Con Edison
Raghu Sudhakara is vice president of Distributed Resource Integration at Con Edison, a regulated utility providing electric, gas and steam service in New York. He is responsible for leading company initiatives in clean transportation, distributed and clean technology resources such as storage and solar, and demand management and planning. Sudhakara has held positions of increasing responsibility including E-Mobility, demand management and non-wires solutions. Before joining Con Edison in 2012, he worked as a consultant to power generation companies on power plant efficiencies.
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.