MIT’s 2020 study, The Future of the Electric Grid, aims to provide a comprehensive, objective portrait of the U.S. electric grid and the challenges and opportunities it is likely to face over the next two decades. It also highlights the challenges of enhancing and expanding the transmission network, integrating variable energy, including distributed energy, shifting demand, modernizing utility regulation, and data communications. It highlights a number of areas in which policy changes, focused research and demonstration, and the collection and sharing of important data can facilitate meeting the challenges and seizing the opportunities that the grid will face.