DER Task Force

We’re back for our first solo pod in months! We talk about what everyone is talking about these days… VPPs and load growth from AI. Is all this hype and talk about our space a good thing? Tune in to hear the Task Force unpack and set the narrative straight. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dertaskforce.com/sub...

We’re back, this time with Allison Bates Wannop, DERTF’s policy lead! We cover an absolute ton of stuff in this one: * Allison's background and introduction, Mother's Day acknowledgments * Mary Powell's influence, DER advocacy, the significance of FERC v. EPSA in shaping energy policy * Favorite DER categories, Vermont initiatives, impact of extreme weather on policy, details about the Green Mount...

Last week we sat down with Dave Riess, the CEO and co-founder of Wunder. They’re working hard to scale mid-sized commercial solar projects, where they believe the real TAM is in this market. Dave is an awesome guy who’s been grinding in the space for years now, so we naturally had a ton to talk about. * (00:02:55) Introduction and Guest Overview : Introduction of the hosts and the guest, David Ree...

We’re back! This time with Casey Handmer, founder and CEO of Terraform Industries. Terraform is building a system to turn cheap solar electricity into methane. To pull this off they’ll need to commercialize the most performant and lowest-cost electrolysis, carbon capture, and Sabatier reactors ever seen. Casey had a ton of interesting thoughts about how to pull this off from engineering fundamenta...

We’re back! This time we sat down with Quincy Lee, CEO and co-founder of Electric Era, an electric vehicle refueling company. Quincy has a super cool background - starting with designing skyscrapers, then moving on to space technology, and now he’s der-pilled. We talk about all kinds of stuff in this one: * what SpaceX and Starlink were like * why EV charging, or whoops, we mean “car refill” * EV...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.dertaskforce.com We’re back! This time with a VIDEO POD. We recorded this live at DTECH a few weeks ago and haven’t had time to upload it. But this is a fun one that you don’t want to miss. Not only did we finally find out what a DERMS is, but we also became fully converted distribution utility maxis after walking the show floor. We...

We’re back, this time joined by Jesse Jenkins - professor at Princeton and lead of the Zero Lab. We cover a ton of ground in this one, including: * Jesse’s DERs journey, including skepticism at times and optimism at others. * A ton of discussion on rate design. * Jesse’s recent pod on rooftop solar. * How the hell is rooftop solar so expensive here versus Australia? * Where DERs are unfairly advan...

We’re back! This time with Lynne Kiesling, Director of the Institute for Regulatory Law & Economics (IRLE) at Northwestern University. Lynne is an Economist who has been working on power systems issues since the early 2000s, with a focus on power markets, transactive energy, and “quarantining the monopoly” as she says. Lynne was a panelist at DERVOS, as paying subscribers know from our previously...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.dertaskforce.com Back in November we threw DERVOS, our annual distributed energy summit. It turned out awesome. We really couldn’t be happier or more grateful for how it went. The panels and speakers were great, the crowd that turned up was amazing, and the vehicle to rave afterparty was super fun. Because the talks and panels went...

We’re back! This time we sat down with Pier LaFarge, co-founder and CEO of Sparkfund. Those who listened to the DERVOS recording released last week may remember Pier pitching a utility-led DER deployment model. It was a pretty interesting idea that we felt deserved its own deep dive on a pod, so we invited Pier on to make the case for what is likely a very counterintuitive DERs approach for many i...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.dertaskforce.com Back in November we threw DERVOS, our annual distributed energy summit. It turned out awesome. We really couldn’t be happier or more grateful for how it went. The panels and speakers were great, the crowd that turned up was amazing, and the vehicle to rave afterparty was super fun. Because the talks and panels went...

Tune in for a chat on why ‘24 is TIME TO DER. Duncan and James reflect on the past 5 years before looking ahead at 2024 and beyond—and why the future is so exciting. We re-hash Dervos, retro our ‘23 new years resolutions, state our ‘24 resolutions, look back on the last 5 years in the space and where it is now, the current tech environment, building energy startups vs. thinking about energy, energ...

We’re back! This time with a perfect warmup for DERvos in a few days with DERTF OG Ben Carron. Ben has not only worked for FERC, Nat Grid, SunRun, E3, and now Enel X, but also was one of the earliest presenters at our original, pre-pandemic “DG Beers” happy hours. We wanted to have Ben on to get back to our energy market wonkery roots, so don’t worry—you won’t hear any stuff about twitter culture...

