Podcasts about Southern California Edison

OJ Simpson’s estate has agreed to pay nearly $58 million to the family of Ron Goldman, who was killed along with Nicole Brown Simpson in 1994. Although Simpson was acquitted in criminal court, he was later found liable in a civil trial and ordered to pay more than $33 million; interest and penalties have pushed the total dramatically higher. A flood advisory is in effect, and the show will be broadcasting live from Smart & Final in Yorba Linda this Friday, where Tim jokes about auctioning everything in his garage while begging the clouds to stop the rain. Attorneys representing survivors of the Eaton Fire in Altadena have filed a lawsuit against Southern California Edison and Genasys Inc., alleging the utility sparked the blaze and Genasys failed to send critical evacuation warnings, contributing to the death of a woman in the fire zone. Construction crews in both Topanga Canyon and Altadena are dealing with the latest round of storm damage and heavy rain impacts. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Congress ended the shutdown this week, but it didn't reach a deal on health care. Roughly two million Californians who buy insurance through the state's marketplace now face steep price hikes after the Trump administration refused to extend enhanced federal tax credits. And some Californians can't afford to keep their coverage. Reporter: Lesley McClurg, KQED The federal Department of Justice has joined a lawsuit seeking to overturn Proposition 50, the ballot measure approved by California voters last week, that will redraw the state's congressional maps.  Reporter: Guy Marzorati, KQED Lawyers representing victims of the Eaton Fire say Southern California Edison is using delay tactics in court. Reporter: Erin Stone, LAist Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Altadena resident and consumer advocate Andrew Wessels talks about his report "Fix What You Broke: Survivor's Recommendations for a Fair and Fully Funded Edison Recovery Program" about holding Southern California Edison accountable for the unprecedented destruction of the Altadena community.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/tavis-smiley--6286410/support.

Dominique is joined by iconic broadcaster, author and activist Tavis Smiley and Black Lives Matter Grassroots Director Dr. Melina Abdullah. On this podcast we put Southern California Edison in the spotlight after they tried to gaslight, disrespect and disregard Black people in Altadena in the wake of the disastrous Eaton Canyon fire. Tavis is asking our delegation to call SCE CEO Pedro Pizarro at (626) 302-2255 then press 1.https://www.instagram.com/blmgrassroots/ https://www.instagram.com/diprimaradio/

Welcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking here.Yesterday, Southern California Edison (SCE), the utility whose power lines may have started the devastating Eaton Fire, announced its Wildfire Recovery Compensation Program. Under the program, people affected by the fire can receive hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in compensation, in a matter of months rather than years—but in exchange, they must give up their right to sue.It should come as no surprise that SCE, in designing the program, sought the help of Kenneth Feinberg. For more than 40 years, often in the wake of tragedy or disaster, Feinberg has helped mediate and resolve seemingly intractable crises. He's most well-known for how he and his colleague Camille Biros designed and administered the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. But he has worked on many other headline-making matters over the years, including the Agent Orange product liability litigation, the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Trust, the multidistrict litigation involving Monsanto's Roundup weed killer—and now, of course, the Eaton Fire.How did Ken develop such a fascinating and unique practice? What is the most difficult aspect of administering these giant compensation funds? Do these funds represent the wave of the future, as an alternative to (increasingly expensive) litigation? Having just turned 80, does he have any plans to retire?Last week, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ken—the day after his 80th birthday—and we covered all these topics. The result is what I found to be one of the most moving conversations I've ever had on this podcast.Thanks to Ken Feinberg for joining me—and, of course, for his many years of service as America's go-to mediator in times of crisis.Show Notes:* Kenneth Feinberg bio, Wikipedia* Kenneth Feinberg profile, Chambers and Partners* L.A. Fire Victims Face a Choice, by Jill Cowan for The New York TimesPrefer reading to listening? For paid subscribers, a transcript of the entire episode appears below.Sponsored by:NexFirm helps Biglaw attorneys become founding partners. To learn more about how NexFirm can help you launch your firm, call 212-292-1000 or email careerdevelopment@nexfirm.com.Three quick notes about this transcript. First, it has been cleaned up from the audio in ways that don't alter substance—e.g., by deleting verbal filler or adding a word here or there to clarify meaning. Second, my interviewee has not reviewed this transcript, and any errors are mine. Third, because of length constraints, this newsletter may be truncated in email; to view the entire post, simply click on “View entire message” in your email app.David Lat: Welcome to the Original Jurisdiction podcast. I'm your host, David Lat, author of a Substack newsletter about law and the legal profession also named Original Jurisdiction, which you can read and subscribe to at davidlat.substack.com. You're listening to the eighty-fourth episode of this podcast, recorded on Friday, October 24.Thanks to this podcast's sponsor, NexFirm. NexFirm helps Biglaw attorneys become founding partners. To learn more about how NexFirm can help you launch your firm, call 212-292-1000 or email careerdevelopment@nexfirm.com. Want to know who the guest will be for the next Original Jurisdiction podcast? Follow NexFirm on LinkedIn for a preview.I like to think that I've produced some good podcast episodes over the past three-plus years, but I feel that this latest one is a standout. I'm hard-pressed to think of an interview that was more emotionally affecting to me than what you're about to hear.Kenneth Feinberg is a leading figure in the world of mediation and alternative dispute resolution. He is most well-known for having served as special master of the U.S. government's September 11th Victim Compensation Fund—and for me, as someone who was in New York City on September 11, I found his discussion of that work profoundly moving. But he has handled many major matters over the years, such as the Agent Orange product liability litigation to the BP Deepwater Horizon Disaster Victim Compensation Fund. And he's working right now on a matter that's in the headlines: the California wildfires. Ken has been hired by Southern California Edison to help design a compensation program for victims of the 2025 Eaton fire. Ken has written about his fascinating work in two books: What Is Life Worth?: The Unprecedented Effort to Compensate the Victims of 9/11 and Who Gets What: Fair Compensation after Tragedy and Financial Upheaval. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Ken Feinberg.Ken, thank you so much for joining me.Ken Feinberg: Thank you very much; it's an honor to be here.DL: We are recording this shortly after your 80th birthday, so happy birthday!KF: Thank you very much.DL: Let's go back to your birth; let's start at the beginning. You grew up in Massachusetts, I believe.KF: That's right: Brockton, Massachusetts, about 20 miles south of Boston.DL: Your parents weren't lawyers. Tell us about what they did.KF: My parents were blue-collar workers from Massachusetts, second-generation immigrants. My father ran a wholesale tire distributorship, my mother was a bookkeeper, and we grew up in the 1940s and ‘50s, even the early ‘60s, in a town where there was great optimism, a very vibrant Jewish community, three different synagogues, a very optimistic time in American history—post-World War II, pre-Vietnam, and a time when communitarianism, working together to advance the collective good, was a prominent characteristic of Brockton, and most of the country, during the time that I was in elementary school and high school in Brockton.DL: Did the time in which you grow up shape or influence your decision to go into law?KF: Yes. More than law—the time growing up had a great impact on my decision to give back to the community from which I came. You've got to remember, when I was a teenager, the president of the United States was John F. Kennedy, and I'll never forget because it had a tremendous impact on me—President Kennedy reminding everybody that public service is a noble undertaking, government is not a dirty word, and especially his famous quote (or one of his many quotes), “Every individual can make a difference.” I never forgot that, and it had a personal impact on me and has had an impact on me throughout my life. [Ed. note: The quotation generally attributed to JFK is, “One person can make a difference, and everyone should try.” Whether he actually said these exact words is unclear, but it's certainly consistent with many other sentiments he expressed throughout his life.]DL: When you went to college at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, what did you study?KF: I studied history and political science. I was very interested in how individuals over the centuries change history, the theory of historians that great individuals articulate history and drive it in a certain direction—for good, like President Kennedy or Abraham Lincoln or George Washington, or for ill, like Adolf Hitler or Mussolini. And so it was history that I really delved into in my undergraduate years.DL: What led you then to turn to law school?KF: I always enjoyed acting on the stage—theater, comedies, musicals, dramas—and at the University of Massachusetts, I did quite a bit of that. In my senior year, I anticipated going to drama school at Yale, or some other academic master's program in theater. My father gave me very good advice. He said, “Ken, most actors end up waiting on restaurant tables in Manhattan, waiting for a big break that never comes. Why don't you turn your skills on the stage to a career in the courtroom, in litigation, talking to juries and convincing judges?” That was very sound advice from my father, and I ended up attending NYU Law School and having a career in the law.DL: Yes—and you recount that story in your book, and I just love that. It's really interesting to hear what parents think of our careers. But anyway, you did very well in law school, you were on the law review, and then your first job out of law school was something that we might expect out of someone who did well in law school.KF: Yes. I was a law clerk to the chief judge of New York State, Stanley Fuld, a very famous state jurist, and he had his chambers in New York City. For one week, every six or seven weeks, we would go to the state capitol in Albany to hear cases, and it was Judge Fuld who was my transition from law school to the practice of law.DL: I view clerking as a form of government service—and then you continued in service after that.KF: That's right. Remembering what my father had suggested, I then turned my attention to the courtroom and became an assistant United States attorney, a federal prosecutor, in New York City. I served as a prosecutor and as a trial lawyer for a little over three years. And then I had a wonderful opportunity to go to work for Senator Ted Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington and stayed with him for about five years.DL: You talk about this also in your books—you worked on a pretty diverse range of issues for the senator, right?KF: That's right. For the first three years I worked on his staff on the Senate Judiciary Committee, with some excellent colleagues—soon-to-be Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer was with me, noted litigator David Boies was in the office—and for the first three years, it was law-related issues. Then in 1978, Senator Kennedy asked me to be his chief of staff, and once I went over and became his chief of staff, the issues of course mushroomed. He was running for president, so there were issues of education, health, international relations—a wide diversity of issues, very broad-based.DL: I recall that you didn't love the chief of staff's duties.KF: No. Operations or administration was not my priority. I loved substance, issues—whatever the issues were, trying to work out legislative compromises, trying to give back something in the way of legislation to the people. And internal operations and administration, I quickly discovered, was not my forte. It was not something that excited me.DL: Although it's interesting: what you are most well-known for is overseeing and administering these large funds and compensating victims of these horrific tragedies, and there's a huge amount of administration involved in that.KF: Yes, but I'm a very good delegator. In fact, if you look at the track record of my career in designing and administering these programs—9/11 or the Deepwater Horizon oil spill or the Patriots' Day Marathon bombings in Boston—I was indeed fortunate in all of those matters to have at my side, for over 40 years, Camille Biros. She's not a lawyer, but she's the nation's expert on designing, administering, and operating these programs, and as you delve into what I've done and haven't done, her expertise has been invaluable.DL: I would call Camille your secret weapon, except she's not secret. She's been profiled in The New York Times, and she's a well-known figure in her own right.KF: That is correct. She was just in the last few months named one of the 50 Women Over 50 that have had such an impact in the country—that list by Forbes that comes out every year. She's prominently featured in that magazine.DL: Shifting back to your career, where did you go after your time in the Senate?KF: I opened up a Washington office for a prominent New York law firm, and for the next decade or more, that was the center of my professional activity.DL: So that was Kaye Scholer, now Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer. What led you to go from your career in the public sector, where you spent a number of your years right out of law school, into so-called Biglaw?KF: Practicality and financial considerations. I had worked for over a decade in public service. I now had a wife, I had three young children, and it was time to give them financial security. And “Biglaw,” as you put it—Biglaw in Washington was lucrative, and it was something that gave me a financial base from which I could try and expand my different interests professionally. And that was the reason that for about 12 years I was in private practice for a major firm, Kaye Scholer.DL: And then tell us what happened next.KF: A great lesson in not planning too far ahead. In 1984, I got a call from a former clerk of Judge Fuld whom I knew from the clerk network: Judge Jack Weinstein, a nationally recognized jurist from Brooklyn, the Eastern District, and a federal judge. He had on his docket the Vietnam veterans' Agent Orange class action.You may recall that there were about 250,000 Vietnam veterans who came home claiming illness or injury or death due to the herbicide Agent Orange, which had been dropped by the U.S. Air Force in Vietnam to burn the foliage and vegetation where the Viet Cong enemy might be hiding. Those Vietnam veterans came home suffering terrible diseases, including cancer and chloracne (a sort of acne on the skin), and they brought a lawsuit. Judge Weinstein had the case. Weinstein realized that if that case went to trial, it could be 10 years before there'd be a result, with appeals and all of that.So he appointed me as mediator, called the “special master,” whose job it was to try and settle the case, all as a mediator. Well, after eight weeks of trying, we were successful. There was a master settlement totaling about $250 million—at the time, one of the largest tort verdicts in history. And that one case, front-page news around the nation, set me on a different track. Instead of remaining a Washington lawyer involved in regulatory and legislative matters, I became a mediator, an individual retained by the courts or by the parties to help resolve a case. And that was the beginning. That one Agent Orange case transformed my entire professional career and moved me in a different direction completely.DL: So you knew the late Judge Weinstein through Fuld alumni circles. What background did you have in mediation already, before you handled this gigantic case?KF: None. I told Judge Weinstein, “Judge, I never took a course in mediation at law school (there wasn't one then), and I don't know anything about bringing the parties together, trying to get them to settle.” He said, “I know you. I know your background. I've followed your career. You worked for Senator Kennedy. You are the perfect person.” And until the day I die, I'm beholden to Judge Weinstein for having faith in me to take this on.DL: And over the years, you actually worked on a number of matters at the request of Judge Weinstein.KF: A dozen. I worked on tobacco cases, on asbestos cases, on drug and medical device cases. I even worked for Judge Weinstein mediating the closing of the Shoreham nuclear plant on Long Island. I handled a wide range of cases where he called on me to act as his court-appointed mediator to resolve cases on his docket.DL: You've carved out a very unique and fascinating niche within the law, and I'm guessing that most people who meet you nowadays know who you are. But say you're in a foreign country or something, and some total stranger is chatting with you and asks what you do for a living. What would you say?KF: I would say I'm a lawyer, and I specialize in dispute resolution. It might be mediation, it might be arbitration, or it might even be negotiation, where somebody asks me to negotiate on their behalf. So I just tell people there is a growing field of law in the United States called ADR—alternative dispute resolution—and that it is, as you say, David, my niche, my focus when called upon.DL: And I think it's fair to say that you're one of the founding people in this field or early pioneers—or I don't know how you would describe it.KF: I think that's right. When I began with Agent Orange, there was no mediation to speak of. It certainly wasn't institutionalized; it wasn't streamlined. Today, in 2025, the American Bar Association has a special section on alternative dispute resolution, it's taught in every law school in the United States, there are thousands of mediators and arbitrators, and it's become a major leg in law school of different disciplines and specialties.DL: One question I often ask my guests is, “What is the matter you are most proud of?” Another question I often ask my guests is, “What is the hardest matter you've ever had to deal with?” Another question I often ask my guests is, “What is the matter that you're most well-known for?” And I feel in your case, the same matter is responsive to all three of those questions.KF: That's correct. The most difficult, the most challenging, the most rewarding matter, the one that's given me the most exposure, was the federal September 11 Victim Compensation Fund of 2001, when I was appointed by President George W. Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft to implement, design, and administer a very unique federal law that had been enacted right after 9/11.DL: I got chills as you were just even stating that, very factually, because I was in New York on 9/11, and a lot of us remember the trauma and difficulty of that time. And you basically had to live with that and talk to hundreds, even thousands, of people—survivors, family members—for almost three years. And you did it pro bono. So let me ask you this: what were you thinking?KF: What triggered my interest was the law itself. Thirteen days after the attacks, Congress passed this law, unique in American history, setting up a no-fault administrator compensation system. Don't go to court. Those who volunteer—families of the dead, those who were physically injured at the World Trade Center or the Pentagon—you can voluntarily seek compensation from a taxpayer-funded law. Now, if you don't want it, you don't have to go. It's a voluntary program.The key will be whether the special master or the administrator will be able to convince people that it is a better avenue to pursue than a long, delayed, uncertain lawsuit. And based on my previous experience for the last 15 years, starting with Agent Orange and asbestos and these other tragedies, I volunteered. I went to Senator Kennedy and said, “What about this?” He said, “Leave it to me.” He called President Bush. He knew Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was his former colleague in the U.S. Senate, and he had great admiration for Senator Ashcroft. And so I was invited by the attorney general for an interview, and I told him I was interested. I told him I would only do it pro bono. You can't get paid for a job like this; it's patriotism. And he said, “Go for it.” And he turned out to be my biggest, strongest ally during the 33 months of the program.DL: Are you the managing partner of a boutique or midsize firm? If so, you know that your most important job is attracting and retaining top talent. It's not easy, especially if your benefits don't match up well with those of Biglaw firms or if your HR process feels “small time.” NexFirm has created an onboarding and benefits experience that rivals an Am Law 100 firm, so you can compete for the best talent at a price your firm can afford. Want to learn more? Contact NexFirm at 212-292-1002 or email betterbenefits@nexfirm.com.You talk about this in your books: you were recommended by a very prominent Democratic politician, and the administration at the time was Republican. George W. Bush was president, and John Ashcroft was the attorney general. Why wouldn't they have picked a Republican for this project?KF: Very good question. Senator Kennedy told both of them, “You better be careful here. This is a very, very uncertain program, with taxpayer money used to pay only certain victims. This could be a disaster. And you would be well-advised to pick someone who is not a prominent friend of yours, who is not perceived as just a Republican arm of the Justice Department or the White House. And I've got the perfect person. You couldn't pick a more opposite politician than my former chief of staff, Ken Feinberg. But look at what he's done.” And I think to Senator Kennedy's credit, and certainly to President Bush and to John Ashcroft's, they selected me.DL: As you would expect with a program of this size and complexity, there was controversy and certainly criticism over the years. But overall, looking back, I think people regard it widely as a huge success. Do you have a sense or an estimate of what percentage of people in the position to accept settlements through the program did that, rather than litigate? Because in accepting funds from the program, they did waive their right to bring all sorts of lawsuits.KF: That's correct. If you look at the statistics, if the statistics are a barometer of success, 5,300 applicants were eligible, because of death—about 2,950, somewhere in there—and the remaining claims were for physical injury. Of the 5,300, 97 percent voluntarily accepted the compensation. Only 94 people, 3 percent, opted out, and they all settled their cases five years later. There was never a trial on who was responsible in the law for 9/11. So if statistics are an indication—and I think they are a good indication—the program was a stunning success in accomplishing Congress's objective, which was diverting people voluntarily out of the court system.DL: Absolutely. And that's just a striking statistic. It was really successful in getting funds to families that needed it. They had lost breadwinners; they had lost loved ones. It was hugely successful, and it did not take a decade, as some of these cases involving just thousands of victims often do.I was struck by one thing you just said. You mentioned there was really no trial. And in reading your accounts of your work on this, it seemed almost like people viewed talking to you and your colleagues, Camille and others on this—I think they almost viewed that as their opportunity to be heard, since there wasn't a trial where they would get to testify.KF: That's correct. The primary reason for the success of the 9/11 Fund, and a valuable lesson for me thereafter, was this: give victims the opportunity to be heard, not only in public town-hall meetings where collectively people can vent, but in private, with doors closed. It's just the victim and Feinberg or his designee, Camille. We were the face of the government here. You can't get a meeting with the secretary of defense or the attorney general, the head of the Department of Justice. What you can get is an opportunity behind closed doors to express your anger, your frustration, your disappointment, your sense of uncertainty, with the government official responsible for cutting the checks. And that had an enormous difference in assuring the success of the program.DL: What would you say was the hardest aspect of your work on the Fund?KF: The hardest part of the 9/11 Fund, which I'll never recover from, was not calculating the value of a life. Judges and juries do that every day, David, in every court, in New Jersey and 49 other states. That is not a difficult assignment. What would the victim have earned over a work life? Add something for pain and suffering and emotional distress, and there's your check.The hardest part in any of these funds, starting with 9/11—the most difficult aspect, the challenge—is empathy, and your willingness to sit for over 900 separate hearings, me alone with family members or victims, to hear what they want to tell you, and to make that meeting, from their perspective, worthwhile and constructive. That's the hard part.DL: Did you find it sometimes difficult to remain emotionally composed? Or did you, after a while, develop a sort of thick skin?KF: You remain composed. You are a professional. You have a job to do, for the president of the United States. You can't start wailing and crying in the presence of somebody who was also wailing and crying, so you have to compose yourself. But I tell people who say, “Could I do what you did?” I say, “Sure. There are plenty of people in this country that can do what I did—if you can brace yourself for the emotional trauma that comes with meeting with victim after victim after victim and hearing their stories, which are...” You can't make them up. They're so heart-wrenching and so tragic.I'll give you one example. A lady came to see me, 26 years old, sobbing—one of hundreds of people I met with. “Mr. Feinberg, I lost my husband. He was a fireman at the World Trade Center. He died on 9/11. And he left me with our two children, six and four. Now, Mr. Feinberg, you've calculated and told me I'm going to receive $2.4 million, tax-free, from this 9/11 Fund. I want it in 30 days.”I said to Mrs. Jones, “This is public, taxpayer money. We have to go down to the U.S. Treasury. They've got to cut the checks; they've got to dot all the i's and cross all the t's. It may be 60 days or 90 days, but you'll get your money.”“No. Thirty days.”I said, “Mrs. Jones, why do you need the money in 30 days?”She said, “Why? I'll tell you why, Mr. Feinberg. I have terminal cancer. I have 10 weeks to live. My husband was going to survive me and take care of our two children. Now they're going to be orphans. I have got to get this money, find a guardian, make sure the money's safe, prepare for the kids' schooling. I don't have a lot of time. I need your help.”Well, we ran down to the U.S. Treasury and helped process the check in record time. We got her the money in 30 days—and eight weeks later, she died. Now when you hear story after story like this, you get some indication of the emotional pressure that builds and is debilitating, frankly. And we managed to get through it.DL: Wow. I got a little choked up just even hearing you tell that. Wow—I really don't know what to say.When you were working on the 9/11 Fund, did you have time for any other matters, or was this pretty much exclusively what you were working on for the 33 months?KF: Professionally, it was exclusive. Now what I did was, I stayed in my law firm, so I had a living. Other people in the firm were generating income for the firm; I wasn't on the dole. But it was exclusive. During the day, you are swamped with these individual requests, decisions that have to be made, checks that have to be cut. At night, I escaped: opera, orchestral concerts, chamber music, art museums—the height of civilization. During the day, in the depths of horror of civilization; at night, an escape, an opportunity to just enjoy the benefits of civilization. You better have a loving family, as I did, that stands behind you—because you never get over it, really.DL: That's such an important lesson, to actually have that time—because if you wanted to, you could have worked on this 24/7. But it is important to have some time to just clear your head or spend time with your family, especially just given what you were dealing with day-to-day.KF: That's right. And of course, during the day, we made a point of that as well. If we were holding hearings like the one I just explained, we'd take a one-hour break, go for a walk, go into Central Park or into downtown Washington, buy an ice cream cone, see the kids playing in playgrounds and laughing. You've got to let the steam out of the pressure cooker, or it'll kill you. And that was the most difficult part of the whole program. In all of these programs, that's the common denominator: emotional stress and unhappiness on the part of the victims.DL: One last question, before we turn to some other matters. There was also a very large logistical apparatus associated with this, right? For example, PricewaterhouseCoopers. It wasn't just you and Camille trying to deal with these thousands of survivors and claimants; you did have support.KF: That's right. Pricewaterhouse won the bid at the Justice Department. This is public: Pricewaterhouse, for something like around $100 million, put 450 people to work with us to help us process claims, appraise values, do the research. Pricewaterhouse was a tremendous ally and has gone on, since 9/11, to handle claims design and claims administration, as one of its many specialties. Emily Kent, Chuck Hacker, people like that we worked with for years, very much experts in these areas.DL: So after your work on the 9/11 Fund, you've worked on a number of these types of matters. Is there one that you would say ranks second in terms of complexity or difficulty or meaningfulness to you?KF: Yes. Deepwater Horizon in 2011, 2012—that oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico blew up and killed about, I don't know, 15 to 20 people in the explosion. But the real challenge in that program was how we received, in 16 months, about 1,250,000 claims for business interruption, business losses, property damage. We received over a million claims from 50 states. I think we got probably a dozen claims from New Jersey; I didn't know the oil had gotten to New Jersey. We received claims from 35 foreign countries. And the sheer volume of the disaster overwhelmed us. We had, at one point, something like 40,000 people—vendors—working for us. We had 35 offices throughout the Gulf of Mexico, from Galveston, Texas, all the way to Mobile Bay, Alabama. Nevertheless, in 16 months, on behalf of BP, Deepwater Horizon, we paid out all BP money, a little over $7 billion, to 550,000 eligible claimants. And that, I would say, other than 9/11, had the greatest impact and was the most satisfying.DL: You mentioned some claims coming from some pretty far-flung jurisdictions. In these programs, how much of a problem is fraud?KF: Not much. First of all, with death claims like 9/11 or the Boston Marathon bombings or the 20 first-graders who died in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, at the hands of a deranged gunmen—most of the time, in traumatic death and injury, you've got records. No one can beat the system; you have to have a death certificate. In 9/11, where are your military records, if you were at the Pentagon? Where are the airplane manifests? You've got to be on the manifest if you were flying on that plane.Now, the problem becomes more pronounced in something like BP, where you've got over a million claims, and you wonder, how many people can claim injury from this explosion? There we had an anti-fraud unit—Guidepost, Bart Schwartz's company—and they did a tremendous job of spot-checking claims. I think that out of over a million claims, there may have been 25,000 that were suspicious. And we sent those claims to the Justice Department, and they prosecuted a fair number of people. But it wasn't a huge problem. I think the fraud rate was something like 3 percent; that's nothing. So overall, we haven't found—and we have to be ever-vigilant, you're right—but we haven't found much in the way of fraud.DL: I'm glad to hear that, because it would really be very depressing to think that there were people trying to profiteer off these terrible disasters and tragedies. Speaking of continuing disasters and tragedies, turning to current events, you are now working with Southern California Edison in dealing with claims related to the Eaton Fire. And this is a pending matter, so of course you may have some limits in terms of what you can discuss, but what can you say in a general sense about this undertaking?KF: This is the Los Angeles wildfires that everybody knows about, from the last nine or ten months—the tremendous fire damage in Los Angeles. One of the fires, or one of the selected hubs of the fire, was the Eaton Fire. Southern California Edison, the utility involved in the litigation and finger-pointing, decided to set up, à la 9/11, a voluntary claims program. Not so much to deal with death—there were about 19 deaths, and a handful of physical injuries—but terrible fire damage, destroyed homes, damaged businesses, smoke and ash and soot, for miles in every direction. And the utility decided, its executive decided, “We want to do the right thing here. We may be held liable or we may not be held liable for the fire, but we think the right thing to do is nip in the bud this idea of extended litigation. Look at 9/11: only 94 people ended up suing. We want to set up a program.”They came to Camille and me. Over the last eight weeks, we've designed the program, and I think in the last week of October or the first week of November, you will see publicly, “Here is the protocol; here is the claim form. Please submit your claims, and we'll get them paid within 90 days.” And if history is an indicator, Camille and I think that the Eaton Fire Protocol will be a success, and the great bulk of the thousands of victims will voluntarily decide to come into the program. We'll see. [Ed. note: On Wednesday, a few days after Ken and I recorded this episode, Southern California Edison announced its Wildfire Recovery Compensation Program.]DL: That raises a question that I'm curious about. How would you describe the relationship between the work that you and Camille and your colleagues do and the traditional work of the courts, in terms of in-the-trenches litigation? Because I do wonder whether the growth in your field is perhaps related to some developments in litigation, in terms of litigation becoming more expensive over the decades (in a way that far outstrips inflation), more complicated, or more protracted. How would you characterize that relationship?KF: I would say that the programs that we design and administer—like 9/11, like BP, plus the Eaton wildfires—are an exception to the rule. Nobody should think that these programs that we have worked on are the wave of the future. They are not the wave of the future; they are isolated, unique examples, where a company—or in 9/11, the U.S. government—decides, “We ought to set up a special program where the courts aren't involved, certainly not directly.” In 9/11, they were prohibited to be involved, by statute; in some of these other programs, like BP, the courts have a relationship, but they don't interfere with the day-to-day administration of the program.And I think the American people have a lot of faith in the litigation system that you correctly point out can be uncertain, very inefficient, and very costly. But the American people, since the founding of the country, think, “You pick your lawyer, I'll pick my lawyer, and we'll have a judge and jury decide.” That's the American rule of law; I don't think it's going to change. But occasionally there is a groundswell of public pressure to come up with a program, or there'll be a company—like the utility, like BP—that decides to have a program.And I'll give you one other example: the Catholic Church confronted thousands of claims of sexual abuse by priests. It came to us, and we set up a program—just like 9/11, just like BP—where we invited, voluntarily, any minor—any minor from decades ago, now an adult—who had been abused by the church to come into this voluntary program. We paid out, I think, $700 million to $800 million, to victims in dioceses around the country. So there's another example—Camille did most of that—but these programs are all relatively rare. There are thousands of litigations every day, and nothing's going to change that.DL: I had a guest on a few weeks ago, Chris Seeger of Seeger Weiss, who does a lot of work in the mass-tort space. It's interesting: I feel that that space has evolved, and maybe in some ways it's more efficient than it used to be. They have these multi-district litigation panels, they have these bellwether trials, and then things often get settled, once people have a sense of the values. That system and your approach seem to have some similarities, in the sense that you're not individually trying each one of these cases, and you're having somebody with liability come forward and voluntarily pay out money, after some kind of negotiation.KF: Well, there's certainly negotiation in what Chris Seeger does; I'm not sure we have much negotiation. We say, “Here's the amount under the administrative scheme.” It's like in workers' compensation: here's the amount. You don't have to take it. There's nothing to really talk about, unless you have new evidence that we're not aware of. And those programs, when we do design them, seem to work very efficiently.Again, if you ask Camille Biros what was the toughest part of valuing individual claims of sexual-abuse directed at minors, she would say, “These hearings: we gave every person who wanted an opportunity to be heard.” And when they come to see Camille, they don't come to talk about money; they want validation for what they went through. “Believe me, will you? Ken, Camille, believe me.” And when Camille says, “We do believe you,” they immediately, or almost immediately, accept the compensation and sign a release: “I will not sue the Catholic diocese.”DL: So you mentioned there isn't really much negotiation, but you did talk in the book about these sort of “appeals.” You had these two tracks, “Appeals A” and “Appeals B.” Can you talk about that? Did you ever revisit what you had set as the award for a particular victim's family, after hearing from them in person?KF: Sure. Now, remember, those appeals came back to us, not to a court; there's no court involvement. But in 9/11, in BP, if somebody said, “You made a mistake—you didn't account for these profits or this revenue, or you didn't take into account this contract that my dead firefighter husband had that would've given him a lot more money”—of course, we'll revisit that. We invited that. But that's an internal appeals process. The people who calculated the value of the claim are the same people that are going to be looking at revisiting the claim. But again, that's due process, and that's something that we thought was important.DL: You and Camille have been doing this really important work for decades. Since this is, of course, shortly after your 80th birthday, I should ask: do you have future plans? You're tackling some of the most complicated matters, headline-making matters. Would you ever want to retire at some point?KF: I have no intention of retiring. I do agree that when you reach a certain pinnacle in what you've done, you do slow down. We are much more selective in what we do. I used to have maybe 15 mediations going on at once; now, we have one or two matters, like the Los Angeles wildfires. As long as I'm capable, as long as Camille's willing, we'll continue to do it, but we'll be very careful about what we select to do. We don't travel much. The Los Angeles wildfires was largely Zooms, going back and forth. And we're not going to administer that program. We had administered 9/11 and BP; we're trying to move away from that. It's very time-consuming and stressful. So we've accomplished a great deal over the last 50 years—but as long as we can do it, we'll continue to do it.DL: Do you have any junior colleagues who would take over what you and Camille have built?KF: We don't have junior colleagues. There's just the two of us and Cindy Sanzotta, our receptionist. But it's an interesting question: “Who's after Feinberg? Who's next in doing this?” I think there are thousands of people in this country who could do what we do. It is not rocket science. It really isn't. I'll tell you what's difficult: the emotion. If somebody wants to do what we do, you better brace yourself for the emotion, the anger, the frustration, the finger pointing. It goes with the territory. And if you don't have the psychological ability to handle this type of stress, stay away. But I'm sure somebody will be there, and no one's irreplaceable.DL: Well, I know I personally could not handle it. I worked when I was at a law firm on civil litigation over insurance proceeds related to the World Trade Center, and that was a very draining case, and I was very glad to no longer be on it. So I could not do what you and Camille do. But let me ask you, to end this section on a positive note: what would you say is the most rewarding or meaningful or satisfying aspect of the work that you do on these programs?KF: Giving back to the community. Public service. Helping the community heal. Not so much the individuals; the individuals are part of the community. “Every individual can make a difference.” I remember that every day, what John F. Kennedy said: government service is a noble undertaking. So what's most rewarding for me is that although I'm a private practitioner—I am no longer in government service, since my days with Senator Kennedy—I'd like to think that I performed a valuable service for the community, the resilience of the community, the charity exhibited by the community. And that gives me a great sense of self-satisfaction.DL: You absolutely have. It's been amazing, and I'm so grateful for you taking the time to join me.So now, onto our speed round. These are four questions that are standardized. My first question is, what do you like the least about the law? And this can either be the practice of law or law in a more abstract sense.KF: Uncertainty. What I don't like about the law is—and I guess maybe it's the flip side of the best way to get to a result—I don't like the uncertainty of the law. I don't like the fact that until the very end of the process, you don't know if your view and opinion will prevail. And I think losing control over your destiny in that regard is problematic.DL: My second question—and maybe we touched on this a little bit, when we talked about your father's opinions—what would you be if you were not a lawyer?KF: Probably an actor. As I say, I almost became an actor. And I still love theater and the movies and Broadway shows. If my father hadn't given me that advice, I was on the cusp of pursuing a career in the theater.DL: Have you dabbled in anything in your (probably limited) spare time—community theater, anything like that?KF: No, but I certainly have prioritized in my spare time classical music and the peace and optimism it brings to the listener. It's been an important part of my life.DL: My third question is, how much sleep do you get each night?KF: Well, it varies from program to program. I'd like to get seven hours. That's what my doctors tell me: “Ken, very important—more important than pills and exercise and diet—is sleep. Your body needs a minimum of seven hours.” Well, for me, seven hours is rare—it's more like six or even five, and during 9/11 or during Eaton wildfires, it might be more like four or five. And that's not enough, and that is a problem.DL: My last question is, any final words of wisdom, such as career advice or life advice, for my listeners?KF: Yes, I'll give you some career and life advice. It's very simple: don't plan too far ahead. People have this view—you may think you know what you want to do with your career. You may think you know what life holds for you. You don't know. If I've learned anything over the last decades, life has a way of changing the best-laid plans. These 9/11 husbands and wives said goodbye to their children, “we'll see you for dinner,” a perfunctory wave—and they never saw them again. Dust, not even a body. And the idea I tell law students—who say, ”I'm going to be a corporate lawyer,” or “I'm going to be a litigator”—I tell them, “You have no idea what your legal career will look like. Look at Feinberg; he never planned on this. He never thought, in his wildest dreams, that this would be his chosen avenue of the law.”My advice: enjoy the moment. Do what you like now. Don't worry too much about what you'll be doing two years, five years, 10 years, a lifetime ahead of you. It doesn't work that way. Everybody gets thrown curveballs, and that's advice I give to everybody.DL: Well, you did not plan out your career, but it has turned out wonderfully, and the country is better for it. Thank you, Ken, both for your work on all these matters over the years and for joining me today.KF: A privilege and an honor. Thanks, David.DL: Thanks so much to Ken for joining me—and, of course, for his decades of work resolving some of the thorniest disputes in the country, which is truly a form of public service.Thanks to NexFirm for sponsoring the Original Jurisdiction podcast. NexFirm has helped many attorneys to leave Biglaw and launch firms of their own. To explore this opportunity, please contact NexFirm at 212-292-1000 or email careerdevelopment@nexfirm.com to learn more.Thanks to Tommy Harron, my sound engineer here at Original Jurisdiction, and thanks to you, my listeners and readers. To connect with me, please email me at davidlat@substack.com, or find me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, at davidlat, and on Instagram and Threads at davidbenjaminlat.If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate, review, and subscribe. Please subscribe to the Original Jurisdiction newsletter if you don't already, over at davidlat.substack.com. This podcast is free, but it's made possible by paid subscriptions to the newsletter.The next episode should appear on or about Wednesday, November 12. Until then, may your thinking be original and your jurisdiction free of defects.Thanks for reading Original Jurisdiction, and thanks to my paid subscribers for making this publication possible. 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In this episode of the Energy Newsbeat Daily Standup - Weekly Recap, Stuart Turley and Michael Tanner discussed Governor Gavin Newsom's controversial new bill allowing California utility companies—such as Southern California Edison—to tap into the state's $21 billion Wildfire Fund, half of which is funded by taxpayers. The legislation permits utilities to use the fund to cover wildfire-related expenses and even fines from their own negligence. Turley blasted the move as a “corruption-laden bailout,” arguing it protects utilities at the expense of taxpayers, while comparing it to California's manipulation of federal health funds. Both hosts warned that under Newsom's leadership, California has become a growing national security risk. Subscribe to Our Substack For Daily Insights Want to Add Oil & Gas To Your Portfolio? Fill Out Our Oil & Gas Portfolio Survey Need Power For Your Data Center, Hospital, or Business? Follow Stuart On LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuturley/ andTwitter: https://twitter.com/STUARTTURLEY16 Follow Michael On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelta... andTwitter: https://twitter.com/mtanner_1 Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro00:17 - Citi Says Russia-Ukraine De-escalation Could Impact Oil to $50, and Oil's Surplus Is Here—But What's the Real Story?07:51 - Wind Turbines are Made by Coal and Are Not Sustainable12:26 - Europe is the Biggest Loser in US-China Rare Earth Wars18:38 - EU's Climate Rules Have Caused a Response from the US and Qatar, Issuing Trade Threats20:43 - The Permian Basin Reliability Plan will cost every customer in the ERCOT region24:31 - Gavin Newsom Signs Bill Allowing California Utility Companies to Draw Funding from State Wildfire Fund26:40 - Outro Links to articles discussed:Citi Says Russia-Ukraine De-escalation Could Impact Oil to $50, and Oil's Surplus Is Here—But What's the Real Story?Wind Turbines are Made by Coal and Are Not SustainableEurope is the Biggest Loser in US-China Rare Earth WarsEU's Climate Rules Have Caused a Response from the US and Qatar, Issuing Trade ThreatsThe Permian Basin Reliability Plan will cost every customer in the ERCOT region.Gavin Newsom Signs Bill Allowing California Utility Companies to Draw Funding from State Wildfire Fund

