Dana Annalise Golden
I am an economist with Argonne National Laboratory, in the NNTS / Decision and Infrastructure Sciences (DIS) division, specializing in energy security, industrial organization, and computational methods. My research examines how infrastructure investment and emerging demand sources shape electricity markets, the resilience and security of the nation’s energy systems, clean energy adoption, and economic welfare – combining structural econometric modeling with large-scale data from U.S. power systems.
Job Market Paper
Investment and the Transfer of Power: Dynamic Effects of Transmission in Electricity Markets
Renewable resources are essential for the energy transition, but unequal geographic distribution limits nationwide adoption. I develop and estimate a dynamic structural model of generator behavior – combining a short-run optimal dispatch problem with a long-run capacity investment game – using data from ISOs in the Eastern Interconnection and ERCOT (2018–2023). Upgrading interzonal transmission to modern HVDC standards would reduce wholesale prices by 6%, generating $4 billion in annual welfare gains. Major transmission projects like the Grain Belt Express increase solar and wind adoption by over 10% by 2050. Transmission and investment subsidies (IRA, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law) are complements in accelerating the clean energy transition.
Research Highlights
- Energy Security & Infrastructure Resilience: Assessing how demand growth, transmission constraints, and supply-chain dependencies affect the reliability and security of U.S. energy systems.
- Transmission & Clean Energy: Structural modeling of how electricity transmission infrastructure drives generator investment and renewable adoption across U.S. markets.
- AI-Driven Power Demand & the Grid: Estimating causal effects of large language model deployment on grid reliability, power quality, and emissions near data centers – and what surging AI demand means for energy security.
- Agentic AI for Policy: Building multi-model AI frameworks for rapid scenario analysis of geopolitical supply chain disruptions and energy security chokepoints (Strait of Hormuz).
- Industrial Policy: Studying learning-by-doing and subsidy interactions in the Chinese solar panel industry.
- Computational Tools: Developing Econ Gym, an open-source framework bridging reinforcement learning and dynamic structural estimation.