We’re back! And this time just Duncan and James to talk about weird twitter discourse again! Sorry… we promise we’ll go back to talking about wonky energy stuff in the next episodes. In this ep, we talk about Duncan’s Dad’s epic utility pole story, James’ other less successful business ventures, announcing the first ever V2R (Vehicle 2 Rave) application at DERvos, Marc Andreesen’s manifesto and Sa...

We’re back! Well, 2/3 of us are. In the first ever duo episode, Duncan and James wade deep into CDR, degrowth meme analysis, more thoughts on nuclear, and corporate environmentalism. They talk about climate week, CDR, the narrow focus of mainstream environmentalism on carbon and where the tree huggers at, comparing the popular memes of population decline and “we used to build things”, the opportun...

We’re back! And this time we peeled away from climate week events to record a late night ep with self-proclaimed Nuclear Bro, Mark Nelson. Grab a drink for this marathon of an episode and sink in as we wax poetic about one of our favorite religions, Nuclear Power. And we mean that in the best way. Tune in as we discuss Mark’s journey into nuclear and James’ journey away from it, early 10’s nuclear...

We’re back! And this time with a solo ep, for free! Going forward, we’re un-paywalling all eps and going NPR style: PLEASE think about donating $5 anyways. Here’s why: We are launching a policy team! The policy team will be focusing on enforcing the DERTF Bill of Rights . In order to do that, we need to raise money to pay a part-time or full-time policy lead. We’ll be doing this in two ways: throu...

We’re back! This time with Nick Van Osdol of “Keep Cool”, who is… pretty damn cool himself. Nick has a refreshing perspective and lens on climate reporting: equal parts skeptical, optimistic, empathetic, and rational. If only more people could engage like he does. In this wide-ranging ep we talk nuclear fusion, how to think about climate risk, if we should mess around with geo-engineering, Maersk...

We’re back! And this time we hosted OG DERTF Heads James McWalter (the better James) and Kyle Baranko from Paces at the David Energy HQ. They are working on one of the gnarliest problems in the entire clean energy space: permitting and interconnection. We go deeeep on the problem, so you don’t want to miss this. We are massive fans of them and what they’re building, and had so much fun recording t...

We’re back! And this time with THEE GOD Julian Spector. It’s our longest episode ever because we just couldn’t help ourselves going in with a member of the OG GTM Mafia. It’s worth it. Julian just had some super rad reporting on how the South is building a vibrant clean energy manufacturing hub , and we sat down to discuss. We nerd out on this one for the real DERTF heads! So settle in on the Four...

We’re back! And this time with Alfred Johnson, Founder and CEO of Crux. Crux just raised a seed round led by Lowercarbon Capital and is building a marketplace to help climate companies unlock billions in IRA tax credits. If you want to understand the IRA, look no further! We nerd out on everything from the ins and outs of transferability, what the democratization of tax credits means, who stands t...

We’re back! And this time with Matt Huber, an absolute legend and advocate for centralized public power. This was a different ep, but one of our favorite in awhile. In it, we talk about Marxist geography, how bizarre peak oil discourse was, the coming shift to electricity from oil, becoming un-DER-pilled, the possibilities of a centrally-planned decentralized grid, comparing (never before built) n...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.dertaskforce.com We’re back with a solo ep! And yeah, this one is paid. The NYT wrote an article on decarb bros and we have some thoughts. Tune in to listen to us talk about our first ever eco rave in LA right after we serve up a taxonomy of bros and their varying ethics: the decarb bro, the nuke bro, the bernie bro, the tech bro, t...

We’re back! This time on a FULLY SOLAR POWERED POD with absolute legends Corey and Xtina of the Solar Punks Club. We threw the first proper Eco Rave—a solar + storage powered party—at their HQ in LA. Tune in to hear us chat about it the night before the event, and check out more from the day of here . We talked about how they got DER-pilled as non-energy people (big shouts to Saul Griffith!), putt...

We’re back! This time with John Berger, the CEO and Founder of Sunnova. Sunnova is not only one of the largest solar and storage installers in the country, they are also one of the most innovative in their offerings to customers. From VPPS in Texas to free batteries and micro utilities in CA, Sunnova is setting the tone for a distributed future. Tune in to hear how John views consumer choice and d...