Almost nine months have passed since the Eaton Fire ripped through Los Angeles County. It destroyed more than 9,000 buildings and left billions of dollars in damages. At first, attention focused on Southern California Edison's transmission lines as the likely cause. But a new NPR investigation shows there may have been other failures, too. Guest: Chiara Eisner, NPR Another immigrant has died in the custody of federal immigration authorities in California, this time in the Imperial Valley. New questions are being raised about the care of detainees under the Trump administration's ongoing mass deportation campaign. Reporter: Kori Suzuki, KPBS Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Having completed "The Impossible House" project, Robert Fortunato changed his career and switched from the corporate world of mergers and acquisitions to helping others tap into the green movement. He is now a green building advocate, an experienced practitioner, consultant, and educator. This episode is a follow-on interview. Episode #230 documented his inspiring green home construction project. While he was told repeatedly why he could not pursue a fossil-free and healthy home, Robert was determined, got educated, convened smart collaborators, and "impossible" was transformed into reality. He burns no fossil fuels, his home is healthier, and his family is saving money every day.Robert and Ted discuss the role of green building consultants, helping clients to plan carefully, and to tap into new technologies that make sense. Robert is an owner's rep; he who works on behalf of clients. Like Ted, he has worked with schools, businesses, and homeowners making sure they realize savings for their investments.Robert stresses the need for consideration of green measures early in the design process. Things like relatively small investments in whole house surge protection can be readily incorporated, providing insurance for years to come. Robert and Ted talk about the merits of "doing it right" the first time: They discuss orientation for solar, recognizing varying levels of shading throughout the year and both its cooling benefits and solar power generation demerits. The short and long-term benefits of solar and green measures are front and center in the conversation... providing dollar savings, healthier environments and comfort. Robert and Ted focus on lifecycle benefits - which can be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars - versus the upfront costs of measures which can be in the tens of thousands. Solar and efficiency, and electric vehicles and heat pumps, can save money over time... serving as viable annuities. Robert presents his own home savings, now well over $60,000... money that he and his wife put into their son's college education.Robert describes the courses that he teaches for Southern California Edison. For the past ten years Robert has taught a course on building electrification, with invaluable lessons for architects, engineers, and lay people. They learn how to keep costs down while eliminating fossil fuels. A new course focuses on how to avoid costly panel upgrades through sophisticated controls and smart energy management, despite adding loads such as heat pumps and electric vehicles.

