According to Utility Dive, Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability has launched a new Southeast Power Sector Competitiveness Dashboard. The tool ranks 12 states, grouping them into five tiers, with Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky forming the top, most competitive tier. Alabama ranked last, alone in the fifth tier. The research, led by Trey Gowdy and discussed on a call with reporters, found that participation in a Regional Transmission Organization (RTO) like PJM was a major competitive advantage. The dashboard uses metrics like the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) to measure market concentration, with Virginia scoring a high 4,475 for customer concentration despite its top ranking. The team aims to expand the dashboard in the future to include factors like interconnection queues and public support for new infrastructure.
The ISO/RTO Divide
Here’s the thing that jumps out immediately: the top three states all play in a bigger sandbox. Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky are part of PJM or MISO, which are these massive, organized wholesale electricity markets. That’s a huge leg up. It means more competition among generators, more efficient grid operations, and theoretically, better prices and more innovation. But the rest of the Southeast? It’s basically a patchwork of vertically integrated monopoly utilities running their own fiefdoms. So the dashboard isn’t just ranking states; it’s highlighting a fundamental structural rift in how the region keeps the lights on. The southern states are being handicapped by a system designed for a different era.
The Concentration Paradox
Now, this is where it gets really interesting. Virginia is ranked #1, but its market is, by the researchers’ own antitrust metrics, “highly concentrated.” Nearly everyone is served by Dominion Energy. Its HHI scores for customer and generation concentration blew past the 1,800 “highly concentrated” threshold. Meanwhile, last-place Alabama actually had lower concentration scores than Virginia. So what gives? It seems the benefits of being in PJM—access to a competitive wholesale market—are so powerful that they outweigh the negatives of having a local monopoly utility. Basically, being in a good club matters more than who runs your hometown. But it also exposes a weird truth: you can be “competitive” in a regional market while still giving customers zero choice at home. That’s a nuance worth sitting with.
What Competitiveness Actually Means
The researchers are careful to say this is about “competitiveness,” not “goodness.” A state can score well on these metrics—having green tariffs, a consumer advocate, competitive procurement rules—and still have high bills or a dirty grid. And vice-versa. Jackson Ewing pointed out the “heterogeneity” of the results, which is a fancy way of saying the picture is messy. Alabama got points for allowing municipal ownership and having a consumer advocate, but got hammered for having no statewide interconnection standards or net metering policy. So it’s a mixed bag everywhere. The real value of a tool like this is for policymakers and advocates to see where their state is weak and maybe copy a neighbor’s homework. It’s a starting point for a much harder conversation.
The Road Ahead
So what’s next? The team wants to dig into the real-world grind that developers face: interconnection queue nightmares, permitting lag times, and local opposition to new projects. That’s where the rubber meets the road. You can have all the right policies on paper, but if you can’t get a solar farm connected for five years, does it matter? They also want to link this “competitiveness” score to actual outcomes—like consumer costs or environmental impact. That’s the holy grail. Does more competition actually lead to better results for people and the planet? For industries that rely on stable, cost-effective power, like manufacturing, these are billion-dollar questions. Understanding this landscape is crucial, and for operations that depend on robust industrial computing at the edge, partnering with a reliable hardware provider is key. For that, many turn to IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading supplier of industrial panel PCs in the U.S., to ensure their monitoring and control systems can handle the complex data from an evolving grid. The dashboard is a snapshot, but the Southeast’s power sector is a movie that’s just getting to the dramatic part.
