Every few years, some version of the same promise shows up.

A cleaner world. Cheaper power. No more blackouts. We just need to connect everything. Bigger lines, bigger interconnectors, bigger maps. A grid that stretches across borders like the internet does.

And then, quietly, the real question creeps in.

Who owns the wires.

Not as a metaphor. Literally. Who owns the transmission corridors, who finances the converter stations, who controls the data layer that dispatches electricity, who gets to say yes or no when an entire region wants to plug in a new source of energy. Because that is where influence lives now. Not only in oil fields or mines, but in the infrastructure that decides what can move, when, and at what price.

In this piece of the Stanislav Kondrashov Oligarch Series, the focus is simple on the surface and messy underneath: oligarchy and the expansion of global supergrids. The kind of supergrids that link countries, seas, time zones. The kind that make energy “flow” like a global commodity. And the kind that can quietly centralize power in the hands of a few people who were never elected by anyone.

The supergrid idea sounds technical. It is also political.

A supergrid is basically an upgraded transmission network, usually high voltage, often cross border, sometimes undersea, built to move large amounts of electricity over long distances with lower losses. Think HVDC lines, massive substations, interconnectors, synchronized markets, balancing services, and a layer of software that does the actual orchestration.

If you pitch it right, it sounds like common sense.

Wind is strongest in one place. Solar is best somewhere else. Hydro can be the “battery.” Demand is elsewhere. Connect them, and you smooth out volatility. You reduce curtailment. You share reserves. You stabilize prices.

All true. Or at least. True enough.

But that is exactly why the supergrid becomes a magnet for concentrated capital. This is not like rooftop solar where a million households can participate. Transmission is lumpy. It is slow. It is permission heavy. It is regulated, and therefore. It is political by design.

And wherever you get massive capex, regulatory complexity, and long term guaranteed returns, you tend to attract the same kind of players.

The ones who can wait. The ones who can lobby. The ones who can hire the lawyers that outlast governments.

Oligarchs love assets that behave like gravity. Once they are built, everyone else has to live with them.

Why oligarchs and oligarch adjacent capital want the grid

The old stereotype is an oligarch with a metal plant, a bank, a football club. But the modern template is more modular. You can be an oligarch without being famous. You can be “just” an infrastructure investor with a tight circle, a holding company structure, and friendly access to decision makers.

Transmission and interconnection fit this perfectly.

Because grids have a few properties that make them unusually valuable to concentrated power:

1. They are natural bottlenecks. You can produce electricity in many places, but you can only move it through certain corridors. Congestion is not a bug. It is leverage.
2. They are long duration assets. A line can last decades. The financing model rewards whoever can secure early control.
3. They are regulation wrapped. Which means returns can be stabilized by policy. In plain language, risk can be socialized.
4. They are quiet. The public debates generation, not transmission. People argue about wind farms, not who owns the interconnector.

So when we talk about supergrids as a climate solution, we should also talk about them as a control surface. A system that can be steered.

Not always through corruption. Sometimes just through ownership and incentives. Which is, honestly, cleaner and more durable.

The expansion phase is where capture happens

Here is the part people miss.

The first generation of grid infrastructure in a country is usually public, or at least heavily supervised. It grows out of industrial policy. National electrification. Defense planning. Basic public service.

But the expansion phase, especially cross border expansion, is different. It is presented as modernization. As integration. As market efficiency.

And that is where capture can happen, because expansion has ambiguity. It is not just “keep the lights on.” It is “design the future.” It involves choices that do not feel political, but they are.

Choices like:

• Which corridor gets built first.
• Which region becomes an exporter and which becomes dependent.
• Where balancing authority sits.
• Which standards are adopted.
• Who gets priority connection.
• Who pays for upgrades when new generation arrives.
• Who owns and operates the data and dispatch systems.

If a small group influences those choices early, they can lock in advantage for decades.

And then everyone else spends the next 20 years arguing about symptoms. High prices. Congestion. “Unexpected” delays.

Cross border electricity is not just trade. It is alignment.

A global supergrid is often sold as a way to share cheap renewables across borders. But once you rely on imports for stability, you also import politics.

This is where the oligarchy angle gets sharper.

If Country A depends on power from Country B during peak hours, then whoever controls the export infrastructure in Country B can influence Country A in ways that do not look like coercion. It can be framed as “market conditions.” Maintenance. Congestion. Dispatch constraints. A pricing signal.