Southern California Edison customers could see pricier electric bills in the coming weeks as the . California is breaking with the feds on COVID vaccine recommendations. Long Beach Unified moved to restrict cell phone use. Plus, more.Support The L.A. Report by donating at LAist.com/join and by visiting https://laist.comVisit www.preppi.com/LAist to receive a FREE Preppi Emergency Kit (with any purchase over $100) and be prepared for the next wildfire, earthquake or emergency! Support the show: https://laist.com

Climate change and tariffs may be shaking up the coffee industry. But young people are still abuzz these days about specialty drinks like lattes and macchiatos. And a Merced coffee shop is even giving this industry a boost, by training more people to serve up the delicious drinks. Reporter: Rachel Livinal, KVPR Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles have filed suit against Southern California Edison, over its alleged role in starting a pair of deadly wildfires. Reporter: Dan Brekke, KQED A bill that would have created career pathways for incarcerated firefighters was shelved by a Senate committee on Thursday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on AirTalk, US prosecutors file two lawsuits against Southern California Edison over wildfires; the realities of pop music criticism; Deda Restaurant brings authentic Georgian cuisine to Pasadena; FilmWeek and LA's first annual Silent Film Festival. Today on AirTalk, US prosecutors sue Southern California Edison over wildfires (0:15) Is pop music criticism too soft? (16:57) Deda Restaurant's authentic Georgian cuisine (37:27) FilmWeek (51:20) LA's first annual Silent Film Festival (1:23:50) Visit www.preppi.com/LAist to receive a FREE Preppi Emergency Kit (with any purchase over $100) and be prepared for the next wildfire, earthquake or emergency!

¡Toma precauciones! Alerta Amarilla por lluvias y granizo en CDMXEn Baja California renuncia jefe de seguridad acusado de boicotear a periodistaEU demanda a Southern California Edison por incendios que dejaron 21 muertosMás información en nuestro Podcast 

Ted Flanigan first met Gene Rodrigues in 1998. Ted was Director of Efficiency Solutions at LADWP; Gene the Director of Energy Efficiency at Southern California Edison. For years, Gene was the voice and the face of energy efficiency, his sincere and happy demeanor on local television in the evenings. Ted and Gene begin with a reflection that Ted recounted of Gene's mother making sure that Gene knew that every morning that he had a choice about the day ahead. She made clear that you have the choice to be happy and productive each day.Gene was born in Japan to a U.S. serviceman and a Japanese mother. He grew up in Arizona before getting his law degree. In short order he realized that he wanted his law to be important, to make a difference to our society. He applied that vision to his work in regulatory law at Southern California Edison. He became Director of Efficiency, a role that expanded to include distributed energy resources of all kinds.The conversation shifts to Gene's deep appreciation for the field of efficiency... what he calls a foundational element for every utility to boost reliability and local economic development, to cut consumer costs and increase affordability, while protecting the environment at least cost. Gene stressed that California did it right, aligning good business sense with environmental concerns, and meeting the needs of all stakeholders. Calling it a group effort in California, he saluted leaders, John Bryson, Mike Peevey, Ralph Cavanagh, and Art Rosenfeld. They were successful in defining the role of efficiency. Gene explains that it's not a soft customer service, but part of the make-up of a reliable energy system.Gene left Edison in 2014 to work for the consulting firm ICF, noting that it was a company whose "moral compass was facing due north." When reflecting on his work there in the ICF Clean Energy division, Gene notes that he is most proud of the collaborations that he helped seed and nurture in meetings of cohorts. He found those forums most impactful. The conversation ends with a discussion of Gene's tenure at the U.S. Department of Energy where he served the Biden/Harris administration as Assistant Secretary of Energy in the Office of Electricity. While the DOE's Forrestal Building is stark, formidable, and intimidating, Gene stressed that he found the staff there to be the most committed group he has every worked with. His heart aches for the current administration's policy to decimate the role of these non-political, career servants. So then, asked Ted, "Are you optimistic?" Gene said no, he is not optimistic about the current changes, but he commented that when he was appointed, he was confirmed by a voice vote of unanimous consent, representing both sides of the aisle. Gene said, those on the R side are still there. While they knew that Gene came from a deep green background, importantly, they understood his common sense approach to energy management. And they are still there.

Camilla Taylor, Los Angeles artist, and curator of “My House Burned Down” (at Track16 Gallery), talks about: Her childhood with complicated religious origins, between her Mormon LDS father and her mother who branched off to start her own organization (some might say ‘cult,' per Camilla), and how art, for her and many artists, can often fit the functions that people are often looking for in religions (including being part of something bigger than themselves); how she's really good at compartmentalizing, seeing difficult experiences from her life as existing in rooms in a house, where she can shut the door to any given room; the epic story of experiencing her house burning down in the Eaton Fire in Altadena-- from her 16-hour drive home from the Sitka Center residency in Oregon, to seeing it when she approached her part of the San Gabriel Valley, to arriving home and having the wind lift her off her feet, to their belated evacuation; and subsequently how she found out her and her partner's house, and her studio, had burned down, and that that process of mourning has been like; how trauma has manifested from losing her home and studio, and the range of reactions she's received, including a lot of suggestions that are tone-deaf; what insurance will cover, and the studio spaces she's been loaned/gifted for now, putting off the need for having to rent a studio for the first time (since studios have always been attached to her living spaces). This podcast relies on listener support; please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the podcast, for as little as $1/month, here: https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod In the 2nd/Patreon Bonus half of the conversation, Camilla talks about: How, because of her visibility as an artist, she's been more fortunate than many others who lost homes/studios in the fire by receiving a range of resources that artists less visible have not; the lawsuits against Southern California Edison, who allegedly started the Eaton fire; the group show she curated, ‘My House Burned Down,' at Track 16 Gallery, which included four artists who lost their homes in the Eaton fire, and four artists who lost their homes in prior fires, and how the show addressed a commonality in losing one's home as an artist, with an extra emphasis on materiality; how while she doesn't know what the right reaction is, when people learn that her house (and studio) burned down in a fire, she knows that the reaction that she's going to rise above it, like the phoenix from the ashes, is absolutely not the reaction to have, because it's hurtful especially in its negating of what happened to her; and we have an extensive exchange about what I have long referred to as “the P-word,” as in ‘practice, as in ‘my art practice, a word Camilla also hates, and she talks about why language has become so important in art/the art world, including her take that artists overcompensate in art because, essentially, we/art is so unimportant to everyone else; and Camilla shares her favorite and least favorite art-speak words; and how in her teaching she's honest with students about how their work affects her, as opposed to making art historical comparisons.

More than 100 of the world's largest energy companies are betting that artificial intelligence (AI) will revolutionize how electricity gets made, moved, and managed. But they're not waiting for Silicon Valley to build it for them—they've taken matters into their own hands through an EPRI-led consortium. That initiative is the Open Power AI Consortium, which EPRI launched in March 2025 to drive the development and deployment of an open AI model tailored for the power sector. According to its mission statement, the Open Power AI Consortium “aims to evolve the electric sector by leveraging advanced AI technologies to innovate the way electricity is made, moved, and used by customers. By fostering collaboration among industry leaders, researchers, and technology providers, the consortium will drive the development and deployment of cutting-edge AI solutions tailored to enhance operational efficiencies, increase resiliency and reliability, deploy emerging and sustainable technologies, and reduce costs while improving the customer experience.” “We're really looking at building an ecosystem to accelerate the development and deployment, and recognizing that, while AI is advancing rapidly, the energy industry has its own unique needs, especially around reliability, safety, regulatory compliance, and so forth. So, the consortium provides a collaborative platform to develop and maintain domain-specific AI models—think a ChatGPT tailored to the energy industry—as well as sharing best practices, testing innovative solutions in a secure environment, and long term, we believe this will help modernize the grid, improve customer experiences, and support global safe, affordable, and reliable energy for everyone,” Jeremy Renshaw, executive director for AI and Quantum with EPRI, said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. Among the consortium's members are some of the largest energy companies in the world, including Constellation, Con Edison, Duke Energy, EDF, Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO), New York Power Authority (NYPA), Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E), Saudi Electricity Co., Southern Company, Southern California Edison, Taiwan Power Co., and Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). It also includes entities like Amazon Web Servies (AWS), Burns and McDonnell, GE Vernova, Google, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Interconnection Authority, Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP), Khalifa University, Microsoft, Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), PJM, Rolls-Royce SMR, and Westinghouse Electric Co. “For many years, the power industry has been somewhat siloed, and there were not many touch points or communication between global utilities, technology companies, universities, and so forth. So, this consortium aims to facilitate making new connections between these important and impactful organizations to increase collaboration and information sharing that will benefit everyone,” Renshaw explained. EPRI, together with Articul8 and NVIDIA, has already developed the first set of domain-specific generative AI models for electric and power systems aimed at advancing the energy transformation. Although the technology has not been released publicly, it will be made available soon as an NVIDIA NIM microservice for early access. This development sets the foundation for more to come.

