Element Six

Clare Southworth talks with Puneeth Kalavase, Head of Grid Services at Emerald AI, about where batteries help, where they hit their limits, and how shifting computing workloads can give utilities more room to connect large loads.

In this episode

• Why putting a battery next to a data center only solves part of the speed-to-power problem
• How front-of-meter and behind-the-meter batteries work differently
• How adjusting compute demand can extend battery runtime while meeting customer service commitments
• How moving workloads between data centers can ease grid constraints and make use of wind and solar power that would otherwise be curtailed
• How a data center reduced its load by 15% for 24 hours during a heat wave in a project with Silicon Valley Power
• What FERC’s show cause order means for large-load interconnection and why Puneeth sees ERCOT as further ahead
• What utilities and data center operators each need to see before they commit to flexibility

Puneeth Kalavase has spent more than a decade in energy, working on commercial battery storage at Stem and wholesale battery bidding at Fluence, Eolian and Plus Power. At Emerald AI, he applies that experience to helping data centers adjust their power demand in response to grid conditions.

Produced by Element Six, a specialist talent partner hiring across building intelligence, grid infrastructure and data center power.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As the push to get power on the grid faster continues, more energy software companies are tackling complex problems than ever. More companies need specialized solutions, but it’s harder than ever to be heard. Clare Southworth sits down with Ari Greenberg, CRO of Ascend Analytics, to talk all things commercial. We cover how to sell into utilities, IPPs, and data centers when each one needs something different, and what the rise of startups means for the market. Ari also shares where companies can make changes to grow and keep their customers.

In this episode:

- How utilities, IPPs and data centers value the same software differently

- Why data centers are moving the conversation from price to speed

- The need for better queue intelligence and why this will become the most wanted service

- What startups get wrong between $5M and $30M, and why ICP discipline matters more than chasing new markets

- How to successfully keep retention in an overcrowded market

Ari Greenberg is Chief Revenue Officer at Ascend Analytics, where he runs sales, marketing, customer success, partnerships, and revenue operations. He previously led the energy, metals and mining segments across the Americas at S&P Global, built the energy and industrials segment at AlphaSense, and led a global sales team at Zema Global.

Views are his own.

Chapters

00:00 Intro and Ari’s background

02:11 Same software, different buyers

05:14 Utility sales cycles and regional differences

11:21 Selling to data centers: speed over price

17:47 Rise of Startups and how they can make an impact

21:27 Why customers buy vs how they use the product

23:36 Zero to one and beyond

26:33 Selling by segment instead of by product

33:06 Where demand goes next: transmission and queue intelligence

35:54 Why the data centers will get built

39:49 The one change with the biggest impact

Produced by Element Six, a specialist talent partner hiring across building intelligence, grid infrastructure and data center power.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gigawatt loads are being studied on software that looks like it was built for Windows 95. The math underneath has barely changed. Everything around it has.

Clare Southworth talks with Mike Malguarnera of Transmission Fox about the state of interconnection modeling and what it would take to make the results worth trusting.

In this episode:

• Why interconnection software has not moved since the 1990s and how it makes results less reliable
• Which utilities and regions are winning in the 'speed to power' race
• What happens to a model when you have to solve for load and generation at once
• Utilities and risk, and why nobody wants to lose ten cents to make a dollar

Mike Malguarnera has spent 15 years in power, starting on one of the last coal plants built in the United States, then resource planning and power market strategy at ACES, then solar and storage development and interconnection at BW Solar. He now runs Transmission Fox, helping developers review interconnection results and set transmission strategy.

Views are his own

Produced by Element Six, a specialist talent partner hiring across building intelligence, grid infrastructure and data center power.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Power demand in the US is outstripping the grid's current capacity, with interconnection queues taking years and transmission lines taking over a decade to build; the country urgently needs a short-term solution.

Clare Southworth talks with Isaac Maze-Rothstein of Leap and Thomas Armstrong of Voltus about what virtual power plants can do.

In this episode:

• Why VPPs can help with immediate needs and also long-term needs, and the importance of a flexible grid both financially and for reliability
• Why extreme weather is just as important as data centers in pushing costs up for customers
• The C&I gap, why it is currently on 1% of the market and the potential it can have
• Whether data centers will flex, and whether anyone will pay them to
• The market rules both guests would tear up, starting with PJM's ELCC derates

Isaac Maze-Rothstein is Associate Director of Partner Success at Leap, where he helps partners get more value from grid services. He previously led research on virtual power plants, Bitcoin mining, and microgrids at Wood Mackenzie.

Thomas Armstrong is Director of Partnerships at Voltus, focused on monetizing commercial and industrial batteries in wholesale markets. He worked in EV charging and for utilities before joining.

Views are their own.

Produced by Element Six, a specialist talent partner hiring across building intelligence, grid infrastructure and data center power.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Down Low with Joe, Lewis Martin is joined by Joe Aamidor for a market update on what is shaping the smart buildings industry in 2026.

