Grid Talk

With leadership in the government changing, the electric utility industry is anticipating major shifts in policy. But sustainability will continue to be a focus of the evolving electric and energy sector according to a strategic advisor for large commercial and industrial organizations looking to manage their sustainability and energy issues. In this episode of Grid Talk, we interview Drew Murphy CEO of Trio about what's ahead for the energy industry.“There will be reversals, there will be setbacks; there will be things where we've moved down one path and then that stops so you have to move down another,” said Murphy. Trio was launched 9 years ago by Edison International, one of the nation's largest utilities, to help its customers navigate the energy transition, which he believes will continue regardless of the administration change.“Sustainability and energy will continue to go hand-in-hand and we're going to see this move forward.” Murphy says the renewable and clean energy business is constantly evolving and changing. “I think that the technological advancement that we've seen over the last 20 years in terms of clean energy technology advancement, how the costs have come down; how much we've deployed both in the U.S., and globally, I think technology is driving forward and that is something that I think will continue.”AS chief executive officer of Trio, Murphy is responsible for guiding the organization and empowering the team to help clients manage their energy choices and risks to deliver on their strategic, financial and sustainability goals. Previously Murphy was senior vice president of Strategy, Corporate Development and Sustainability for Trio's parent company, Edison International, where he was responsible for managing the strategic planning process for the company and its subsidiaries and overseeing the analysis of emerging trends in the industry and their impact on Edison International's regulated utility and competitive businesses.Murphy earned a bachelor's degree from Harvard College in 1983 and a Juris Doctor from George Washington University in 1987.

At first glance, solar energy production and livestock grazing don't seem like they have much in common, but the two industries have formed a growing partnership with what's known as solar grazing.This episode of Grid Talk features Nick Armentrout who is the president of the American Solar Grazing Association. Armentrout reports a steep rise in the use of livestock to graze under and around solar panel deployments in rural America.“There is vegetation in place to control stormwater. After the site is turned on and is operational, now you need to maintain that vegetation. You don't want it to grow too tall and shade the panels and impact actual production.” said Armentrout.It's turning out to be a win-win situation for farmers and energy producers. Instead of machinery to keep vegetation in check, farmers use the land for grazing animals.“Over 120,00 acres of solar are being grazed in the United States, so that is more than any other country that we're aware of on the globe.” The trend benefits solar power generators, helping them maintain the land under their power assets, produces new income streams for small family farmers, and is inspiring a new generation of young farmers that want to help tackle climate change.“I think it's a fantastic situation, I mean, we're just scratching the surface on livestock and grazing solar and the potential benefits for the animals in the system.”

Energy storage is considered the holy grail that would unlock a vast increase in solar and wind renewable electricity generation. That's the topic for the latest episode of Grid Talk featuring Will McNamara who is a Grid Energy Policy Storage Analyst with Sandia National Laboratories.Six national energy labs and a cohort of 200 partners across the energy industry have joined together in a moonshot effort to vastly expand energy storage in America. It is all being coordinated through the National Consortium for the Advancement of Long Duration Energy Storage (LDES) technologies. “There was a proposal call issued by the Department of Energy offering funds to the national labs to create an industry forum focused on the many challenges that are facing long-duration energy storage technologies and create this forum so that the industry can come together and address these challenges,” said McNamara The goal is to boost storage technology on a large scale from about four hours duration to 10 hours.“The sun doesn't always shine, the wind doesn't always blow so we need to find a way to store the energy to make it dispatchable, hence the need for energy storage, so we are absolutely in this evolutionary period. We are building the constructs for the future.”In his role as Grid Energy Storage Policy Analyst for Sandia National Laboratories, McNamara focuses on energy storage policy development at the federal and state levels. He has spent his entire 23-year career in the energy and utilities industry with a concentration on regulatory and legislative policy.  Additional areas of subject matter expertise include distributed energy resources, AMI/smart grid, renewables, and competitive retail markets.McNamara has an M.B.A. from University of Phoenix, an M.A. in Mass Communications from the University of Iowa, and a B.A. in Political Science and Journalism from the University of Iowa. 

Solar siting, the future of hydroelectric dams, and grid transmission buildout have been some of the most contentious and important areas needing attention as the U.S. builds out the electric grid of tomorrow. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Dan Reicher who is a former Assistant Secretary of Energy and is associated with the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, as well as Dartmouth's Irving Institute for Energy and Society.The discussion centers on a program at Stanford called Uncommon Dialogues which aims to sort out divisive issues and make progress solving them.“I started to look into this Uncommon Dialogue program, and I was really quite intrigued given the difficulties we have in resolving some of today's big energy, climate and environmental issues,” said Reicher.The idea is to get opposing parties together at least once and see if there's any interest in really trying to resolve some of their big differences.“I think we've got a good process, and we've tested it now in both hydropower and big solar, and I think it could work well on a lot of other issues. We got some of the biggest solar developers in the United States to sit down with some of the big environmental groups including The Nature Conservancy, the largest U.S. conservation group, and with tribal representatives and a whole host of others.”The result was the groups bought in on an agreement about how to proceed.“We've been moving forward ever since to really try to improve the way we site, operate, and transmit the power from these big solar projects, often measured in the hundreds and hundreds of megawatts and some of them approaching 1,000 megawatts.”Dan Reicher is a former Assistant Secretary of Energy in the Clinton Administration. Mr. Reicher is currently attached to the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. Mr. Reicher joined Stanford in 2011 as the executive director of Stanford's Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy & Finance. Before joining Stanford, he was the Director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives at Google.Mr. Reicher holds a B.A. in biology from Dartmouth College and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. 

Kansas, in the heart of America's robust wind belt, has approved a new direct current transmission corridor to help speed the transition to cleaner energy. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Andrew French, the chairman of the Kansas Corporation Commission.“Kansas actually approved a permit for the Grain Belt Express DC line to extend all the way across our state and all the way to Indiana,” said French.It comes at a time of increased demand for energy - particularly non-carbon emitting sources. French acknowledges that navigating the regulatory and permitting process is difficult.“Right now, you're looking at a few years to get new generation online and it's a tough spot. You've got a lot of customers that want power.”“This is a complex industry even for developers that are very sophisticated. As they're developing a wind farm, a solar farm, some other generation source, it's really hard for them to anticipate how much it's going to cost for them to interconnect,” the Kansas regulator said. He's also optimistic about the future.“There are a lot of things moving in the direction of a successful energy transition. There are also a lot of things standing in the way or complications. There is of course, public sentiment that doesn't understand some of the reasons why we may have need to build new infrastructure and transition to different resources.”Andrew J. French was appointed to the KCC in2020. He has served as Chairperson since 2021.French currently serves as the Kansas representative to the Southwest Power Pool and regularly participates in various SPP stakeholder groups. He is also one of 10 state utility regulators selected to serve on the Joint Federal-State Task Force on Electric Transmission formed in 2021.Before his appointment to the KCC, French practiced law with a focus on energy policy and the regulation of utility rates and services. French has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Kansas and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Kansas School of Law.  

The sister plant to the ill-fated Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania is getting a new life. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Dan Eggers, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Constellation. Constellation will pay $1.6 billion to refurbish Unit 1 at Three Mile Island by 2028. It sits near Unit 2, the reactor that suffered a partial meltdown in 1979.  Unit 1 is an independent reactor, and its long-term operation was not impacted by the Unit 2 accident. Unit 1 closed in 2019 due to financial conditions, but Microsoft has now agreed to purchase all the energy from the plant to meet demand for its data centers.“They are undeniably a sustainability leader,” Eggers said of Microsoft. “When we realized that this was a viable project in the sense that we could bring it back from a mechanical and technical perspective, we brought the opportunity to them, explained what it could be, and they were very enthusiastic.” Eggers says the need for additional generation made them take another look at TMI Unit 1. “We ran it for 20 years. It ran incredibly well, safely, reliably, dependably over that time,” said Eggers.Daniel L. Eggers is the executive vice president and chief financial officer for Constellation. In this role, he is responsible for leading the execution of all financial activities for the Constellation business. He serves on the Constellation Executive Committee, which sets strategy and direction for the company.Eggers joined Exelon in 2016. Prior to that he was with Credit Suisse for 18 years with a focus on energy-related sectors. Eggers received a bachelor's degree in Finance from Texas Christian University and received the Chartered Financial Analyst designation in 2000. He also completed the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Reactor Technology Course in 2023.