Fifteen years ago, Scott Engstrom thought utilities were boring, bureaucratic organizations where people went for job security. But after co-founding GridX in 2010 during the smart meter era, he discovered an industry full of dedicated people tackling complex challenges.GridX went the next five years without a paying customer. Then, in 2015, California mandated time-of-use rates, and the start-up found its footing. Today, Scott helps utilities nationwide design and implement sophisticated rates for a variety of programs, from electric vehicle charging to demand response programs and virtual power plants. Because as load growth from AI data centers and industrial customers strains the grid, sophisticated rate design has become more critical than ever.This week on With Great Power, Scott outlines how rate design helps utilities manage unprecedented load growth from data centers and why "growth pays for growth" protects existing customers from new infrastructure costs.TRANSCRIPT:Brad Langley: 15 years ago, Scott Engstrom had an underwhelming impression of the utility industry.Scott Engstrom: My perception was similar to the general perception of what utilities and the people who work there were like, which was these are maybe not your most motivated crew, like a semi-government job. So you go there for job security and maybe not the most adventurous or smart or energetic or hard charging.Brad Langley: But despite his perception, he still wanted to get in on some of the new action really shaking up things in the power sector.Scott Engstrom: It started in the mid to late nineties. There was a time when the U.S. utility industry was going through deregulation. Almost all 50 states were considering some of this idea of deregulating their utility and allowing for competition for the supply of energy. And it was a really interesting time because this industry that hadn't changed for 90 or a hundred years was now looking at a wholesale financial business model change.Brad Langley: Over the next decade, as Scott dove into the world of utility investing and stock trading, he learned his original perception of the industry was way off.Scott Engstrom: These people worked really hard, and they really cared both about the company – they're very loyal to the companies they worked with – and actually really cared about customers and treating customers well. And so for the most part, all of those stereotypes that I was led to believe turned out to be wrong.Brad Langley: By the late 2000s, a new wave of disruption was taking over the power sector. Smart meters had hit the scene and that gave Scott, who is now deeply entrenched and inspired by this industry, an idea.Scott Engstrom: We really built a set of software that was meant to support what it meant to install smart meters at a utility. And what changes that meant for lots of things in the organization, but particularly for us, was around the fact that smart meters were going to enable a new set of or new type of rates and programs that utilities could offer their customers. And we were going to conquer the world with our new software.Brad Langley: Unfortunately, Scott and his fellow co-founder Jian Zhang were a little bit ahead of their time. And their new company called GridX – yes, the same GridX where I currently work – went five years before finding a paying utility customer.Scott Engstrom: So we spent those five years really going to all those utilities that did invest in smart meters and showing them what we could do with our product, which was essentially a really agile, complex rate engine that could support all the new rates of the future. And they all sort of gave us very nice pats on the shoulders and said, ‘Well, we're really proud of you. Good job. Someday we're going to need this software, but it's just not today.'Brad Langley: But that all changed on July 3rd, 2015 when the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) issued a monumental decision for Scott and his scrappy startup.Scott Engstrom: The California Public Utility Commission had an open docket focused on what they called regulatory rate reform and, in particular, time of use rates and even more specifically about making time of use rates as the default rate for residential customers in California. We had been investing in our software to support that. And so once the commission gavel went down and the order came out and they actually approved this, we were obviously really excited at GridX, not just because of what it might mean for our business, but because we really believed that these rates and new programs will have real impacts for climate change and the clean energy transition.Brad Langley: And ever since then, as rate design has continued to evolve over the past decade, Scott and his team have been working with utilities to deliver different kinds of rates to customers and educate those customers on how the rates actually work. This is With Great Power, a show about the people building the future grid, today. I'm Brad Langley. Some people say utilities are slow to change, that they don't innovate fast enough. And while it might not always seem like the most cutting edge industry, there are lots of really smart people working really hard to make the grid cleaner, more reliable, and customer centric. This week I'm talking to Scott Engstrom, co-founder and chief customer officer at GridX.Scott Engstrom: We believe that end customers have to know more about the cost of energy and that how they use energy impacts utility's ability to change the energy they supply to their customers. And so our mission is to help our clients like utilities and their customers understand the exact value of their clean energy choices.Brad Langley: Today, Scott works with utilities all across the country to implement rates for various programs from electric vehicle charging to the more classic time of use rates mandated by the CPUC now over 20 years ago. And as the economy has grown to be more reliant on electricity, so has the complexity of rate and program design. So I asked Scott about how some of these new electricity users are impacting rates. But first I asked him how he actually ended up securing his first paying customer after CPUC's 2015 mandate. So it obviously had an impact on the California IOUs like PG&E, Southern California Edison, SDG&E. How did you start to approach utilities like that knowing that PG&E is a customer of ours? What was that process to approach PG&E and start helping them comply with this new requirement?Scott Engstrom: Utilities in general have been always a little bit shy about working with startups and new companies. They always feel better when you have another customer. So even in this case where there were requirements from the public utility commission to do rate education and outreach and marketing about how these rates would affect customers and their bills and how they might be able to do better on those rates, there was obviously still some, maybe not obviously, but there still was some reticence about working with a startup like ours. We had been engaged with those utilities. This didn't come completely out of the blue. We had been planting seeds with the utilities that these were capabilities we had. Of course, they wanted to wait to see the final order and to see what the commission was going to require them to do. And once that happened it became clear that the utilities were going to have to send regular bill inserts or letters to customers – I think it was on a quarterly basis or it might've been twice a year – letting them know what time of use rates meant for them.That's no trivial exercise. I doubt many people have thought about this, but say both PG&E and Southern California Edison have around five million residential customers to do this kind of analysis. For five million customers, you've got to calculate 12 bills for each of those customers. That represents one year's worth of data on the current rates that the utility offers. And then you have to do that on the alternate rates, the time of use rates that the utilities were considering. So if there were two or three options they were considering that could be 180 or 240 million bills. So this is way beyond a spreadsheet exercise and something we had been investing in to really differentiate ourselves as the solution provider that could help both PG&E and Edison and the other utilities in California.Brad Langley: So supporting rate education was part of GridX's original product offering, but the company has expanded significantly since then. Spend a minute or two walking us through how GridX's offerings have evolved.Scott Engstrom: We thought initially GridX was going to be a great solution for billing and for back office, and that was a little hard sell. As a very small company handling millions or billions of dollars of revenue for the utilities, that was a hard pill for them to swallow. But then when this idea of rate comparisons came up, the stakes were not quite as high. If you get a rate comparison wrong, it doesn't affect the utilities financially. It may affect their reputation to a certain extent, but also in analysis, you do have a little bit of room to be not penny level accurate. If you're off by a couple of pennies, you can live with that. But we started thinking that there's a lot of systems out there that manage the meter to cash business process for utilities that probably most of your listeners are familiar with, which is really solved by a system called a customer information system and meter data management systems that help the utility really bill customers and care for them.And that's a really important business process. But the emergence of things like time of use rates and the problems they were trying to solve, we saw the emergence and the opportunity really to help utilities with a different cycle, which we call the utility product or rate lifecycle. Kind of taking a different approach to utilities and having them think of themselves more like consumer product companies – that they have their rates, and their programs should be thought of more like consumer products. Think companies. Think of their products and services that they sell. And so in the utility industry, we did really want to get the utilities to change their mindset and think about themselves as more of a product company because more products and services were going to be needed to meet the kind of decarbonization and electrification goals that they were trying to achieve. And they were going to have to figure out which products and services their customers responded to.How do they create the kind of demand flexibility they need and how do they become good? This is a muscle that the utilities didn't typically need to have before the clean energy transition. They just didn't need this. So we really started thinking about what is the utility product lifecycle? And that includes everything from designing new rates and creating the data and testimony that utilities need to bring it to their regulators and validate why those rates or products are needed or how they will impact customers or the utilities' revenue and provide the utilities with tools to create different structures and ideate on the way programs might be able to work and have them have a real data and analytics based approach to understanding those. And that lifecycle continues then from once the rate's approved to now someone is a traditional product manager. More and more we're seeing with rate design that the rates are meant to potentially change customer's behavior. We have a set of solutions that help those product and program owners be successful at driving enrollment and participation in the rate and ultimately success. And then of course, the last piece of that lifecycle then is operationalizing that rate, making it available to your customers. And that's where we've come back to our roots a little bit. And some of our utilities actually get these operationalized and make them available for billing for customers.Brad Langley: What other trends are you seeing now that makes this revolutionary idea of a rate and program lifecycle so necessary?Scott Engstrom: Yeah, for a long time when we met with customers, we would show them a graph of the duck curve here in California and talk about how that certainly has happened in California, may happen in their state as well, at least directionally. And then on top of that, we were seeing, we continue to see lots of investment in renewable energy, which is much more intermittent replacing fossil fuel coal plants. And so we were painting a picture about how those two trends were going to create mismatches in supply and demand and the way that they could solve for that was through rates and programs that created price signals for things like battery storage and electric vehicle charging and things like that to help manage those times of day when you had excess supply or excess demand. And I think that's really true, but certainly have to recognize the politics of the day.And the current administration is I think providing some headwinds to the decarbonization movement. What we do see not as a replacement, but in addition to that is this large load growth being a real force for utilities, having to again look at rate design and think about rate design for a few reasons. One of them is the demands from customers are exceeding the supply and the capacity that the utilities have. So they're scrambling. We work with a lot of our utilities, we work closely with the key account managers who manage the largest customers and are dealing with the large load growth as well. And they are looking across their system to find capacity for this load growth. It's not all AI data centers. Those are the really big chunky ones, but there's a lot of other large industrial customers that are just growing their businesses and need more power from their utilities. And so we talk to them about the ability to use demand side resources, which is calling on your customers to respond to price signals and rates and programs and use less energy at times where the economics make sense for them through the rate and program. And so we are seeing a real need from the large load growth to reconsider rate structures and innovative new programs to support that. Not to mention the tariffs for the large data centers themselves.Brad Langley: When a utility gets a request for a massive data center, or in some cases maybe two or three, what are the key rate design considerations they should be thinking through?Scott Engstrom: In the case of large data centers, the amount of infrastructure investment required to support those can be really high. And the way utility rates work is that oftentimes that investment is spread across all customers. So in this case, it's more of almost tariff design than rate design in the way that we talk about it colloquially. And those tariffs are really important to get the risks and rewards between the customer classes at a utility. I think there's been a common phrase that I've heard a lot at conferences: growth pays for growth, which means if I'm a large new customer and the utility is going to have to buy a new substation and build new transmission for me and a lot of investment in infrastructure just to hook up my data center, and that's going to cost whatever, 10 million, a hundred million dollars, that customer's on the hook for that amount.And then we've seen the other structure where the utilities have more of a take or pay type of arrangement. So the big worry is they're a customer crying wolf. They say, I need you to set up all this infrastructure for me because I'm going to set up a data center. So if the utility goes and spends that money and gets it all set up, but the data center never comes, who's on the hook for paying for that? And so we've seen in the tariff design and the dockets that we've seen around the country that the customer again is on the hook for a minimum payment on an annual basis or something that really covers that cost of infrastructure to set up. And then if they actually use the energy associated with that, great, but they certainly can't harm other customers. And I think that's a consistent theme we see is how do we create these tariffs and rate structures in a way that the system can benefit from bringing in the new load and the new customers, but the customers who otherwise shouldn't be subject to any punishment for a customer that never shows up are protected in that rate structure.Brad Langley: I gather you take this as a real concern. This has to be a focus of utilities and the large data center operators to ensure that customers that aren't using that energy aren't disadvantaged. And are utilities recognizing this and do they see that as a real concern?Scott Engstrom: Definitely. I think that we want the U.S. to be a leader in AI, so we want to create an attractive business environment for the data centers to get set up. We want them to do it quickly. There's a real challenge with supply chain and just getting the infrastructure in place to get the generation, the supply of energy in place to support them, even if you could agree on what the tariff structure is just getting all the facilities in place. And so there's this sort of, I think, interest in what's best for the country and how we want to grow that industry and support it. And it's really exciting to be in an industry like utilities, which is one of those often taken for granted industries to now see it in the center of something so important and in the public eye. And so that's really exciting.I think for our industry it's both a real great opportunity as well as potentially really big risk if this turns out as some are worried about that the demand will never materialize or it's being way overstated and we put in a lot of infrastructure and cost to support this demand and it never shows up. So I think those are really important factors that the industry is grappling with. And I'm really excited about where this goes. Of course, I would love the U.S. to remain at the forefront and for our utilities to grow and prosper by supporting the AI growth.Brad Langley: Spend a little time talking about demand flexibility more generally. Demand flex is becoming critical with supply chain constraints limiting new generation. How can rates and programs help flatten load shapes and manage peak demand more effectively?Scott Engstrom: Certainly what we've seen really consistently at a probably smaller scale are the time of use rates at utilities we've worked with, really in some cases create pretty sensational results. One of the best results we have is one of our customers in Southern California calculated that during one of the heat storms here in California in 2022 on one of the peak days, customers responding to that price signal in the time of use rates to reduce load by 75 megawatts, which at the time was equivalent to about their third largest demand response program. And you probably know, Brad, demand response programs can be pretty clunky, expensive to administer. Time of use rates can be a much more simple, elegant solution to that. So in any case, I think that demand flexibility, as I mentioned before, that as our industry has changed, as more and more customers have put distributed energy resources behind the meter, it just creates a lot more variability on the system.I think sometimes this gets framed as an inconvenience to customers, and I might put it opposite. I might say that this gives an opportunity for customers to manage their bills. There are a lot of customers who have flexibility in the way they use energy, and if the utility was to offer me an incentive to use less electricity at a time when I didn't need to, if I was a business or a residential customer with an electric vehicle, I'd be happy to take advantage of that opportunity and reduce my utility bill. So it's often positioned as an imposition on customers, but actually demand flexibility and programs and rates that are structured in the right way can deliver a lot of benefits both to the customer and to the utility and the grid. So one other example that we hear a lot of these days that certainly the FERC and others have been a lot of papers released about what VPPs or virtual power plants can do to demand or the peak periods help create demand flexibility.And that's definitely true. We see those companies that are out there that are aggregating loads through things like thermostats and electric vehicles and batteries and other resources have a real potential to do that. And we're really excited about that. And in fact, in particular at GridX, I think we're doing a couple things to really accelerate how VPPs can be successful. One is you have to get those devices out there, so you have to have customers with the thermostats, with solar on their roof, with batteries in their houses. And certainly there are early adopters who are very interested and know well the benefits of these, but for a lot of customers, they're just sort of curious, interested. And we have invested heavily in helping them understand the economics of these behind the meter resources so that utilities with incentives and rebates and really have a great value for their customers just in owning them on their own, not to mention participating in a virtual power plant program.So that's a product we call GridX Explorer, and we think it's really important to help customers as they look at more and more of these options and they become more and more economical. And then of course, you have to have the right tariff, the right rate, essentially for customers to be on who then are willing to give over control of those devices to a third party who in that control can be flexible. So helping the utilities design the right rate that create the incentives for customers to recognize the savings they're expecting and the economics they're expecting from acquiring those behind the meter resources.Brad Langley: Scott, we've worked together now for about three and a half years, very happily for me at least. I know you're a fan of the show. So this question should be on your radar here. What superpower do you bring into the energy transition?Scott Engstrom: Well, if I say humility, I think that's too much of a contradiction, right? I like to think of myself as humble and not taking myself too seriously, but I think the superpower that I really truly like to think I have, I hope I have, is the ability to see both the big picture and in detail, particularly at least when it comes to the issues that GridX is focused on. I think my background we talked about in finance and thinking about things at a very high level across lots of utilities, across lots of states, helps me see the big picture in that role. I was talking to CEOs and CFOs, so having a perspective into what's important to the C-Suite helps me think about how GridX should be helpful for those big pictures and solve big strategic problems for utilities. But then having been at a small company for so long where you had to do everything, including working with the customers on implementation, it helped me really understand the details of how do you make this all happen? What has to happen at the detail level, at the individual customer level with the systems, with the integration? So being able to bridge that high level strategic thinking with low level understanding of details, I think provides me with some superpower.Brad Langley: Agreed. Well, Scott, thank you so much for coming on the show. I loved our conversation.Scott Engstrom: Thanks, Brad. Thanks for having me on With Great Power, my favorite podcast of all.Brad Langley: Scott Engstrom is the co-founder and chief customer officer at GridX. With Great Power is produced by GridX in partnership with Latitude Studios. Delivering on the clean energy future is complex. GridX exists to simplify the journey. GridX is the enterprise rate platform that modern utilities rely on to usher in our clean energy future. We design and implement emerging rate structures and we increase consumer investment in clean energy all while managing the complex billing needs of a distributed grid. Erin Hardick is our producer. Anne Bailey is our senior editor. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor, Sean Marquand composed the original theme song and mixed the show. The GridX production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and me, Brad Langley. If this show is providing value for you and we really hope it is, we'd love it if you could help us spread the word. You can rate or review us at Apple and Spotify, or you can share a link with a friend, colleague, or the energy nerd in your life. As always, thanks so much for listening. I'm Brad Langley.

