Tool · Global research briefs
Research Brief
127 one-page briefs across 49 countries, each placed on its path from proposal to binding law.
Read the Brief: Research Brief (opens in a new tab)Virya (वीर्य) is Sanskrit for vigor, courage and the inner strength to act: THE ENERGY IN YOU.
Professional summary
I am an avid learner and traveler. My interest is in “How Things Work” and “How We Can Make Them Work Better.” My work sits at the intersection of energy markets, power systems planning and policy, from production cost modeling and transmission planning to capacity markets, regulatory proceedings and the clean energy transition. I write about the shifts reshaping global energy markets, and I build tools (games, indexes and policy digests) that make this complex domain legible to a wider audience.
Selected writing
- Navigating the Currents: Key Shifts in US Energy Markets (opens in a new tab)
- Is the PJM Capacity Market Entering a New Era? (opens in a new tab)
- FERC 2024 State of the Market Report (opens in a new tab)
- Planning for Production Cost Model Migration (opens in a new tab)
- Decoding India's Climate Action (opens in a new tab)
- Indian Power Sector needs Strong Political Will (opens in a new tab)
Games
Play the Energy Economy
Six browser games that teach real market mechanics the fun way. Trade power, trade futures, run datacenters, govern nations, build the BRICS bloc and test your knowledge, all priced in Virya Rupees (V₹). Five have global leaderboards; BRICS keeps its scoreboard on your device.
VIRYA: Power Trader
Trade electricity like a pro.
Trade electricity on a wholesale power desk against shifting demand, weather, outages and mythology-inspired rivals; overexposure gets margin-called.
Trade Now: Power Trader (opens in a new tab)VIRYA: Datacenter Economy
Power the AI boom, profitably.
Build and run datacenters for the AI boom, balancing compute demand against power, siting and grid constraints, with every megawatt hitting your V₹ bottom line.
Build Your Empire: Datacenter Economy (opens in a new tab)VIRYA: Energy Markets Trivia
How well do you really know the grid?
Rapid-fire questions on power markets, ISOs and RTOs, fuels, policy and grid history; climb from apprentice to grid guru.
Test Yourself: Energy Markets Trivia (opens in a new tab)VIRYA: Arthashastra
Govern a nation. Win on quality of life.
Choose one of seven ideologies and govern a nation for a decade of trade, summits, bonds and sanctions, scored on your citizens’ Quality of Life.
Found Your Nation: Arthashastra (opens in a new tab)VIRYA: Energy Futures
Trade the curve. Survive the margin call.
Run a country’s trading desk across crude, gas, power, LNG, carbon and uranium, solo or with up to five friends, on real margin and mark-to-market arithmetic.
Open the Desk: Energy Futures (opens in a new tab)VIRYA: BRICS
Build the bloc. Keep your promises.
Lead a founding BRICS seat through twelve rounds and three summits: charter regions, build projects and keep your promises to lead the bloc.
Take Your Seat: BRICS (opens in a new tab)
Energy Policy
Energy Policy, Decoded
Energy policy moves markets, but it lives in thousand-page dockets that nobody has time to read. The Virya Energy Policy Brief turns them into one-page briefs, each placed on its own jurisdiction's path from proposal to binding law, with the numbers that matter, who gains and who pays, the dates that will change it, and a link to the controlling official text.
- 127policy briefs
- 49countries
- 10 yearsof policies covered
- One page per policy: the problem it attacks, the mechanism, the market effect and the key numbers
- Sixty-four stage ladders show how far each policy is from becoming binding law, comparable across 49 countries in the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific
- Ask the brief: a plain-language assistant grounded in the official text, with your own OpenRouter key
Virya Electric Grid Index
Is the grid ready for the AI decade?
The Virya Electric Grid Index benchmarks 86 economies on the strength of their power systems. Every country gets a rank, a pillar-by-pillar grade, a country-specific read on where it is at risk and why, and its resource mix, demand and regulatory set-up, all inside an interactive Energy Atlas that also maps the regulators, system operators and data sources for every market. The grid is the economy's balance sheet, and this index reads it.
- 86economies benchmarked
- 8scoring pillars
- Network losses and reliability
- Supply flexibility
- Component supply chains
- Cost of capital
- Economic growth
- Manufacturing momentum
- Regulatory resilience
- Equipment capability
Each economy is graded Good, Fair, or Risky on all eight; its rank comes from the underlying pillar scores, so economies with the same grades can rank differently.
Virya Compute Risk Explorer
What does a GPU-hour really earn?
The Virya Compute Risk Explorer prices an AI data center in 86 economies. Pick a country, a site size (1 MW, 100 MW, or 1 GW of grid power), a GPU, and a workload, and it stacks the cost of every GPU-hour against the rent it can earn: electricity, backup power, the building, staff, and a country risk charge. It shows where the site breaks even and what it may cost to protect it.
- 86economies priced
- 3site sizes, 1 MW to 1 GW
- 6risk products
- Delivered industrial power tariffs for every economy, with backup diesel priced in where the grid goes down
- Break-even utilization, GPU rent, and power price for each site size, so you can see how much room the business has
- Indicative prices for utilization, rent, resale, and outage floors and a power hedge, plus a year-by-year cash table
Virya Grid Simulator
How does a power market set its price?
The Virya Grid Simulator runs a day in a five-bus power market in your browser. It commits units, then runs security-constrained economic dispatch (SCED) for each hour and prices every bus. Break a line, add a data center, or charge the battery, and follow congestion, losses, and LMPs step by step.
- 5buses, PJM test system
- 24hours dispatched
- 0.2 sto solve a day
- Unit commitment, then SCED each hour, solved with the open-source HiGHS solver
- Every price explained: the energy, congestion, and loss parts of the LMP at each bus
- Settlement, congestion, and inputs for your scenario, also as a reviewed PDF
Virya US Grid Explorer
Who owns the wires?
The Virya US Grid Explorer maps the US power grid: transmission lines by voltage, power plants by fuel, retail utility territories, holding companies, and planning areas. The layers are linked, so a planning area shows the utilities inside it and a utility shows the lines and plants it owns.
- 94,619transmission lines
- 2,931utility territories
- 95planning areas
- Search utilities, plants, line owners, and planning areas such as PJM, MISO, and ERCOT
- Filter by state, voltage, fuel, and utility type, or by what a selection owns
- 26 more layers: FERC and EPA regions, fuels, EPA facilities, infrastructure, and waterways
Contact
Get in touch
Questions, feedback on the games, the brief or the index, or an idea to work on together: send a note and it comes straight to my inbox. You can also email [email protected].