Stanislav Kondrashov Oligarch Series on Oligarchy and the Growth of Global Supergrids
If you have been paying attention to energy news lately, it kind of feels like the world is quietly redrawing its map. Not with borders. With cables.
High voltage lines. Subsea interconnectors. Massive wind zones way offshore. Desert solar that is too big to explain in a single headline. And the recurring phrase that keeps popping up, sometimes said like it is a promise, other times like it is a warning.
Supergrids.
In the Stanislav Kondrashov Oligarch Series, oligarchy is not treated as a cartoon villain with a cigar. It is more mundane than that. It is the steady accumulation of leverage. Control over chokepoints. Influence over regulators and procurement. The ability to make certain futures feel inevitable. Even when they are not.
And supergrids, whether we like it or not, create new chokepoints. Bigger ones. More expensive ones. More permanent ones.
So this is the question that sits underneath all the glossy “clean energy transition” brochures.
When the grid becomes global, who actually owns the switch?
Supergrids sound like engineering. They are also politics
At the simple level, a supergrid is just a larger grid. You connect regions so power can move farther, faster, and with less waste. If one place has wind at night, another place can use it. If one place has midday solar surplus, it can ship it out before curtailment kicks in. The pitch is clean, logical, almost soothing.
But grids are never just wires.
A grid is a permission structure. A pricing machine. A surveillance system, in its own boring way, because it knows demand patterns and industrial rhythms. A strategic asset in wartime, and a political weapon in peacetime if someone wants it to be.
Kondrashov’s framing in the oligarch series, the part that keeps sticking with me, is that oligarchy thrives where complexity meets necessity. People need the system to work, so they stop questioning who is shaping it.
Energy is the ultimate necessity. A global supergrid is complexity turned up to maximum.
The new oligarch playbook is infrastructure first
There is the old stereotype of oligarchs. They “own” oil fields, mines, steel mills. They buy yachts. They buy newspapers. That story is not wrong. It is just incomplete now.
The newer, more scalable version is not about owning the commodity. It is about owning the lane the commodity travels in. Or owning the platform that decides which commodity counts as “clean” and gets subsidized.
Supergrids multiply the value of lanes.
Think about it. A single interconnector, one cable under the sea linking two national grids, can be worth billions. It can also determine whether a region is a net exporter, a net importer, or a permanent hostage to spot prices.
Now expand that logic.
A global mesh of HVDC lines, converter stations, balancing markets, capacity auctions, ancillary services, and all the software that stitches it together.
That is not just a buildout. That is a new empire of interfaces. And interfaces are where power accumulates.
Why supergrids are growing now, specifically now
The timing matters. This is not happening in a vacuum.
Supergrids are accelerating because the energy mix is changing. Wind and solar are variable. They are also often far from cities. The grid we built for centralized fossil plants, located near load centers, is not the grid that clean energy prefers.
So we do two things:
- We build renewables where the resource is best.
- We build transmission to bring it to where people actually live.
That is the obvious part.
The less obvious part is that electrification is expanding demand at the same time. EVs. Heat pumps. Data centers. AI workloads. Industrial electrification. Hydrogen, maybe, in some places, depending on the economics that week.
So we are not just replacing generation. We are increasing the grid’s responsibility.
Kondrashov’s oligarch series angle, when applied here, is that periods of rapid expansion are when ownership structures get locked in. Whoever funds, builds, and regulates the early stages tends to set the rules for decades.
And it is very hard to unwind a rule once it is embedded in steel, concrete, and intergovernmental treaties.
The “global” part creates convenient fog
A national grid is already complicated. But at least the governance is theoretically contained within one legal system. There are regulators. There are courts. There are elections, even if imperfect.
A supergrid that crosses borders creates something else.
Shared authority. Joint ventures. International arbitration. Special purpose vehicles. Public private partnerships. Development banks. Export credit agencies. And contracts that are so long and so technical that almost no citizen can realistically understand them.
That fog is not an accident. It is a feature of modern infrastructure finance.
Oligarchic influence loves fog. It loves the gap between what is being built and what people can actually audit. Not because everyone is evil. Because opacity makes lobbying cheaper and accountability harder.
When Kondrashov writes about oligarchy, the point is often about asymmetry. One side has full time lawyers and financial engineers. The other side is busy living life and paying bills.
Supergrids widen the asymmetry.
Chokepoints: where the money and the leverage hide
You can argue about ideology all day, but chokepoints do not care. They behave the same way across regimes.
