Democratic strategists this week rolled out a proposal to open the grid to competition, including creating a national right to generate power and share it with neighbors.
Please support Energy Changemakers’ work by subscribing!
The proposal is part of Project 2029, an effort to develop a governing blueprint for the next Democratic administration, much as Project 2025 has served as a roadmap for the Trump administration. Two Democratic policy veterans with ties to the Clinton, Obama and Biden administrations — Andrei Cherny and Chad Maisel — are behind the effort.
Project 2029 released a paper on Nov. 12, “Open the Grid,” that marries a libertarian free market stance with a push for clean energy and consumer protections.
Authored by Kiran Bhatraju, founder and CEO of energy data company Arcadia, the paper says that it’s time to finish the market openings begun with industry restructuring of the 1990s and 2000s.
“The new system should preserve what the old bargain sometimes got right — universal service, reliability, safety, and consumer protection — while removing the legal barriers that protect incumbent suppliers’ monopolies,” the paper says.
Opening the grid to local energy
More specifically, Project 2029 would eliminate utility franchise rules that block the sale of electricity across public rights-of-way. Sometimes called the over-the-fence rule, it’s viewed in the industry as a significant impediment, particularly for community microgrids. It means a microgrid installed at one building cannot sell its excess electricity to a building on a separate property across the street.
The paper calls for Congress to preempt state franchise laws that restrict competitive electricity suppliers, customer self-generation and qualifying microgrids.
The federal government would allow microgrids to cross public rights-of-way and serve willing customers, subject to safety and reliability standards. Customers remaining connected to the larger grid would still pay their share of its costs.
The plan also calls for nationwide retail electricity competition, allowing customers to choose suppliers offering packages that include rooftop solar, batteries, electric vehicle charging, and flexible demand, along with electric supply.
It points to two companies already pursuing variations of that model: Base Power, which provides home batteries to retail electricity customers in Texas, and David Energy, which bundles retail electricity with plug-in batteries in New York.
Changing how utilities make money
The proposal would also change the financial incentives that govern utilities.
It recommends moving away from making infrastructure development a profit center for utilities and instead incentivizing them through performance-based regulation. They would be rewarded based on their reliability, interconnection speed, customer satisfaction, emissions reductions, and cost efficiency.
The approach could encourage utilities to pursue distributed energy as an alternative to conventional grid infrastructure. Bhatraju points to Con Edison’s Brooklyn Queens initiative as an example of how changing utility financial incentives can achieve that end.
Other provisions would accelerate generator interconnection, require transmission-owning utilities to join regional grid operators, prohibit utilities from charging customers for political advocacy, and require data centers to bring their own power.
No shortage of energy equipment
Project 29 is not an official Democratic Party platform. But if it is adopted, the energy policy conversation could change for Democrats, becoming less about clean energy incentives and tax credits, and more about tackling energy costs by strengthening the competitive landscape.
“What stands between families and businesses saving on their power bill is not a shortage of panels, batteries, or power plants,” Bhatraju writes.
Rather, as he sees it, the problem is a set of laws written more than a century ago that limit who can deliver them and make full use of their potential.
