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 provocative finding from the institute's latest research: when building owners invest in microgrids to optimize their own financial returns, the grid benefits as a byproduct — at zero marginal cost to grid operators.

The research, spanning five commercial building types and 13 geographies worldwide, finds that microgrids can deliver 20–40% power headroom recovery on average, with some configurations reaching 60%. And in 80% of modeled scenarios, the building owner achieves payback in under ten years — meaning the grid gets relief without spending a dollar.

This conversation reframes microgrids not as niche resilience tools, but as a scalable, privately financed mechanism for managing the coming demand surge — if the price signals are right.

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 bus depots, and smaller community sites. Now, with 23 “resilient hub” microgrids under development and plans to produce on-site green hydrogen for its transit fleet, Montgomery County is redefining what local energy leadership looks like.

In this conversation, host Elisa Wood sits down with two key architects of this vision: Michael Yambrach, Chief of Montgomery County’s Office of Energy and Sustainability, who has overseen the county’s energy evolution since 2014; and Khaled Fakhuri, Senior Vice President of Schneider Electric’s Microgrid Business, the county’s long-term development partner. Together, they unpack how the county got here, how the public-private partnership model works, and what the future of microgrids looks like at local, national, and even data-center scale

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 threat are now actively seeking out DER companies as partners.

The catalyst? Data centers. The explosive growth of AI and digital infrastructure is driving electricity demand at a scale that centralized generation simply cannot meet fast enough — and utilities are starting to realize that 80 million untapped American rooftops may be part of the answer.

Krapels brings both battle scars and optimism to this conversation. A former investment banker turned clean energy executive, he helped build SolarCity into the country's largest solar company and fought landmark net-metering wars in Nevada. Now, from Enphase — which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year — he describes a world where bundled, flexible distributed energy resources (solar + battery + bidirectional EV charger + smart home management) form dispatchable virtual power plants that utilities can actually rely on. And he argues it's not a future scenario. It's already happening.

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 to solar, and how rural co-ops, farm policy, and complementary generation profiles could bring it back into the mix.

While unlikely to compete head-to-head with solar, distributed wind may play a valuable supporting role in hybrid, distributed energy systems.

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 projects, fewer change orders, and infrastructure that communities actually use.

Markus offers a template for community microgrid development and provides examples of how it has worked in real-world projects. He tells the story of the Orcas Center Microgrid (Solar Builder Magazine’s Microgrid Project of the Year): a solar-plus-storage system built for a performing arts center on Orcas Island that turned out to be the community’s real resilience hub—not the fire station, not the school, but the place where people actually gather when things go wrong.

You’ll also hear about: a tribal nation moving to higher ground ahead of a looming earthquake, a rural fire district running almost entirely on diesel for 30 years, and a national museum doubling as an emergency medical equipment hub. Each project started with a community conversation, not a technical spec.

Markus also breaks down Washington State’s unique policy and funding ecosystem, including its cap-and-invest program, Commerce technical assistance grants, and the emerging day-ahead market that could finally make community microgrids economically self-sustaining. And he makes the case for FERC Order 2222 as the regulatory lever that could unlock real revenue for community-owned energy assets.

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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, personalized energy shifting, Ben and Elisa talk about why the future of grid stability runs directly through your living room.

What you'll learn:

• What a virtual power plant actually is, and why it's different from old-school demand response

• How Renew Home manages nearly 6 gigawatts of flexible load across 7.5 million households

• Why being distributed makes a VPP more valuable than a centralized power plant

• The policy gap holding back the next wave of VPP growth (and which markets are leading)

• How Ben's team achieves an 80% opt-in rate — without customers feeling a thing

• What role EVs, heat pumps, and home batteries will play in the grid of 2035

Ben Brown built the Nest Learning Thermostat and Google Home devices before spinning out Renew Home — now North America's largest residential VPP platform — from Google in 2023. In November 2024, Renew Home announced a partnership with NRG Energy to build a 1-gigawatt AI-powered VPP in Texas.

This episode is for anyone who pays an electric bill, cares about the clean energy transition, or wants to understand how the grid is actually going to keep up with exploding demand from data centers, EVs, and electrification.

Subscribe to the Energy Changemakers newsletter and join the community at energychangemakers.com.