One of the largest investor-owned utilities in the country is preparing for an 80% increase in electricity demand by 2045. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Steve Powell who is the president and CEO of Southern California Edison.With a customer base of 15 million people across a 50,000 square mile service area, Southern California Edison is changing the way it prepares for the increased demand.“Our engineers that are frankly used to dealing with relatively small changes on the grid and small amounts of load growth and really focus on just making sure that the infrastructure stays reliable are now having to think very differently about how we plan for customer load growth and load growth is showing up really quickly,” said Powell.Meeting the demand for carbon free electricity means more generation from wind and solar and other sources like nuclear and geothermal. It also means more transmission to get electricity to customers.“You look at the California Independent System Operator's 20-year outlook and they're talking about 50 plus billion dollars of new transmission that needs to get built. We're going to need to build transmission miles at four times the pace that we've seen historically.”Powell admits 20 years is short timeframe, and the industry needs to move faster. “About 20% of the energy that customers use is electricity. By the time you get to 2045, I would expect 50 to 60% of it to be electricity based. So, customers are going to be two to three times more dependent on electricity than they are today. That means our level of service has to be better. Reliability is going to have to be better.”Steven Powell is president and chief executive officer of Southern California Edison. Powell has held a variety of positions of progressing responsibility since joining the company in 2000, including executive vice president, Operations and senior vice president of Strategy, Planning, and Operational Performance.  He has a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles and received his MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management. He has also held leadership positions in resource planning and strategy, gas and power procurement, and SCE's plug-in electric vehicle readiness efforts.

Germany and Europe are somewhat envious of the massive federal spending now underway in America to ready the grid and the energy economy to combat climate change. That's according to Simon Müller who is one of Europe's leading thinkers on the future of energy and sustainability. As the director of the think tank Agora Energiewende, he took time to explain his views on the Department of Energy's Grid Talk Podcast.“When it comes to the buildout of renewable energies actually what we see in jurisdictions across the world is that now that you really have very competitive costs that it doesn't take that much political will any more to go for quite large amount of renewables,” said Müller. After the global economic downturn from the Covid pandemic, Europe has watched the U.S. government put in place a stimulus package built around investments in clean energy and the electric power grid. “When you look at policymakers in Germany but also in Europe, they've been looking to the United States and the Inflation Reduction Act with a certain degree of envy. Why? Because it's been perceived as being very successful at attracting investments in technologies that are very promising for the future and that are very strategic and position the United States on clean energy technologies.” Europe has struggled to match that government support.“If we want to also play a role as a manufacturing hub going forward, we have to get our act together to find a response to that act in the U.S.”Simon Müller is Director Germany at Agora Energiewende. He leads Agora's work in Germany on overarching energy and climate policy issues as well as in the areas of electricity, heat and energy infrastructure. Müller has advised governments in over 20 countries on six continents and coordinated and authored various studies on the transition of the power and energy system to renewable energies.Müller is an alumnus of the Mercator Followship on International Affairs and is a member of the advisory board of the DLR Institute for Networked Energy Systems. He studied in Oldenburg, Bremen and Berlin (psychology, physics) and holds a M.Sc. in physics.

NV Energy and Google have pioneered new utility regulatory policy to help the tech company's move to power its data center with renewable and green energy.In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Doug Cannon, President and CEO of NV Energy. Google executives say the agreement could be a template for similar pacts with utilities around the country. Higher revenues from new fee structures will be used to fund new geothermal generation resources in Nevada. “We really quickly recognized is we couldn't just rely on that tariff book anymore and we had, if we were going to stay relevant in the business and we were going to be a value-add energy provider for our customers we had to change our way of business.”Utilities that don't adapt to the green energy push of the likes of Google, Amazon and Microsoft may be headed to challenging times. “We're going to see some utilities bypassed.”“What this product, what we're focused on is real time green generation being injected into the NV Energy grid at the same time as Google was utilizing energy… there's absolutely a real time match on that energy.”Doug Cannon leads NV Energy's daily operations and oversees the company's commitment to deliver low-cost energy, expand its renewable energy portfolio and maintain industry-leading reliability for its customers. He has been with NV Energy since 2013.NV Energy delivers electricity to nearly 1.3 million customers and nearly 50 million tourists annually throughout its nearly 46,000-mile service territory in the state of Nevada. Cannon earned a juris doctor from the University of Colorado School of Law and a master's degree in environmental studies from the University of Colorado. He holds a bachelor's degree in environmental geoscience from Weber State University.

Google's data centers consume an enormous amount of electricity. That's prompted the information giant to proactively engage in the accelerating energy revolution. From Nevada to North Carolina and many points between, it is gearing up to power the Artificial Intelligence wave by striking novel relationships with utilities and encouraging the transformation of energy regulation, state by state. That is the focus of this episode of Grid talk. Host Marty Rosenberg interviews Amanda Peterson Corio, Google's Global Head of Data Center Energy.Google, citing industry sources, says and additional $2.5 trillion must be spent on clean energy over the next six years to address climate change. “What we have encountered is a universal recognition that we are in a unique moment in time,” said Peterson Corio. “For the first time in decades, we have real load growth in the U.S.”Google's response is to deepen its use of clean energy. “We are matching 100% of the electricity we use on an annual basis with new additional clean energy that we put onto the grid somewhere in the system or in the world.”That effort will now be broadened. “Our higher standard of our 24/7 carbon-free energy goal actually takes that a step further and says if we're truly going to decarbonize the grid where we operate, we need to make it first local, meaning we can't just only sign a new contract for wind or solar, for example, in the Midwest to offset our data center in Singapore, right? Carbon is a global problem, but we also need to find solutions directly where we operate.”Amanda Peterson Corio has 20 years of experience in energy project finance, development, and the procurement of renewable and traditional energy generation. In her current role, Amanda manages power procurement, energy policy, and energy infrastructure development for Google's global data centers. Amanda holds an MBA from The Wharton School of Business and a BA in Business Administration with Honors from Boston University's School of Management.

TerraPower, fueled with $1 billion from Bill Gates, hopes to be first out of the gate with next generation nuclear projects that will complement and back up burgeoning renewable energy generation. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Chris Levesque who is president and CEO of TerraPower. The company is developing its 345-megawatt prototype. Ultimately, the units will be plugged in to the grid and replace generation at many coal-burning power plants. That will allow the new units ready access to transmission lines.“We are the only construction permit for a commercial reactor in front of the NRC (U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission) today so by that objective measure, it means we're next. It means the next American reactor is our Natrium Reactor in Wyoming; yes, so we plan to receive that construction license in 2026,” said LevesqueAll kinds of nuclear technology should soon follow. “All the models show that the optimum mix on an emission-free grid is going to be 20% to 30% nuclear,” Levesque said. “I wish we could move faster, though. TerraPower is the leader. We're trying to deliver as fast as we can on the first one and scale as fast as we can but we're going to need multiple technologies.” “We really do need to triple nuclear, and we're excited about being first but even when we deliver hundreds of reactors to triple nuclear, it's going to require a really massive deployment.”Chris Levesque is president and chief executive officer of TerraPower and also serves as a member of the TerraPower Board. He was appointed to that position in November 2018 after having served as president of TerraPower since 2015. Levesque leads this nuclear innovation company in the pursuit of next-generation nuclear energy. His proven track record in scoping, planning and implementing complex projects began with his service in the U.S. Nuclear Navy and features more than 30 years of experience in the nuclear field.Levesque holds a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a Master of Science in mechanical engineering and a naval engineer degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also serves on the board of the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Massive investments to overhaul our aging power grid are underway, but it's going to require significant planning to be successful.In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg sits down with Ron Ambrosio, an energy transformation professional, to talk about getting smarter and more deliberate how we plan for the future.“One of the key themes that we're trying to educate the industry on is the importance of not just looking at forward incremental steps and design, but also the importance of looking at that endgame and doing analysis on that from an architectural perspective,” said Ambrosio.“The endgame is reducing carbon fuels, trying to depend on renewable energy more and more and trying to expand to the use of distributed energy resources.”Limits on the grid today are delaying the deployments of new grid assets. “That bottleneck partially reflects the fact that our current grid design does have limitations in what it can absorb today.” Ambrosio noted that, when it comes to planning, we will always have the issue needing new transmission.“There's a lot of evolution that the distribution systems need to go through in order to accommodate a very high penetration of more distributed renewable energy and other types of DER resources.” Ambrosio is former chief technology officer of smarter energy research at the IBM TJ Walton Research Center and former chairman of the Gridwise Architecture Council. He is a senior technical executive and scientist with a focus on technology, business and policy issues related to energy transformation in the electricity industry. He has 40 years of software engineering experience in distributed, real-time systems and their interoperability with enterprise computing environments, and 20 years of experience specifically in the energy transformation space.

