Bidgely
Gautam Aggarwal is the Chief Revenue Officer at Bidgely. Prior to Bidgely, Gautam was CMO at NSS Labs, a data-driven cyber security company. In his 25+ years of rich strategic and business experience in Solutions, Product Marketing, Product Management and Strategy, and Global Marketing, he also served as Vice President, Product Marketing at FireEye and Barracuda Networks and lined them for their successful IPOs. Earlier in his career, he served as Director of Marketing, Solutions and Management at Cisco.
The electric utility industry has moved past the era of predictable one percent growth. As we reach the middle of 2026, however, the question is no longer whether new load is coming, but rather how providers can build fast enough to meet the demand. This month, we spoke with eight leaders currently navigating unprecedented growth challenges to discuss the strategies and infrastructure we all need to modernize the grid.
The scale of the current challenge is significant. In Virginia, Rappahannock Electric Cooperative is managing five GW of contracted data center load against a foundation where the current peak is only 1.2 GW. In New York, Con Edison is executing a $17 billion investment plan to ensure the grid remains resilient as the city electrifies its buildings and transportation. However, as Rajesh Kumar of NYPA and Jacob Lucas of Eversource emphasize, a central challenge is the timing mismatch; while large loads can be commissioned in eighteen months, transmission and generation projects require significantly more time to complete.