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Modern grid management is about much more than routine efficiency. Utility teams are under pressure to enable proactive wildfire mitigation, rapid storm response, and continuous oversight across thousands of miles of aging infrastructure, but maintaining and scaling these tasks can be a major challenge when teams are constrained by traditional field inspection methods that are slow, expensive, and visually limited. How are autonomous, long-range drone platforms and Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations transforming grid monitoring across massive service territories? And what does it actually take to deploy and scale these capabilities?

Trevor Perrott, CEO and Co-Founder of Censys Technologies, sat down with us to answer those questions and more. He breaks down the operational realities of moving from reactive maintenance to predictive asset management, explores how utilities can achieve "asset omniscience" to protect critical infrastructure, and outlines strategies for turning massive aerial datasets into actionable intelligence. Perrott also outlines how to navigate ever-evolving FAA regulations, what approaches are being used to scale pilot programs into high-ROI enterprise deployments, and more. 

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This Week in Cleantech is a weekly podcast covering the most impactful stories in clean energy and climate featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey.

This week's episode features special guest Dan Gearino from Inside Climate News, who lays out how new tariffs and the phaseout of federal tax credits have dealt a heavy blow to the rooftop solar industry. 

This week’s “Cleantecher of the Week” is Richard Wang, CEO and co-founder of Voya Energy, which just raised $35 million to turn scrap aluminum into backup power for data centers. Instead of diesel generators, Voya's system runs an electrochemical reaction that pulls energy out of aluminum with zero carbon pollution, aiming to be quieter, smaller, and cleaner than the diesel backup that's become a flashpoint in local data center opposition. The company plans to have generators ready for on-site testing by the end of 2027, with nearly a dozen companies already lined up for pilot demonstrations.

This Week in Cleantech — August 28, 2026 

1. Exclusive: 75% of Americans Now Oppose Local Data Center Development — Heatmap
2. The Clean Energy Transition Has A Grid Problem. Here’s How To Fix It. — Atmos
3. US building twice as much gas-fired capacity as China in AI boom, analysis finds | Fossil fuels — The Guardian
4. Hyperscalers’ Off-Grid Power Push Comes With Risks — The Wall Street Journal
5. Rooftop Solar Is Having a Rough One — Inside Climate News

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While some students enjoy summer break, their school buses are still hard at work. Rather than transporting pupils, they're hauling electrons and supporting the grid during critical periods of peak electricity demand.

Such is one of the tantalizing promises of vehicle-to-grid, or V2G, technology, and it's far from fantasy. More than 30 utilities across 21 U.S. states currently have V2G school bus projects, from California to Connecticut, North Carolina up to Massachusetts. Since they can charge their beefy batteries of 200 kilowatt-hours or more when power prices are low, the peak-shavers-on-wheels are proving to be a valuable tool for utilities, especially as demand surges and affordability discussions grow louder. 

And applications go beyond buses. More broadly, vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology enables batteries to communicate with and be discharged to external systems, whether that's an electric vehicle (EV) or something else. Such virtual power plant (VPP) programs are still in their infancy, and regulatory frameworks and standards to support them are far from established, but early studies are beginning to tease out the enticing possibilities for managing EV charging and smart battery dispatch.

On this episode of the Factor This Policycast, the latest in a series presented in partnership with national business association Advanced Energy United, we dive into a world where smart charging plays a critical role in grid reliability and keeping electricity prices manageable. 

Host Paul Gerke leads a discussion between electrifying transportation policy principal Elizabeth Stears of Advanced Energy United and Leah Brams, market development manager at Highland Fleets, an electrification-as-a-service provider helping school districts, local governments, and commercial fleet owners affordably convert their traditional diesel vehicle fleets to EVs. They outline the policy reforms needed to unlock V2X's potential and identify the roadblocks to wider adoption. Brams and Stears identify how utilities can best leverage such technologies and share learnings from pilots- what works, what doesn't, and how we can refine policy to roll idling electric buses into peak-demand squashers.

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This Week in Cleantech is a weekly podcast covering the most impactful stories in clean energy and climate featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey. Jeremiah Karpowicz, Content Director at Clarion Events, is filling in for Paul this week.