In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Shay Bahramirad who is the  vice president of T&D, strategy, and sustainability at LUMA and president of the IEEE Power & Engineering Society. The discussion focuses on rebuilding the grid in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017 and how the world is pivoting to a new electric grid.Bahramirad is the point person helping to rebuild the grid in Puerto Rico and and go beyond what existed prior to Hurricane Maria. The federal government has earmarked $16 billion to Puerto Rico for grid related work.“From that total $16 billion dollars, we have initiated over $13 billion dollars of scope of work and over $4 billion dollars of it is approved by FEMA and over $1.2 billion dollars has been constructed in the grid. That includes everything from poles that they would withstand 160 miles per hour winds to modernization of substations,” said Bahramirad. Part of the rebuild is making the grid more reliable for customers.“It also suffered from decades of under investments and lack of maintenance that led customers and citizens of Puerto Rico to experience outages three times more frequently than any other utility in the United States. ““We got to work. The frequency of outages experienced by customers has gone down by about 25% since we started.”As for changes confronting IEEE Power & Engineering Society members, utilities, and customers – the organization is focused on building the electrical grid of the future and making sure all the players are working in unison.“It's an unprecedented time to be in this industry and the challenges that we deal with cannot wait for a decade to coordinate.”Dr. Bahramirad is a leading figure in the industry. She is the President of the IEEE Power and Energy Society, an editorial board member of the Electricity Journal, a US CIGRE Executive member, an adjunct professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and the founder of IEEE Women in Power. Dr. Bahramirad completed her PhD in electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has issued a new rule to better coordinate the massive buildout of new electric transmission systems. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Ari Peskoe who is the director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program.FERC is trying to help pave the way to get a reported 11,000 wind, solar, and battery projects online. Right now, they are in limbo because of the lack of transmission.“There are massive amounts of generation, mostly clean generation, stuck in these interconnection lines or interconnection queues,” said Peskoe.In May, FERC issued Order No. 1920 to coordinate information sharing and transmission buildout. “FERC is trying to motivate the industry to develop high-voltage transmission lines and to work together on that development through existing regional alliances.”Peskoe says there have been tens of billions of dollars a year spent on transmission, but much of it has gone to rebuilding last century's infrastructure.“We need to keep the system working, but we also need to think about ways to expand it in a cost-effective way.” Order No. 1920 urges the industry to be more forward thinking rather than reacting to these generators on a project-by-project basis.“Let's look at the broader trends, the long-term trends that we're seeing, both in the supply mix changes as well as the potential for increasing demand due to electrification and other factors and plan wholistically going forward to anticipate the future needs.” Ari Peskoe has written extensively about regulation of the U.S. power sector, on issues ranging from Constitutional challenges to states' energy laws to interstate transmission development. Prior to the Environmental and Energy Law Program, Ari was an associate at a law firm in Washington, D.C. where he litigated before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission about the Western Energy Crisis. He received his J.D. from Harvard Law School and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with degrees in electrical engineering and business.

Countries around the world are stepping up efforts to combat climate change but mountainous challenges loom. That's according to the guest on the latest episode of Grid Talk.Host Marty Rosenberg speaks with David Waskow, director of International Climate Initiatives at the World Resources Institute. Waskow says non-governmental organizations (NGOs), are shoulder to shoulder with national governments' stepped-up engagement.“We're both making a lot of progress and have enormous challenges ahead of us,” said Waskow.According to Waskow the work is just beginning.“I think one thing we haven't taken into account is the depth of transformation that we need.”Some countries are making notable progress. “The surge in renewables in India is just quite remarkable and there over 100 gigawatts at the moment I believe, and continuing to grow rapidly,” he said. And he's talking about massive societal transformations.“We are moving quickly on EVs but all the evidence is that we're not only going to have to do EVs at a massive scale, we're also going to have to shift to other modes of transport than passenger vehicles.”AS the Director of WRI's International Climate Initiative Waskow is focused on international cooperation that catalyzes and supports action on climate change at the national level in developed and developing countries Prior to WRI, David directed climate change policy at the development organization Oxfam America, where much of his work focused on the impacts of climate change on vulnerable communities. He has graduate degrees from the University of Chicago and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University; his undergraduate degree is from Brown University.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is gearing up to fund $40 billion of electric grid and sustainability projects. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks Zealan Hoover who is the EPA Administrator's Senior Advisor for Implementation. They discuss the range of projects to be funded.“We've received over $100 billion dollars in supplemental appropriations. A lot of that is for electric system decarbonization and other climate investments,” Hoover said. The amount far exceeds any effort the agency has undertaken in its 50-year history. “We have received tens of billions of dollars across multiple programs through the Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act to both accelerate grid decarbonization and to get more zero emission equipment plugged into that grid.”States, cities, and tribes are now competing for $4.6 billion worth of projects, with awards to be announced starting in July. “We've received over $30 billion dollars in project proposals so we will be funding the best of the best. We're seeing really innovative proposals that are tailored to the needs of local communities and states,” Hoover said.Zealan Hoover has led EPA's agency-wide implementation of more than $100 billion in programs authorized under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. Prior to that, he worked in the private sector advising organizations on a wide range of strategic and operational matters with an emphasis on decarbonization and managing climate risk. Hoover graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Offshore wind power generation is about to take off in a big way in the U.S. One of the biggest splashes will be made by Equinor which is building up to 130 ocean-planted wind turbines 15 to 30 miles off Long Island. Grid Talk host Marty Rosenberg goes in-depth on the project details with Equinor's Vice President of Operations, Sam Byrne.The operation will be anchored by operations based in Brooklyn, in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. The company's Empire Wind farm will generate 2.1 gigawatts of electricity. New York State has declared that it wants 9 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030.Byrne described the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal now being erected. “We'll be building a building, we'll be building a substation,” said Byrne. “We need maintenance technicians, marine and vessel crews to get out there, planning teams, medics…” Once offshore wind starts spinning, its appeal will be clear. “The wind resource blows more strongly and more consistently offshore and it better matches electric consumption patterns than a lot of other renewable sources.”Byrne also talks about why the U.S. has been slow to adopt offshore wind and why that is changing.“We're starting to see the acceleration now. Some of it has to do with support; some of it has to do with the technology that's come into being; some of it has to do with just the need for electricity.”Sam Byrne is in his first year with Equinor. His responsibilities include leading and overseeing Equinor's US offshore wind operations and maintenance activities, while ensuring development and execution of safe, efficient, and cost-effective operations. Byrne worked previously Vestas Wind Systems and McKinsey & Co. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Yale University and an M.A. in International Economics and International Relations with a concentration in Energy, Resources, and Environment from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded grants to two entities to enable a deeper dive into tidal energy generation. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Nate Johnson who is the Vice President of Development for ORPC. The Maine based firm will deploy two devices in Cook Inlet, Alaska to further study tidal generation.“For decades folks have been trying to harness marine energy and I would say it's still new because there's only a handful of companies around the world that have achieved that and it's a harsh environment, it's complex,” said Johnson. The first phase of the study is being paid for with a $3 million DOE grant with a goal generating between one and five megawatts of power. “Alaska has an opportunity to produce way more than it needs and produce other forms of electricity, transportable electricity from tidal energies. In Cook Inlet alone in Alaska, we have the potential for 18 gigawatts.”ORPC and the other grant recipient, a team led by Orcas Power and Light Cooperative in Washington, aim to raise the profile of potential tidal power. “A lot of folks aren't aware that there are technologies out there than can produce electricity from tides or from rivers that aren't dammed so we really focus on not only getting the device in the water but working with communities or customers to build awareness in different regions and try to grow that marketplace. That's a big part of what we do.”Nate Johnson leads ORPC's development activities and the implementation of its innovative power systems in cost effective, environmentally responsible ways. A native of Long Island, Maine, Nate has a diverse background that includes renewable energy, commercial fishing, aquaculture, groundwater exploration and development, construction management and environmental engineering. He earned a Bachelor of Applied Science from Tufts University.

