Grid Talk

Germany and Europe are somewhat envious of the massive federal spending now underway in America to ready the grid and the energy economy to combat climate change. 

That’s according to Simon Müller who is one of Europe’s leading thinkers on the future of energy and sustainability. As the director of the think tank Agora Energiewende, he took time to explain his views on the Department of Energy’s Grid Talk Podcast.

“When it comes to the buildout of renewable energies actually what we see in jurisdictions across the world is that now that you really have very competitive costs that it doesn’t take that much political will any more to go for quite large amount of renewables,” said Müller. 

After the global economic downturn from the Covid pandemic, Europe has watched the U.S. government put in place a stimulus package built around investments in clean energy and the electric power grid. 

“When you look at policymakers in Germany but also in Europe, they’ve been looking to the United States and the Inflation Reduction Act with a certain degree of envy. Why? Because it’s been perceived as being very successful at attracting investments in technologies that are very promising for the future and that are very strategic and position the United States on clean energy technologies.” 

Europe has struggled to match that government support.

“If we want to also play a role as a manufacturing hub going forward, we have to get our act together to find a response to that act in the U.S.”

Simon Müller is Director Germany at Agora Energiewende. He leads Agora's work in Germany on overarching energy and climate policy issues as well as in the areas of electricity, heat and energy infrastructure. Müller has advised governments in over 20 countries on six continents and coordinated and authored various studies on the transition of the power and energy system to renewable energies.

Müller is an alumnus of the Mercator Followship on International Affairs and is a member of the advisory board of the DLR Institute for Networked Energy Systems. He studied in Oldenburg, Bremen and Berlin (psychology, physics) and holds a M.Sc. in physics.

NV Energy and Google have pioneered new utility regulatory policy to help the tech company’s move to power its data center with renewable and green energy.

In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Doug Cannon, President and CEO of NV Energy. 

Google executives say the agreement could be a template for similar pacts with utilities around the country. Higher revenues from new fee structures will be used to fund new geothermal generation resources in Nevada. 

“We really quickly recognized is we couldn’t just rely on that tariff book anymore and we had, if we were going to stay relevant in the business and we were going to be a value-add energy provider for our customers we had to change our way of business.”

Utilities that don’t adapt to the green energy push of the likes of Google, Amazon and Microsoft may be headed to challenging times. 

“We’re going to see some utilities bypassed.”

“What this product, what we’re focused on is real time green generation being injected into the NV Energy grid at the same time as Google was utilizing energy… there’s absolutely a real time match on that energy.”

Doug Cannon leads NV Energy’s daily operations and oversees the company’s commitment to deliver low-cost energy, expand its renewable energy portfolio and maintain industry-leading reliability for its customers. He has been with NV Energy since 2013.

NV Energy delivers electricity to nearly 1.3 million customers and nearly 50 million tourists annually throughout its nearly 46,000-mile service territory in the state of Nevada. 

Cannon earned a juris doctor from the University of Colorado School of Law and a master’s degree in environmental studies from the University of Colorado. He holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental geoscience from Weber State University.

Google’s data centers consume an enormous amount of electricity. That’s prompted the information giant to proactively engage in the accelerating energy revolution. From Nevada to North Carolina and many points between, it is gearing up to power the Artificial Intelligence wave by striking novel relationships with utilities and encouraging the transformation of energy regulation, state by state. 

That is the focus of this episode of Grid talk. Host Marty Rosenberg interviews Amanda Peterson Corio, Google’s Global Head of Data Center Energy.

Google, citing industry sources, says and additional $2.5 trillion must be spent on clean energy over the next six years to address climate change. 

“What we have encountered is a universal recognition that we are in a unique moment in time,” said Peterson Corio. “For the first time in decades, we have real load growth in the U.S.”

Google’s response is to deepen its use of clean energy. 

“We are matching 100% of the electricity we use on an annual basis with new additional clean energy that we put onto the grid somewhere in the system or in the world.”

That effort will now be broadened. 

“Our higher standard of our 24/7 carbon-free energy goal actually takes that a step further and says if we’re truly going to decarbonize the grid where we operate, we need to make it first local, meaning we can’t just only sign a new contract for wind or solar, for example, in the Midwest to offset our data center in Singapore, right? Carbon is a global problem, but we also need to find solutions directly where we operate.”

Amanda Peterson Corio has 20 years of experience in energy project finance, development, and the procurement of renewable and traditional energy generation. In her current role, Amanda manages power procurement, energy policy, and energy infrastructure development for Google’s global data centers. 

Amanda holds an MBA from The Wharton School of Business and a BA in Business Administration with Honors from Boston University’s School of Management.

TerraPower, fueled with $1 billion from Bill Gates, hopes to be first out of the gate with next generation nuclear projects that will complement and back up burgeoning renewable energy generation. 

In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Chris Levesque who is president and CEO of TerraPower. 

