Technical Talk with RF

ReliabilityFirst (RF) offers a regularly scheduled monthly call to provide entities and stakeholders with a forum for addressing topics and questions relevant to reliability, resilience and security.   

While RF Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) will provide presentations and updates, they will not address entity-specific questions and issues. These types of questions can be handled offline by using the RF Assist Visit program. If you have any questions, please reach out to Mike Hughes, Entity Engagement Manager, 216-503-0617.  

Agenda 

Resource adequacy concerns loom in RF region amid surging load growth 

Tim Fryfogle, Principal Engineer – Resources, Engineering & System Performance, RF 

Tim will discuss RF’s 2026 Resource Adequacy Report, published in February. The report evaluates projected future grid reliability, load growth, changes in the generation mix, and key risks including generation retirements, policy volatility, permitting delays, and supply chain constraints. 

 Implications of artificial intelligence-related data center energy use and emissions 

Benjamin C. Lee, Professor of Electrical and Systems Engineering and Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania 

Dr. Benjamin Lee from the University of Pennsylvania, will provide a systems‑level view of how more efficient computing can enable sustainable data centers for artificial intelligence. He examines the growing energy and grid impacts of AI, evaluates emerging data center technologies, and discusses how infrastructure design, workload management, and energy integration must evolve to support long‑term, sustainable AI growth.