The grid is getting more complex, complicating the responsibilities of the entities responsible for keeping electricity flowing. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Clair Moeller who is the President and Chief Operating Officer for the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO).The discussion focuses on the evolving power grid and the transition to clean energy. “Retirements are outpacing new installations of resources on the grid and that's a problem that we haven't had on the grid since its early formation period in the ‘30s,” Moeller said. “Things are moving in an uncoordinated fashion where we're creating risk for the grid that we maybe didn't anticipate.”One of the risks is the need for more transmission to meet demand.“By the time we're all in, it will be over a hundred billion dollars' worth of transmission investments.”Spending for new generation and transmission will have an impact on consumers.“Energy costs at the consumer level are going to go up substantially,” said Moeller.Moeller also talks about the pace of the energy transition and the need for education. “We can reduce our carbon footprint faster if we build more gas-fired generation so that we can turn off coal plants. But that just doesn't make sense to people that think we should turn off combustion because that's how you reduce the carbon footprint,” he said.Clair Moeller leads all aspects of the Operations division at MISO, including grid operations, forward markets, system planning, external affairs, information technology and corporate services. Moeller also has executive responsibility for the compliance and external affairs teams.He is an industry expert with experience in the operation of power systems throughout the Midwest. He is skilled at identifying and implementing the best practices in transmission planning and system operations.Moeller completed the Oxford Advanced Management and Leadership course at Oxford Said Business School, the Executive Management program at the Carlson School of Business, University of Minnesota, and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Iowa State University. 

The federal government is poised to transform the United States' electric grid at an unprecedented, massive clip to fight climate change and embrace sustainability.That's according to Sasha Mackler, head of the Bipartisan Policy Center energy program who is the guest on the latest episode of Grid Talk. “The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act are really two major achievements from a federal policy perspective,” said Mackler. “They're very focused on the developments and in particular the deployment of clean energy technologies across the American economy.”  The result will unleash an enormous amount of new capital from the federal government into this energy transition and into energy modernization. “Dollars are being spent; small grants have gone out the door. Big grants and funding programs have been established and funding commitments have been made but the actual large dollars that are going to flow into the economy, those are still really getting setup because projects take time to sort of work through the commercial permitting phase, to get the consortiums together, to get the contracts in place so that they can actually get out into the market and attract the capital and start the construction.” Sasha Mackler has worked for more than two decades at the intersection of energy policy and commercial markets. Prior to leading the Energy Program, he spent nearly 10 years in the private sector, first as vice president of Summit Power Group's carbon capture business and then overseeing market development activities for Enviva, the largest biomass fuel supplier to the global utility industry. His professional work has focused on the innovations necessary to scale emerging energy technologies along with developing the business models and policy frameworks that support the deployment of low carbon energy systems.Mackler holds both a Master of Science in Earth Resources Engineering and Master of Public Administration from Columbia University. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Geomechanical Engineering from the University of Rochester.

Ontario Canada's government is all in on nuclear technology as it stakes out a global leadership position in small modular reactors (SMRs). In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Todd Smith who is the Ontario Energy Minister.Rapid population and economic growth, coupled with the province's long reliance on nuclear technology, prompted its decision to pursue SMRs. “We felt very comfortable in moving forward with the technology we'd chosen which is a 300-megawatt boiling water reactor from GE Hitachi,” said Smith. “We're partnering with U.S. Technologies on this and other U.S. and international partners to develop the first-of-the-kind SMR, small modular reactor, here in Ontario.”“It's baseload power, it's there when you need it, it's there and able to be relied on 365 days a year.”The province expects to add five million residents over the next decade.“That's going to require a lot of electricity.” Todd Smith has been the Ontario Energy Minister since June of 2021. Smith has served in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario for more than a decade. He is a graduate of Loyalist College.

Small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) could play an important role in meeting future energy needs. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Sandra Dykxhoorn, the vice president of New Nuclear Growth at Ontario Power Generation (OPG), based in Toronto.“It's a game-changer,” said Dykxhoorn about SMRs. “We are really at the front of the pack here. OPG is recognized now globally as a world leader in its small modular deployment.”SMRs will make their international debut in the free world in Ontario, Canada in five years.“The reason why small modular reactors exist at all and why people are investing in this technology is because we know there is a need for smaller, clean base load power options that can replace gas and coal,” Dykxhoorn said. “Part of the solution with the small modular reactor is that it's smaller so that should be quicker to build; doesn't take as long,” she told Grid Talk. “Additionally, it's more modular and more standardized. What we try to do is introduce factory buildout components.”It will be safer than conventional nuclear plants around for decades. “Essentially what they're trying to do is remove the humans that need to be involved in managing a nuclear reactor in the event that there's an emergency or something happens. Ultimately, there's something called passive safety.”As the Vice President of New Nuclear Development for Ontario Power Generation, Sandra Dykxhoorn oversees the company's long-term new nuclear growth strategy, building external relationships and creating a pipeline of opportunities. She has been with OPG since 2016  She graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Carleton and is a proud alumnus of the Laurentian Leadership Program in Ottawa and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques (IEP) in Grenoble France.

The federal government is accelerating its support of pathbreaking fusion power research, ramping up three fusion research hubs and developing private sector engagement in next generation nuclear power. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Kramer Akli who is with the Department of Energy's Office of Fusion Energy Sciences.“What we are hoping on for the hubs in four years is to give us a clear picture which inertial fusion approach we can pursue,” said Akli.DOE has committed to spend $42 million over four years to support research into the use of lasers to fire up fusion, the process that powers the sun. This comes after researchers achieved a significant milestone in 2022 called "scientific breakeven."  “For the first time in history we have achieved ignition and that you can get more energy out of the target,” he said. Overall, DOE is spending $500 million dollars a year on fusion.“With these three national hubs, we have leading institutions, but they bring together more than 30 institutions from national labs, universities, and the private sector to tackle some of these challenges.” “What we have today that we didn't have five, 10 or 20 years ago is we have a private sector, more than 50 companies, that are pursuing fusion energy and we have attracted more than $6 billion dollars in investments,” said Akli.Kramer Akli has been with the Department of Energy since 2016.He has a PhD in Applied Science from the University of California, Davis. He received a BS in Plasma Physics from National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute). 

The recent United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) meeting in Dubai confirmed it will take a combination of generation sources to decarbonize electricity production, and nuclear energy will play a key role. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Arshad Mansoor who is the President and CEO of the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). Mansoor provides his takeaways from the conference. “Now (there is) almost unanimous agreement on the importance on both large nuclear central station and small modular reactors. You can call this COP28 the Nuclear COP28 because I haven't seen this (before) from leaders, from organizations, from industries,” said Mansoor.Other generation sources are also needed.“We should double-down, triple-down on wind and solar but we should triple-down on offshore wind.”Mansoor said that EPRI research priorities align well with the global direction of energy and climate policy. “I think our long-term focus is spot-on which is, we've got to double-down on innovation on SMRs and long duration energy storage and on carbon-capture.”Arshad Mansoor is responsible for the EPRI's operation and portfolio of R&D programs. Mansoor has been with EPRI for 21 years and previously served as SVP of research and development, and VP of the Power Delivery and Utilization sector. He earned a B.S. in electrical engineering from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology; and a M.S. and doctorate in electrical engineering from the University of Texas in Austin. 

Solar power generation deployments are accelerating worldwide - and the grid must evolve to accommodate it. That's the topic of this episode of Grid Talk. Host Marty Rosenberg talks with Mary Werner who is the Solar Program Manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado. “We did a Solar Futures Study in 2020 and in that report, we said that if you want to go to a decarbonized electric grid by 2035, we have to ramp up from our 2020 level by 9½ times and that's just in the United States,” said Werner.Werner explained the world is on pace to erect $1 billion a day in solar assets.“By 2035, if we also plan on electrification which would then increase the amount of electricity needed, we would have to get to 12½ times.” Production is gearing up in tandem with the escalating need for solar. “In a report last week that I saw, our quarterly Market Industry Report, says that there have been 240 gigawatts of solar manufacturing announced since the Inflation Reduction Act passed in August 2022,” Werner said. “That is the kind of ramp up is what we need.”Mary Werner joined NREL in 1995 as an engineer in the Federal Energy Management Program and eventually became the program manager. She has also managed programs for NREL's Building Technologies Program, Integrated Deployment, the Deployment and Market Transformation organization. In 2015, Werner became the program manager for the Solar Program, the flagship program at the lab.Ms. Werner has an Executive MBA from the University of Colorado, Denver and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from California State University, Sacramento.

