The Outlet: May 11, 2026
Hi there,
Welcome to this week's edition of The Outlet. Here are some sparks to keep you informed and entertained!
🔦 Fun Fact
The first commercial electric power station in the United States — Edison's Pearl Street Station in lower Manhattan — flipped its switch on September 4, 1882. It served just 85 customers across a single square mile, all wired with carbon-filament lamps Edison had invented the year before. The plant ran on 110 volts DC, the same nominal voltage residential branch circuits still use today, nearly 144 years later. Pearl Street burned to the ground in 1890, but the model — central generation feeding distributed loads — became the template every utility on earth still follows.
😆 Laugh of the Day
Why do electricians make great therapists?
They're really good at handling resistance.
🤖 Google Pledges to Help Train 100,000 Electrical Workers and 30,000 New Apprentices
Google announced a major partnership with the electrical training ALLIANCE (etA) — the joint IBEW/NECA training arm — to fund AI-integrated curriculum, AR/VR learning tools, and an aggressive expansion of apprenticeship slots. The goal: grow the electrical workforce pipeline by 70% within five years, with apprentices getting access to Google's AI Essentials course alongside traditional bench training. The motivation is self-interested — Google's data center buildout is power-constrained — but the funding lands in real classrooms training real electricians for the work that actually pays the bills...
📋 New IEC White Paper: The Workforce Crisis Isn't About Recruitment — It's About Capacity
The Independent Electrical Contractors released a new white paper, Beyond Recruitment: When the Market Will Not Wait, arguing that the industry's framing of the labor shortage is wrong. The real bottleneck, the paper argues, isn't getting people in the door — it's apprenticeship system capacity, supervision ratios, and the time it takes to bring someone to journeyman competency. In other words: pumping more bodies in won't help if the training pipeline can't absorb them. The piece is explicitly an invitation to debate, not a final answer, and IEC is asking contractors and chapters to weigh in...
🔋 Cheap Batteries Are Reshaping the Grid — and Adding Storage Work to Every Electrician's Plate
Battery costs have dropped roughly 75% since 2018, with another 25% drop expected by 2035, and utility-scale storage is on track for a one-third install increase in 2026 alone. Storage is now expected to make up more than a quarter of all new generating capacity added to the U.S. grid this year, with major projects like Sacramento Municipal Utility District's 160-MW/640-MWh battery breaking ground in June. For electricians, that translates into more BESS commissioning work, more interconnection jobs, and more residential installs as state programs (like Connecticut's revamped ESS program that shifted to performance-based payments April 1) drive homeowner adoption...
We hope you enjoyed this week's edition of The Outlet. Stay tuned for more updates, and as always, keep the current flowing! ⚡ 🔌
Get The Outlet in your inbox
Weekly electrician industry news, study tips, and the occasional bad joke. No spam.