With Great Power

In 2016, Dr. Kyri Baker was a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory working on a new home energy management system. Called Foresee, the system reduced energy usage through machine learning algorithms that tracked consumption patterns and grid conditions.  Today, Kyri is an associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she continues her research on machine learni...

In early 2023, things were moving along as planned for a rate restructuring plan at Holy Cross Energy, a rural electric co-op in Colorado. The board of directors had approved the plan, which would separate the cost of energy from the cost of delivering that energy to the customer. The change meant rooftop solar customers could continue to sell their excess electricity back to Holy Cross, just at a...

Over the past two seasons of With Great Power , you've heard stories from all kinds of people working at the front lines of change on the power grid.  We've covered the rise of electric vehicles, explored the dawn of long-duration storage, unpacked the utility digital transformation, and asked: how can power companies learn from other industries about change? In March, we’re coming back for anothe...

There are more than 250 million cars on U.S. roads today. Only about 1% of them are electric. But with seven million more EVs projected to hit the road by 2030, that percentage is changing. The problem? Access to all those EVs isn't equal. The majority of EV owners in the country are high-income and white. But to cut transportation emissions in the U.S., we need to make EV ownership and charging a...

Over the past 20 years, Kerri Carnes has worked a lot of different jobs at Arizona Public Service, or APS. She's been an administrative assistant, real-time trader, and regulation manager. Today, she serves as the director of customer-to-grid solutions.  Besides maintaining service, Kerri and her colleagues are determined to increase customer adoption of technologies like solar, EVs, and smart the...

A wave of extreme weather this year has left Jim Kapsis questioning whether utilities are prepared for more frequent, intense weather events in the future. There's a growing group of startups that are more than ready to provide solutions, but they've struggled to break into the space. They need help figuring out a business model that works in the unique market that is the utility industry.  Jim's...

Rappahannock Electric Cooperative recently received a $38 million grant through the Department of Energy's Grid Innovation and Partnership Program. The grant will fund a  massive rollout of technologies that will serve as the backbone of the energy transition.  Peter Muhoro is one of the executives at REC that will oversee these projects. The money will be used to implement a new distributed energ...

In 2016, Edison International was rethinking how to boost their efforts toward fighting climate change. As the parent company behind Southern California Edison, they were making strides in the power sector.  But Edison International wanted to tackle decarbonization in other sectors. So they added clean energy consulting into the mix with their new venture, Edison Energy. This past summer, Drew Mur...

In January, Illinois' largest utility released ComEd 2030 – their roadmap for providing clean power for more than 4 million customers.    For CEO Gil Quiniones and the company, that means hitting big marks like enabling almost 2 million EVs by 2030, $1 billion in energy assistance for customers, integrating DERs, and procuring more clean power. If done right, ComEd's path would be a big win for th...

Renewables are having a moment. Wind and solar capacity in the US went up 13 gigawatts last year, now totaling more than 238 gigawatts nationwide. And last year's Inflation Reduction Act is helping to move the needle in a big way. But there's a problem. For wind and solar to meet the demands of the energy transition, we need some way to store all those electrons for use during peak hours or when p...

America’s new renewable power capacity is expected to triple each year through 2030. To decarbonize the grid, there needs to be a way to store those clean electrons.  That’s where long duration energy storage (LDES) comes into play. These technologies can store energy for 12 hours, a full day, or even weeks at a time. Unfortunately, long duration storage is not widely used today.  Julia Souder is...

EVs are a huge piece of the decarbonization puzzle. But as Apoorv Bhargava realized over his career working in the power business, utilities across the country aren’t prepared for the cost of onboarding the millions of EVs needed on the road.  A 2019 report from Boston Consulting Group found that it could cost a utility that serves two to three million customers, anywhere between $1,700 to $5,800...