Community solar allows households and businesses to access the benefits of solar energy, such as lower electricity costs, regardless of whether they're able to host a system on their own roof.In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Jeff Cramer who is the president and CEO of Coalition for Community Solar Access. “We've figured out a way for any electricity customer to be able to participate and benefit from local clean energy deployment in less than five minutes with guaranteed savings,” said Cramer. And interest in community solar projects is growing, with more states considering community solar programs.“It's thousands of projects around the country in over 20 states across the country.”By the end of the year there will be six gigawatts of community solar on the system. Cramer expects that to grow significantly in the future. “What Community Solar offers is it offers a sort of a hub for the deployment of, a central hub for the deployment of distributed generation.”Jeff Cramer has served as President and CEO of CCSA since its founding in 2015. Prior to CCSA, Cramer co-founded and served as a Partner at 38 North Solutions, a Washington DC public affairs firm that focused exclusively on federal clean energy and sustainability policies and advocacy. He has a B.A. in government, philosophy from Clark University.

The utility sector is embracing new values and attracting a new kind of work force as it empowers America with a sustainable, affordable, secure grid. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Tom Kuhn, president and CEO of the Edison Electric Institute which represents investor-owned utilities providing electricity to 235 million Americans. The discussion focuses on the current state of the industry and its future. “We are very cognizant of how important electricity is to every household in this country so it's very, very important for us to maintain reliability and affordability, but what is going to have to change is obviously our response to increasing growth and the need to maintain reliability for our customers,” said Kuhn.Additionally, Kuhn talks about the impact electric utilities adopting new cultural values.“We have gotten so much cleaner and we are so much committed to it, we are attracting really a tremendous number of young people into this business right now and they're coming because they see a purpose in life.”He also discusses how recent federal initiatives are spurring deep changes. “The Congress and the White House led the charge on the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill that we got a few years ago and clean energy tax credits, the Inflation Reduction Act. They were historic pieces of legislation that our infusing-needed capital into this business to help us to achieve this clean energy transition and to enable us to bring on new technologies.”Tom Kuhn joined the Edison Electric Institute in 1985 as executive vice president, was named chief operating officer in 1988, and elected president in 1990.Prior to joining EEI, he was president of the American Nuclear Energy Council, which subsequently merged with the Nuclear Energy Institute. The Council represented virtually all of the companies in the commercial nuclear power industry. Mr. Kuhn served on the Secretary of Energy's Advisory Board and the Board of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He currently serves on the Boards of the Alliance to Save Energy, the United States Energy Association, the Electric Drive Transportation Association, and the American Council for Capital Formation. Mr. Kuhn received a BA in Economics in 1968 from Yale University, served as a Naval Officer following his graduation, and received an MBA in 1972 from George Washington University. 

Hawaii gets about one-third of its energy from renewables, and it aims to get to 100 percent by 2045. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Stephen Walls, the deputy chief energy officer of the Hawaii State Energy Office.The state is still busy assessing the impact of Maui's devastating fires on its electric grid. “The office is going through an exercise of trying to think through and identify what resources the state does have, to make sure that the energy system remains available, even in, during strange or extreme weather events,” said Walls.Long term, the question is how the state gets to 100 percent renewable generation. “I think we're encouraged by a few things. One, Kauai - over half of its energy supplied is renewable and if they are able to complete their pump storage hydro project, then they'll be pushing over 70 percent and they'll still have the rest of the time to figure out what else they should do”Walls says the state is banking on continued technology change and cost improvements.“We've led with the use of and reliance on distributed energy renewable resources and will continue to do that and be at one of the leading voices in smart inverters and inverter-based resources in providing grid services there.Stephen Walls has worked on energy and climate issues in the private, public, non-profit, and academic sectors. Prior to working for the Hawaii State Energy Office, he worked for the U.S. Department of Energy and General Electric.Stephen earned his J.D. with honors from The George Washington University Law School and studied International Relations (B.A.) and Economics (B.S.) at the University of Delaware. 

Artificial intelligence and machine learning will make a big difference in boosting our reliance on intermittent renewable wind and solar power.In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Dalia Patiño-Echeverri, professor at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. With renewable energy being deployed at a rapid pace, making sure there is back up, or reserve, power available to meet peak demand is critical. Patiño-Echeverri is using sophisticated forecasting models to precisely predict fluctuations in renewables and reserve generation needs to be ramped up or down. “We will be in a better position to integrate the valuable renewable energy that we get from solar and from wind because we will be considering all the possibilities and we'll be prepositioning our system in the best way to cope with the variability and the uncertainty of these resources,” said Patiño-Echeverri. “The number one benefit that we see in our technology is that we're going to have the right level of reserves at each moment and in time in our system.”“And with artificial intelligence and with machine learning, we have found ways to run these models that are more sophisticated, more demanding of computational resources. We have found ways to simplify those requirements and we have found ways to run them faster.”interviews Dalia Patiño-Echeverri Dalia Patiño-Echeverri is the Gendell Associate Professor of Energy Systems and Public Policy at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University where she explores, assesses, and proposes technological, policy, and market approaches to contribute to the goal of striking a balance between environmental sustainability, affordability, and reliability in electricity systems. She received B.S. and M.Sc. degrees in Industrial Engineering from University of The Andes, Bogotá, Colombia and the PhD degree in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University.

Wind production in America's wind basket, a 14-state region including Iowa and Kansas, fell off the table in June, yet the region has served its power load during the hot summer.In this episode of Grid Talk host Marty Rosenberg interviews Lanny Nickell who is executive vice president and CEO for the Southwest Power Pool. Nickell talks about the summer's wind mystery.“We have over 32,000 megawatts of nameplate wind capacity in SPP. Again, that's across 14 states. On June 6 of this year at 10 o'clock in the morning, out of the 32,000 megawatts of nameplate wind capacity, only 110 megawatts of energy was actually produced,” he said. “That's less than 0.4% and what's remarkable about that number is that you would expect across a broad geographic footprint covering all or parts of 14 states that you would see more wind than what we saw.”It's alarming because during our peak conditions, we expect to see a little over 5,000 megawatts of wind production,” he said. The system avoided blackouts and brownouts but not by much. “It was stressed, absolutely.”Lanny Nickell – As executive vice president and chief operating officer, Lanny Nickell is responsible for SPP's provision of engineering, operations, and information technology services to members and customers. These services include coordination of reliable power system operations, development, design and administration of energy markets, development of transmission expansion plans needed to facilitate delivery of reliable and affordable energy to consumers, and administration of resource adequacy policies.Nickell received a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tulsa and is a graduate of Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program

Federal spending of one-trillion dollars is aimed at transforming the electric grid and transitioning to clean energy. In this episode of Grid Talk, we talk with Sheri Givens, president and CEO of the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA). The discussion focuses on the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. “In looking and listening to our many members and regulators who are involved in accessing those funds, I think it's an exciting time for clean energy investment and investment in infrastructure,” said Givens. There are still many questions about how the influx of funding will flow down into actual projects. “I know it takes a while to ramp up such large targeted investment and I know a lot of the utilities and the stakeholders are waiting for clear guidance from the federal government,” Givens said. Other challenges include implementing new ideas.“Sometimes innovation can be stymied by the regulatory process. There's going to need to be some openness and some agility and some flexibility to allow for utilities and third parties and other entities to come in and to make some of these innovative solutions available to customers nationally.”Sheri Givens joined SEPA as president and CEO in November 2022. Her professional experience includes nearly twenty years in legal, regulatory, legislative, and external affairs in both the public and private sectors. She previously served as vice president of US Regulatory and Customer Strategy at National Grid. Prior to joining National Grid, she consulted on utility consumer education and regulatory policy issues in energy markets nationwide.Givens earned a Bachelor of Arts in government from the University of Texas at Austin and a Juris Doctor from the University of Houston Law Center.

