Build, Repeat. (A Paces Podcast)

Recorded live at the Paces office during Climate Week NYC, this episode features Claire McConnell, VP of Business Development for Energy Storage at Redwood Materials. James McWalter talks with Claire about how repurposed EV batteries are becoming one of the fastest paths to power for AI data centers.

Claire has worked on batteries for more than 15 years, from cost reduction on the Model S and the early days of Tesla Energy, through electric commercial vehicles at Proterra, to leading storage business development at Redwood. She explains why Redwood launched Redwood Energy: EV packs were coming back with meaningful state of health just as AI data centers hit a wall on grid access. She also explains why Redwood projects that repurposed EV batteries could serve up to half of the North American BESS market by 2030.

In this episode:

• Why a 100 MW data center gives up $25–40M in revenue for every month it waits on interconnection
• How storage enables bring-your-own-capacity pathways and fully off-grid solar-plus-storage microgrids
• Redwood's 63 MWh second-life microgrid powering Crusoe's modular AI data centers at over 99% availability
• How capacity maintenance agreements take degradation risk off the customer
• Why renewables plus storage could become the default path to speed to power, with gas as backup
• Career advice for breaking into climate and energy

Paces helps developers find and evaluate the sites most suitable for renewable development. Interested in a call with James, CEO @ Paces?

Michael Grasso spent his career building some of the largest residential virtual power plants in the country — from Vistra Corp Solar to Sunrun to Sunnova — before founding GridRails, a software platform built for load-serving entities to bring distributed energy resources online, visualize them, control them, and settle the economics, all through a single system.

James and Michael dig into why only about 20% of the demand-response market has been captured despite roughly 11 million Americans already enrolled, and why Michael sees this as a two-sided problem: utilities lacking the tools to build flexible programs, and consumers uninterested in the rigid offerings they've been given. They talk through how real-time price and demand signals — rather than fixed, regulator-bound programs — could unlock far more participation.

The conversation turns to one of the fastest-moving trends in the industry: the rise of "edge" data centers sited on distribution networks rather than transmission, and what it means to orchestrate flexibility for facilities whose inference-driven load rises and falls throughout the day. They also cover the regulatory tailwinds coming out of FERC Order 2222, why 34 states now have some form of structured VPP program, and why Michael argues that simplifying those programs — not adding more structure — is the real path to scale.

A candid, wide-ranging conversation about coordination, complexity, and what it will actually take to keep the grid working as electrification accelerates.

Paces helps developers find and evaluate the sites most suitable for renewable development. Interested in a call with James, CEO @ Paces?

In this episode, James talks with Navya Gundeti, Director of Project Development at Engie North America, where she leads the distributed solar and storage development pipeline.

Navya is operating in a market where five-year plans don't survive the year they were written. OBBBA, tariff whiplash, data center land competition, and reshuffled interconnection queues forced her team to rebuild its strategy in real time. Her case in this episode: rigorous quantification on what you can measure, honest intuition on what you can't, and a bet that the next real unlock for the industry is utilities and advanced computing finally meeting.

• Why distributed solar isn't a head-to-head competitor for data center load — but co-ops and munis facing first-time load growth are a real opening
• Competing with hyperscalers offering landowners $25K–$100K+ per acre, and why landowner education (not price) is the distributed developer's advantage
• The interconnection playbook shift: the right technology partners plus deep utility stakeholder relationships, not "submit and wait"
• Her hot take: the fusion of AI, quantum computing, and grid intelligence will flip the script.

A must-listen for distributed solar and storage developers navigating the OBBBA aftermath, the data center wave, and the next phase of interconnection.

Paces helps developers find and evaluate the sites most suitable for renewable development. Interested in a call with James, CEO @ Paces?

In this episode, James talks with Bill Francis, Vice President of Emerging Markets at New Energy Equity — a distributed solar developer that has spent over a decade building community solar programs across the country.

