Power 100 Methodology
The Power 100 ranks the 100 most influential digital voices in US clean energy. It measures who actually moves the conversation — not who has the largest follower count.
The algorithm: Weighted LeaderRank
Rankings use Weighted LeaderRank, a variant of PageRank designed for social influence networks (Li et al., Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2014). The algorithm builds a directed graph where an edge from A to B represents A engaging with B's content (replying, quoting, reposting, commenting). Each node's influence score is the equilibrium probability of a weighted random walk on this graph, with edge weights set by engagement strength and recency.
Why LeaderRank rather than raw follower counts: a 200K-follower account that gets engaged with by ten other influencers carries more weight than a 200K-follower account whose engagement comes from anonymous retail. PageRank-family algorithms make that structural distinction; flat metrics cannot.
Input signals
- Twitter / X — replies, quote-tweets, and retweets between tracked accounts. Collected hourly via the official platform data partner.
- LinkedIn — comments, reposts, and reactions on public posts. (See note on collection status below.)
- Bluesky — replies, quotes, and reposts.
- Podcast guest appearances — being booked on a tracked podcast (Volts, Catalyst, Columbia Energy Exchange, Open Circuit, Cleaning Up, Shift Key, NPM Interconnections, and others) counts as an editorial endorsement edge from the host to the guest.
- Conference speaking invitations — keynotes and named panels at major US clean-energy conferences contribute a smaller editorial-endorsement edge.
Platform-budget normalization
Twitter generates orders of magnitude more engagement events than LinkedIn or Bluesky. Without normalization, the ranking would collapse into a Twitter follower contest. We assign each platform a fixed share of the total influence budget — Twitter does not dominate by raw volume.
The result is that someone whose primary presence is LinkedIn (e.g., a project finance MD who never tweets but drives serious comment threads on policy posts) can outrank a Twitter-native account with more raw engagement.
Eligibility & activity requirement
- Must be active in US clean energy — developer, IPP, lender, infra fund, EPC, OEM, policy, advisor, journalist, or academic with a clean-energy focus.
- Must show recent posting activity on at least one tracked platform within the last 30 days. An impressive résumé without recent posting does not qualify for a digital influence ranking.
- Inactive members (60+ days) are flagged for review and dropped if posting doesn't resume.
Categories
Each ranked person is assigned to one of six broad categories: Policy, Capital, Projects, Media, Technology, Research. Assignment is by primary professional role; multi-hat individuals (e.g., a venture investor who also writes a Substack) get a single category based on what they're best known for. The All tab shows the global Top 100; the per-category tabs show the Top 20 in each.
Refresh cadence
Rankings recompute weekly on a Sunday cut. The week-over-week movement indicator (▲ / ▼) shown on the All tab compares against the previous Sunday's ranking. New entrants are tagged NEW.
Collection status
LinkedIn data collection is currently paused. Following an April 2026 platform Terms-of-Service notice, DealFlow has indefinitely suspended automated LinkedIn data collection. The existing LinkedIn engagement graph remains in the ranking; it is not being augmented with new edges. Twitter and Bluesky collection continue normally.
We'll restore LinkedIn collection only via a sanctioned integration path. In the meantime, LinkedIn-native influencers are scored against their existing graph plus their cross-platform activity.
What the Power 100 doesn't measure
The Power 100 is a digital-influence ranking. It does not measure:
- Institutional power (AUM, MW under management, dollar volume)
- Policy impact (votes cast, regulations written)
- Deal-making track record (covered in the league tables and DealFlow 50)
- Off-platform thought leadership (closed conferences, board influence, private writing) — these are real, but they aren't measurable from public engagement signals.
Read it as one input: who's shaping the public conversation in US clean energy this week.
Corrections & nominations
If you think someone's missing, miscategorized, or misranked, email hello@dealflow.energy. Nominations don't bypass the algorithm — they get added to the tracked-account universe and then ranked on the same signals as everyone else.