Sep 23, 2026 · 60 min
Power traders turn grid complexity into volatile opportunity
OI24: Why Power Trading Is 10 Times Crazier Than Crypto ft. Cory Paddock
Electricity markets combine physical constraints, weather uncertainty, and rapid feedback, making risk management as important as forecasting.
- 1GBE Energy forecasts power-market mismatches using weather, demand, supply, transmission constraints, and regional market structure.
- 2Power trading rewards conviction but punishes poor sizing, forcing traders to manage losses, slippage, settlement risk, and short positions.
- 3Electrification, artificial intelligence, and data centers could expand power markets while regional rules keep their evolution uneven.
Don't miss
Cory Paddock explains how paradigm shifts and changes in grid topology produced career-defining trades and helped launch GBE Energy.
The brief
Cory Paddock of GBE Energy explains why electricity trading is unusually volatile: supply and demand must balance continuously across a constrained physical grid.
GBE’s edge comes from forecasting mismatches in demand and supply, combining weather models, historical data, internal models, generation, transmission, and regional structure.
The hard part is psychological as much as analytical: traders must size positions, accept losses, recognize exceptional days, and keep conviction without fighting the market.
Paddock describes how major shifts in grid topology created career-defining trades and helped generate the capital to launch GBE Energy.
The conversation closes on GBE’s training model and a larger question: whether electrification, AI, electric vehicles, and data centers will reshape power markets.
What was said on this episode
13 statements · 7 positive · 3 negative · 1 mixed · 2 neutral
Young people can accomplish extraordinary things with LLMs.
“what they can do with LLMs is extraordinary”
Listen at 47:36
Using LLMs effectively still requires contextual knowledge and guidance.
“you still need to know and bully the LLMs into the right answer”
Listen at 47:57
LLM models and tools are improving in development speed.
“The speed at which models and tools can be turned around has been continuously surprising to me.”
Listen at 48:03
Power-market growth is generally trending upward despite uncertain pace.
“the direction is still up and to the right”
Listen at 54:03
Data-center construction will continue.
“The data center build-out is still going to happen.”
Listen at 54:09
Vehicle electrification will continue.
“Electrification of vehicles is still going to happen.”
Listen at 54:13
Building electrification and air-conditioning additions will continue.
“Electrification of heat and buildings and further additions of air conditioning, that's still going to happen.”
Listen at 54:16
Electricity is an especially attractive commodity over the next decade.
“there's not a better commodity to be in”
Listen at 54:34
Electricity markets will experience cyclical oversupply and undersupply.
“There'll be cycles, for sure.”
Listen at 54:42
Future human civilization is unlikely to use less electricity.
“It's pretty impossible to imagine any kind of future human civilization with less electricity.”
Listen at 54:57
Power-market design has not solved its physics and economics challenges.
“there hasn't been a market design that has really solved the physics and economics problem”
Listen at 56:15
Power markets may remain fragmented into regional pockets worldwide.
“you can imagine a world where pockets of power markets exist kind of throughout the world”
Listen at 56:26
Regional power markets may remain insular and niche.
“they stay reasonably insular and very niche”
Listen at 56:40
Statements are attributed to the speaker as said on the episode and reflect their view at the time, not PodLume's. They are not advice.