40 Under 40 | Trina Whiteside, Nira Energy. 'If you understand a technology or space few people truly try to comprehend, you automatically put yourself in a position to spot opportunities and improvements with outsized impact.' Published 8 September 2026, 04:04 Read its Q&A with Trina Whiteside, director of customer engagement at Nira Energy, who was named one of Recharge's 40 Under 40 rising stars in the wind industry. To read the full list of its 40 Under 40 leaders in the Americas, click here. The young leaders in other regions will be revealed in the coming days. Who is Trina Whiteside? What policy shift could best unlock more wind development in your geography? FERC sets the rules ISOs, RTOs, and utilities must follow to develop and operate U.S. grid infrastructure. Stronger regulation to increase transparency around planning and cost allocation methodologies would get renewables interconnected faster. The more data developers have, the more projects reach completion. Recharge AS has seen that firsthand at Nira Energy across the 700GW of interconnection requests Recharge AS has supported: Projects die when developers go in without a clear estimate of upgrade costs. Where published methodologies exist and are followed, its software already estimates upgrade costs within 4%. Extending that transparency to every region would sharpen estimates further and give investors the certainty they need. What's your favorite or funniest story about your time in the industry? I was in Denmark for two weeks supporting SCADA testing for a new product my team was rolling out in the US market, and I used the intervening weekend to bikepack along most of the country's western coast. Partway through, I biked right past the second-ever installed Vestas V236, the 15MW offshore turbine I was helping bring online off the coast of New York. Unexpectedly seeing it in person, mid-ride, brought a sense of joy and pride that I'll never forget. What's the best career advice you've received? Take a job in industry before joining a startup. Back in 2022, I chose Vestas over a startup offer because a climate-tech CEO told me to go earn my stripes first. Learning the real nuance of how renewable energy projects come online has since helped me work hand-in-hand with developers, spotting and closing the gaps their projects face early in the development pipeline. What advice would you give someone entering the industry today? Always turn toward the hardest problems, not only the ones that sound most exciting. If you understand a technology or space few people truly try to comprehend, you automatically put yourself in a position to spot opportunities and improvements with outsized impact. Do hard things, and learn to thrive in a niche that suits your talents, mine are SCADA, cybersecurity, and interconnection. Recharge's 40 Under 40 will return next year to showcase more rising stars in the global wind industry. If you'd like to hear when nominations open, please complete this short form. You'll be able to nominate yourself or a peer.

Automation for cost allocation forecasts: A PJM case study. Case Study This case study is drawn from a joint presentation by Nira Energy and Doral at ESIG's i2X STITCH Meeting 4: Automation and Data Harmonization (August 18, 2026). The i2X STITCH initiative - facilitated by Berkeley Lab in collaboration with ESIG and Elevate Energy Consulting as part of the DOE's Interconnection Innovation e-Xchange - brings together industry stakeholders to explore interconnection study practices across U.S. regions and identify opportunities for harmonization. When early cost estimates come in at hundreds of millions of dollars, how do you know whether to hold your position or fold? That's the calculation Doral faced with a project in PJM - and according to Shawn Welch (VP, Interconnection & Transmission), it's a decision that depends less on the sticker-shock number itself and more on understanding what everyone else in the queue is likely to do next. The Problem Doral had 500 MW across two projects in PJM's Decision Point 1 window. Phase 1 study results showed high cost allocations driven by an expensive network upgrade - the kind of early-stage number that can look alarming before the full picture develops. The Automation Rather than react to the initial estimate alone, Doral's team ran sensitivity analysis to forecast high- and low-band network upgrade cost allocation scenarios. That analysis was paired with judgment about the broader queue: other projects carrying even higher cost allocations than Doral's were likely to withdraw, based on Doral's read of those developers and past behavior in similar situations. Doral held its position rather than withdrawing additional megawatts. The bet paid off - when Phase 2 study results came in, the projects' network upgrade costs dropped by $96 million, in part because other high-cost-allocation projects did in fact drop out of the queue as anticipated. The Result The project advanced through Phase 2 and is currently undergoing Phase 3 studies.