Energy Changemakers Podcast

Plug-in solar — widely known as “balcony solar” — is one of the fastest-growing entry points into clean energy, and it is finally gaining a legal foothold in the United States. In this episode, host Elisa Wood talks with Stephan Scherer, co-founder and CEO of CraftStrom, who spent roughly a decade in the European plug-in solar market before bringing the technology to the U.S. The conversation unpa...

The grid is straining under AI-driven demand, aging infrastructure, and climate-fueled weather events — and Robert W. Cross believes the answers already exist. The harder question is whether the industry can come together to deploy them. In this episode, host Elisa Wood talks with Cross, founder of Cross Consulting and principal at the cleantech design studio Outfit, about why distributed energy m...

Electricity prices are rising, data centers are struggling to connect, and consumers are feeling the pinch — yet utilities keep reporting record earnings. What's going wrong, and how do we fix it? In this episode, Elisa Wood speaks with Michael Lee, former CEO of Octopus Energy US and founder of Distributed Grid, about the structural flaw at the heart of the American utility model: an incentiv...

Produced in partnership with Xendee, this podcast explores the market dynamics that led the company to create a free, non-commercial gathering for the microgrid industry. In their conversation, Elisa Wood and Xendee CTO Michael Stadler discuss what's been holding microgrids back from achieving their full market potential, how utilities treat them, and why data centers are opening up opportunit...

What does it take to build a billion-dollar biofuels company from inside one of energy’s most durable entrepreneurial firms? Michael Bakas has spent 25 years at Ameresco — and now he’s leading Neogenyx Fuels, a new $1.8 billion joint venture with HASI. Elisa Wood of Energy Changemakers gets the full story: the cocktail-napkin founding of Ameresco, the dual energy crisis (geopolitics + AI demand),...

Produced in partnership with Xendee, this podcast explores the market dynamics that led the company to create a free, non-commercial  educational gathering  for the microgrid industry. In their conversation, Elisa Wood and Xendee CTO Michael Stadler discuss what’s been holding microgrids back from achieving their full market potential, how utilities treat them, and why data centers are opening up...

This episode revisits one of the most-listened-to conversations in Energy Changemakers history—a three-way dialogue between Kay Aikin (CEO of Dynamic Grid, Maine), Lorenzo Kristov (independent grid market architect and formerly of California ISO), and Mark Paterson (Principal and Lead Systems Architect, Energy Catalyst, Australia). The original episode aired in 2024; this return engagement goes de...

The Pew Charitable Trusts has released a long-awaited policy playbook for scaling distributed energy resources (DERs) across the United States. In this episode, host Elisa Wood sits down with the two co-chairs of the Pew DER Advisory Council — Audrey Zibelman and Pat Wood III — to unpack what the playbook says, why DER deployment has stalled despite a clear business case, and what policymakers can...

The US grid is under pressure — surging demand from data centers, EVs, and industrial expansion is forcing expensive infrastructure upgrades. But what if a significant share of that relief could come for free? In this bonus episode, Elisa Wood sits down with Vincent Petit, SVP of Climate and Energy Transition Research at the Schneider Electric Sustainability Research Institute (SRI), to explore a...

Montgomery County, Maryland — located just outside Washington, D.C. — has emerged as one of the most ambitious local governments in the United States when it comes to distributed energy, microgrids, and clean power resilience. Since its first microgrid went online in 2018, the county has built out a portfolio of advanced installations at public safety facilities, a correctional facility, electric...

For years, utilities and the distributed energy industry fought bitter battles over net metering, revenue erosion, and who controls the grid. Now, something has shifted. In this episode of the Energy Changemakers Podcast, host Elisa Wood sits down with Marco Krapels, SVP and Chief Marketing Officer at Enphase Energy, to explore a striking reversal: utilities that once viewed rooftop solar as a thr...

Distributed wind has long played third wheel to solar and storage — but new market conditions may be opening the door to a comeback. In this bonus episode, Elisa Wood speaks with analyst Peter Asmus about whether distributed wind can find new life in  microgrids, virtual power plants (VPPs), and rural energy systems . They explore wind’s surprising early dominance in microgrids, why it lost ground...

