Connor Nelson
Connor Nelson

Connor
Nelson

I turn energy regulation into evidence, briefings, and tools people use.

Based in Washington, DC, I'm a practitioner and advocate in federal energy permitting and wholesale power markets. I also design the materials and data tools that help decision makers act.

connordnelson99@gmail.comLinkedIn

Research

Lead author of three national hydropower reports, including a review of 4,819 licensing documents.

Design

Fact sheets, maps, and web reports I wrote, laid out, and mapped myself.

Tools

A markets tracker, a national hydropower dashboard, and an AI research library.

Connor Nelson

Briefing materials

Ten fact sheets I researched, wrote, and designed for meetings with federal agencies, the White House, and the Senate. Every map is my own, built in ArcGIS from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and other public data. Select a brief to read every page.

Data center load growth and pumped storage

How pumped storage helps connect new load faster, and what DOE and FERC can do.

2 pagesPDF, 5.7 MB

Army Corps of Engineers

Untapped capacity at Corps dams and two process fixes.

2 pagesPDF, 1.7 MB

Department of the Interior

Hydropower on Interior lands, with project examples.

4 pagesPDF, 5.6 MB

NOAA Fisheries

Capacity under NOAA consultation and license trends.

4 pagesPDF, 4.6 MB

U.S. Forest Service

Hydropower in national forests, with project examples.

3 pagesPDF, 3.3 MB

Bureau of Land Management

Hydropower on BLM lands, with project examples.

3 pagesPDF, 3.6 MB

Hells Canyon: Clean Water Act Section 401

Each state water quality condition rated against BAAJA, plus the 16 year path to certification.

3 pagesPDF, 0.9 MB

Hells Canyon: Federal Power Act Section 4(e)

All 47 land agency conditions rated against BAAJA, using FERC staff findings.

3 pagesPDF, 0.9 MB

Section 4(e) in Montana, Idaho, and Alaska

Project cases where FERC had to adopt conditions its own staff did not support.

4 pagesPDF, 0.6 MB

Historic preservation reviews of routine repairs

Five Section 106 reviews at working plants, measured against BAAJA.

3 pagesPDF, 1.2 MB

Writing

White papers, articles for Powerhouse, NHA's publication on hydropower policy and markets, and regulatory comments to FERC, five other federal agencies, and the California PUC.

NHA white paper, 2024

Hydropower at Risk

How challenges to America's first renewable resource threaten grid reliability and resilience.

Lead author

Read the paper

Department of Energy filing, Nov 2025

Comments on DOE's Speed to Power request for information, making the case for pumped storage to meet data center load growth

Author.

Read the comments

Powerhouse, Aug 2026

Why the Grid Is Leaning Harder on Hydro's Spinning Mass

Why hydropower's physical inertia matters more as large data center loads swing grid demand.

With Sam Kalman

Read on hydro.org

Powerhouse, Apr 2026

How Pumped Storage and Long-Duration Storage are Meeting the Data Center Moment

How long duration storage can serve data center demand, and the financing and market changes it needs.

Read on hydro.org

Powerhouse, Sep 2025

Relicensing Challenges: Could Opt-In Fees Help Hydro's Future?

Whether letting project sponsors fund faster environmental review could ease the coming wave of relicensing.

Read on hydro.org

Powerhouse, Sep 2024

How the Upward Trend in Non-Capacity Amendments Delays Hydropower Modernization

A statistical look at the rise in license amendments since 2019 and the slower approvals that followed.

With Michael Purdie

Read on hydro.org

EPA filing, Feb 2026

Comments on EPA's proposed update to Clean Water Act Section 401 water quality certification rules

Docket EPA-HQ-OW-2025-2929. Project managed with outside counsel.

View on regulations.gov

FERC filing, Feb 2026

Comments on FERC's inquiry into post-licensing activities at hydropower projects

Docket RM26-3-000. Project managed with outside counsel.

View on FERC eLibrary

Fish and Wildlife Service filing, Dec 2025

Comments on proposed Endangered Species Act rules for Section 7 interagency consultation and for listing and critical habitat

Docket FWS-HQ-ES-2025-0044 and FWS-HQ-ES-2025-0039. Project managed with outside counsel, Gaffney Law.

View on regulations.gov

NHA white paper, 2026

Winning the AI Race: Tapping into Pumped Storage Hydropower

How the more than 60,000 MW of proposed pumped storage can supply the reliable power AI growth needs.

Lead author

Read the paper

Interior Department filing, Jul 2025

Comments on Interior's regulatory reform request for information, on Endangered Species Act and licensing rules that affect hydropower

Docket DOI-2025-0005. Author.

View on regulations.gov

Army Corps filing, Apr 2025

Comments on implementing the Water Resources Development Act of 2024, focused on Section 408 reviews for non-federal hydropower

Docket COE-2024-0004. Author.

View on regulations.gov

FERC filing, Jan 2025

Protest in the complaint over PJM's capacity auction

Docket EL25-18-000. Author.

