Energy Central

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 certainly an expert—complete with a distinguished security-focused background that brought him from FBI to the utility providing power to the Pentagon, naval bases, and some of the world’s most energy-intensive data centers.

Listen in for a look at how Dominion is approaching cyber and physical security as a unified discipline and why partnerships across government, law enforcement, and the private sector are becoming essential to grid resilience.

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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 conversations today, and much more.

With decades of combined utility experience, Jay and Mike offer an impactful look at meeting customers where they are, placing the right bets, balancing incentives with competition, and the reality of making decisions about large loads.

Listen for a rare peek at what today’s top utility leaders are really prioritizing.

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 and storage can flatten the duck curve, cut costs, and build a more resilient grid.

Bringing his decades of experiences to the table, Lewis shares how California’s energy transformation can serve as a blueprint for the nation—and why the real battle isn’t just about generation, but about where and how we build it. This conversation challenges conventional wisdom about where the next wave of grid investment should go, emphasizing how “thinking local” may be the smartest way to plan globally.

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Key Links:

Exploding transmission costs are the missing story in California’s regionalization debate: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/exploding-transmission-costs-are-the-missing-story-in-californias-regional/526894/

How to protect California ratepayers, expand clean local energy and avoid bailing out PG&E: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/how-to-protect-california-ratepayers-expand-clean-local-energy-and-avoid-b/554564/

How Two Simple Fixes Can Fairly Compensate the True Value of DERs in California: https://www.tdworld.com/distributed-energy-resources/article/21132853/how-two-simple-fixes-can-fairly-compensate-the-true-value-of-ders-in-california

Transmission Access Charges Wasteful electricity transmission spending is hurting California communities. Our reforms will fix this: https://clean-coalition.org/policy/transmission-access-charges/

Flattening California’s Duck Curve with Local Solar: https://clean-coalition.org/news/flattening-californias-duck-curve-with-local-solar-and-battery-storage/

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 Dr. Judith Curry for a wide-ranging conversation about the intersection of energy abundance and climate stewardship. From the challenges to wind and solar proliferation to the timing of pulling off the energy transition to all of the above vs. best of the above…Mike and Judith are breaking it all down in this insightful, provocative conversation.

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 organizations is managing record load growth, integrating renewables, and planning for a future of reliability, affordability, and resilience.

Listen in to hear Lanny unpack the key trends shaping the modern energy landscape, from data center demand and electrified oil fields to the $18 billion in infrastructure investments that will define the next era of grid reliability.

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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 every utility leader should be paying closer attention.

From record-breaking PJM auction prices to mounting pressure from state governors and regulators, capacity markets are facing what may be called a crisis of confidence. But behind the headlines lies a bigger question: are these markets built based on the legacy utility setup still fit for today’s new era of data-center-driven load growth, rapid electrification, and decarbonization mandates?

Having studied market design and power sector reform across the U.S. and Europe, Graf offers a sharp, data-driven look at the mechanics shaping this moment and where reform might go next. This episode cuts through the noise to reveal what’s really happening behind the market mechanics and what it all means for utility leaders balancing affordability, reliability, and clean energy commitments in a rapidly evolving power system.

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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 GridWare, and Billy Terry, COO at Consumers Power.

Sensing and fault detection can help us build a more resilient grid. And the tech behind these major moves? It’s getting better and better, as Scott and Billy point out. Listen in for a look at what this investment in the grid’s future could mean for all of us. Because at the end of the day, visibility doesn’t just enable operational excellence. It’s everything.

The global energy transition isn’t theoretical anymore—it’s happening right now. But how fast can we go, and how far can renewables really take us?

In this episode of Power Perspectives, hosts Kinsey Grant Baker sits down with Mark Jacobson, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford University, to explore one of the most polarizing questions in energy today:

100% clean energy, is it actually possible?

For decades, Jacobson has modeled the path to a world powered entirely by wind, water, and solar, contending that fossil fuels, carbon capture, or nuclear aren’t necessary to meet the future energy needs. His research has influenced global climate policy, inspired states to adopt renewable targets, and sparked fierce debate across the energy sector.

Whether you’re a skeptic of his stance or co-signer that the future can be all renewable, this conversation challenges assumptions and asks the most important question in energy today: what if the solutions we need are already here?