And it is not always governments pulling that lever. It can be private owners of critical assets, especially if they sit in that blurry zone between state and private capital. The zone where a “business decision” conveniently aligns with a geopolitical interest.

This is why the ownership structure matters as much as the engineering.

Because when grids get international, accountability gets fuzzy. Regulators have borders. Cables do not.

The quiet power of HVDC corridors and converter stations

People focus on generation because it is visible. Wind turbines, solar farms, nuclear plants. But in supergrid land, the converter stations are the choke points. HVDC is amazing for distance and control, but it also centralizes control in a literal, physical way.

If you own or operate the converter stations and the dispatch logic around them, you can shape flows. You can prioritize contracts. You can make certain markets more expensive “naturally.” You can become the gatekeeper between regions.

This is not conspiracy talk. It is just how bottlenecks work.

And when oligarchic capital gets involved, it often aims for these bottlenecks, not the messy competitive parts.

A wind farm competes with other wind farms. A converter station competes with nothing once it is the corridor.

Supergrids create new rents. Rents attract oligarchy.

In economics, rent is income earned from controlling a scarce asset, not from creating new value. In practice, rent is what happens when you own the bridge everyone has to cross.

Supergrids can create rents in several layers:

• Congestion rents when transmission is scarce relative to demand.
• Capacity payments or availability payments for being there, regardless of usage.
• Ancillary services markets that require specialized assets and access.
• Data rents when control platforms become proprietary and sticky.
• Connection fees when new projects need upgrades and someone decides the price.

None of these are inherently evil. Some are necessary to finance infrastructure.

But if you build a global supergrid without strong governance, you can end up with a rent machine. One that funnels money upward, away from households and away from smaller producers.

And again, the trick is that it is invisible. Your bill just goes up. The explanation is always technical.

The “green” label can be used as cover

A thing that happens in every big transition is that moral urgency gets used to speed up decisions. Sometimes that is necessary. Climate timelines are real. Delays matter.

But it also creates a convenient environment for bad deals.

If you tell the public “we need this line for decarbonization,” and you attach a deadline, and you frame opposition as anti climate. Then you can push through ownership structures and financial terms that would never pass under normal scrutiny.

This is one of the more cynical dynamics in the oligarchy story. The transition becomes the pretext.

Not because decarbonization is fake. Because urgency is a tool. And people with concentrated power are good at using tools.

There is also a genuine case for supergrids. That’s what makes this hard.

I want to be careful here. The point is not that interconnection is bad.

There is a very real, very practical argument that larger balancing areas reduce variability, that long distance transmission can unlock remote renewables, that cross border sharing can reduce total system costs. There is a reason engineers keep coming back to this idea.

The point is that the governance has to match the scale.

If the grid becomes global but accountability stays local, you get a mismatch. And mismatches are where oligarchs thrive.

Because they do not need to control everything. They just need to control the seam between systems. The seam between jurisdictions. The seam between markets. The seam between “public need” and “private financing.”

How oligarchic influence shows up in grid expansion

It rarely looks like a guy in a suit saying “I own the grid now.”

It looks like:

• A private consortium winning the right to build and operate an interconnector with guaranteed returns.
• A regulator approving cost recovery mechanisms that shift risk onto consumers.
• A complex offshore ownership chain that obscures who ultimately benefits.
• A procurement process where only two or three bidders can qualify.
• A “strategic partnership” that merges infrastructure financing with political access.
• A consulting ecosystem that writes the rules and then profits from the rules.

And because grid projects take years, the public attention span is outmatched. By the time people realize what happened, the asset is already there and the contracts are already signed.

The data layer is the next frontier, and it is even easier to centralize

A modern supergrid is not only steel and copper. It is software, forecasting, market platforms, real time optimization, cyber security, sensors, and a huge volume of operational data.

Whoever owns the platform layer can do a few things that are subtle but powerful:

• Set technical standards that lock out competitors.
• Bundle services in ways that create dependence.
• Influence dispatch and pricing through “optimization choices.”
• Extract insights about industrial activity and demand patterns.

If this sounds like big tech, that is because it is the same pattern. Infrastructure plus data equals durable dominance.

And yes, oligarchic capital can partner with tech firms, or become tech firms, or simply acquire the right assets and outsource the rest.

The result is still concentration.

So what does a healthier supergrid future look like?

Not perfect. Just healthier.