This week's episode features special guest Molly Taft from WIRED, who discusses the growing, cross-partisan backlash against AI data centers.

This week’s “Cleantecher of the Week” is Drew Baglino, founder and CEO of Heron Power. His company builds solid-state transformers that don't rely on the steel causing shortages, and Heron just closed a $140 million round to build a U.S. factory capable of producing 40 gigawatts of the gear a year. Congratulations, Drew!

This Week in Cleantech — August 21, 2026

1. OpenAI Locks In Lease for Huge Data Center in Ohio With Backing From Nvidia — The Wall Street Journal
2. The Blackout That Could Devastate America — The New York Times
3. Big Batteries to Bolster the Grid Are Stuck Waiting to Plug In — Bloomberg
4. DOE says we need more transmission, decides building less is fine — Factor This
5. How Data Centers Broke American Politics — WIRED

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U.S. solar photovoltaic and battery energy storage developers are well positioned to serve unprecedented electric load growth spurred by data centers, putting the people and companies who spearhead power projects in the driver's seat- or so you'd think. The reality is a little more complicated than that.

On this episode of the Factor This podcast, Sabah Bayatli, president and CEO of San Antonio-based OCI Energy, lends insights into what it's like to develop utility-scale solar and battery energy storage projects in Texas and beyond. In a conversation with host Paul Gerke of Factor This, Bayatli shares OCI Energy's growth story and what makes it different from other independent power producers, leaning on what he has learned through collaboration with utilities, financial institutions, technology providers, and infrastructure investors. 

Bayatli outlines OCI Energy's development strategy and argues that interconnection remains the biggest bottleneck to getting projects online. He weighs in on how grid operators are managing their queues and opines on how developers can continue to advance projects amid policy, permitting, and market uncertainty. Plus: Bayatli's perspective on the future of energy storage, grid reliability, and energy growth over the next five years. 

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This Week in Cleantech is a weekly podcast covering the most impactful stories in clean energy and climate featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey.

This week's episode features special guest Mark Chediak from Bloomberg, who breaks down Trump's new 15% tariffs and price floors on imported polysilicon and its derivatives, including wafers, cells and modules.

This week’s “Cleantecher of the Week” is Kumo Sharma, founder of Arkaya Energy. His company's milk-source heat pump pulls heat straight out of fresh milk as it's chilled for cheesemaking, then uses that heat to make near-boiling water for washdown — cutting England’s Barber's Farmhouse Cheesemakers' electricity use in half and saving them about $94,000 a year. Congratulations, Kumo!

This Week in Cleantech — August 14, 2026 

1. Zach Dell Is Raising Money to Put a Battery in Your Backyard — WSJ
2. Trump waged war on EVs. Now he’s helping them out. — E&E News
3. Some Nebraska communities are cashing in on renewables. Others are being left behind. — Grist
4. Federal Judge Orders Pentagon to Lift Freeze on Wind Power — The New York Times
5. How the US Is Trying to End Solar Tariff Whack-a-Mole — Bloomberg

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It's been a rough summer for soft serve ice cream cone enthusiasts. In most parts of the United States, hot and humid weather has visited and overstayed its welcome, which is no treat for the power grid, either. Elevated temperatures mean increased electricity consumption and accompanying higher prices, the cherry on top amidst a nationwide surge in demand fueled by data centers, manufacturing, and mass electrification.

So far, we've seen grid operators issue a few alerts and calls for conservation, particularly in constrained PJM Interconnection territory, where emergency conservation measures kept electricity demand ​from eclipsing an all-time high set in 2006. Down in Texas, the record book is being rewritten this summer. ERCOT has shattered its all-time demand mark more than once, but has also thus far kept power prices reasonable by leveraging an influx of renewables and battery energy storage to break generation records, too.