Bill joined NEE at the end of 2025 after seven years at Engie, arriving right as the traditional community solar model is showing real strain. Programs are saturating. Development capital is tighter. The ITC safe harbor clock is ticking. His mandate: figure out what comes next — and build it. The case he makes in this episode is that the fundamentals for distributed energy are actually stronger than ever. The branding and program structure just need to change.

• Why community solar programs are hitting a wall — and the structures (feed-in tariffs, co-op PPAs, VPP tariffs) that could replace them
• The ITC safe harbor cliff at end of 2027: why developers need a three-dimensional strategy on equipment timelines, permitting, and safe harbor right now
• The distributed storage opportunity: why half an acre beats 80 acres — and why electric co-ops are among the most motivated customers for standalone batteries
• NEE's development DNA: why being judicious about when and how you de-risk assets matters more than ever when development capital is scarce

A must-listen for distributed solar and storage developers thinking through market selection, capital discipline, and what the post-community solar era actually looks like.

Paces helps developers find and evaluate the sites most suitable for renewable development. Interested in a call with James, CEO @ Paces?

In this episode, James talks with Sam McGarvey, Director of Origination at NineDot Energy — a developer, owner, and operator of front-of-meter battery storage systems across New York City's five boroughs.

NineDot made a deliberate bet: ignore every other market and go all-in on the single hardest place to build energy storage in the country. That focus has taken them from 3 employees to 84, and toward 400–500 megawatts of distributed storage across New York City by the end of the decade. Sam breaks down what it actually takes to develop in NYC — and why the lessons apply everywhere.

• Why NYC's complexity is a feature, not a bug, for a focused developer
• The affordability story: 1.3 million NY utility customers behind on bills — and what storage can do about it
• Why January 2026 was a turning point: the first time ConEd included distributed storage in its load forecast

A must-listen for developers navigating dense markets, complex permitting, and the next phase of distributed storage.

Paces helps developers find and evaluate the sites most suitable for renewable development. Interested in a call with James, CEO @ Paces?

In this episode, James talks with Matt Plante, President of Voltus, about what it actually takes to build a virtual power plant that grid operators call on every single day.

Voltus aggregates distributed energy resources, including industrial loads, batteries, commercial buildings, and now residential assets, into virtual power plants that participate in wholesale electricity markets. Since April 2024, Voltus has been dispatched by a grid operator every single day, a milestone that signals demand flexibility has moved from emergency backup to standard operating procedure. Matt joins James to unpack how the company has grown 10x since their 2021 conversation, what finally made the battery cost curve work, and why the barriers to scale look nothing like the barriers to entry.

James and Matt get into:

• Why the shift from no-load-growth to explosive load growth has changed what grid operators will consider, and how fast
• How batteries went from not penciling to the fastest-growing DER segment in Voltus's portfolio
• What data centers actually want from demand flexibility programs, and why forcing them to participate would backfire
• Why FERC 2222 hasn't delivered and what it actually takes to unlock new states for third-party demand response

The grid's relationship to distributed resources has fundamentally changed, and this episode is a clear-eyed look at what made that shift happen and what comes next.

Paces helps developers find and evaluate the sites most suitable for renewable development. Interested in a call with James, CEO @ Paces?

The grid has been here before. Between 1960 and 2000, US utilities grew demand 4–5x while cutting real electricity prices by 20%, and the lessons from that era are more relevant than ever.

Mark Dyson is Managing Director of Electricity at RMI, where he's spent nearly two decades working on grid modernization, distributed energy resources, and the policy and market design that holds it all together. Before returning to RMI, he led analytics at Ascend Analytics, giving him a rare vantage point across both the technical and market sides of the energy transition.

In this episode, Mark draws on that history to make the case that data center load growth isn't the crisis it's being framed as — it's a solvable problem, and virtual power plants are a big part of the solution. He breaks down why VPPs are 40–60% cheaper than gas peakers or batteries for meeting new peak demand, and what it actually takes to deploy them at scale.