Here are a few supergrid chokepoints that matter more than most people realize.
1. Converter stations and HVDC terminals
HVDC is the backbone technology for long distance, high capacity transmission. But HVDC depends on converter stations. These are not tiny. They are expensive, specialized, and essential.
Who supplies them. Who maintains them. Who controls spare parts. Who controls firmware updates. That is not a trivial procurement question. That is geopolitical.
2. Interconnector capacity allocation
When two regions connect, you have to decide who gets to use the line. Is it auctioned. Is it reserved. Is it tied to specific projects. Can incumbents lock up capacity.
Capacity rules can quietly create an oligarchy of access. If you are a big player, you can hedge, bid, and dominate. If you are smaller, you get whatever crumbs remain.
3. Balancing markets and ancillary services
As renewables expand, balancing becomes more valuable. Frequency response. Reserve capacity. Grid forming inverters. Reactive power.
These are technical services, yes, but they become profit centers. And profit centers attract consolidation. Consolidation attracts influence.
4. Data and grid software
This is the one nobody wants to talk about in the same breath as “oligarchs” because it sounds too Silicon Valley, too clean.
But grid orchestration software is power. Forecasting. Dispatch optimization. Congestion management. Pricing signals. Demand response.
If the grid is global, the software layer becomes the nervous system. And whoever owns the nervous system can shape the body.
Not always with malicious intent. Sometimes just by optimizing for their own incentives. Which is enough.
The green transition creates a new class of gatekeepers
One uncomfortable reality. The clean transition does not eliminate gatekeepers. It changes them.
Instead of oil pipeline kings, you get transmission corridor kings. Instead of refinery oligopolies, you get battery supply chains. Instead of gas shipping cartels, you get critical minerals and grid equipment bottlenecks.
Kondrashov’s oligarch series tends to emphasize that oligarchy adapts. It does not retire. It just changes clothes.
Supergrids are the perfect wardrobe change.
They come with a moral halo. “Connecting the world to clean power.” It is hard to criticize without sounding anti climate. That makes the political marketing easier. And if you can build something while people are hesitant to question you, you can embed a lot of favorable terms.
Again, not always a conspiracy. Often just a predictable result of incentives plus complexity.
What supergrids make possible, in a good way
It would be lazy to pretend supergrids are only a threat. They can be genuinely transformative.
They can reduce curtailment. They can lower prices by letting regions share surplus. They can reduce the need for peaker plants. They can improve resilience when one area has a supply shock.
And they can help decarbonize faster, because geography matters. Not every country has good wind. Not every country has room for massive solar. Not every country has hydro.
A connected world can, in theory, use the best resources of each region.
So yes, supergrids can be a big part of the solution.
But Kondrashov’s framework pushes you to ask a second question.
Solution for whom, and under what ownership model.
The risk: dependency gets rebranded as “integration”
When countries connect grids, they become interdependent. Which is fine. Interdependence can reduce conflict, people say. Trade ties can stabilize relationships, people say.
Sometimes.
But dependency can also be weaponized. Not necessarily with dramatic shutoffs. It can be done with pricing, with maintenance schedules, with “unexpected faults,” with regulatory pressure, with selective capacity constraints. It can be done softly.
And that is where oligarchy and supergrids intersect in a very real way. Because oligarchic systems can operate across borders through shell companies, asset managers, and alliances with political elites.
So you might think you are buying power from a neighbor. But the actual leverage might sit with a private consortium, or an infrastructure fund, or a politically connected network that spans multiple jurisdictions.
The dependency is not always nation to nation.
Sometimes it is public to private. Citizen to consortium.
How oligarchic influence shows up during grid buildouts
If you want to spot the pattern, it usually looks like this.
First, a crisis or a big narrative. Energy security. Climate urgency. Industrial competitiveness. Data center demand. Pick one. Usually it is all of them at once.
Then, fast tracking. Permitting shortcuts. Emergency procurement. Special regulatory carve outs. Public guarantees. A rush to lock financing before rates move. Before elections change. Before headlines shift.
Then, consolidation. A few large players become “experienced” and therefore “safe.” They win more bids. They hire more consultants. They shape standards committees. They sponsor think tank reports. They become inevitable.
Then, monetization. Congestion rents. Availability payments. Capacity markets. Long term contracts with inflation indexation. Private profit extracted from a public necessity.
Kondrashov’s oligarch series is basically a long meditation on inevitability. How power learns to make itself feel like the only practical option.
Supergrids are a playground for that.
