Smart Grid Today Podcast

Avi Gopstein is the smart grid program manager and group leader at NIST, the US federal government's National Institute of Standards & Technology, which has played and still plays an ongoing key role in the development of interoperability standards and testing in the smart grid world. He explained how standards enable the smart grid, especially behind the meter as the energy world works to abolish carbon emissions completely with renewables, demand response, and electric vehicles, and much more – and he shared examples of where the industry is headed with standards profiles that help bring order where existing or new standards can cover a complex variety of use cases.

Copper Labs helps utilities and their customers gain significant value from real-time energy monitoring using meter data – whether that's smart meters or the drive-by AMR systems that are still widely used by electric utilities. The Copper Labs hardware ships with both systems to help utilities transition from AMR to smart grid as it delivers real-time data to a utility's customer through a mobile app and to the utility through a web interface...

CPower has been offering demand response aggregation for C&I customers for many years and as the electric industry and marketplace has been evolving, the firm has gained lots of experience in turning opportunities to find great value in how energy and DERs are managed into grid-balancing and energy market financial wins for its customers and the utilities that serve them, and they told us all about it...

John Marcolini is senior VP of the network solutions business unit at Itron and his division was faced with the interesting challenge of deploying the network for the smart meter rollout of Con Edison in the five boroughs of New York City, a city of some 60,000 buildings plus all the subway stations – and he shared with us his insights about the project.

Andy has been working with utility software for many years including at IBM and Schneider Electric and started as CEO at MPrest in April, helping grow the company that invented the Iron Dome system that protects Israel from missiles and that helps electric utilities around the globe automate their critical systems. He told us about his firm's technology and his predictions for the future...

Sonnen US VP Adam Gentner is in charge of the premium products and projects business unit that specializes in virtual power plants (VPPs) using the firm's home- and business-based battery systems and its own proprietary software. Claudia Kolbinger is VP in charge of the consumer products business which is focused on business development with large partners. The firm has deployed a large VPP in Germany and has several others elsewhere and is building on its existing success to bring the prosumer, grid-balancing, wholesale market, and carbon reduction benefits of VPPs to homes and businesses everywhere.

Hitachi Energy Senior Vice President of Enterprise Software Solutions Bryan Freehoff spoke with us about his firm's Asset Performance Management software or APM and the value it brings electric utilities in multiple ways including critical safety awareness during fire season. Please note that since we spoke to Bryan on this call, his company changed its name from Hitachi ABB Power Grids to Hitachi Energy.

Allan shared with us details about how SEPA conceived of and created its first-ever utility transformation challenge, an in-depth series of surveys that culminated in a report issued this year to help SEPA members and the industry at large see clearly what can be accomplished as the industry ramps up its modernization efforts. This episode was recorded earlier this year but due to our scheduling limitations, it is being released at a key moment in history as the world meets in Glasgow Scotland and discuss what can be accomplished to further the battle against climate change...

Matthew Smith is Itron's director of grid management and spoke with us about the growing applications that take advantage of grid-edge computing in the firm's smart grid deployments with a special focus on wildfire prevention. We spoke about what applications Itron is offering now and also what is being tested in the field for release to customers in the near future.

EnerVenue formed to bring to market the unique hydrogen metal battery – that was reinvented by a leading materials scientist at Stanford University after decades of use in spacecraft, satellites, and the Hubble Space Telescope because it is extremely safe, extremely durable, and can take almost infinite charges and discharges. The original formula was extremely expensive but EnerVenue is here now with a much more affordable version that is ready to change the electric industry and Heinemann told us all about it.

Former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman and current Chief Regulatory Officer of Voltus Jon Wellinghoff told us about how when he led FERC, he helped establish the regulatory and legal foundation, through technical conferences, rulemakings, and ultimately in a case at the US Supreme Court, for how smart grid and its associated technologies, these days called distributed energy resources (DERs), would be introduced into markets. He helped us see the history and the very bright future he is working with Voltus to help create and this is one interview not to miss.