This episode covers:
- The three lessons from last century's grid growth: embrace new technology, invest proactively in infrastructure, and make the most of existing capacity
- Why virtual power plants are the fastest, most affordable tool for meeting data center demand growth
- Why hyperscalers resist flexible load at the project level — and how paying others to curtail resolves that tension
- Navigating permitting headwinds and the post-OBBBA policy environment

If you're working on the energy transition, Mark's perspective on what history can actually teach us about today's challenges is essential listening.

Learn more about RMI here. 

Paces helps developers find and evaluate the sites most suitable for renewable development. Interested in a call with James, CEO @ Paces?

In this episode, James talks with Derek Stenclik, Founding Partner at Telos Energy. Derek shares his path into the power sector, starting at GE where he spent nearly a decade working on grid planning, resource adequacy, and early studies on integrating wind and solar at scale, before co-founding Telos to tackle some of the grid’s most complex planning challenges.

The conversation focuses on how utilities and grid operators are navigating an era of unprecedented uncertainty, driven by rapid load growth, shifting resource mixes, and long planning timelines. Derek shares how Telos approaches these challenges through advanced grid modeling, emphasizing the importance of scenario analysis, proactive planning, and better decision-making in the face of volatile forecasts and evolving market rules.

Key topics include:

• Why grid modeling and scenario analysis are foundational to the energy transition
• Managing explosive load growth from data centers and large new loads
• The evolving role of load flexibility, batteries, and behind-the-meter generation
• Affordability, cost allocation, and the risk of stranded infrastructure

A must-listen for anyone thinking about how reliability, affordability, and speed intersect in today’s power system.

Reach out to Telos Energy by visiting their website. 

Paces helps developers find and evaluate the sites most suitable for renewable development. Interested in a call with James, CEO @ Paces?

In this episode, James talks with Craig Gordon, Head of Global Policy, Regulatory Affairs, and Business Development at Mainspring Energy. Craig brings deep experience in clean energy—from scaling Invenergy’s wind and solar projects to shaping U.S. energy policy with the American Clean Power Association. Today, he’s helping Mainspring redefine dispatchable generation for a rapidly electrifying world.

They discuss how Mainspring’s linear generator technology offers a modular, dispatchable solution ideal for the growing energy demands of hyperscale data centers. Craig shares insights on the importance of fuel flexibility, how the Inflation Reduction Act has reshaped deployment dynamics, and the policy shifts enabling faster, cleaner energy integration behind the meter.

• How Mainspring’s linear generator bridges the gap between renewables and dispatchable generation
• The role of fuel-flexibility (natural gas, hydrogen, ammonia) in enabling resilient siting
• Why data center load growth is stressing legacy regulatory frameworks
• How recent FERC policy shifts are opening new doors for behind-the-meter innovation

A must-listen for developers navigating grid constraints, data center energy needs, and next-gen dispatchable tech.

Paces helps developers find and evaluate the sites most suitable for renewable development. Interested in a call with James, CEO @ Paces?

In this episode, James talks with Tony and Alex from the Paces team about their recent white paper exploring the mismatch between data center growth projections and actual grid planning. Tony, a seasoned power developer, and Alex, a researcher focused on data center flexibility, dive into how speculative load growth is driving transmission investments that may never serve real projects.

They discuss how Paces analyzed over 14 million Texas land parcels to identify where data centers could feasibly be built, incorporating constraints like power access, zoning, water, and community sentiment. The conversation reveals a fundamental disconnect: the grid is being built for data centers that may never exist, while truly viable sites often lack the needed power capacity. By taking a “land-first” approach, Paces offers a bottom-up, data-driven framework to inform smarter, faster, and more collaborative infrastructure decisions.

• Why ERCOT (Texas) was the ideal case study for this white paper.
• The speculative nature of current interconnection requests and its ripple effects.
• Key site viability criteria: power, topography, ownership, fiber, and water.
• Why only 17% of viable land near substations in Texas has withdrawal capacity.

A must-listen for anyone building in clean energy, this episode offers a practical framework to better align developer needs with grid planning.

Paces helps developers find and evaluate the sites most suitable for renewable development. Interested in a call with James, CEO @ Paces?