Robert Fortunato and his wife needed to expand their home in Redondo Beach, California to welcome a child and incorporate two home offices, and they wanted it to be healthy and sustainable. After traveling the world, Robert wanted to incorporate best practices.. like the clever and complete use of materials in island countries demonstrated with coconuts in Sri Lanka, to passive solar design akin to Mesa Verde in Colorado, and non-toxic building material use in Denmark. As he and his wife planned their home remodel, Robert was struck by the black soot on his windowsills, and struck even more so when he learned that his own home was producing the soot... from cooking, water heating, his furnace, and his garaged car. He certainly didn't want that for his family. After employing a reputable green architect to create a healthy home, and having his vision suffer disappointment, Robert questioned authority. What he dubbed his "impossible home" became a labor of love, community involvement, and a demonstration of what is possible. Robert is a musician from Philadelphia. His dance band there became highly popular because Robert bought an early Mac computer and learned to market his gigs. His tenacity and entrepreneurial spirit earned him a spot at the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania where he studied business. When he met Monica, who became his wife, they travelled the world visiting 20 countries with their eyes wide open. They learned many lessons that they wanted to incorporate in their home... and they did.The architect was fired. Robert used Sketch-Up to design a home with a major overhang to keep out the summer heat and keep the home cool. He ditched natural gas in favor of solar and an all-electric home. He turned to his community and found an abundance of talented folks all keen on pitching in. Fully 97% of the materials in the old home were repurposed, he cut his energy use by 70%, solar produced enough energy for his home and car, and he capped his natural gas line. All told, the project engaged 70 collaborators, and at its conclusion he'd had 5,000 visitors to witness his Living Building Challenge certified home, it garnered lots of press and a Los Angeles County green leadership award.Robert today runs ForStrategy Consulting, a firm that coaches leadership and innovation. He notes that he likes to "coach clients out of dark places!" In addition to playing his drums, being a band leader, and continuing his passion for music.. he provides green home and building decarbonization consulting for Southern California Edison and others... proving that if you have a vision, and you pursue it diligently, you can serve yourself and others with a healthy home and fulfilling lifestyle.

Today on AirTalk, Southern California Edison announces direct compensation program for Eaton Fire victims; a check in with Attorney General Rob Bonta; core substitute teacher memories of yours?; how the funding cuts will effect smaller radio stations and TV Talk. Today on AirTalk SoCal Edison will provide compensation to Eaton Fire victims (00:15) CA Attorney General Rob Bonta (19:48) Best (and worst) substitute teachers (37:44) CA community college 'ghost students' (51:21) How small public radio are faring (1:06:45) TV Talk (1:25:30) Visit www.preppi.com/LAist to receive a FREE Preppi Emergency Kit (with any purchase over $100) and be prepared for the next wildfire, earthquake or emergency!

Southern California Edison says it will pay Eaton Fire victims straight from its pockets. An LA County Supervisor is disputing claims that firefighters neglected one of the worst hit neighborhoods in the Eaton Fire. Nurses condemn Kaiser's decision to end gender-affirming surgeries for minors. Plus, more.Support The L.A. Report by donating at LAist.com/join and by visiting https://laist.comVisit www.preppi.com/LAist to receive a FREE Preppi Emergency Kit (with any purchase over $100) and be prepared for the next wildfire, earthquake or emergency! Support the show: https://laist.com

In Episode 77 of The Power Element Podcast, we welcome Jill Anderson, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Southern California Edison, to the studio. In this Question & Discussion episode, Raul and Jill dive into conversations on leadership, company culture, and emerging trends in the industry.Thank you, Jill Anderson. @jillenergyThis podcast is powered by: @sturgeon_electric & @myrgroup Check out and support our Promotional Partners: @milwaukeetools @coeyewear @highvoltageindustries3080 @kleintools @buckingham_mfg @workingathlete @jelcosafety totalsafety.comSpecial Thank You @linemanmama @highvoltagecommandoAd Music Provided by: Daniel Sanchez @d.s.s._beatsFollow us on Instagram @californialineworksMay we all continue to guide and support those in need. Please continue the conversation about mental health and well-being within your community. Be your Brother's Keeper. Visit www.lineco.org for assistance through LINECO. Suicide and Crisis and Lifeline Dial 988.

Friday July 4, 2025 Southern California Edison to Pay $82.5 Million to Settle Bobcat Fire Lawsuit

Podcast: PrOTect It All (LS 26 · TOP 10% what is this?)Episode: Driving OT Security Innovation: AI, Risk Reduction, and the Future of Critical InfrastructurePub date: 2025-06-23Get Podcast Transcript →powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarizationWelcome back to Protect It All! In this episode, host Aaron Crow sits down with longtime friend and OT cybersecurity veteran Brian Proctor for a deep dive into the current state—and future—of the OT cyber landscape. Together, they trade stories from the front lines, reflecting on how their early experiences as asset owners shaped their passion for innovation and helping critical infrastructure run safely and securely. Brian, whose career spans roles from OT engineer to startup co-founder, opens up about his journey—highlighting his drive to push the boundaries of traditional OT security and the evolution of key industry technologies. The conversation explores everything from the persistent lack of innovation in OT, to AI's growing role in tackling the daunting challenges of risk reduction, visibility, and scaling assessments across sprawling environments. If you've ever wondered how new tech like AI is reshaping industrial cybersecurity, why “we've always done it this way” just doesn't cut it anymore, or how organizations can realistically stay ahead without breaking the bank, this episode delivers honest insights, practical advice, and a look toward an exciting, if sometimes daunting, future. So grab your headphones and settle in as Aaron and Brian share stories, hot takes, and strategies designed to protect it all—because in critical infrastructure, the stakes have never been higher. Key Moments:  06:45 OT Cyber Industry Evolution 11:57 Evolving Challenges in OT Security 19:34 Bridging the OT Security Skills Gap 21:54 Enhancing OT Security Understanding 30:46 AI Model Security Challenges 34:26 Rapid Scaling for Site Assessments 40:56 Simulating Cyber Threat Responses 47:19 Operational Priorities: Equipment vs. Cyber Tools 49:30 Focus on Meaningful Security Metrics 56:30 Rapid AI Adoption vs. Internet 01:02:12 Cybersecurity: Small Targets are Vulnerable About the guest :  Brian Proctor is a cybersecurity leader with over 20 years of experience protecting critical infrastructure across energy, industrial automation, and operational technology sectors. As the co-founder and CEO of Frenos, he empowers critical infrastructure operators to proactively secure their environments against evolving cyber threats. Brian built his foundation in ICS/OT cybersecurity during his 13+ year tenure at two progressive California Investor Owned Utilities, San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison serving the 2nd and 8th largest cities in the United States. He managed a team of 15 security engineers and researchers across 150+ projects, established OT security roadmaps, and co-invented an R&D Magazine Top 100 award-winning GPS anti-spoofing mitigation technology that earned him a patent. Brian has published IEEE papers on security monitoring, served as Critical Infrastructure Co-Chair for Securing Our eCity, and regularly speaks at conferences to educate and build the ICS/OT cybersecurity community. He holds technical certifications including GICSP, CISSP, and CRISC, along with a Business Administration degree from the University of San Diego. Links:  https://frenos.io/services - Learn more about Optica, the industry's first tech-enabled rapid OT visibility service  https://frenos.io/autonomous-ot-security-assessment-platform - Learn more about how to automate OT security risk assessments Connect Brian : https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianproctor67/ Connect With Aaron Crow: Website: www.corvosec.com  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronccrow   Learn more about PrOTect IT All: Email: info@protectitall.co  Website: https://protectitall.co/  X: https://twitter.com/protectitall  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PrOTectITAll  FaceBook:  https://facebook.com/protectitallpodcast    To be a guest or suggest a guest/episode, please email us at info@protectitall.co   Please leave us a review on Apple/Spotify Podcasts: Apple   - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/protect-it-all/id1727211124 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/1Vvi0euj3rE8xObK0yvYi4The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Aaron Crow, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.