The electric grid in in America's northeast industrial heartland is in the midst of profound transformation. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Kenneth Seiler who is vice president for PJM Interconnection. Seiler talks about how the electric system is rapidly evolving with PJM evaluating 2,700 new major grid related projects. “We just went through the interconnection reform process to get those most-ready projects out the door.” said Seiler.There are some difficult challenges to getting new projects connected to the grid.“There's a lot of energy being put on this right now to address any number of these issues whether it's the queue reform and the bottlenecks that we're experiencing based on the volumes we've been seeing; whether it's supply chain issues; whether it's the financing; whether it's local opposition.” Within PJM, there are 1,500 generation units touched by the transmission grid. “With the amount of renewables that we're seeing with solar and wind and storage facilities, that number will increase greatly,” Seiler said. “I don't know what that number will be in the next five years but I will tell you that a lot of the people who are looking to build solar panels and solar farms right now are looking to interconnect at the same exact spot where we have a retired fossil unit,” he said.Kenneth Seiler has been with JPM Interconnection for 23 years. He is responsible for all activities related to resource adequacy, generation interconnection, interregional planning and transmission planning, including the development of the Regional Transmission Expansion Plan.Prior to joining PJM, Seiler worked for Metropolitan Edison Company/GPU Energy for nearly 14 years in various operations and engineering roles. Seiler earned a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from The Pennsylvania State University and a Master of Business Administration from Lebanon Valley College.

In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg chats with Audrey Zibelman about the push to make the national grid fully digital. Zibelman is an experienced energy regulator who is advocating for giving the grid a “digital spine. Zibelman was the chair of the New York State Department of Public Service when it introduced its REV new vision for electric energy. She's also been CEO and managing director of the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) and, most recently, was vice president of at the Moonshot X Factory at Google. “At X, where I continue to be an advisor, I was brought in to lead a project around grid digitalization. To me, the big critical part of thinking about the whole process of decarbonization is that it's the amount of information we need to use… as well as the ability to integrate data and all the various devices that are going to be used.”“To help manage an affordable, reliable, clean electric system is massively more complex obviously than it was historically and part of this is going to be creating these digital spines or digital platforms that allow us to manage this data and share it.”  Audrey Zibelman is an experienced energy industry executive who has driven innovation within organizations and across the sector. She has been at the helm of multiple organizations leading the transition of the power industry into a decarbonized world as a CEO, Board Member, and government leader. Audrey currently serves on President Biden's National Infrastructure Advisory Council, is a Board member of EOS Energy, Squadron Energy, and SPAN, and Senior Advisor to the Pollination Group, Meridiam, Alliance Capital, and Camus energy. 

Two Danish islands will serve as hubs of massive new offshore wind turbines to serve itself and neighboring countries and spur development of clean hydrogen green fuel for aircraft and factories. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Hanne Storm Edlefsen who is the vice president of Energy Islands, a project of the Energinet transmission system operator in Denmark.One complex will be on Bornholm Island in the Baltic and link up 3,000 megawatts of wind power, simplifying the collection of the power and its transmission to land. The second complex will be on a new island to be built in the North Sea.“Well out in the North Sea, we're going to build an artificial island so that's a whole other project. This is supposed to be finished in 2033 as the plans are now. It will be in the beginning three or four gigawatts of offshore wind which is to be decided by Parliament within the next couple of months, but the ambition is actually that later there will be added even more gigawatts so the artificial island in the North Sea will end on 10 gigawatts which is so much electricity,” said Edlefsen. Wind power provides half of Denmark's electricity, and the goal is to increase it by 80% by 2024.“It definitely takes some braveness from the politicians to start these projects where a lot of the technology is still new or untested when they are taking the decisions,” she said. Hanne Storm Edlefsen has been with Energinet for 11 years. Energinet owns, operates, and develops the transmission grids for Danish electricity and gas supply. Her work focuses on sector coupling and large-scale renewables. Edlefsen has a master's degree in Political Science from the University of Copenhagen.

Two major fusion initiatives are making headway in the decades long goal to find the ultimate source of clean energy. In this episode of Grid Talk, we visit with Laban Coblentz who is the head of communications at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project in the south of France.Coblentz described the long quest for fusion and its implications. “Fusion has the potential to give a baseload source of energy without only a fraction of the waste concerns of fission, without the safety concerns of fission, but with the ability to provide clean energy for a planet in a concentrated way.” It will be safe and should not trigger many of the concerns of conventional nuclear reactors that have been around for decades.“Fusion will not be without waste, but it won't have any long-lived, high activity radioactive waste.”  “The fact that the physics don't allow a meltdown or that kind of thing; you could in fact place it in greater proximity to cities, to industry if you get the local—if you get the regulatory authorities to agree.”The European Union and the United States are two of the seven key, international players in ITER.“ITER is not just a fusion device, it's an exercise in what happens when the global community believes so much in a common goal and in a better future for our kids that we are willing to put aside our known ideological differences to try to pool our best expertise, something that science has done for a longtime.” Laban Coblentz has been with ITER since 2015. He is an entrepreneur and consultant with leadership roles at several companies. He has been involved with communication, energy policy, advanced science and technology, and entrepreneurship since attending the U.S. Navy Nuclear Power School in the 1980's.He holds an M.A. in English, English Literature from San Francisco State University and a B.A. in  degree in English, Psychology from Malone University.

Fusion power, clean and limitless, long elusive to scientists, may be headed our way sooner than many suspected thanks to a breakthrough experiment in early December at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL) in California. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Annie Kritcher, the physicist who designed the successful experiment that recreated the energy source of the sun.She explained: “What we're doing here is essentially creating a miniature star in a lab about the size of a human hair to half the size of the human hair. We have 192 giant lasers and when we say giant, that means that the whole system that is used to create this laser energy and all the details associated with it, it's the size of three football fields when you put all of the 192 laser beams together.”  Fusion research has been going on for decades, but the December experiment is a significant breakthrough and represents a new approach. “The thing that's different this time is that for the first time we've actually demonstrated in the laboratory that we can achieve fusion energy gain in a controlled way. Before that, we've never actually generated fusion energy output that was controlled in a laboratory setting. This result motivates and is a proof of principal for all the different approaches out there,” said Kritcher.That increases the likelihood of success.“There's also a huge resurgence in the number of people working in this area and the different approaches that are being looked at and when you have that many people looking at a problem, the progress is highly accelerated.”Dr. Annie Kritcher is the design lead within the Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) team as part of the National Ignition Facility at LLNL. Dr. Kritcher started at LLNL as a summer intern in 2004. She earned a PhD in Nuclear Engineering and Plasma Physics and a MS Nuclear Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. Annie earned her BS in Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences at the University of Michigan.

Here Come Residential Heat PumpsIn this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Michael Sachse who is the CEO of Dandelion Energy. Dandelion Energy's mission is to enable the widespread adoption of geothermal. “If you think about what we need to decarbonize, heating's really a challenge because so much about heating comes from burning natural gas; a lot of homes burn fuel oil, and so really, we got focused on that problem,” said Sachse.The company offers homeowners affordable geothermal heating & cooling systems as an alternative to gas, oil, propane, or electric heating.“There's a strong and growing emotional sense that people want to be sustainable, and they want to make investments that are going to speak to their values.”Sachse also talks about the cost of installing geothermal heat pumps and how long it takes for a unit to pay for itself.Michael Sachse is an experienced executive who has previously scaled start-ups through periods of rapid growth. Sachse was previously CEO of Stardog, an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at NEA, and Chief Marketing Officer at Opower, where he helped to guide the company through its IPO and acquisition by Oracle. Sachse is a graduate of Amherst College and Harvard Law School.Snippet: “Geothermal is a terrific fit for any part of the country that has hot summers and cold winters.”

Kansas City, Missouri is working to place the largest municipal solar farm in the nation next to its $1.5 billion new Kansas City International Airport. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with the Brian Platt who is the City Manager.“If we ever want to make positive change and progress in these existential and generational challenges that we're facing, we have to be big and bold,” said Platt. The project is adding to Kansas City's reputation as a leader in reducing carbon emissions and much more.“We identified 3,100 acres of land that can be used for solar development that can produce up to 500 megawatts of solar panels on that site. We could potentially power 70,000 homes from a solar array in this location which would be about a third of the city.” Platt is big on thinking creatively.“Well, one of the things that we're thinking about as a city is how we can be better stewards of the environment and improve health and quality of life for our residents. And one of the things you think about of course with air quality and pollution and health outcomes is how do we reduce carbon emissions?”Brian Platt has been the city Manager since December of 2020. The city manager is responsible for making city services run efficiently and economically. Platt previously served as City Manager for Jersey City, New Jersey. He earned his Master of Public Administration at Columbia University and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy at Emory University.