Foghorn COO Chris Penrose told us about his firm's offering which began as a software platform to help manufacturers automate their operations has evolved into a flexible suite of advance automation and analysis programs being used in a wide variety of industries including buildings and campuses to monitor systems, find and fix energy waste, and help customers meet carbon reduction goals.

Sense CEO Mike Phillips and the other founders of Sense came from the speech recognition world, bringing their understanding of audio wave forms to the subtle but distinct electrical wave forms created in the home by electric appliances. The firm uses a device installed behind the meter – and more recently introduced software for use in the Landis & Gyr Revelo meter – that brings value to home owners and to their electricity providers by gleaning what devices are using how much power and when. Teamwork with Schneider Electric is bringing the firm's software into smart homes and Phillips told us how the value of the firm's offering is growing by sampling the waveforms on the distribution grid, too.

Brian Levite is regulatory affairs director for S&C Electric, a century-old firm that from the start was dedicated to making technology that transforms the grid into a safer and more effective system. His role allows him to deftly explain the benefits of smarter grids and he joined us to discuss the firm's annual reliability report and some very surprising gaps in reliability that were recorded last year.

Electriq Power is an electricity storage provider for residential electricity customers that offers backup power plus the wide array of values that aggregated storage deployments can bring to electricity providers and their customers. He shared some details about a pilot project in the Caribbean and a commercial deployment in California along with his take on how the fast-paced evolution of the electric industry is creating really exciting opportunities that his firm is addressing.

Andrew Heath is a senior director at JD Power working in its utility intelligence practice. He shared lots of insights about the firm’s traditional utility customer satisfaction tracking and benchmarks and also about the new environmental and social governance metrics for the electric industry. How the tremendous investments that are being made in modernizing the industry are perceived is critical as the firm found out customers who know more about infrastructure work being done seem to have a higher level of satisfaction, but the industry is not always great at sharing the news of the benefits its work may be building.

Store Dot defied all the predictions and created a battery technology that lets batteries of any size be charged in five minutes. The accomplishment was built on a nobel-prize winning battery formula and the use of machinery built for the biotech industry to make nanomaterials that can safely take a charge at incredible speeds. The implications for the utility industry and every industry that uses electricity – including now the transportation sector with EVs and electric trucks, buses and trains – are tremendous and Myersdorf spoke to the role his products could play in the electric grid for load balancing and much more.

Coretec CEO Michael Kraft told us about a brand new battery breakthrough his company is bringing to market that improves the energy density of lithium ion batteries by two to three times. Kraft is well aware of how the battery market is preparing for massive growth and he described how his technology has an edge on the competition and how battery storage is the key to bringing within reach the decarbonization of the grid, and of transportation, and beyond.

Leclanche CEO Anil Srivastava’s knowledge and insights are fueled by a career that spans the smart grid story arc, from being an electrical engineer who worked with Hewlett Packard and a leading nuclear generator to taking the helm at a battery company that understands how electrochemistry, energy management software, and sound telecom networks merge to play a key role in the modernization of electric grids large and small being rolled out or still just imagined as the electric industry faces tremendous evolution – and he shared his vision with us.

Justin Fier is director of threat intel and analytics at Darktrace, a cybersecurity firm that uses artificial intelligence for many industries including electric utilities of all sizes to identify when bad actors are moving in the system and shut them down. This is the second visit of Darktrace to our show and Justin helped us look at recent developments in the industry and shared insights about why the risks of cybersecurity should not interfere with the modernization of industries including the electric industry.

Strohecker is company managing director for Hitachi ABB Power Grids in Canada. He shed light on multiple facets of his firm’s smart grid deployments including how ABB has been managing to continue its critical smart grid work during the pandemic, about the key roles smart grid technology plays in the global transition to carbon-free electricity including multiple examples of projects his firm has been involved with, and also about the combination of ABB Power Grids with Hitachi and why that pairing offers big opportunities to both firms.

Six-K is a firm using a novel plasma-furnace process developed at MIT to manufacture key battery components that cut the time and cost of battery production by a very dramatic percentage. Holman is a long time veteran of battery technology firms including A123 and he described how the traditional approach to creating some battery parts takes a couple days to complete while his firm uses its microwave-based plasma process that burns at 6,000°F, hence the name of his company, to make the ingredients in mere seconds, a time and cost savings he believes can drastically improve the economics for battery storage on the grid.