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 episode:

• Why Shah is defending Xcel Energy's controversial utility-owned battery program in Minnesota — and why he thinks the critics are fighting the wrong battle

• The $50 billion math: how strategically placed batteries could meet all U.S. load growth through 2030 at a fraction of the cost of new utility infrastructure

• His blunt advice for half the clean energy industry: adapt your cost structure or shut your doors

• The "controlled experiment" between Xcel Minnesota and Xcel Colorado that could settle the utility ownership debate

• A three-point energy platform for governors, anchored in grid-enhancing technologies and massive battery deployment

• Shah's personal journey from a village in India with barely any electricity to overseeing the largest clean energy lending program in U.S. history

Key quote: "This solution is 90% cheaper than upgrading all the wires in Minnesota. Now we're arguing about whether this could have been 10% cheaper than the private sector solution."

People and organizations discussed: Sparkfund, Xcel Energy, Generate Capital, SunEdison, Common Charge, Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Tesla, Atmos Financial, DOE Loan Programs Office

Resources: DOE VPP Liftoff Report (January 2025) · DOE Grid-Enhancing Technologies Liftoff Report · IEA World Energy Outlook · commoncharge.org · energychangemakers.com

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 Electric leading microgrid solution development

• Early pioneer in the microgrid space

The Stranded Abundance Problem

• Valuable incentive programs (ITC, 179D, state incentives) exist but remain underutilized

• Capital exists but doesn't trust complex value streams

• Example: Heat pump programs can access 50% ITC but developers avoid it due to complexity and risk

Historical Parallels

• Printing press and the democratization of knowledge

• Gold rush: connecting stranded gold with stranded capital through infrastructure (Wells Fargo)

The Solution: Web3 and Decentralized Finance

• Using blockchain, smart contracts, and automation to create trusted data frameworks

• Integrating compliance data with insurance (similar to telematics in fleet vehicles)

• Removing ITC recapture risk through data-driven insurance products

• Creating investible assets from energy data

Two Sides of Abundance

• Removing friction to build (permits, interconnection, supply chain)

• Removing friction to finance (trust, complexity, risk management)

• Energy abundance requires both reducing building barriers AND financing barriers

• Trusted data infrastructure can unlock stranded capital pools

• Tokenization and alternative investments are creating new opportunities

• The shift toward private markets and granular asset transparency enables liquidity

• Democratization of both energy AND finance is the ultimate goal

• Ezra Klein's work on abundance agenda

• Larry Fink's 2025 investor letter on tokenization

• Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) incentives

• 179D building energy efficiency tax incentive

For more information, visit energychangemakers.com

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 technologies are needed, and how the regulatory landscape must adapt to handle loads that can spike by several gigawatts in seconds.

Key Topics

• Introduction
• Three Types of Data Centers
• AI Training Centers: The Game Changer
• The Ramp Rate Problem
• Why Virtual Power Plants Can't Help
• What Solutions Could Work
• The Battery Challenge
• Interconnection Roadblocks
• Microgrid Alternatives
• The Regulatory Challenge
• Broader Infrastructure Crisis
• The Incentive Problem
• Systems Thinking Approach

Resources mentioned

• NERC Study: National Electricity Reliability Corporation report on large load impacts

• Energy Hub VPP White Paper: Recent publication on virtual power plant capabilities

• Previous Podcast: "Are We Expecting Too Much From Virtual Power Plants?" with Kay Aikin, Mark Patterson, and Lorenzo Kristov

• GridWise Architecture Council: Organization focused on power systems architecture

• Kay's Website: www.innovate8futures.com (Regenerative Futures - systems thinking resources)

Kay Aikin is CEO of Dynamic Grid and a systems engineer specializing in electrical grid architecture. She serves on the GridWise Architecture Council and is known for her forward-thinking approach to grid transformation challenges. Kay focuses on distribution network challenges, DER integration, and holistic systems design.

Elisa Wood is the host of the Energy Changemakers Podcast, which features conversations with industry leaders about building the decentralized grid. She can be reached at [email protected].

Have thoughts on this episode? Reach out to Elisa at [email protected] or use the thumbs up/down buttons to provide feedback.

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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 industry executive at the intersection of energy and decarbonization with 30 years of experience integrating hardware and software to develop, commercialize, and scale sustainable energy solutions. She is the Managing Partner at Clean Tech Strategy Advisors, where she advises corporations, startups, and investors navigating the clean tech landscape.