The federal government is spending $7.5 billion on Electric Vehicle infrastructure to increase EV adoption across the country. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg chats with Nick Voris who is the senior vice president of electrification for Evergy.“It's going to unlock nationwide travel with respect to EVs,” said Voris.The money will be spent over the next five years to create electrification corridors.“The National EV Infrastructure Program… is intent on creating charging sites every 50 miles along our major highway corridors coast-to-coast.” “Once we get to the point that we have highway corridor stations every 50 miles, it really reduces or dare I say, eliminates range anxiety because you have so many charging options that do not exist right now so if you can travel Interstate with an EV.” Voris believes this one of the most dynamic corners in the utility industry right now.“I don't think there's anything that the utility does that's sexy, but this is the closest thing.”Nick Voris leads the Evergy team responsible for developing and implementing electrification products and services, including the utility's long-term electrification roadmap. He been with Evergy since 2017. He previously worked for Kansas City Power and Light and City Utilities of Springfield, MO.Voris has a Master of Business Administration from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering from Missouri University of Science and Technology.

In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with the General Manager of Austin Energy, Jackie Sargent. The discussion is focused on the city-owned utility's push to be carbon free by 2035 and ensuring equity for electric customers.“When we are at looking moving forward and reaching those carbon-free goals, affordability is part of that equation, and it's really important for us that we address the customers who are most vulnerable within our community,” said Sargent.Austin Energy has one of the most robust customer-assistance programs in the country. “Not only do we provide utility bill subsidies and savings for those customers, but we have a whole slate of wrap-around services. We actually work with 56 partners in our community to support these customers because you could help them with their utility bill, but they have a lot more needs than just paying for their electricity.” The utility is proactive in making sure programs are accessible.“We've also brought on a consultant to create a Customer Journey Map to help us understand what our customers experience when they're requesting, and they're receiving, services from us, and we'll use that to help us to better direct those services to those or the people that most need them and create the best customer experience for all of our customers.”Jackie Sargent rejoined the Austin Energy team as General Manager in August 2016. From 2010 to 2012, Sargent served as Senior Vice President of Power Supply and Market Operations at Austin Energy before joining Platte River Power Authority in Fort Collins, Colorado, as General Manager and CEO. Sargent also served as Vice President of Power Supply and Renewables Integration for Black Hills Corporation in South Dakota.Sargent is a licensed professional engineer and holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and a Master of Science in Technology Management from South Dakota School of Mines and Technology.

Italian utility powerhouse Enel is championing a surge of renewable investments in America and transformation of the grid. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Mona Tierney-Lloyd who's head of U.S. Public Policy at Enel North America. Enel is the world's leading private electricity distribution provider and it's also the world's largest renewable developer. The discussion focuses on the significant transformations happening in the energy sector.“This is the most interesting time to be in the energy sector that I've ever experienced,” said Tierney-Lloyd.  “It's really great to see all of these policies become implemented at customer levels and at the grid levels and really become a significant factor in the energy industry.”The podcast also looks at the Italian company's push in the U.S. Market. “Enel is very bullish on development in the United States. We have eight gigawatts of renewable development operational today and we have expectations of adding at least two gigawatts per year of additional renewable development. Most of our new development that we have underway we're also adding utility-scale battery storage alongside of that new renewable development.”Mona Tierney-Lloyd has 30 years of experience in the energy industry and policy development. She has worked for Enel and Enel predecessor companies for nearly 15 years. Tierney-Lloyd has been with Enel North America since 2020 where she supported regional transmission organization bills that passed in Nevada and Colorado. She Participated in stakeholder process that developed policies for distributed energy resource participation in markets in MISO, ERCOT, and CAISO. Tierney-Lloyd previously worked as Senior Director, Western Regulatory Affairs at EnerNOC. She has a Bachelor of Science in Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering from Penn State University.

Italy is at the forefront of major utilities worldwide realizing its vision of the future of electricity. The massive utility aims to be carbon neutral by 2040. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Antonio Cammisecra, who's the head of the Enel Grids within the Enel Group in Italy. Enel Grids operates a massive 1.5 million miles of predominately distribution lines. “Without a doubt we are the most digitized distribution company in the world,” said Cammisecra. “We are the absolute leader in this field.” It is all part of a sweeping, utility sector transformation.“It took us 20 years to completely digitalize the Italian grid for which we are very well advanced. And we had several waves of digitalization so, now we are at the third generation of digital meter. We have achieved basically two things: the capability to open up a much more modern electricity market because the digitization of the metering itself is the beginning of a much more modern market so you can have hourly pricing for example.” “We understood there was a new era approaching to the industry and you cannot, let's say, survive or prosper or lead the industry without deep profound change in the way you wanted to stay in that industry, which, of course, conceives a different approach to innovation and to sustainability.”Antonio Cammisecra became Head of the Enel Grids Business Line on October 1, 2020. Prior to that, he was the Sole Director of Enel Green Power and Director of the Africa, Asia, and Oceania region. He joined the International Division of Enel Group in 1999 and has served in multiple positions.Cammisecra studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Naples Federico II, graduating with first class honors in 1996. He received an MBA from Milan's Bocconi University in 2004.

Alaska is global leader in microgrid technology with one of highest concentrations of renewably powered microgrid projects in the world. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Peter Asmus who is Executive Director of Alaska Microgrid Group. The group offers access to expertise from the utility industry and research community to leverage decades of experience designing, building and operating microgrid projects across Alaska.“What's unique about Alaska is it's number one in the U.S. for total microgrid capacity,” said Asmus. Just about every Alaskan is served by a microgrid.“At last count I saw something like 3,500 megawatts of installed capacity. Most of those systems are what I would call remote power systems where there is no grid and that's what's unusual about Alaska”.Microgrids loom large over the future of an electric grid that will be integrating increasing amounts of renewable energy, providing ever greater levels of resilience, Asmus said. “I see microgrids becoming a bigger and bigger thing as climate change impacts accelerate and the power outage rate keeps going up. People are so dependent on electricity; they're going to want some form of a microgrid resiliency.”Peter Asmus is a leading global authority on microgrid markets and other emerging trends in sustainable and resilient energy systems. Author of four books, he has been writing about and analyzing emerging trends in energy policy, technology and applications since 1986. Most recently, he was Research Director with Guidehouse Insights where he started up the world's first global data set on microgrids and developed a forecast methodology to estimate future growth. Additionally, he was editor of the Clean Power Journal, assistant editor of California Policy Choices, and has written for several energy trade publications, including Windpower Monthly and Electric Utility Week. Asmus holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin.

Three out of four Americans are served by utilities out to slash carbon emissions, according to Julia Hamm, the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Smart Electric Power Alliance. In this episode of Grid Talk, Hamm sits down with host Marty Rosenberg to talk about how the power industry has changed over the last 19 years. “73% of all U.S. electric customers are served by a utility that has a public target for a hundred percent carbon reduction, so I'd say that's pretty significant,” said Hamm.With utilities making clean energy a core part of their mission, they are driving significant changes to the industry.   “Utilities are now playing an active leadership role in helping to decarbonize not only their own business operations but also working proactively with customers, others in their supply chain and really across the whole economy in order to accelerate decarbonization.” To match that profound change, utility regulators and policymakers need to better coordinate the rules governing the energy sector, she said. “We need to see an increased level of coordination at the federal, state, and local levels far beyond what we have historically seen,” Hamm said.For the past 20 Julia Hamm has been advising and collaborating with utilities, solution providers and government agencies on business models, grid modernization, and clean energy policies, strategies and programs. She oversees SEPA's research, education, and collaboration activities for its 1,100 member companies.  Hamm is a graduate of Cornell University.

A federal infusion of $80 billion in infrastructure spending is generating new levels of innovation and cooperation when it comes to maintaining and upgrading the electrical grid. In this episode of Grid Talk, we hear from Dianne Solomon who is a commissioner on the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (NJBPU). She also is a member of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners and currently serves as Chair of the Committee on Critical Infrastructure.This gives her a unique perspective on how federal dollars will be spent across the states.“There's no 50-state agreement on how and where the grid needs to be improved, in what fashion. It really is based upon where you are located and where you stand is sort of where you sit in terms of what you…each state determines what the needs are for their area. But the one thing that all commissioners can agree upon is their charge as commissioners and that's to ensure safe, reliable service at reasonable rates.” Solomon also talks about the role of innovation in shaping the grid of the future. “There is a tremendous amount of innovation being supported in the utility space at both the federal and state level. The Committee of Critical Infrastructure that I chair has a great working relationship with the Department of Energy and that's always helpful. The states' initiatives with the federal government is going to be very important in moving these innovations forward.” Commissioner Solomon was confirmed to serve as Commissioner of the Board of Public Utilities in 2013.  She was re-confirmed in 2017. Prior to her appointment to the NJBPU she served as Commissioner of the South Jersey Transportation Authority, which is responsible for operating the Atlantic City Expressway, Atlantic City Airport, and shuttle service in and around South Jersey.Commissioner Solomon is a graduate of Rider University with a degree in Political Science.

