Identify where electricity demand is growing in rural co-op service areas and the local factors driving change.
Document how cooperatives manage rising demand through infrastructure, programs, and rate design.
Examine how priorities, constraints, and system dynamics shape strategy choices across co-ops.
Analyze how coordination, institutions, and stakeholder relationships influence load growth planning.
Where is demand growing? What parts of rural co-op service areas are seeing the fastest increases, and what local factors are driving change?
How are co-ops responding? What strategies are being used—such as infrastructure upgrades, programs, and rate design?
Why these strategies? How do priorities, preferences, constraints, and risk shape which options co-ops choose?
What enables coordination? What governance and coordination approaches support effective planning and community responsiveness?
Interactive maps showing patterns of electricity load and generation growth
Strategy atlas documenting how co-ops are managing rising demand across contexts
Coding dictionary linking governance and coordination concepts to real-world load growth planning cases
Playbooks and briefs designed for utility staff, policymakers, and partners
Academic research including publications in public policy, energy, and planning journals
Graham Ambrse co-leads Themes 2–4 leading the project’s research design, synthesis across themes, and output integration across themes.
He is a public administration scholar focusing on the fields of collaborative governance and policy process with an expertise and interest in energy and local food governance. This focus is aided by skills in advanced network analysis, computational text mining, and natural language processing. In addition to these computational skills, I have also designed and administered survey and interview research projects, positioning myself as a competent mixed methods researcher.
Serena Kim co-leads the project with direct co-leadership on Themes 1 and 4, focusing on geospatial data integration, machine-assisted analysis of planning documents, and the development of reproducible data products for practitioners.
Serena is an Assistant Professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at NC State University. Her research examines the social, spatial, and policy dimensions of distributed energy resources, including rooftop solar and EV charging infrastructure. She also develops software and models that integrate multimodal data with machine learning to support infrastructure resilience and data-informed energy policy.
Gabe Chan co-leads Themes 2 and 3 and facilitate co-op engagement, bring years of electric cooperatives research experience to the team. His portfolio includes work energy innovation planning, an integrated planning, resource innovation initiatives among others.
He is an associate professor at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School of Public Affairs in the Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy (STEP) area. In his research and engagement, Gabe seeks to support policy and institutions for a more rapid and equitable energy transition in domains such as distributed energy resource deployment, consumer-owned electric utilities, community solar, and innovation. Gabe is the Co-Director of the Center for Science Technology, and Environmental Policy and the Electric Cooperative Innovation Center.
Academic Website Electric Cooperative Innovation Center Website
Matthew Grimley co-leads Themes 2 and 3, bring nearly a decade of experience in energy policy in a variety of projects and capacities.
He has been a researcher at the University of Minnesota for the past six years, studying grassroots energy policies and innovations. He is also lead researcher through the Electric Cooperative Innovation Center, working on rural energy transitions with electric cooperatives in Minnesota and around the nation.
Lakin Garth co-leads Themes 1 and 3 while facilitating dissemination efforts to practitioners. He and SEPA are vital conduits for dissemination or project results to their industry partners.
Lakin joined SEPA in August 2021. He manages research and content development related to the role of emerging energy technologies that can accelerate the transition to a carbon-free electric power system. Previously, he led SEPA’s Utility Transformation Challenge. Lakin has more than 16 years of experience in the energy industry, including as Principal of the Planning and Assessment team and a Senior Planning Project Manager.
gwambros at ncsu dot edu
serena_kim at ncsu dot edu