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America’s demand for electric power is surging and, with it, the need to move electrons around the country. Nowhere is that trend more tangible than at GE Vernova’s Grid Solutions factory in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, a sprawling 332,000-square-foot facility that has been making high-voltage instrument transformers and high-voltage circuit breakers, key components of the electric grid for more than three decades.

In 2009, the United States Department of Energy was seeking a dose of radical thinking. Early that year, its newly created Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) issued an open call for “the most revolutionary energy technologies.” If ARPA-E officials were expecting a steady trickle of ideas from business, academia, and research laboratories, they were wrong. They’d just opened the floodgates.

“The world needs wind,” said Vic Abate, CEO of GE Vernova’s Wind business, at the company’s recent Investor Day event. Indeed, wind power already plays an important role in worldwide energy production. However, to meet the world’s growing energy needs, and to foster decarbonization, wind power must increase the amount of electricity it supplies to the grid from 7% currently to 25%. “Think of an energy system where one out of four electrons comes from wind,” Abate added, “because this is a different world.”