes. “State and local governments are doubling down on their initiatives to support renewable energy growth,” she noted, pointing to some states’ responses to federal tariffs on steel and solar panels as an example.
“States implemented higher RPS standards and implemented incentives to help revive the growth of this industry,” she explained. “So I think it's a complex issue that doesn't depend on the total removal of regulators from the space but rather greater collaboration with them just from the get-go.”
Cross-sector collaboration to create a modernized grid
Ultimately, laying the foundation for a modernized grid will require a combination of thoughtful policy, technological innovation, and market forces. Panelists closed the conversation on an optimistic note, encouraging the audience — and industry at large — to keep looking toward the future. Today’s power sector is remarkably different than it was even a decade ago, with few predictions that solar would become one of the cheapest sources of generation as it is today. A decade from now, technological innovation means there’s no telling what the most affordable source of generation will be.
Advancing the power sector will require collaboration across multiple solutions and disciplines. With so much work to be done in modernizing the grid, renewable energy developers are “not competing, really,” Mandanas noted, but rather finding their own lane in the shared mission to build a new power paradigm.
Seeking ways to advance your distributed clean energy project? Reach out to Onyx today.