They cover Copeland's acquisition of Bueno, what it says about OEM digital strategy, and why more major players are pushing to own the software and data layer.

They also unpack Cambio’s $18M Series A, the current state of sustainability software, and why this may now be more of a replacement market than a greenfield opportunity. Joe shares his view on fragmentation, TAM, and why smart buildings have not produced a single dominant software winner.

The conversation also dives into Clockworks’ latest raise, the strength of the fault detection category, and why established leaders are still attracting capital. Finally, Lewis and Joe discuss Trane Cloud, the broader wave of OEM platform launches, and the challenge of building and scaling software inside large incumbents.

Topics covered:

• Bueno acquired by Copeland
• Why OEMs are doubling down on software
• Cambio’s raise and sustainability software market dynamics
• Why TAM in smart buildings is often overstated
• Clockworks and the future of fault detection
• Trane Cloud and OEM digital platforms
• The challenge of building software inside large industrial companies

If you work in smart buildings, HVAC, controls, real estate technology, or climate software, this episode is packed with sharp insight on where the market is heading.

Produced by Element Six, a specialist talent partner hiring across building intelligence, grid infrastructure and data center power.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Most smart building systems are excellent at telling you what’s wrong.Far fewer are designed to change what happens next.

In this episode of Quick Cuts, Ben Muwoki sits down with Derek John Mullassery (COO, CopperTree Analytics) to explore the shift from fault detection and diagnostics (FDD) to automated action inside commercial buildings.

Fault detection is no longer novel. Dashboards and alarms are everywhere. The real constraint in modern building automation is execution.

Derek explains how automated system optimisation and remote commissioning are moving the industry beyond detection and into action, while keeping operators in control.This conversation explores:

• Why “insight” does not equal impact
• The gap between analytics and operational change
• What it takes for software to safely write back to a BAS
• Why automation only scales when trust scales
• The importance of guardrails: traceable, reversible, explainable decisions
• How automated commissioning can test 100% of systems remotely
• Why culture, not technology, is often the bottleneck

About Derek John Mullassery

Derek is the Chief Operating Officer at CopperTree Analytics, a pioneer in building analytics and FDD. He works at the intersection of building automation, energy efficiency, and software-driven operational performance. His focus is on helping commercial buildings move beyond dashboards and alerts toward measurable outcomes, while maintaining operator trust and control. Throughout his career, Derek has worked closely with building owners, operators, and portfolio teams to scale analytics across complex real estate environments, bridging the gap between technology capability and real-world adoption.

Produced by Element Six, a specialist talent partner hiring across building intelligence, grid infrastructure and data center power.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For years, building management systems have lived on-premise. Local servers. Mechanical rooms. Site-by-site maintenance.

But as HVAC, lighting, and access control become increasingly IP-connected, the conversation around Cloud BMS is accelerating.

In this episode of Quick Cuts, Ben Muwoki sits down with Dhaval Shah, VP and Head of Product, Software and Services Portfolio for Digital Buildings at Schneider Electric, to unpack what Cloud BMS actually means and whether it’s becoming an operational reality or remaining a strategy deck concept.

In this episode, we cover:

• What “Cloud BMS” really means (hosted vs hybrid vs cloud-native architectures)
• Why CIOs are now driving the conversation around building systems
• The impact of IT/OT convergence on building automation
• Cybersecurity, data governance, and resilience concerns
• How portfolio scale changes the economics of BMS deployment
• Why hybrid architecture may be the practical transition path
• What needs to happen for Cloud BMS to move from early adopter to mainstream

As Dhaval explains, the shift is not just technical. It’s organisational. Once building systems sit on enterprise networks and connect to cloud platforms, they become part of broader IT strategy, cybersecurity policy, and portfolio-wide standardisation efforts.

At scale, this stops being an architecture debate and becomes an operating leverage question.

If you operate or deploy BMS across multi-site portfolios, this episode offers a grounded view of where Cloud BMS stands today and what to watch over the next few years.

About Dhaval Shah

Dhaval Shah is VP and Head of Product, Software and Services Portfolio for Digital Buildings at Schneider Electric. He has spent his career across engineering and business leadership roles spanning industrial automation, automotive, solar energy storage, and building automation. He focuses on shaping the future of building systems through software, cloud architecture, and scalable service models.

Produced by Element Six, a specialist talent partner hiring across building intelligence, grid infrastructure and data center power.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Digital twins have been in the smart building conversation for more than a decade. What is changing now is the expectation.

In this Climate Gap Quick Cuts episode, Ben Muwoki sits down with Rick Szcodronski, Chief Product Officer at Willow, to unpack how digital twins are evolving from visualisation and data layers into decision-making platforms that operators can actually trust and use.