After the city of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power asked NREL to help them figure out what would it take to get LA's entire grid running on 100% renewable energy by 2045, their study called the LA100 said it wasn't just possible to make the switch; it was possible to do it a decade sooner.  So LADWP changed their goal. Instead of converting the grid by 2045, they'd do...

The 2018 Camp fire was the most destructive wildfire in California's history. By the time the smoke cleared, more than 150,000 acres had burned. Damages surpassed $16 billion. Dozens had died. Thousands more were displaced. So how did it all happen?  The increasingly hot and dry conditions in the region coupled with the high Diablo winds turned the forest floor into a powder keg. Within hours, tho...

A third of the world's largest companies now have net-zero targets in place for carbon emissions. Google was ahead of the curve. Back in 2007, it had already achieved its goal of going carbon neutral across all of its offices and data centers around the globe.  But as demand for Google's services expanded, it knew that it had to overhaul its energy goals. At the time, Raiford Smith served as Googl...

Over the last 12 episodes, we have heard some fascinating personal and professional stories about people who are pushing innovation on the grid – from smart meters to electric cars to culture shifts. And we have great news: we are hard at work on another season that will feature more executives and deep thinkers who are moving the utility business into a dynamic, digital, distributed era. There ar...

In 2005, Lisa Schwartz was stunned when a colleague at the Oregon Public Utility Commission told her utility distribution planning budgets never saw the light of day. She thought it was a missed opportunity for consumer and stakeholder feedback on planning the future of the grid.  Ever since, she has worked to increase transparency in utility planning.  “In my view, having really meaningful stakeh...

For Katherine Hamilton, working at Dominion Virginia Power ran in the family. Her grandfather Leon built a career there. As a young engineer, she learned the ins and outs of the electric utility business, and was inspired by the problem solving and creativity her job required.  “It was a very innovative place to be. It wasn't that they were necessarily innovative because they wanted to be creative...

The smart meter unlocked a trove of data on how people use energy in their homes. And it created the opportunity for utilities to offer more services based on customers' individual needs and consumption habits. These demand-side services are crucial for decarbonizing the grid, enhancing reliability, and integrating more renewables. But many utilities are still in the early stages of digitizing the...

Climate change is making extreme weather events more intense and more frequent, which strains the electric grid.  As an employee of Southern California Edison, Katie Sloan is familiar with these events. From 2019 to 2021, the state had 44 weather-related power outages. Katie knows cleaning up the grid is a vital part of slowing climate change. She also knows it’s important for improving resiliency...

There's a saying in the business world that if you're not innovating, you're dying. For Josh Gould, that applies to utilities, too. In the risk-averse utility industry, it can be hard to push for change, or do things unconventionally. Josh believes that getting people motivated around an idea is the key to success, which he learned in his time as an energy technology researcher for the government....

Everything around us can be personalized. Our homes, our cars, our online shopping experience. And that’s what consumers have come to expect. As utilities work to grow their business, they're also thinking about personalization – designing programs for specific groups of people and not just mass offerings for all customers. But serving the needs of everyone means collecting more than just a few da...

Buildings account for nearly 40% of America’s CO2 emissions, making the built environment critical for meeting net-zero goals.  Utilities are starting to use efficiency measures and electrification to cut gas consumption and increase consumption of electricity. But these efforts also change the way they make money – and many utilities are still figuring out how to make the shift. As the strategic...

Distributed energy resources, or DERs, can be a powerful tool for managing the local grid. They’re more complicated to manage than traditional electricity delivery from central power plants, but they are vital for making the grid cleaner, more dynamic, and more resilient. Brenda Chew has been researching this concept for years. Now, she's helping put it into practice as the Director of Product Man...

Finding the local value of renewables can be a complex exercise. If rates don't properly reflect the value of distributed energy and the central grid together, it can create an imbalance in economic benefits. Rooftop solar is one prominent example of a technology disrupting the utility business model – changing the way utilities make money and spread costs among consumers. Lon Huber has spent his...