Sam duPont is a principal for strategic programs in the strategy group at Baltimore Gas & Electric and he spoke to us about a smart city/smart home pilot program being rolled out in Annapolis, Md, using smart meter data and connected devices to offer a select group of opt-in residential and small business customers control over their energy use He told us about the success of the messaging the utility used and the focus on groups such as low-income customers to make sure the feedback was coming not just from early adopters.

Anterix owns the licenses for 900 MHz spectrum used by electric utilities and others to deploy private LTE broadband networks used for smart grid and other purposes. The firm recently saw the culmination of a five-year FCC rulemaking that set the rules for the use of 900 Mhz spectrum for utilities and President Rob Schwartz told us about the history and the benefits this spectrum offers – and why utilities want to deploy private broadband networks using this cell-phone standards, and how several utilities already deployed pilots of it including Ameren, Florida Power & Light, New York Power Authority, and how Southern Company was the first to roll it out in earnest. 

Amply CEO Vic Shao, a former battery storage lead at energy technology giant Engie, started Amply in 2018 to solve major problems that he saw holding back the electrification of big fleets of vehicles such as city buses when he realized managers of these fleets were unsure how to buy power, how to choose charging equipment, or what to do when the power goes out. This is a massive shift into unknown territory and Shao realized Amply could help smooth the transition with service model that answers these problems and many others. He told us all about how it works.

Colin Gibbs joined us to discuss how Bidgely is not only helping its clients manage the sudden changes brought on by the pandemic, which he described in detail, but also how the firm is developing fast answers for utility firms around the globe to help their customers through these tumultuous times. He has an inspiring view of the industry, where it is headed in normal times, and how to help manage the current crisis.

Stem is a leader in energy storage using batteries and VP Ted Ko spoke to us about the state of storage in the electric industry including which states around the US have policies and budgets that are driving growth including California where funding for battery deployments in low-income facilities fell far short of demand. New York set what Ko called the gold standard with its storage roadmap and opportunities are flourishing in other states. Untapped value streams in distribution-grid support and for microgrids using battery storage are quite exciting and Ko told us what is working and what needs to change in regulatory efforts.

Shuli Goodman in her second time on the program shared insights about how the pandemic offers urgent lessons for the electric industry that need to be heard to make sure the accelerating changes in the energy world do not take the industry by surprise. The LF in LF Energy stands for Linux Foundation and her organization is working with many big-name utilities and technology providers in the industry to develop software to help weather the upheaval that is already unfolding. She described how this work is meant to help.

Jess Melanson is COO and president of Utilidata, a software firm that offers a grid-edge operating system that adds value to smart grid deployments. The firm started by delivering voltage optimization using AMI (smart-meter) data a decade ago and now offers that and much more for electric utilities to bring great value to their smart grid deployments by maximizing the returns on their technology investments with top notch software the firm created itself and also acquired. This is a real heart-of-the-smart-grid technology value conversation that touches on regulatory issues and what the industry can accomplish with smart grid.

Patty Durand, CEO of the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative in a return visit to the program, this time spoke about her organization’s in-depth research on “beneficial electrification” – a phrase meant to encompass the massive shift in society toward electricity as the main energy for industry, homes, and transportation, and making sure the electricity used is generated with the least carbon emissions possible, preferably no carbon at all. This carbon-free energy goal is being set by nations, states, industry leaders among major corporations, and the SECC looked at multiple reports and interviewed a dozen industry experts to see where this process is, where its going and how the consumer fits into this electric industry mass evolution.

Paul Dailey is director of product and market strategy for Outback Power, a subsidiary of storage giant EnerSys that is focused on pairing battery storage with distributed renewables generation. As one might guess from the name, the firm has roots in the off-the-grid sector of solar that has been growing for decades but his firm is seeing great opportunities in the solar boom and the need for distributed generation to store the product it generates onsite.