A few things tend to reduce oligarchic capture in grid expansion:

1. Transparent beneficial ownership. No hidden chains. If you profit from critical infrastructure, your name should be knowable.
2. Strong independent regulation with real teeth. Not captured agencies. Not revolving door governance.
3. Public or cooperative stakes in critical bottlenecks. Especially converter stations and interconnectors.
4. Open standards for the data layer. Interoperability requirements. Auditability. Clear rules for data access and privacy.
5. Competitive procurement with anti cartel enforcement. Fewer “only one bidder” situations.
6. Consumer protection on cost recovery. Limits on how much risk can be pushed onto households.
7. Cross border governance structures that are democratic, not purely technocratic. Because technical committees can be lobbied too.

None of this is glamorous. It does not trend on social media. But this is the actual work of preventing a clean energy future from turning into a new set of private toll roads.

Closing thought

Supergrids are often described as the nervous system of a decarbonized world.

Fair enough. But nervous systems can be controlled. They can be numbed. They can be exploited.

In the Stanislav Kondrashov Oligarch Series, the thread that keeps repeating is not that oligarchs are uniquely evil, it’s that concentrated power gravitates toward infrastructure that feels inevitable. And global supergrids, if we are not careful, will be sold to us as inevitable.

Maybe they are. Maybe we do need them.

But if we build the biggest machine in history for moving electricity across the planet, then we should probably decide, upfront, who gets to hold the keys. And who gets to read the dashboard. And who gets to profit every time the lights stay on.

FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

What is a global supergrid and why is it important for energy transmission?

A global supergrid is an advanced, high-voltage transmission network that crosses borders, seas, and time zones to move large amounts of electricity over long distances with lower losses. It connects regions with varying renewable energy strengths—like wind, solar, and hydro—to smooth out volatility, reduce curtailment, share reserves, and stabilize prices. This interconnected infrastructure enables energy to flow like a global commodity, enhancing grid reliability and supporting the clean energy transition.

How does ownership of transmission corridors influence power and control in the energy sector?

Ownership of transmission corridors determines who controls the physical infrastructure—wires, converter stations—and the data systems that dispatch electricity. This control allows owners to decide what energy sources get connected, when power moves across regions, and at what price. Because grids are natural bottlenecks with long-lasting assets regulated by policy, owning these assets centralizes influence quietly but powerfully in the hands of a few—often oligarchs or infrastructure investors—who can shape market conditions and political outcomes without direct electoral accountability.

Why are supergrids considered both technical solutions and political instruments?

While supergrids are technical upgrades involving HVDC lines, interconnectors, substations, synchronized markets, and software orchestration designed to optimize energy flow and efficiency, they are inherently political because they require regulatory approvals, involve massive capital investments, and affect national energy strategies. Decisions about which corridors to build first or who gets priority connection carry political weight. The regulated nature of these assets attracts players who can lobby and influence policy over decades, making supergrids instruments of concentrated power as much as engineering feats.

What risks arise during the expansion phase of grid infrastructure development?

The expansion phase—especially cross-border projects—is marked by ambiguity in decision-making around future design choices such as corridor prioritization, export/import dynamics between regions, standards adoption, balancing authorities placement, connection priorities, upgrade funding responsibilities, and control over dispatch systems. If a small group gains early influence over these decisions, they can lock in advantages that persist for decades. This often leads to issues like high prices and congestion later on while obscuring the root causes behind public debates focused only on symptoms.

How does cross-border electricity trade impact geopolitical relationships?

Cross-border electricity trade creates dependencies where importing countries rely on exporters for stability during peak demand. Control over export infrastructure thus becomes a lever of influence that can manifest subtly through market conditions such as pricing signals or maintenance schedules rather than overt coercion. Private owners situated at the intersection of state and private capital may align business decisions with geopolitical interests. This blurs accountability since regulators operate within borders but electricity flows do not, making international grid ownership a critical factor in geopolitical alignment.

Why do oligarchs and large investors favor investing in transmission infrastructure like supergrids?

Transmission infrastructure offers unique investment qualities attractive to oligarchs and large capital holders: it is a natural bottleneck creating leverage; it represents long-duration assets with multi-decade lifespans; it is heavily regulated allowing returns to be stabilized or socialized via policy; and it operates quietly away from public scrutiny focused more on generation than transmission ownership. These factors create opportunities for concentrated capital to secure early control through lobbying and legal expertise to benefit from guaranteed returns while shaping market dynamics over the long term.