Chris Robertson helps utilities, industry, governments, environmental groups, and communities navigate the accelerating convergence of renewable energy, battery storage, grid modernization, and data center infrastructure. Five decades of design thinking applied to complex energy decisions.
Robertson Energy Advisors is an independent Portland-based business and policy, energy and climate practice, continuing work begun in 1990 as Chris Robertson & Associates, LLC. The work spans five decades, now focused on Oregon's data center and electric utility relationships — grid reliability, battery energy storage systems, and energy policy.
The through-line is a single question: how do we design energy systems so they're climate friendly, affordable, and resilient?
Early work included research support to Buckminster Fuller’s World Game Energy Workshop, design of community energy efficiency projects, a stint at a large municipal utility designing and managing energy services, and the design of large-scale electric utility energy efficiency programs. That work led to technology and market consulting for a startup developing an innovative data center power supply, ahead of the dotcom bust — an early encounter with the data center and grid intersection that defines much of the current work.
In 2012 I called it early: solar east of the Cascades was already cost-competitive. That took me into a deep dive on solar industry polysilicon supply. This year I brought technical and policy input to the Governor’s Data Center Advisory Committee on battery storage for AI infrastructure. And most recently I’ve written Battery-Electric Oregon, a research report on the state’s utility-scale batteries: how they are likely to fare in a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake, and a call to build only non-flammable chemistry in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest.
Same question, five decades running: what does a climate-friendly, affordable, resilient energy system look like?
Utility-scale BESS business and regulatory strategy and market assessment — with deep knowledge of long-duration zinc-bromine chemistry as a safe alternative to lithium-ion chemistry.
BESS as it relates to grid reliability and emerging NERC/FERC regulation of data centers as participants in the bulk power supply system. In Oregon, interconnection strategy and energy storage integration for high-density AI infrastructure loads.
Public testimony, committee presentations, and written comments for regulatory proceedings. Translating technical evidence into credible advocacy for utility commissions, legislative committees, and advisory bodies.
Skilled participant in negotiation and mediation for multi-stakeholder energy planning processes. Utility, industry, community engagement, regulatory settlement, and coalition building.
Design for Resilience and Values — a 252-page study of what Oregon's grid-scale battery fleet does when the Cascadia Subduction Zone ruptures, and why the answer turns on chemistry.
Oregon and the Pacific Northwest are building a very large fleet of grid-scale batteries, and almost all of it is lithium iron phosphate. The report sets out the operating and planned Oregon fleet, the seismic design basis, the full-life cost of chemistry choice including the societal cost of fire, the recovery infrastructure a surviving fleet provides, and a Derate and Replace program for the existing flammable fleet.
Eight recommendations follow, addressed to the Legislature, the Public Utility Commission, the Office of the State Fire Marshal, the Energy Facility Siting Council and the Department of Energy. Ten appendices carry the evidence in enough detail for a reader to check it, supported by four companion workbooks published alongside.
A note on editions. The PDF is the citable edition and its table of contents carries page numbers true to that rendering. A Word edition is available on request for readers who prefer an editable format; because Word paginates differently, its contents list omits page numbers, and page references should be made to the PDF.
© 2026 Chris Robertson. The report and its companion workbooks are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). They may be copied, quoted, adapted and redistributed, including commercially, with attribution to the author and an indication of any changes made.
"Resilience arises from intentional actions aimed at lessening the impacts of disaster." — Kathleen Tierney, The Social Roots of Risk, 2014
The Cascadia Subduction Zone fault off the Pacific Northwest coast produces magnitude 9 earthquakes on average every 300 years. The last one was 323 years ago. The next will be the worst natural disaster in US history — affecting 20 million people across Northern California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. All lifeline services will be heavily damaged. Electricity and communications will be unavailable for weeks to months.
A new era of cheap solar, fireproof zinc-bromine batteries, and satellite-based internet connectivity has made community resilience energy and communications infrastructure economically and technically viable today in ways it wasn't two years ago.
We envision Neighborhood Resilience Centers (NRCs) as small solar power plants with safe batteries, a satellite-based WiFi hotspot, and kiosks where devices can be recharged. NRCs are designed to survive a major earthquake and provide energy and communications services for the surrounding neighborhood.
NRCs make green energy and supply battery services to the grid during normal times. During power outages they disconnect from the grid to provide life-saving services 24/7 until the grid is restored.
This is a complex re-imagining of how distributed energy resources could be deployed as a resilience resource across the Pacific Northwest — involving communities, state and local governments, the region's utilities, and the business and non-profit sectors.
Contact us to discuss resilience planningIn Oregon, AI infrastructure growth and electric grid capacity are hot-button issues. Hillsboro is seeing data centers arrive faster than the grid can accommodate them. The questions of how they interconnect, how they can become grid flexibility resources, how they affect grid reliability, and what role battery storage can play are being played out right now.
This work sits at the intersection of emerging NERC/FERC regulation of data centers as bulk power system participants, Oregon's new data center rate framework for Portland General Electric (OPUC UM 2377, POWER Act / HB 3546), and the comparative merits of lithium-ion versus long-duration zinc-bromine battery storage for AI infrastructure loads.
Recent work includes three technical briefings submitted to the Oregon Data Center Advisory Committee — covering grid reliability risks, battery storage interconnection strategy, and a structured summary of policy recommendations to the Governor — along with analysis of Schedule 96 Demand Minimization and GridCARE queue advancement for battery energy storage interconnections.
Discuss this workBattery energy storage systems, data centers and grid reliability, energy and climate consulting, and Cascadia Subduction Zone community energy resilience.