Enjoy this"fireside chat" with Jill Anderson, Executive Vice President of Operations at Southern California Edison, in which we will discuss the art of creating diverse, high performing teams that build on different perspectives and experiences in order to drive the clean energy transition. Learn how Jill has used her unique perspective to progress her career and how she fosters open, collaborative teams as a leader. Speakers:Moderated by Sangeeta Ranade, Vice President of Energy as a Service, AlphaStruxureJill C. Anderson, EVP of Operations, Southern California Edison

In this episode of The Broadband Bunch, host Brad Hine is joined by Rusty Williams, President and CEO of the Utilities Technology Council (UTC), for a preview of the 2025 UTC Annual Conference, taking place June 16–19 in Long Beach, California. With over 30 years of experience spanning utilities, telecom, IT, and network integration, Rusty shares a behind-the-scenes look at this year's event—from its deep-rooted history and evolving educational programming to exciting keynote speakers, including Southern California Edison's Todd Inlander and FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington. You will learn about key themes such as AI in utilities, managing legacy infrastructure, spectrum and wireless connectivity, the launch of UTC's new cybersecurity program ARMOR, and the highly anticipated UTC Academy—a training initiative designed to close the skills gap in utility telecom and IT operations.

In this episode of the All Things Sustainable podcast, we sit down with Shinjini Menon, Senior Vice President of System Planning and Engineering at Southern California Edison, an investor-owned public utility operating as a subsidiary of Edison International.   Southern California Edison is one of the largest US electric utilities, and Shinjini explains how it is prioritizing energy reliability and affordability while also building climate resilience — a topic that is particularly urgent in Southern California, where the risk of wildfires is so high.   “We have put forward a pretty ambitious goal for decarbonization and the electrification that we believe is necessary for affordable decarbonization,” Shinjini says.   “At the end of the day, it's about all of our communities having affordable access to energy, reliable energy, and having that energy security.”   Shinjini explains how the utility uses technology, modeling and data to mitigate wildfire risks and make the grid more resilient. She says Southern California Edison has learned from peers in the US and other parts of the world as it works to build climate resilience.   Listen to last week's interviews from the CERAWeek conference hosted by S&P Global here. Listen to our podcast episode about 2025 wildfires in Los Angeles here.  Read research from S&P Global Sustainable1 about the projected financial costs of climate change for the world's largest companies. Learn more about the S&P Global Sustainable1 Physical Risk dataset.  This piece was published by S&P Global Sustainable1, a part of S&P Global.           Copyright ©2025 by S&P Global           DISCLAIMER     By accessing this Podcast, I acknowledge that S&P GLOBAL makes no warranty, guarantee, or representation as to the accuracy or sufficiency of the information featured in this Podcast. The information, opinions, and recommendations presented in this Podcast are for general information only and any reliance on the information provided in this Podcast is done at your own risk. This Podcast should not be considered professional advice. Unless specifically stated otherwise, S&P GLOBAL does not endorse, approve, recommend, or certify any information, product, process, service, or organization presented or mentioned in this Podcast, and information from this Podcast should not be referenced in any way to imply such approval or endorsement. The third party materials or content of any third party site referenced in this Podcast do not necessarily reflect the opinions, standards or policies of S&P GLOBAL. S&P GLOBAL assumes no responsibility or liability for the accuracy or completeness of the content contained in third party materials or on third party sites referenced in this Podcast or the compliance with applicable laws of such materials and/or links referenced herein. Moreover, S&P GLOBAL makes no warranty that this Podcast, or the server that makes it available, is free of viruses, worms, or other elements or codes that manifest contaminating or destructive properties.     S&P GLOBAL EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL LIABILITY OR RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR OTHER DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF ANY INDIVIDUAL'S USE OF, REFERENCE TO, RELIANCE ON, OR INABILITY TO USE, THIS PODCAST OR THE INFORMATION PRESENTED IN THIS PODCAST.

Southern California Edison is firing back over a new report about the origin of the Eaton Fire. A suspected gang leader accused of being a mafia-like mastermind heads to court. The new technology that will have you thinking twice, the next time you want to drive in a bus lane. Plus, more.Support The L.A. Report by donating at LAist.com/join and by visiting https://laist.comSupport the show: https://laist.com

Southern California's wildfire season has turned into a year-round crisis, and with it comes a surge in litigation. On this episode of the Emerging Litigation Podcast, we explore the aftermath of the devastating January 2025 wildfires, including the high-profile Eaton and Palisades fires, and the complex legal battles now unfolding.My guest, Ed Diab, is a founding partner of Diab Chambers LLP, a boutique law firm with a sharp focus on wildfire litigation. Ed and his team have worked alongside national firm Baron & Budd to represent over 100 public entities in wildfire cases dating back to 2015. His deep experience in this area, combined with an insider's perspective on utility liability, makes him uniquely qualified to discuss the challenges and strategies involved in these high-stakes cases.As of early 2025, more than 100 cases have been filed against utilities like Southern California Edison, with public entities, individuals, and insurance carriers seeking damages for widespread destruction. In this conversation, Ed breaks down the causes of these fires, the legal strategies in play, and the uphill battle plaintiffs face when going up against major power utilities.Ed walks us through California's unique inverse condemnation doctrine, negligence claims, and how utility companies defend themselves—challenging liability, infrastructure management, and fire prevention efforts. We also discuss the challenges of evidence preservation, particularly when transmission towers remain critical to the state's power grid.From the legal wrangling over the Eaton Fire to the complexities of the Palisades rekindle, Ed shares the latest developments and what litigators should expect moving forward. His insight into the coordination between local and national firms and how they've successfully pursued wildfire claims makes this a must-listen episode for anyone following disaster-related litigation.

(Tuesday 03/18/25)Amy King and Chris Merrill for Handel on the News. Israel has launched deadly airstrikes in Gaza. Southern California Edison is investigating a 'zombie' power line as a possible cause of the Eaton Fire. After a federal judge questioned Trump's deportations, Trump is seeking to replace the judge. On opening day in Tokyo, Shohei Ohtani and the Dodgers prepare to start the MLB season, while Spectrum offers a streaming-only subscription for Dodgers games. In other news, SpaceX's Dragon capsule has undocked from the ISS. The search for missing Pittsburgh student Sudiksha Konanki continues, with new surveillance footage and a person's passport confiscated. The U.S. has issued travel advisories for spring break. Trump announced that JFK assassination files will be released today. Harvard is going tuition-free for families earning up to $200,000, and California Governor Newsom plans to request an additional $2.8 billion for Medi-Cal cost overruns.

Robert Sallander discusses the complex litigation against Southern California Edison for the Eaton Wildfire brought by over 100 insurance companies in Los Angeles Superior Court. Have a topic you'd like Bob to cover? Submit it to questions@gpsllp.com, or connect with Bob directly on LinkedIn.And if you'd like to know more about GPSL, check out our website.You can also find us on LinkedIn, X, and Facebook.

Industrial Talk is onsite at PowerGen and talking to Joe Patch, Founder at Confio Group about "Renewable and Clean Tech Recruiting". Scott MacKenzie hosts an industrial podcast featuring Joe Patch, CEO of Confio Group, a company specializing in energy recruiting and staffing. Joe discusses the challenges in the power industry, particularly the shortage of engineers and the importance of obtaining a Professional Engineer (PE) license. He highlights the growing demand for power, citing a need for 80 gigawatts of data center power in six years. Joe emphasizes the value of networking and retainer relationships in recruiting. He also touches on the diverse opportunities in the energy sector, including roles in finance, operations, and marketing. Joe encourages young professionals to explore the dynamic and mission-critical field of power generation. Action Items [ ] Connect with Joe Patch and the Confio Group team on LinkedIn or through their website at confiogroup.com. [ ] Explore opportunities in the energy industry, particularly in emerging technologies like hydrogen, as potential career paths. [ ] Consider obtaining a Professional Engineer (PE) license to open up more opportunities in the power and energy sectors. Outline Introduction and Welcome to Industrial Talk Podcast Scott MacKenzie introduces the Industrial Talk Podcast, emphasizing its focus on industry professionals and innovations. Scott welcomes listeners and thanks them for their support, highlighting the podcast's dedication to celebrating industry professionals. Scott mentions the Power Gen conference in Dallas, Texas, and encourages listeners to visit if they are in the power business. Scott introduces Joe Patch, the guest for the episode, and sets the stage for the discussion on resources, people, and industry trends. Joe Patch's Background and Company Introduction Joe Patch introduces himself and his company, Confio Group, which means "trust" in Spanish. Joe shares his background, starting in the power business in the early 2000s after finishing graduate school and joining his father's firm. Joe's father, who worked for Bechtel, started his own firm in the late 80s, focusing on power projects. Joe discusses his non-engineering background but mentions the educational experience he received growing up in a household with a civil engineer. Joe's Early Experiences and Family Influence Joe recounts bringing his 13-year-old son, Anthony, to the Power Gen conference to expose him to the dynamic world of energy. Joe shares memories of accompanying his father to power projects, which provided him with a deep understanding of the industry. Joe emphasizes the importance of being on job sites, understanding the culture, and building relationships with tradespeople. Scott shares a similar experience, mentioning his father's work at Southern California Edison and the impact of early exposure to the industry. Staffing Challenges and Workforce Development Scott and Joe discuss the challenges of staffing and workforce development in the power industry. Joe highlights the difficulty of finding enough engineers, especially in hard engineering disciplines like structural, civil, mechanical, and electrical. Joe advises graduating engineers to obtain a Professional Engineer (PE) license to open more career opportunities. Joe emphasizes the importance of getting the word out about the opportunities in the energy sector to...

Rich discusses the top news items of the day, including the House censuring Rep. Al Green (D-TX) for interrupting President Trump's speech this week. Next, a discussion of DOGE and details of a Gallup poll on media trust with GOP strategist Jenn Kelly. We also check in with Susan Crabtree, White House/national political correspondent at RealClearPolitics, for a look at L.A. County's lawsuit against Southern California Edison over the the recent wildfires. Later, Nadine Ness shares the story of how she became a Royal Canadian Police Officer, a trained profiler, and now the founder and president of Unified Grassroots. Her mission: to stop sexual abuse and trafficking of children. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

(March 06, 2025)Amy King and Neil Saavedra join Bill for Handel on the News. Trump issues ‘last warning' to Hamas to release all hostages in Gaza, as US holds direct talks with Hamas. L.A County sues Southern California Edison over Eaton Fire. Europe's leaders are meeting for another crucial Ukraine summit. Can they seize momentum back from Trump? Federal judge blocks funding cuts to medical research. CDC rescinds termination notice, calls about 180 fired employees back. Trump grants one-month exemption for US automakers from Mexico, Canada tariffs.

Southern California Edison is facing new lawsuits from municipalities alleging that its equipment started the Eaton Fire. Much of Sierra Madre is under another evacuation warning today. Huntington Beach voters will weigh in this week on who controls the city's libraries. Plus, more.Support The L.A. Report by donating at LAist.com/join and by visiting https://laist.comSupport the show: https://laist.com

Demócratas y republicanos reaccionaron al discurso del presidente ante el pleno del Congreso. Durante su discurso Donald Trump defendió sus controversiales medidas en temas de migración, economía, política exterior y recortes federales.En otras noticias: Un día después de que el mercado bursátil se desplomara por la imposición de aranceles el presidente Trump retrasó temporalmente las tarifas sobre automóviles de México y Canadá.Demócratas y republicanos reaccionaron al discurso del presidente Trump ante el pleno del Congreso. La Corte Suprema rechazó la solicitud de la administración Trump de mantener congelados los fondos para ayuda internacional.Al menos cuatro alcaldes de ciudades santuario fueron fuertemente cuestionados en el Congreso y fueron acusados de albergar a criminales. 

