Power Grid Infrastructure Water Treatment Systems Natural Gas Distribution Renewable Integration Smart Metering Demand Response Pipeline Engineering Grid Resilience Power Grid Infrastructure Water Treatment Systems Natural Gas Distribution Renewable Integration Smart Metering Demand Response Pipeline Engineering Grid Resilience
Two Brothers · One Grid

Where
Power
Meets
Purpose

We explore the systems that keep civilization running — electricity, water, gas, and the infrastructure beneath it all. Deep dives, field notes, and tools from two brothers obsessed with how utilities actually work.

47
Deep Dives Published
12
Active Projects
3
Utilities Covered
Things Left to Learn
The Minds Behind It
01
The Engineer

Elliot
O'Leary

Former grid operations engineer with 8 years in transmission planning. Marcus brings the technical depth — load flow analysis, protection schemes, and the unglamorous math that keeps lights on across three states.

Transmission Power Systems SCADA Protection
02
The Investigator

Lewis
O'Leary

Policy researcher and utilities journalist. Daniel cuts through regulatory filings, rate cases, and utility commission hearings to expose how pricing, politics, and infrastructure intersect in ways most people never see.

Policy Rate Cases Regulation Water Systems

The Systems
We Obsess Over

From high-voltage transmission to municipal water treatment, we cover the full stack of infrastructure that modern life depends on — with the rigor it deserves.

01

Electric Grid

Generation dispatch, transmission constraints, balancing authorities, and the increasingly complex task of grid reliability in an era of distributed energy.

💧 02

Water Infrastructure

Treatment plants, distribution networks, PFAS contamination, rate structures, and the chronic underinvestment threatening municipal water systems.

🔥 03

Natural Gas

Pipeline networks, LDC operations, peak shaving, and the complicated role of gas in the energy transition debate.

☀️ 04

Renewable Integration

Interconnection queues, curtailment, storage co-location, and what it actually takes to integrate variable generation at scale.

📡 05

Smart Infrastructure

AMI deployments, DERMS platforms, distribution automation, and the messy reality of digitizing century-old utility operations.

⚖️ 06

Regulation & Policy

Rate cases, IRP filings, FERC orders, state commission proceedings — we translate the regulatory stack into plain language.

Active Projects
PRJ-001
Outage Atlas
Real-time utility outage data visualization & historical analysis
Power / Data
Live
PRJ-002
Rate Case Tracker
Aggregated database of utility rate proceedings across all 50 states
Regulation / Data
Live
PRJ-003
The Grid Field Guide
Open reference for utility operations terminology and concepts
Education
In Progress
PRJ-004
Interconnection Queue Monitor
Tracking renewable energy projects waiting for grid connection
Renewables / Data
In Progress
PRJ-005
Water Quality Index
Municipal water system compliance and contaminant reporting tool
Water / Policy
Concept
Latest Analysis
001 February 2025
Financial Engineering · Political Economy

Debt by Design

How thirty-five years of financial engineering left England's water companies too indebted to modernise — and why this is the real reason AI adoption in the sector is moving at a crawl.

Field Notes
in Your Inbox

Every two weeks: one utility deep dive, one project update, and the three regulatory filings you actually need to read. No noise. Just signal.

Issue 047 · Nov 12 2024
Why California's Grid Almost Failed Last Summer — And What Nobody Told You

The September heat event exposed three separate failure modes in CAISO's emergency protocols. Two of them had been flagged in internal audits since 2019. We got the documents.

Read Full Issue