Energy Central

A major shift in U.S. energy and climate policy has reignited debate across the utility industry. When the Trump administration’s EPA moved to roll back the 2009 Endangerment Finding, the scientific determination that greenhouse gases threaten public health, it set off a wave of reactions throughout the energy sector. But how do utility professionals themselves actually view the move? To start to...

For years, EVs were treated as a looming grid problem that would lead to an epidemic of transformer overloads, unpredictable peaks, and expensive distribution upgrades. But what if EVs aren’t a liability but instead an asset to building a more flexible, resilient grid? In this episode of Power Perspectives, host Kinsey Grant Baker speaks with John Taggart, Co-Founder and President of WeaveGrid, to...

Reliability has become one of the most urgent topics in the utility sector today. As aging infrastructure meets rising electricity demand and more frequent extreme weather, utilities are facing growing pressure to keep the lights on while modernizing the grid. From vegetation management to conductor fatigue and storm resilience, the question isn’t whether upgrades are needed, but how utilities can...

The utility industry is entering a construction boom unlike anything seen in decades. From electrification and load growth to wildfire mitigation and resilience investments, utilities across the country are racing to build and upgrade transmission and distribution infrastructure. But scaling up construction isn’t just about building faster, it’s also about rethinking the entire construction lifecy...

Urban grids are running out of room , especially in dense cities where rooftop solar is limited, EV charging is complicated, and peak demand keeps climbing. Modernizing and growing utilities thus need new, novel ways to unlock flexibility without massive infrastructure overhauls. In this episode, Andrew Wang of Every Electric shares with host Kinsey Grant Baker his team’s unique approach to “drops...

The grid is aging fast, and demand is rising even faster. But while much of the conversation fixates on physical infrastructure, there's a critical, often overlooked piece of the puzzle: modeling. How utilities plan for the future—what tools they use, what data they trust, and how they stress-test their assumptions—can mean the difference between billions spent wisely and billions wasted. In this...

Distributech is the electric utility industry’s biggest annual event, and this episode of Power Perspectives breaks down what actually mattered on the ground. Host Kinsey Grant Baker is joined by Energy Central Community Manager Matt Chester to recap the most important conversations, trends, and takeaways from this year’s conference. From affordability and data centers to AI and distributed energy...

For decades, energy policy lived mostly in the background of American politics—important, but rarely decisive at the ballot box. After the 2025 election season, we have evidence of how that’s no longer the case. Rising electricity bills frustrating voters, visible grid strain they want to point to data centers as the culprit, and an overall competing narratives around affordability and climate pol...

What’s the most notable constraint on the energy transition? It’s not generation or technology, but the biggest slowdown is coming from the grid side and the ability to plan, operate, and scale power systems fast enough to meet demand. That’s according to Sabine Erlinghagen, CEO of Siemens Grid Software, and guest on this episode of Power Perspectives. Erlinghagen joins host Kinsey Grant Baker to...

As the electric grid faces accelerating pressure from electrification, data center growth, and extreme weather, much of the public conversation fixates on generation shortfalls and capacity additions. But beneath those headlines, some of the most consequential work is happening where customers actually experience the grid: on the wires. In this episode, host Kinsey Grant Baker chats with Kevin Wal...

For decades, load forecasting was one of the more stable disciplines in utility planning. Growth was incremental, assumptions were well understood, and long-term investments could be made with reasonable confidence. That era is over. In this episode, host Kinsey Grant Baker sits down with Darrin Kinney, Senior Vice President of Business Development at Integral Analytics, to unpack why uncertainty—...

Note: This episode was recorded in late November 2025. To keep up with the (many) updates to EPA policymaking, permitting reform, and more that have happened since this conversation...might we suggest the Energy Central Daily Newsletter? The clean energy transition is running into a critical constraint, and it’s not because of technology, capital, or ambition. Instead the bottleneck comes from how...

Physical security has become one of the grid’s most urgent and most misunderstood challenges. While cybersecurity rightly commands attention, attacks on substations and critical infrastructure are rising in frequency, sophistication, and intent. And unlike cyber threats, physical attacks don’t require advanced tools—just access, time, and opportunity. To dive into this essential area of concern fo...