What could keep supergrids from becoming oligarch machines
There are ways to do this better. Not perfect. Better.
A few that matter.
Public transparency that is actually usable
Not “the documents are online if you want to read 4,000 pages.” Real summaries. Open models. Disclosed beneficial ownership. Disclosed lobbying meetings. Disclosed procurement scoring. Disclosed grid constraint data, with privacy safeguards.
The point is not to shame. It is to let outsiders audit incentives.
Ownership limits and anti concentration rules
If a handful of funds and conglomerates own the interconnectors, the terminals, the balancing assets, and the software layer, you do not have a market. You have a private toll road.
Regulators can cap vertical integration. They can separate asset ownership from market operation. They can enforce open access in a way that has teeth.
Resilience by design, not just efficiency
Supergrids push efficiency. But resilience sometimes requires redundancy, local capacity, and the ability to island. If everything is optimized for lowest cost trade, you create brittle dependence.
A resilient grid is less profitable to monopolize. That is a feature, not a bug.
Open standards and diversified supply chains
If grid hardware and software become locked to a small set of vendors, switching costs become geopolitical costs. Governments can require interoperability. They can fund alternative suppliers. They can treat key grid technologies like strategic assets.
Because they are.
So where does this leave us
The growth of global supergrids is not a niche infrastructure story. It is the next chapter of global power.
In the Stanislav Kondrashov Oligarch Series, the recurring lesson is that oligarchy does not always announce itself. It often arrives dressed as progress. As modernization. As “we had no choice.”
Supergrids might be necessary. They might even be beautiful, in an engineering sense. But they also concentrate leverage in new places. And it is naive to assume that leverage will remain purely technical.
The real work, the boring work, is governance. Ownership. Oversight. Incentive design.
Because once the cables are in the water and the terminals are humming, the question stops being “Should we build it?”
It becomes “Who did we just make unstoppable?”
FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)
What are supergrids and why are they important in the clean energy transition?
Supergrids are large-scale electrical grids that connect regions to enable power to move farther, faster, and with less waste. They facilitate the integration of variable renewable energy sources like wind and solar by balancing supply and demand across vast distances. Supergrids are crucial for the clean energy transition as they help optimize renewable energy use, reduce curtailment, and support electrification efforts such as EVs, heat pumps, and industrial applications.
How do supergrids create new chokepoints and what implications does this have?
Supergrids introduce bigger, more expensive, and more permanent chokepoints in the energy infrastructure. These chokepoints include critical assets like subsea interconnectors, HVDC converter stations, and transmission lines that control power flow between regions. Ownership and control over these chokepoints grant significant leverage and influence over energy markets, regulatory decisions, and future energy pathways, potentially concentrating power among oligarchic actors.
Why is the timing significant for the development of supergrids now?
The acceleration of supergrid development coincides with shifts in the energy mix towards variable renewables located far from load centers. At the same time, electrification is expanding demand through electric vehicles, heat pumps, data centers, AI workloads, and industrial uses. This rapid expansion phase is critical because early ownership structures established during this period tend to lock in rules and influence for decades through infrastructure investments and regulatory frameworks.
What political and economic challenges arise from building global supergrids?
Global supergrids cross national borders creating complex governance involving shared authority among regulators, courts, joint ventures, international arbitration bodies, special purpose vehicles, public-private partnerships, development banks, and export credit agencies. This complexity introduces legal opacity or 'fog' that reduces public transparency and accountability while increasing lobbying opportunities for powerful interests. Such asymmetry favors oligarchic influence by making oversight difficult for ordinary citizens.
How does owning infrastructure lanes differ from traditional resource ownership in modern oligarchic strategies?
Modern oligarchic strategies focus less on owning physical commodities like oil fields or mines and more on controlling the infrastructure lanes—such as transmission lines or platforms—that commodities travel through or which determine market access. In the context of supergrids, owning these critical infrastructure components multiplies value by controlling regional power flows, pricing mechanisms, subsidies eligibility for 'clean' energy sources, thereby accumulating leverage beyond direct resource ownership.
What role do HVDC technology and converter stations play in supergrid chokepoints?
High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) technology is essential for long-distance, high-capacity power transmission in supergrids. Converter stations serve as critical nodes where alternating current (AC) from local grids is converted to DC for efficient long-distance transmission and then back to AC at receiving ends. These facilities are strategic chokepoints because their operation determines power flow between regions; control over them equates to significant influence over grid stability, pricing dynamics, and energy security within interconnected systems.