In general, serving peak demand is extremely expensive, and the peakier the system, the pricier it is for the average ratepayer. As most of the country copes with higher electricity bills, finding ways to curb costs is paramount. Thankfully, utilities have a variety of tools at their disposal to improve grid utilization and peak load management, including flexible home electrical equipment, smart electric vehicle charging, and managing distributed energy resources through virtual power plants. And since transmission and distribution system infrastructure is designed to accommodate the few hours of the year when the system is taken to its limits, there is almost always spare capacity on power lines, which can be leveraged via advanced transmission technologies, as we discussed in the previous episode of the Factor This Policycast.

This edition of the podcast, presented in partnership with Advanced Energy United, explores demand-side solutions for surviving summer peaks. Host Paul Gerke leads a discussion highlighting the tools available to keep the lights on and bills manageable, and how utilities can use them to get more out of our existing grid without investing in costly, time-consuming infrastructure upgrades. Richard Caperton, vice president for public policy at SPAN, and Sarah Steinberg, managing director at Advanced Energy United, outline the metrics that matter, share how early legislation is leaning, and explain why demand-side solutions work for utilities.

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This Week in Cleantech is a weekly podcast covering the most impactful stories in clean energy and climate featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey.

This week's episode features special guest Heather Clancy from Trellis, who discusses why some data center companies see fuel cells as an attractive option for onsite power.

This week’s “Cleantecher of the Week” is is Aytaç Yilmaz, Co-founder & CEO of Ore Energy. The Amsterdam-based startup just closed a $43 million Series A for its iron-air batteries, which store renewable power for up to 100 hours by rusting and unrusting iron electrodes, no lithium or cobalt required. Ore's also just signed the largest long-duration storage deal in continental Europe, a 1 gigawatt-hour agreement with Dutch utility Budget Thuis. Congratulations, Aytaç!

This Week in Cleantech — August 7, 2026 

1. Solar to Soon Pass Coal as China’s Top Power Capacity Source — Bloomberg
2. How Solar Donors Helped Take Down a Trump-Backed Republican –– Politico
3. The World Crossed a Major Solar Milestone. No One Noticed –– Bloomberg
4. This Is What the New Rush to Mine America Looks Like –– TIME Magazine
5. Why data center companies Equinix and Oracle are buying fuel cells – Trellis

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 In an era defined by compounding wildfire risks, rapid digitalization, and unprecedented demand growth, utilities need to redefine their playbook. Sumeet Singh, CEO of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) and EVP for Energy Delivery, is doing exactly that for one of the country’s largest energy enterprises while both improving local communities and setting an operational benchmark for the wider industry.

In this episode of the Factor This podcast, Singh details how utility leaders can balance cultural shifts with the economic imperative to maximize underutilized grid capacity and lower customer rates. He breaks down how PG&E processes billions of pieces of data to help predict wildfire risks in advance, and how AI-enabled camera networks can shave critical minutes off emergency response times. 

From deploying machine learning to accelerating customer interconnections, Singh details how data amplifies frontline expertise rather than replacing it. Grounded in a philosophy of selfless service and value-based safety ownership, this conversation provides a blueprint for combining innovative technology with engineering discipline to cultivate a community trust that is foundational to the grid of the future.

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This Week in Cleantech is a weekly podcast covering the most impactful stories in clean energy and climate featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey.

This week's episode features special guest Clara Hudson from the Wall Street Journal, who breaks down Heineken's plan to use a renewable-powered heat battery to release steam for its beer brewing in Portugal.

This week’s “Cleantechers of the Week” are Tim Shepherd and Sylvain Marseille from Pelton Shepherd Industries, which makes Nutri Ice – ice packs that you can use to feed plants. It is the only truly compostable gel pack and offers the same performance as a regular gel pack. Congratulations Tim and Sylvain!

This Week in Cleantech — July 31, 2026

1. Cracks appear in the vision of off-grid AI data centers — Axios
2. Trump administration admits grants for clean energy were canceled based on politics – The Associated Press
3. BP nears deal to sell solar business Lightsource to Kuwait-backed group – Financial Times
4. Trump admin bans ‘new’ foreign-made inverters. What does that mean? — Canary Media
5. Heineken Is Trying a Heat Battery to Generate Steam for Its Brewing — The Wall Street Journal

Energy policy on your mind? Check out all episodes of the Factor This Policycast