This conversation covers what separates digital twin projects that scale from those that stall, why speed to value has become the real maturity test, and how AI is shifting operator workflows away from dashboards and towards clear, actionable decisions.

Key topics covered

- Why owners and operators are expecting measurable value from digital twins

- Speed to value and why ROI has to show up in days, not months

- Why adoption and internal champions determine whether deployments stick

- Balancing technical accuracy with usability and real operational outcomes

- Why the future is enterprise workflow integration, not standalone visualisation

- How AI interfaces reduce cognitive load and change how decisions get made

About Rick

Rick Szcodronski is the Chief Product Officer at Willow. He has spent his career in the smart building sector, starting in design consulting and smart building strategy before moving into product leadership. At Willow, he focuses on digital twin platforms and operational AI, helping owners and operators turn complex building data into practical decisions at portfolio scale.

Subscribe for more interviews on smart buildings, digital twins, building automation, energy management, and operational AI.

Produced by Element Six, a specialist talent partner hiring across building intelligence, grid infrastructure and data center power.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of The Climate Gap: Quick Cuts, Ben Muwoki sits down with Deepinder Singh, Founder and CEO of 75F, to unpack a problem many facility operators already understand: the issue is not data. It is deployment.

While enterprise towers often receive bespoke engineering attention, the mid-market, small, and midsize buildings where most people actually work face a different challenge. Equipment diversity, inconsistent standards, retrofit history, and fragmented systems make repeatability difficult at scale. The conversation explores whether AI can meaningfully improve smart building deployment, not by replacing expert engineers, but by helping everyday operators perform more consistently.

Key themes include:

• Why mid-market buildings are not “simple” in aggregate
• The concept of the zero-interface building
• AI as assistant, not replacement
• Raising the floor, not the ceiling
• Clean data, consistent algorithms, and digital twins
• Standardising deployment across diverse portfolios

This episode challenges the industry to move beyond dashboards and toward systems that are easier to deploy, commission, and operate at scale. If you operate, design, or invest in building automation systems, BMS, energy management platforms, or AI-driven controls, this discussion is for you.

Deepinder Singh is the Founder and CEO of 75F, a vertically integrated IoT-based building controls company focused on intelligent HVAC automation for commercial buildings.

A serial entrepreneur, Deepinder previously built companies in high-speed networking and infrastructure technologies. He is known for bridging advanced networking and software thinking into the building automation and energy management space. At 75F, he is leading the development of AI-enabled controls, digital twin architectures, and the concept of the “zero-interface building”, where operators interact conversationally with building systems rather than through traditional dashboards.

His work focuses on improving deployment speed, commissioning quality, and operational consistency across the fragmented mid-market building sector.

Produced by Element Six, a specialist talent partner hiring across building intelligence, grid infrastructure and data center power.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Recurring Revenue, Real-World Results – Closing the Post-Sale Gap

Recurring revenue models are everywhere. But recurring value is still where many subscription, SaaS, and IoT businesses struggle.

In this episode of The Climate Gap: Quick Cuts, Ben Muwoki sits down with Beth Skierski, founder of EGS Solutions, to explore why Customer Success often falls short and how companies can close the post-sale gap that quietly drives churn.

Across climate tech, smart buildings, and enterprise SaaS, many teams invest heavily in product, sales, and onboarding. What happens after the contract is signed is often handled informally, reactively, or inconsistently. This is especially true for project-led businesses moving into subscriptions and IoT vendors shifting into software models.

Beth shares a practical framework for treating the post-sale journey as something that can be deliberately designed, measured, and improved.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why recurring revenue is an operating challenge, not just a pricing decision
• The difference between reactive account management and true Customer Success
• How to design a proactive customer journey that supports adoption and outcomes
• Why renewals are lagging indicators, and what leading indicators matter more
• How IoT and hardware-led businesses can avoid common mistakes when moving into software
• What customer health really looks like beyond renewals and dashboards

If you are scaling a SaaS business, transitioning from project delivery to subscriptions, or leading Customer Success, Revenue, or GTM teams, this episode offers grounded, real-world insight into what actually drives retention and expansion.

About Beth Skierski

Beth Skierski is the Founder and Principal of EGS Solutions, where she helps B2B, SaaS, and IoT-driven companies build sustainable Customer Success organisations.

With a background in engineering, Beth brings a methodical, outcome-focused approach to Customer Success. Her work sits at the intersection of technology, commercial execution, and customer outcomes, helping teams move beyond reactive account management toward proactive, repeatable value delivery.

Beth partners with organisations navigating shifts from project delivery to subscriptions, and from hardware or IoT-led models into software, supporting them in designing customer journeys, defining success metrics, and improving retention and expansion through better post-sale structure.

Watch now and subscribe for more conversations across smart buildings, energy, climate tech, and the teams turning performance into proof.

Produced by Element Six, a specialist talent partner hiring across building intelligence, grid infrastructure and data center power.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.