The company is developing its 345-megawatt prototype. Ultimately, the units will be plugged in to the grid and replace generation at many coal-burning power plants. That will allow the new units ready access to transmission lines.

“We are the only construction permit for a commercial reactor in front of the NRC (U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission) today so by that objective measure, it means we’re next. It means the next American reactor is our Natrium Reactor in Wyoming; yes, so we plan to receive that construction license in 2026,” said Levesque

All kinds of nuclear technology should soon follow. 

“All the models show that the optimum mix on an emission-free grid is going to be 20% to 30% nuclear,” Levesque said. “I wish we could move faster, though. TerraPower is the leader. We’re trying to deliver as fast as we can on the first one and scale as fast as we can but we’re going to need multiple technologies.” 

“We really do need to triple nuclear, and we’re excited about being first but even when we deliver hundreds of reactors to triple nuclear, it’s going to require a really massive deployment.”

Chris Levesque is president and chief executive officer of TerraPower and also serves as a member of the TerraPower Board. He was appointed to that position in November 2018 after having served as president of TerraPower since 2015. Levesque leads this nuclear innovation company in the pursuit of next-generation nuclear energy. His proven track record in scoping, planning and implementing complex projects began with his service in the U.S. Nuclear Navy and features more than 30 years of experience in the nuclear field.

Levesque holds a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a Master of Science in mechanical engineering and a naval engineer degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also serves on the board of the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Massive investments to overhaul our aging power grid are underway, but it’s going to require significant planning to be successful.

In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg sits down with Ron Ambrosio, an energy transformation professional, to talk about getting smarter and more deliberate how we plan for the future.

“One of the key themes that we’re trying to educate the industry on is the importance of not just looking at forward incremental steps and design, but also the importance of looking at that endgame and doing analysis on that from an architectural perspective,” said Ambrosio.

“The endgame is reducing carbon fuels, trying to depend on renewable energy more and more and trying to expand to the use of distributed energy resources.”

Limits on the grid today are delaying the deployments of new grid assets. 

“That bottleneck partially reflects the fact that our current grid design does have limitations in what it can absorb today.” 

Ambrosio noted that, when it comes to planning, we will always have the issue needing new transmission.

“There’s a lot of evolution that the distribution systems need to go through in order to accommodate a very high penetration of more distributed renewable energy and other types of DER resources.” 

Ambrosio is former chief technology officer of smarter energy research at the IBM TJ Walton Research Center and former chairman of the Gridwise Architecture Council. He is a senior technical executive and scientist with a focus on technology, business and policy issues related to energy transformation in the electricity industry. He has 40 years of software engineering experience in distributed, real-time systems and their interoperability with enterprise computing environments, and 20 years of experience specifically in the energy transformation space.

In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Shay Bahramirad who is the  vice president of T&D, strategy, and sustainability at LUMA and president of the IEEE Power & Engineering Society. The discussion focuses on rebuilding the grid in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017 and how the world is pivoting to a new electric grid.

Bahramirad is the point person helping to rebuild the grid in Puerto Rico and and go beyond what existed prior to Hurricane Maria. The federal government has earmarked $16 billion to Puerto Rico for grid related work.

“From that total $16 billion dollars, we have initiated over $13 billion dollars of scope of work and over $4 billion dollars of it is approved by FEMA and over $1.2 billion dollars has been constructed in the grid. That includes everything from poles that they would withstand 160 miles per hour winds to modernization of substations,” said Bahramirad. 

Part of the rebuild is making the grid more reliable for customers.

“It also suffered from decades of under investments and lack of maintenance that led customers and citizens of Puerto Rico to experience outages three times more frequently than any other utility in the United States. “

“We got to work. The frequency of outages experienced by customers has gone down by about 25% since we started.”

As for changes confronting IEEE Power & Engineering Society members, utilities, and customers – the organization is focused on building the electrical grid of the future and making sure all the players are working in unison.

“It’s an unprecedented time to be in this industry and the challenges that we deal with cannot wait for a decade to coordinate.”

Dr. Bahramirad is a leading figure in the industry. She is the President of the IEEE Power and Energy Society, an editorial board member of the Electricity Journal, a US CIGRE Executive member, an adjunct professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and the founder of IEEE Women in Power. Dr. Bahramirad completed her PhD in electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has issued a new rule to better coordinate the massive buildout of new electric transmission systems. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Ari Peskoe who is the director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program.

FERC is trying to help pave the way to get a reported 11,000 wind, solar, and battery projects online. Right now, they are in limbo because of the lack of transmission.

“There are massive amounts of generation, mostly clean generation, stuck in these interconnection lines or interconnection queues,” said Peskoe.

In May, FERC issued Order No. 1920 to coordinate information sharing and transmission buildout. 