According to Markus Virta, Co-Founder of Cascadia Renewables, the answer has almost nothing to do with solar panels and batteries—and everything to do with listening. In this episode, Markus—who has spent 16 years at the intersection of clean energy and Pacific Northwest policy—explains why microgrids fail when engineers lead and communities follow, and how inverting that paradigm leads to faster...

In Episode 40, host Elisa Wood sits down with Ben Brown, CEO of Renew Home, to explore how millions of ordinary homes are being quietly transformed into virtual power plants (VPPs) — aggregated, AI-coordinated, and capable of delivering what a gas-fired peaker plant once did, at a fraction of the cost and with zero emissions. From Jimmy Carter's thermostat appeals to today's invisible, per...

Jigar Shah is one of clean energy's most influential — and outspoken — figures. In this episode, he takes a surprising stand on a utility battery program that has the distributed energy world divided, makes the case that the solar industry is now the battery industry, and lays out a policy blueprint for new governors that starts with one bold number: cut electricity bills 20% by 2030. In this...

Eliot Assimakopoulos, CEO of Realizse and former GE microgrid pioneer, discusses a critical barrier to clean energy deployment: "stranded abundance." Despite available capital and valuable incentives, friction in finance prevents these resources from connecting, limiting microgrid and DER project development. Eliot Assimakopoulos CEO, Realizse Former Marine Corps Captain 20 years at General Electr...

The explosive growth of AI training centers is creating unprecedented challenges for the electric grid. In this eye-opening conversation, Kay Aikin reveals why gigawatt-scale data centers like Stargate aren't just about needing more power—they're creating stability threats that could collapse entire grid systems. Learn why virtual power plants can't solve this problem, what new technol...

This episode explores "speed to power" - the urgent need for data centers to access electricity quickly to support AI infrastructure growth. Anna Demeo explains why the fast-moving world of hyperscalers (Google, Meta, Microsoft) is colliding with the cautious, regulated utility industry, and what innovative solutions might bridge this gap. Guest Bio: Anna Demeo Anna Demeo, PhD is an indu...

Right now, the term "energy abundance" seems to be everywhere. It springs from Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's book Abundance , which argues that we have too many rules and procedures bogging down the construction of clean energy, housing, and other needed infrastructure. While the book has created debate in both the power industry and political arenas, this episode moves away from t...

Rooftop solar is far more affordable in other countries than it is in the United States, and the gap has little to do with technology. In this conversation, Elisa talks with Nick Josefowitz, Chief Executive of Permit Power, about why American families pay so much more for rooftop solar and how outdated permitting, utility requirements and fragmented local rules create unnecessary barriers. Nick ex...

In this episode, host Elisa Wood sits down with Adam Scarsella , Vice President of Digital Infrastructure Sales at Voltus , to explore a new approach to accelerating data center interconnection: Bring Your Own Capacity (BYOC). This innovative model allows hyperscalers to meet their peak energy needs not by waiting years for new power plants, but by funding a virtual power plant (VPP) built from di...

In this special crossover episode, Energy Changemakers host Elisa Wood joins Jennifer Zajac on Clean Energy Shorts to talk about the most exciting innovations reshaping the electric grid. From mega-microgrids to driveway solar, Elisa reveals what’s really happening behind the headlines—and why the clean-energy story is about more than politics. They unpack the myths driving public perception, expl...

Why do many energy companies struggle to connect with stakeholders despite strong technical credentials? Why is it so hard for them to tell their story, and what could make it easier? Elisa Wood brings together two communications experts who have helped a range of organizations find their stories: energy writer-editor Jay Hodgkins and podcast strategist Scott Smith.   Why stories are remembered an...

Are data center forecasts overblown? Will energy efficiency trim megawatts and even gigawatts off predictions? And if so, what must data centers do to significantly curb their energy use?  In this episode, host Elisa Wood talks with Mike Slevin of Fluke about what it really takes to make data centers more efficient. They discuss how small, everyday improvements in equipment performance add up to b...

Utility monopolies were meant to keep the lights on, but have they also opened the door to corruption that slows energy innovation? Elisa talks with Dick Munson , veteran clean-energy advocate and author of Power Corrupts , about the scandals that rocked utilities like Commonwealth Edison and FirstEnergy, why the century-old monopoly structure invites abuse, and how bribery and dark money can stal...