Key Links:

Mark Jacobson’s Stanford Profile: https://profiles.stanford.edu/mark-jacobson

Mark Jacobson on X: https://x.com/mzjacobson

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AI is transforming everything, but what happens when it starts transforming the grid itself?

As data centers explode in scale and AI workloads surge, utility leaders are wondering when the power system might reach a a breaking point. But what if the next generation of compute didn’t just consume energy? What if it instead helped stabilize the grid?

In this episode of Power Perspectives, host Kinsey Grant Baker sits down with Arushi Sharma Frank, Senior Advisor on Power Utilities at Emerald AI and a senior associate at CSIS, and a technology  investor who has launched a massive ERCOT campaign for tech neutral dispatachability solutions. In the conversation, they unpack how her team is redefining the relationship between technology and electricity. Frank, whose career spans Tesla, Exelon, and the intersection of policy and physics, shares how AI data centers can evolve from grid stressors to grid assets through orchestration, curtailment, and smart market design.

As Emerald AI grabs industry headlines for its much-anticipated power-flexible AI infrastructure, Frank shares her deep technical insight with a visionary look at where AI and energy converge. It’s a must-listen for utility decision-makers, grid planners, and innovators who see the grid not as a limit, but as a launchpad.

Key Links:

Arushi Sharma Frank on Substack: https://arushisharmafrank.substack.com/

Rich Miller on Substack: https://substack.com/@richmiller

NVIDIA: How AI Factories Can Help Relieve Grid Stress: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/ai-factories-flexible-power-use/

Two Bills in Texas for Data Center Speed to Power: (Guess Which One Investors Will Like More): https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/two-bills-texas-data-center-speed-power-guess-which-1zabe/

Power Access for AI: The Flexibility Compact: https://www.csis.org/analysis/power-access-ai-flexibility-compact

ARUSHI SHARMA FRANK: What Should Be In The Strategic Blueprint For A 21st Century Grid?: https://dailycaller.com/2025/08/12/opinion-what-should-be-in-the-strategic-blueprint-for-a-21st-century-grid-arushi-sharma-frank/

AI requires a smarter grid — and so does everyone else: https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/ai-requires-a-smarter-grid-and-so-does-everyone-else/

How the world’s first flexible AI factory will work in tandem with the grid: https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/how-the-worlds-first-flexible-ai-factory-will-work-in-tandem-with-the-grid/

Aggregations and data centers: If a resource shows up when the grid is straining, make it count: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/aggregations-data-centers-grid-flexibility/756183/

Mainstreaming AI data center flexibility: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/mainstreaming-ai-data-center-flexibility/804103/

From Bottlenecks to Breakthroughs: Rewriting the Grid Planning Playbook in the Southwest Power Pool and Texas: https://www.csis.org/analysis/bottlenecks-breakthroughs-rewriting-grid-planning-playbook-southwest-power-pool-and-texas

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It’s no secret: AI is changing everything from how we think, to where we build, to how we power the world.

And nowhere is that disruption hitting harder and more quickly than in the rise of data centers, the massive energy users that are quickly becoming the new industrial load of the 21st century.

In this episode of Power Perspectives, host Kinsey Grant Baker digs into the context of this transformation with the illuminating Pete Sacco, founder of Gray Wolf Data Center and physicist-turned-engineer-turned-developer. Sacco blends technical mastery with a human-centered vision for what the next generation of compute infrastructure could look like: distributed, opportunistic, and deeply integrated with local energy systems.

From solid oxide fuel cells and on-site microgrids to new partnerships between utilities and data centers, this episode unpacks the radical rethink happening at the edge of the grid—and what it means for energy leaders tasked with keeping pace. This episode is a must-listen for anyone sitting at the intersection of energy, infrastructure, and innovation.

And the message is clear: the data center revolution is coming fast, and utilities that embrace the change today will be the ones defining the next era of the grid tomorrow.

And thanks to our partner, Renew Developers, for making this episode possible. ReNew Developers is a sustainable real estate development firm offering speed-to-market power solutions and Energy-as-a-Service. We serve data centers and large industrial power users by developing modern projects with on-site power generation. Our unique approach shaves years off the timeline to move into your data center. We have a pipeline of land with energy generation permits in place that can feed your state-of-the-art data center expansion needs. Contact us at ReNewDevelopers.com if you need land with power now.