View on FERC eLibrary

FERC filing, May 2024

Comments on FERC's proposed rule on reactive power compensation

Docket RM22-2-000. Author.

View on FERC eLibrary

California PUC filing, Feb 2024

Reply comments on California's 2023 preferred system plan, asking the CPUC to model pumped storage at 8, 10, and 12 hour durations

Docket R.20-05-003. Author. Built a coalition with pumped storage developers, including GreenGenStorage, behind the reply.

Read the comments

FERC filing, Nov 2023

Comments on ISO New England's day-ahead reserves proposal

Docket ER24-275-000. Author.

View on FERC eLibrary

Interactive white paper, lead author

Affordable Power, Broken Process

An empirical study of the conditions federal agencies attach to hydropower licenses. I read the licensing record with large language models, checked the results by hand, and built a five part web report that works on desktop and phone.

5,116
license conditions extracted
4,819
licensing documents read
46
states, filings from 1980 to 2026
Read the interactive reportProduced for the National Hydropower Association.
Water spilling over Grand Coulee Dam

Tools I built and led

Software that turns scattered regulatory records into something people can search, track, and use.

Member product I conceived and led

NHA eLibrary

I conceived this member product and took it from idea to launch. I ran discovery with members and agencies, wrote the roadmap, business case, and pricing model for NHA's Board, and managed the outside developer who built it. It is an AI research platform that gives cited answers, project timelines, maps, and a dashboard of extracted license conditions. I have demoed it to DOE.

1,000+
FERC licensed projects
200,000+
pages of licensing records
~40
member users in closed beta
Visit nha-elibrary.com
A walkthrough: asking the licensing record a question and opening the cited filing
Each project page adds documents, conditions, costs, a timeline, generation, and an ArcGIS map
Each project page adds documents, conditions, costs, a timeline, generation, and an ArcGIS map
The home screen, with plain language search and charts drawn from the record
The home screen, with plain language search and charts drawn from the record
Every answer cites its source, and opens the filing with the quoted passage highlighted
Every answer cites its source, and opens the filing with the quoted passage highlighted
RTO/ISO Markets Calendar week view with color coded meetings for each grid operator

RTO/ISO Markets Calendar

A web app on a Python scraper that tracks meetings and filings across all seven U.S. grid operators and FERC. It scores each item for hydropower relevance, tags market topics, and feeds a weekly digest for NHA's Market Design Committee that reaches 159 subscribers with a 31% average open rate.

Open the calendar
 U.S. hydropower dashboard with a national capacity map and a chart of license expirations by year

U.S. hydropower map and dashboard

I designed and built NHA's public map of U.S. hydropower, joining Energy Information Administration data with Oak Ridge National Laboratory asset records and EPA emissions factors.

Open the map on hydro.org

Appearances and quotes

Interview, Aug 2026

Cardinal News

The two proposed dam projects in Wise County are part of a nationwide renaissance of hydropower

Interview, Jun 2026

Hydro Leader

Why the United States needs pumped storage hydro to win the AI race

Panel, May 2026

Western Governors' Association

Energy Superabundance workshop, Salt Lake City, May 20 and 21

Panel, Apr 2026

National Waterways Conference

Cross-sector national perspectives on federal water resources issues

Workshop, Mar 2026

Google Public Sector

Permitting technology workshop with DOE, PNNL, NOAA, and White House CEQ

Interview, Sep 2025

RTO Insider

Renewables creating opportunities for pumped hydro in New England

Podcast, Dec 2024

Volts podcast

Time to stop taking hydropower for granted?

Results

FERC opened an inquiry into hydropower amendment delays

I built the statistical analysis from FERC eLibrary and PNNL data showing a 165% rise in non-capacity license amendments, with processing times nearly doubled, and briefed FERC Commissioners. Sen. Murkowski raised the findings in a Senate committee hearing, and FERC opened a Notice of Inquiry (RM26-3) to address the problem directly.

Read the analysisNHA comments on the inquiry

The Army Corps moved to prioritize non-federal hydropower at its dams

I built NHA's Army Corps permitting reform effort, from WRDA 2024 comments to an October 2025 meeting at the Pentagon with Adam Telle, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works. That work contributed to his February 23, 2026 memorandum directing the Corps to leverage non-federal hydropower investment at its facilities.

Read the Assistant Secretary's memoNHA comments on WRDA 2024

DOE's financing office opened talks on pumped storage

My comments on DOE's Speed to Power request proposed using DOE loan authority as a construction risk backstop for pumped storage, built on my geospatial analysis of planned data centers and pumped storage. That work grew into the Winning the AI Race white paper and opened a dialogue with DOE's Office of Energy Dominance Financing. EDF spoke at Waterpower Week in March 2026, began talks with NHA on the backstop, and briefed NHA's Pumped Storage Development Council. The paper also earned NHA a pumped storage panel at the Western Governors' Association workshop in May.

Read the DOE commentsRead the white paper
PDF

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