Zinc8 Energy Solutions CEO Ron MacDonald and Chief Technology Officer Simon Fan shared with us various compelling stories about the firm’s breakthrough, long-term, arguably almost infinite power storage technology, including how they won out against over 100 applicants for a New York Power Authority long-term storage demonstration where the utility, America’s largest publicly owned power producer, took some convincing that the firm’s eight-hour-and-above storage capacity was even real...

Brian van Buskirk is chief product officer for Arbnco, a company with a history of building optimization that is fast developing its relationships with electric utilities and large commercial and industrial clients to use advanced digital tools to maximize the benefits in energy management and hit carbon reduction targets. The name of the company refers to taking the carbon out of buildings and van Buskirk gave us lots of details about the value his firm delivers, his role in expanding the firm into the utility world, and what products are in the pipeline for release soon such as software to let its customers sell their energy management into energy markets.

Kore Power developed the lithium ion power cells it uses in rack mounted energy storage systems for onsite storage deployments up to grid scale storage. The firm sees its software controls as critically important to the value of its products and sees the market for supporting solar and other distributed generation as a wide open field. Gorrill explained why his firm is well positioned to take advantage of the opportunities to serve electric utilities and their customers.

Maggie Alexander is director of business development at energy management technology firm Apparent, a firm that has developed microinverter and energy gateway hardware and the software that takes distributed energy resources in homes and businesses, including municipal bus systems and many others, and manages them intelligently to bring out the most value from the investments being made in solar and energy storage deployments. She told us about the technology and about use cases including selling the electricity into the ISO/RTO markets, and how her company sets itself apart in a market that she said is starting to get crowded with similar services.

ICF Lead Project Manager Laura Frantz and VP and Senior Technical Director David Meisegeier brought us up to speed on ICF's work with utilities using in-home smart speakers with voice assistants. This work, including ongoing in-the-field research at utilities like Con Edison in New York City and Southern Maryland Electricity Cooperative or SMECO, for example, reveals what people want, and frankly what they do not want from their voice assistant.

RadientREIT is pioneering the use of the REIT real-estate construct to treat solar generation deployments as real estate, making solar a very attractive investment. He also told us about his work using home solar plus battery storage to build virtual power plants. This industry is wide open and he has very few competitors, he told us, as he explained how to make the industry work, including how regulatory constructs around the map are blocking progress...

Bertolino is EnelX Head of E-Mobility for USA and Canada and explained how his department is focused on serving the EV charging needs of homes and businesses with 80,000 chargers already deployed globally and plans to deploy many, many more. His firm is owned by electric industry and utility giant Enel and is very much focused on the value the firm’s charging systems can bring on a large scale to the electric industry such as the 40-MW virtual power plant the firm’s charging technology has created in California. His experience spans back to consulting for Enel in the early days of Planet Earth’s first major smart meter rollout in 2002 and he shared details about what the firm is aiming for next.

Line Vision offers a contactless HV transmission line monitoring system that is helping four of the top 10 US electric utilities, plus a consortium of utilities in Europe, extract lots more value from existing and new transmission lines. The system is deployed without interrupting the delivery of electricity and continuously gathers data on every contact point across these lines to help them run more safely and efficiently. Only a very small percentage of HV lines are being monitored today and this creates a huge market his firm is ready to serve.

Redaptive Co-CEO Arvin Vohra and his fellow co-CEO were investment bankers who saw the potential for great value in the energy efficiency world and developed multiple services for C&I customers, helping them finance technology to save money on energy, through efficiency, onsite generation, and the management of the data they can generate to make their operations energy intelligent. The firm started with third-party technology and went on to develop its own applications and project management services and he described for us the variety of ways his customers benefit from what Redaptive offers.

Rajendra Iyer is managing director of Grid Integration Solutions, a business within the renewables energy business of GE that makes and deploys high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission solutions that can be used to either augment existing AC transmission lines and make them run much better with load balancing and other features, or can be deployed anywhere new transmission infrastructure is needed. His vision of the future includes deploying this technology to improve grid operations everywhere but we also talked about how the optimized grid could enhance transactional electricity, the idea of prosumers generating and selling power from homes and businesses and even just removing the cost of electricity entirely from end users.