The push to decarbonize electricity production in the U.S. focuses heavily on solar and wind generation. But delivering reliable energy from intermittent resource will require an upgrade in energy storage capabilities.This episode of Grid Talk features Don Sadoway who is the John F. Elliott Professor of Materials Chemistry at MIT. He's one of the leading experts on emerging battery products and at the helm of about a half dozen startups ready to speed deployment of the most promising approaches into the marketplace.“We have to deal with the intermittency. And nobody wants green electricity that's only available part-time; they want it all the time, so that means storage.”That's where the liquid metal battery comes in. Sadoway will explain why he believes it will revolutionize battery storage.“The aluminum/sulfur battery is no cobalt, no nickel, no manganese, no volatile flammable electrolyte, no graphite, forget the silicon. This is no lithium.”One of his companies is set to release its first product in about a year. When people see it working, things could really take off. “A liquid metal battery could be in the basement of every one of the skyscrapers in Manhattan.”Professor Sadoway has been at MIT for 44 years. His research seeks to establish the scientific underpinnings for technologies that make efficient use of energy and natural resources in an environmentally sound manner. This spans engineering applications and the supportive fundamental science. The overarching theme of his work is electrochemistry in nonaqueous media.He holds the following degrees:B.A.Sc., Engineering Science, University of TorontoM.A.Sc., Chemical Metallurgy, University of TorontoPh.D., Chemical Metallurgy, University of Toronto

America's reliance on nuclear power is poised to rapidly expand given a new generation of more affordable small modular reactors (SMR). In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Maria Korsnick who is the President and CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute. The conversation focuses on how SMRs can deliver carbon-free energy. “We are about 90 gigawatts of generation today so it will be an additional 90 gigawatts of generation and because we're talking more small modular reactors, that 90 gigawatts could turn into about 300 SMRs that would be added to the grid,” said Korsnick.According to Korsnick, nuclear power will increasingly replace fossil fuel generation plants that contribute to climate change and nuclear power is needed to supplement solar and wind power. “Imagine nuclear really forming the backbone of that clean-energy, highly-reliable grid upon which the intermittent resources can also be added.”The 300 small reactors built out in the next two decades would triple the number of nuclear power plants in the nation and help lower the cost of transitioning away from carbon.“It's very, very clear when you add nuclear to the mix, the overall system cost is reduced.”Maria Korsnick has been NEI's President and CEO since 2017 where she draws on her engineering background, hands-on experience in reactor operations, and a deep knowledge of energy policy and regulatory issues to increase understanding of nuclear energy's economic and environmental benefits among policymakers and the public.Korsnick previously served as the NEI's COO. She has been in the energy industry since 1986 working in various roles for Constellation Energy and then Exelon Nuclear.Korsnick holds a bachelor's degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Maryland and has held a senior reactor operator license.

The nation's largest municipal utility, serving Los Angeles, wants to move to 100% clean energy by 2035. To do that, the utility needs to significantly boost renewable energy generation and it's banking on the rapid development of energy storage technology. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Simon Zewdu who is the Director of Transmission Planning, Regulatory Processes and Innovation at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP).The price tag to reach 100% clean energy is estimated as high as $86 billion for increased generation, transmission, and distribution.“We need to significantly increase the capacity of existing transmission lines that we have. The Department owns and operates about 3,600 miles of transmission lines that traverse in five western states. We need to operate those. Not only that, we need to look into how we can come up with some new corridors, collaborate with other agencies to build new transmission lines to be able to support the load within the City of Los Angeles.”Equity will be center stage, as the utility works to bring affordable energy transformation to all customers.“Everything will be looked at from a prism of equity so that we monitor it on a regular basis and report to our communities whether we have met our equity targets,” said Zewdu.Mr. Zewdu has been with LADWP for 20 years with duties spanning from substation design to project management, strategic planning, and special projects. He holds an undergraduate degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering and an MBA in finance. He is a registered Electrical Engineer in the State of California.

The federal government is on track to invest $1.2 trillion to overhaul American infrastructure, with $80 billion headed to the electric grid. In this episode of Grid Talk, we talk with Christine Harada who is the Executive Director of the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council. It was created in 2015 to help facilitate government approvals of major projects.“I want to make sure that we're putting boots on the ground—that we have the construction workers who are there and actually making the infrastructure happen,” Harada said.The impact of the council's work is significant and measurable. “We have found that we were able to decrease the overall timeframe by upwards of 2-2½ years just simply because of the transparency provided by the dashboard and by the activities that this Council takes on to be able to help negotiate and review and resolve challenges.” As for transmission projects, Harada hopes to trim approval times by at least 10 percent. “I am an overachiever so I would love to achieve something like 25%. I think that's certainly just within the federal agencies' realm of control, 10% is a great target. Working with state and local entities, I think that something like a 25% reduction would be a great stretch target.”Harada was named Executive Director in July of 2021. She will manage a portfolio of nearly $60 billion in large-scale infrastructure projects—most of which are renewable energy, coastal restoration, and electricity transmission. Harada will lead 13 federal agencies, state agencies, and project sponsors to develop and implement project-specific timetables for all required reviews and authorizations.Harada holds a master's degree in international studies from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA in finance from the Wharton School at Penn. Additionally, she has a master's degree from Stanford University and a bachelor's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in aeronautics and astronautics. 

Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) is one of the nation's largest utilities, serving Chicago. Last month, ComEd announced it is spending $113 million a year on “income-tested programs” to slash energy use and energy bills for those who can least afford them, while combating climate change. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Gil Quiniones who is the ComEd CEO. They'll talk about initiatives to make sure disadvantaged communities and historically underserved communities are prioritized as the utility pursues decarbonization.“It's not just really deploying technologies. It's how do we engage the community in the process of deploying those technologies in terms of STEM programs with the local schools as well as opportunities for workforce development, whether it's directly for trade-type, craft-type jobs or being a utility professional engineer or scientist.”Quiniones talks about opportunities related to the federal government's $80 billion infrastructure spend on energy. Investing in communities is top priority.“We want to make sure that we're putting our customers at the center of this transition.” You'll also hear what ComEd is adding is it reimagines the grid. Gil Quiniones was named CEO of ComEd in November of 2021 and oversees utility decisions that impact more than four million customers. Mr. Quiniones joined ComEd after spending a decade as the president and CEO of the New York Power Authority, the nation's largest state-owned public power organization. He is an internationally recognized leader in modernizing power grids, and delivering clean, safe and affordable energy for customers, leading to economic and environmental benefits for diverse communities.Mr. Quiniones holds a B.S. from De La Salle University in Manila. In 2020, he earned a Corporate Director Certificate at Harvard Business School.

The U.S. Department of Energy is closing in on a timeline for disbursing $80 billion allocated to electric grid upgrades contained in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed by Congress. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Michelle Manary who is the Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Resilience Division in the Office of Electricity at the U.S. Department of Energy. The discussion focuses on when and how the money from the infrastructure package will be spent.“I would love to see it [flowing] this calendar year. That is a goal but we'll see what happens there,” said Manary. There's a lot of planning that goes in to allocating the funding.“That hat $80 billion-ish to the DOE comes in several different flavors and so everything's kind of continuing on from solar and battery and kind of that generation or storage-side but you also have probably about $20-ish billion or so on the transmission side.”Manary also talks about the collaborative nature of the new programs. “We're trying to set this up, so it works for the industry.”Michelle Manary helps lead DOE's division focused on national transmission infrastructure policy issues in support of national clean energy objectives. She came to the Department of Energy from the Bonneville Power Administration where she served as executive vice president and chief financial officer. Manary joined BPA in 1998 and successfully held several management positions within the agency's Corporate, Power and Transmission organizations.Manary holds a Bachelor of Science in finance from Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon, and Master of Business Administration and Public Administration from Willamette University in Salem, Oregon.