Utility regulation doesn’t usually light up the algorithms on social media, but it’s a topic that quietly determines how much customers pay for electricity, who benefits from new clean energy investments, and whether innovation actually reaches everyday households. In other words, the utility regulation process directly impacts every single household and business and sets the stage for what our en...

In the current age of artificial intelligence, the challenge for utilities isn’t just how to power AI-driven data centers, it’s also how AI itself is changing grid operations, security, workforce needs, and the overall utility business model. In this episode of Power Perspectives, host Kinsey Grant Baker welcomes Paul Quinlan, Director of Energy Research at ScottMadden to peel back the curtain on...

Setting a zero-carbon target is one thing. Delivering it while keeping power reliable and affordable is something else entirely. In this episode of Power Perspectives, host Kinsey Grant Baker is joined by Rachel Huang, Director of Distributed Energy Solutions at SMUD, one of the first U.S. utilities to commit to a zero-carbon electricity supply by 2030. Rachel sits at the center of that effort, tr...

What happens to communities centered on fossil fuels as the clean energy transition accelerates? Because this seismic shift is more than just technical—it'll no doubt bring economic and human impacts to communities that rely on the business of fossil fuels, from coal towns to Texas oil hotspots. With every transition-focused policy, entire regions built around the production of coal and gas must f...

Business as usual? Not going to cut it in today’s energy reality. Embracing cutting-edge tech is the bare minimum to keep up with the modern needs of the modern grid. That’s according to Raiford Smith, Global Head of Power & Energy for Cloud at Google, who joins Mike this week to break down the lessons energy can learn from Big Tech—and the lessons Big Tech can learn from energy. Raiford explains...

Every utility leader wants to know: What can we do to protect an increasingly complex grid from security threats, both cyber and physical? This week on Power Perspectives, Adam Lee, Vice President and Chief Security Officer at Dominion Energy, sits down with host Kinsey Grant Baker to dissect the real, scalable strategies for defending the modern grid from today’s growing threats. And Adam is cert...

What goes through an energy CEO’s mind when thinking about the role of the customer, the fuel mix of the future, the affordability crisis, and the workforce changes shaping power? A lot, unsurprisingly. So today on The Watt & Why, host Mike Smith is bringing in Jay Stowe, founder & CEO of Stowe Utility Group, to break down what modern energy success looks like, the challenges dominating boardroom...

The “duck curve” has become one of the most recognizable symbols in modern energy as an illustration of both the promise and the challenge of solar power. But what if the very technologies creating the problem could also solve it? In this episode of Power Perspectives, host Kinsey Grant Baker welcomes Craig Lewis, Founder and Executive Director of the Clean Coalition, to explore how local solar an...

How can we engage with an energy transition without massive swings in power reliability? Is climate change really just a big cop-out for utility leaders? Or is it a larger predicament that we need to strategize around? What’s the best means of reducing vulnerability and increasing resilience for an energy industry in flux? Today on The Watt & Why, host Mike Smith welcome renowned climate scientist...

The grid of tomorrow is being built today—and the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) is at the center of that transformation. That transformation is being spearheaded by Lanny Nickell, President and CEO of SPP, and host Kinsey Grant Baker welcomes him to this week’s episode of Power Perspectives. This conversation features an exploration of how one of the nation’s most collaborative regional transmission...

For years, capacity markets quietly operated in the background: reliable, technical, and rarely in the headlines. Not anymore! In today’s episode of Power Perspectives, host Kinsey Grant Baker sits down with Christoph Graf, Senior Economist and Research Scholar at NYU’s Institute for Policy Integrity, to unpack why capacity markets are suddenly at the center of the energy conversation and why ever...

With risks flying at utility leaders from every angle—extreme weather, outages, wildfires, and many more—knowing what’s happening on the grid at any moment isn’t just nice. It’s mission critical. So how is next-gen sensing tech helping power pros get better visibility into real-time grid realities? This week on Piloting the Future, Kim and Lee explore with Scott Lindsay, Director of Sales at GridW...