Google Director of Industry Partnerships Jeff Hamel joined us to update us on the progress his firm has been making in bringing control of energy into the hands of homes and businesses and the energy companies that serve them with its Google Nest Thermostat and with a variety of partner firms. Google rebranded its smart home technologies last year and Hamel explained the firm’s perspective on its role in the smart home, in multi-family residences, and to the utility industry going forward.

AI and cybersecurity firm Darktrace specializes in OT cybersecurity protection using AI to learn everything a system normally does so it can spot unusual behavior right away, helping many top electric utilities and other industries around the globe keep the watchful eye needed to secure their smart grid and smart technology deployments. Technology Director Andrew Tsonchev, like many in his field, balked at the term cybersecurity when it first became a catchphrase but he helped us understand how the word has helped the industry focus in on the kind of new threats its facing and that his firm’s technology was built to protect against.

EV Connect provides a software platform that sits at the heart of the EV charging experience for charging facilities owners including parking lot owners – such as hotels and shopping malls - and commercial and industrial fleet owners and residential EV owners and importantly for us – in many cases, their electricity providers. EV Connect has relationships with some 75 of the big investor-owned electric utilities in the US and others around the globe. For utilities, the platform can help with energy management and demand response and more – and his firm is teamed with General Motors, for example, to help foster the easy transition for that firm’s customers and really for our world to embrace the transition to electrified transportation.

EnergyHub VP of Business Development Matt Johnson shared with us details of the progress his firm has had deploying its distributed energy resource or DER management system (DERMS) with utility firms to help them see true value from the DERs deployed on their grids in the form of energy management and even voltage response. Of the firm’s 40-plus utility clients, mostly in the US, about 10 are now using the EnergyHub system with batteries deployed in customer premises, and this is up from about zero not too many years ago, he told us. The industry is quickly jumping past the piloting stage with full deployments, and the DERs being used include Wi-Fi enabled water heaters and more, he told us.

Marina Donovan returned to the podcast to tell us about a report the firm prepared based on surveys of the electric industry and its customers about emergency preparedness. She is vice president of global marketing and public affairs at Itron and shared what the utilities are doing, what their customers perceive them to be doing, and what more can be done as technology helps the industry cope with nature’s wrath to offer the best possible preparedness and resilience.

Joshua Wong is founder and CEO of Opus One Solutions, an electric grid software firm that works with top electric utilities putting the intelligence into grid operations. The firm started with DER management software (DERMS) but has grown in recent years to offering grid management systems covering many problems and opportunities for its utility clients including transactive energy, and he offered lots of insight into what his firm is doing and what the changing industry can achieve.

Arutyunov is VP of Product Management and a co-founder of Xage Security and returned to the podcast, this time to share details about how Chicago utility Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) is using Xage technology to secure distributed energy resources (DERs) – a timely subject as many experts are telling the electric industry how serious an issue this is today.

Activu Vice President John Stark is a long-time veteran in the utility control room view monitor space and, at Activu, is well versed in the latest developments in serving control room technology for utilities of all sizes along with transmission organizations including ISO/RTOs, along with many other industries that use similar technology. He explained how the control room at the top of today’s smart grids benefits from the latest in digital technology his firm offers and the systems it can interact with and help make more beneficial.

Centrica Business Solutions VP and Head of Sales for North America Kate Sherwood told us about how her firm offers services and technologies – including software, hardware, consulting, and energy procurement, especially focused on DER applications and management and planning for financial risks – for large energy users to help them modernize their operations to best take advantage of the digitalization of the energy world. This is an area of smart grid with big payoffs and she explained details and examples of how her firm delivers these.

Smarter Grid Solutions offers distributed energy resources management software – or DERMS – that answers maybe the most critical dilemma of our time: How to deploy lots of renewable and variable distributed generation onto the grid. With headquarters in Glasgow, Scotland, and a laboratory in New York City, the firm is playing a key role in helping some of the largest utilities in the UK and the US, including Southern California Edison, understand the importance of overbuilding and compensation for curtailment risk. And he explained why.