“FERC is trying to motivate the industry to develop high-voltage transmission lines and to work together on that development through existing regional alliances.”

Peskoe says there have been tens of billions of dollars a year spent on transmission, but much of it has gone to rebuilding last century’s infrastructure.

“We need to keep the system working, but we also need to think about ways to expand it in a cost-effective way.” 

Order No. 1920 urges the industry to be more forward thinking rather than reacting to these generators on a project-by-project basis.

“Let’s look at the broader trends, the long-term trends that we’re seeing, both in the supply mix changes as well as the potential for increasing demand due to electrification and other factors and plan wholistically going forward to anticipate the future needs.” 

Ari Peskoe has written extensively about regulation of the U.S. power sector, on issues ranging from Constitutional challenges to states’ energy laws to interstate transmission development. Prior to the Environmental and Energy Law Program, Ari was an associate at a law firm in Washington, D.C. where he litigated before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission about the Western Energy Crisis. He received his J.D. from Harvard Law School and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with degrees in electrical engineering and business.

Countries around the world are stepping up efforts to combat climate change but mountainous challenges loom. That’s according to the guest on the latest episode of Grid Talk.

Host Marty Rosenberg speaks with David Waskow, director of International Climate Initiatives at the World Resources Institute. 

Waskow says non-governmental organizations (NGOs), are shoulder to shoulder with national governments’ stepped-up engagement.

“We’re both making a lot of progress and have enormous challenges ahead of us,” said Waskow.

According to Waskow the work is just beginning.

“I think one thing we haven’t taken into account is the depth of transformation that we need.”

Some countries are making notable progress. 

“The surge in renewables in India is just quite remarkable and there over 100 gigawatts at the moment I believe, and continuing to grow rapidly,” he said. 

And he’s talking about massive societal transformations.

“We are moving quickly on EVs but all the evidence is that we’re not only going to have to do EVs at a massive scale, we’re also going to have to shift to other modes of transport than passenger vehicles.”

AS the Director of WRI’s International Climate Initiative Waskow is focused on international cooperation that catalyzes and supports action on climate change at the national level in developed and developing countries Prior to WRI, David directed climate change policy at the development organization Oxfam America, where much of his work focused on the impacts of climate change on vulnerable communities. 

He has graduate degrees from the University of Chicago and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University; his undergraduate degree is from Brown University.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is gearing up to fund $40 billion of electric grid and sustainability projects. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks Zealan Hoover who is the EPA Administrator’s Senior Advisor for Implementation. They discuss the range of projects to be funded.

“We’ve received over $100 billion dollars in supplemental appropriations. A lot of that is for electric system decarbonization and other climate investments,” Hoover said. 

The amount far exceeds any effort the agency has undertaken in its 50-year history. 

“We have received tens of billions of dollars across multiple programs through the Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act to both accelerate grid decarbonization and to get more zero emission equipment plugged into that grid.”

States, cities, and tribes are now competing for $4.6 billion worth of projects, with awards to be announced starting in July. 

“We’ve received over $30 billion dollars in project proposals so we will be funding the best of the best. We’re seeing really innovative proposals that are tailored to the needs of local communities and states,” Hoover said.

Zealan Hoover has led EPA's agency-wide implementation of more than $100 billion in programs authorized under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. Prior to that, he worked in the private sector advising organizations on a wide range of strategic and operational matters with an emphasis on decarbonization and managing climate risk. Hoover graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Offshore wind power generation is about to take off in a big way in the U.S. One of the biggest splashes will be made by Equinor which is building up to 130 ocean-planted wind turbines 15 to 30 miles off Long Island. Grid Talk host Marty Rosenberg goes in-depth on the project details with Equinor’s Vice President of Operations, Sam Byrne.

The operation will be anchored by operations based in Brooklyn, in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. The company’s Empire Wind farm will generate 2.1 gigawatts of electricity. New York State has declared that it wants 9 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030.

Byrne described the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal now being erected. 

“We’ll be building a building, we’ll be building a substation,” said Byrne. “We need maintenance technicians, marine and vessel crews to get out there, planning teams, medics…”

 Once offshore wind starts spinning, its appeal will be clear. 

“The wind resource blows more strongly and more consistently offshore and it better matches electric consumption patterns than a lot of other renewable sources.”

Byrne also talks about why the U.S. has been slow to adopt offshore wind and why that is changing.

“We’re starting to see the acceleration now. Some of it has to do with support; some of it has to do with the technology that’s come into being; some of it has to do with just the need for electricity.”

Sam Byrne is in his first year with Equinor. His responsibilities include leading and overseeing Equinor’s US offshore wind operations and maintenance activities, while ensuring development and execution of safe, efficient, and cost-effective operations. 

Byrne worked previously Vestas Wind Systems and McKinsey & Co. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Yale University and an M.A. in International Economics and International Relations with a concentration in Energy, Resources, and Environment from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.