Introducing Mark O’Brien to REsurety, a seasoned forecaster to lead Power Markets
Senior Director
Power Markets
This month, REsurety welcomes Mark O’Brien to lead Power Markets, the team responsible for our WeatherSmart forecasts that drive our CleanSight platform.
Mark brings over two decades of deep experience in fundamental energy forecasting and power markets. Before joining REsurety, Mark spent 24 years with American Electric Power (AEP) in Columbus, Ohio, a tenure that has given him a unique perspective on the energy transition.
Mark’s career at AEP was split between engineering and fundamental forecasting. Working on the generation side of the vertically integrated utility, his team’s forecasts were crucial for market strategy and rate setting.
Forecasting: It’s all Fundamental
When asked what has changed about fundamental forecasting since he began his career, Mark takes a measured approach. Sure, the tools are more sophisticated, but “forecasts, including the factors I look at when building them, have not fundamentally changed over my years – although, the driving factors shaping outcomes have. Previously, energy credits or demand-side economics might have driven the story.
“Today’s power market is fundamentally different. Load growth from data centers is ‘the story’ that ended over a decade of stagnation and exposed a lack of investment in new energy generation in the United States. The necessity to build new capacity, on an unprecedented scale, coupled with a lack of experience in such large-scale construction, is creating challenges.”
A Look Ahead: Forces Shaping the U.S. Energy Landscape
Mark agrees that the U.S. is at a crossroads when it comes to energy. “We’re in a world where short-term realities – the pressure to meet load now – are bumping up against long-term requirements and what it will cost to reliably deliver that power in the future. While solar and battery storage have recently dominated new capacity additions, power market constraints are now pushing utilities toward other cost-effective solutions like natural gas in the immediate term, with the sentiment being: ‘I’d love to be green, but I also want to serve the load.’”
The complexity is further driven by state and local economic policies. In both regulated and deregulated markets, new energy infrastructure projects (particularly those necessary to serve data centers and large industrial loads) are frequently met with regulatory incentives—such as expedited permitting, tax abatements, or customized rate tariffs—due to their significant promise of job creation and increased tax revenue. Mark thinks there will be some noise in pricing, with some wildly optimistic – and pessimistic – predictions catching air time as the country sorts out how to meet this new moment in history.
But according to Mark, good fundamental forecasts are all the same: agnostic to energy source and focused on economics. “Ultimately, serving the load requires a diverse fuel mix. It requires a nuanced understanding of how long power takes to get to market, by source, and experience following economic trends that may dictate consumer behavior. I look forward to bringing this rigor to REsurety’s forecasts.”
We look forward to Mark’s insights.
Want to learn more about what makes REsurety’s forecasts so special? Check out more in our recent blog post.