Al menos doce estados han aceptado que sus autoridades locales colaboren con agentes de ICE en la detención, transferencia e identificación de inmigrantes indocumentados. En otras noticias: ¿En qué consiste el registro de inmigrantes indocumentados, cómo se hace y cuáles son las consecuencias de no hacerlo?Los alcaldes de Denver, Nueva York, Chicago y Boston defendieron sus políticas de 'ciudades santuario' ante la Cámara de Representantes donde fueron acusados de proteger y refugiar delincuentes.El presidente Trump firmaría una orden ejecutiva para cerrar el Departamento de Educación, además despediría a miles de empleados del Departamento de veteranos.La Casa Blanca anunció que eximirá por un mes a los fabricantes de autos de México y Canadá de los aranceles que entraron en vigor el pasado 04 de marzo.Claudia Sheinbaum y Donald Trump tendrán una llamada para negociar el tema de los aranceles. 

Anuncian exención en los aranceles de México y Canadá para fabricantes de autos; las cárceles en Miami-Dade colaborarán con agentes del Servicio de Inmigración y Aduanas y el condado de Los Ángeles demanda a la empresa eléctrica Southern California Edison por el incendio Eaton, entre otras noticias. Más información en UnivisionNoticias.com.

In our news wrap Wednesday, President Trump spoke with major automakers before announcing a one-month pause on new tariffs for vehicles coming to the U.S. from Canada and Mexico, severe weather is battering a large chunk of the U.S., LA County is suing Southern California Edison stating the utility's equipment caused the deadly Eaton Fire and NBA superstar LeBron James hits a new milestone. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

AP correspondent Haya Panjwani reports on a California lawsuit related to the devastating wildfires.

California's long-delayed and over budget high-speed rail project is under threat again by the Trump administration. During his first term in office, Trump tried, without success, to claw back nearly a billion dollars in federal aid for the project, which one day is supposed to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco. Now this second Trump Administration is launching an investigation into high speed rail. That could jeopardize $4 billion in funds that the feds have committed for constructing the project's first segment in the Central Valley. Reporter: Dan Brekke, KQED Lawmakers at the state capitol are rolling out proposals to lower Californians' electricity bills, including by taking aim at the rate-increases from investor owned utilities like PG&E and Southern California Edison. But saving money for some ratepayers may come at the expense of other Californians. Reporter: Guy Marzorati, KQED The Los Angeles fires have renewed concerns about how well prepared California is to support older people and people who have disabilities during natural disasters. Reporter: Ana Ibarra, CalMatters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The latest guest on The PR Week podcast is Beth M. Foley, VP and chief communications officer for Edison International and Southern California Edison. She talks about Southern California's recovery from wildfires that ravaged the region early this year, and how authorities can ensure their messages remain front and center amid a hectic news cycle. She also discusses the importance of internal comms and reaching different audiences. Plus, PRWeek senior reporter Jess Ruderman on the biggest marketing and communications news of the week, including the death — or not — of Duolingo's mascot, Edelman's new predictive intelligence lead and the ongoing dispute between President Donald Trump and the Associated Press.  Upcoming events!PR pros, it's time to build the future! Join PRDecoded: Comms at a Crossroads on February 4, 2025, at Convene, 237 Park Ave, NYC.Dive into the hottest trends—The White House, employee engagement, State of Mind Marketing, PE & PR, DE&I, stakeholder capitalism—and connect with industry leaders shaping what's next.Don't miss this chance to elevate your impact. Visit PRDecoded.com to register now!PRDecoded: Comms at a Crossroads. Healthcare PR pros, don't miss the PRWeek Healthcare Conference on February 4, 2025, at Convene, 237 Park Ave, NYC.Dive into health under the new administration, health equity, the latest for GLP-1s, industry innovation and best practice shaping healthcare comms. Register now at prweekushealthcare.com Follow us: @PRWeekUSReceive the latest industry news, insights, and special reports. Start Your Free 1-Month Trial Subscription To PRWeek

Podcast: Nexus: A Claroty Podcast (LS 32 · TOP 5% what is this?)Episode: Nexus Podcast: Brian Foster on the Risks of a Hyperconnected GridPub date: 2025-02-11Get Podcast Transcript →powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarizationBrian Foster, Senior Advisor for Grid Security at Southern California Edison, joins the Nexus Podcast to discuss a presentation he gave at the S4 Conference called . Foster covers the impending risk and host of exposures expected as smart meters and other similar devices are centrally managed online. This scenario gives attackers the ability to attack devices at scale and potentially cause catastrophic damage. Listen to every episode of the Nexus Podcast here. The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Claroty, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.

Brian Foster, Senior Advisor for Grid Security at Southern California Edison, joins the Nexus Podcast to discuss a presentation he gave at the S4 Conference called . Foster covers the impending risk and host of exposures expected as smart meters and other similar devices are centrally managed online. This scenario gives attackers the ability to attack devices at scale and potentially cause catastrophic damage. Listen to every episode of the Nexus Podcast here. 

La nueva fiscal: Pam Bondi cortó los fondos federales para las ciudades santuario. Además demandó a algunas ciudades acusándolas de interferir con los esfuerzos federales para hacer cumplir las leyes migratorias.En otras noticias: El distrito escolar de Alice, Texas informó a los padres que los estudiantes podrían ser objetivo de operativos de ICE mientras son transportados hacia sus casas o escuelas. Congresistas republicanos de Tennessee presentaron una propuesta que negaría la educación pública a niños indocumentados.Por tercera vez un juez federal ordenó poner pausa  a la orden ejecutiva que le negaría la ciudadanía a hijos de indocumentados.

If we can binge-watch our favorite shows or have groceries delivered with a tap, why does navigating healthcare still feel like a maze? Is it time to rethink the patient experience from the ground up? Joining us today is Adeline Ashley, Director of Customer Engagement at Sitecore and author of the groundbreaking book, Shop Stream Heal: Transforming Patient Care in the Digital Age. With over 20 years of experience leading digital transformation for major brands like Oprah, Anthem, and Southern California Edison, Adeline has dedicated her career to bridging the gap between consumer-grade digital experiences and patient care. Her mission is to create healthcare experiences that are accessible, intuitive, and, above all, human. Adeline Ashley is a digital marketing heavyweight and entrepreneurial force in innovative customer experiences. For over twenty years, working with brands like Oprah, Southern California Edison, Anthem, and major healthcare systems, she has spearheaded pioneering initiatives that merge creativity with data-driven strategies to forge lasting connections. From award-winning entrepreneurial ventures like her gourmet foods line to developing engaging digital platforms, she has a proven track record of identifying gaps and delivering groundbreaking solutions. This entrepreneurial mindset now fuels her role as the global healthcare lead at Sitecore, where she is revolutionizing the digital patient journey in healthcare by seamlessly blending human insights with cutting-edge technologies. RESOURCES Shop Stream Heal: Transforming Patient Care in the Digital Age by Adeline Ashley: https://amzn.to/4gfoMGu Sitecore: https://www.sitecore.com Don't miss Medallia Experience 2025, March 24-26 in Las Vegas: Registration is now available: https://cvent.me/AmO1k0 Use code MEDEXP25 for $200 off registration Register now for HumanX 2025. This AI-focused event which brings some of the most forward-thinking minds in technology together. Register now with the code "HX25p_tab" for $250 off the regular price. Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstrom Don't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://www.theagilebrand.show Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://www.teksystems.com/versionnextnow The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company

At least 28 are now confirmed dead from the Los Angeles area wildfires. At least two of the victims' families have filed lawsuits against Southern California Edison alleging negligence and that the utility's equipment may have sparked a fire. As we learn more about the victims, we are taking a moment to focus on the legacies they leave behind. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Renowned civil rights attorney Ben Crump talks about filing the first wrongful death lawsuit for wildfire victims against utility giant, Southern California Edison, for its role in the fires that claimed the life of Altadena resident Evelyn McClendon.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/tavis-smiley--6286410/support.

ICYMI: Hour ONE of ‘Later, with Mo'Kelly' Presents – Ongoing Coverage of the SoCal wildfires with a look at some of the lawsuits that have been filed against Southern California Edison over the Eaton fire … PLUS – Los Angeles County, Third District, Supervisor Lindsey Horvath joins the program with an in-depth look at the SoCal Wildfires - on KFI AM 640…Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app

Four lawsuits were filed Monday accusing Southern California Edison of sparking the Eaton fire. Please Like, Comment and Follow 'The Afternoon Drive with Philip Teresi & E. Curtis Johnson' on all platforms: --- The Afternoon Drive with Philip Teresi & E. Curtis Johnson is available on the KMJNOW app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever else you listen to podcasts. -- The Afternoon Drive with Philip Teresi & E. Curtis Johnson Weekdays 2-6 PM Pacific on News/Talk 580 AM & 105.9 FM KMJ | Website | Facebook | Instagram | X | Podcast | Amazon | - Everything KMJ KMJNOW App | Podcasts | Facebook | X | Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today's Headlines: The Los Angeles wildfire death toll has risen to 24, with a Particularly Dangerous Situation advisory in effect due to high winds, while lawsuits claim Southern California Edison's equipment sparked the Eaton Fire, which has burned over 14,000 acres. In Congress, Trump's defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth faces confirmation hearings amid controversy, and Senator Markey proposes delaying the TikTok sale deadline, with reports of Elon Musk being considered to acquire its U.S. operations. A House bill seeks to allow Trump to negotiate acquiring Greenland, as Denmark signals openness to increased U.S. military presence there. The DOJ expanded its antitrust lawsuit against major landlords and RealPage for alleged rent price-fixing. Meanwhile, President Biden's final foreign policy address highlighted U.S. alliances and progress toward a potential Israel-Hamas hostage and ceasefire deal. Resources/Articles mentioned in this episode: Axios: Wildfires death toll rises to 24 as L.A. area faces fresh threats  Reuters: Southern California Edison faces lawsuits over Los Angeles wildfires MSN: Edison energy company investigated over possible LA fire link The WA Post: Pete Hegseth, Trump's Pentagon pick, faces tough confirmation test Senator Markey: Senator Markey to Introduce Bill to Extend Deadline for TikTok Ban, Takes to Senate Floor in Support of Vibrant Online Communities Bloomberg: China Discusses Sale of TikTok US to Musk as One Possible Option Axios: House GOP crafts bill to let Trump purchase Greenland ProPublica: Justice Department Sues Six of the Nation's Largest Landlords in Effort to Stop Alleged Price-Fixing in Rental Markets NBC News: Ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas 'on the brink of coming to fruition,' Biden says Morning Announcements is produced by Sami Sage alongside Bridget Schwartz and edited by Grace Hernandez-Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Description:In this episode of Kilowatt, I kick off the discussion with Waymo's plans to expand its autonomous taxi service into Japan, followed by Michigan's first federally funded NEVI EV fast charger installation. I also cover Southern California Edison's addition of 280 Chevy Silverado EVs to its fleet, a recall on the Chevy Equinox EV for a pedestrian alert system issue, and Ford's $9.63 billion loan to enhance EV manufacturing. Additionally, I highlight Shaquille O'Neal's unique Lucid Air transformation, the Zeekr 7X electric SUV's upcoming European debut, and Factorial's groundbreaking solid-state battery technology. Lastly, I dive into Tesla's lithium refining operation progress and updates on its full self-driving software, alongside concerning reports about hardware 4 failures.Support the Show:PatreonAcast+Other Podcasts:Beyond the Post YouTubeBeyond the Post PodcastShuffle PlaylistNews:Waymo Heads To JapanGM Recall Chevy Equinox EVZeekr 7X Heads To EuropeSoCal Edison Adds 280 Chevy Silverado EVs To The FleetShaquille O'Neil's Custom Lucid AirFord Gets a $9.63 Billion Loan For Blue Oval CityFord's EV Winter TipsFactorial's Solid State BatteryTesla's Texas Lithium RefineryTesla's AI/HW 4 IssuesTesla Rolls Out V.13 To All HW/AI 4 VehiclesMichigan's First NEVI Charger*Art by Dall-ESupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/kilowatt. Support the show at https://plus.acast.com/s/kilowatt. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.