Smart Grid Today Podcast

Electriq Power is an electricity storage provider for residential electricity customers that offers backup power plus the wide array of values that aggregated storage deployments can bring to electricity providers and their customers. He shared some details about a pilot project in the Caribbean and a commercial deployment in California along with his take on how the fast-paced evolution of the electric industry is creating really exciting opportunities that his firm is addressing.

Andrew Heath is a senior director at JD Power working in its utility intelligence practice. He shared lots of insights about the firm’s traditional utility customer satisfaction tracking and benchmarks and also about the new environmental and social governance metrics for the electric industry. How the tremendous investments that are being made in modernizing the industry are perceived is critical as the firm found out customers who know more about infrastructure work being done seem to have a higher level of satisfaction, but the industry is not always great at sharing the news of the benefits its work may be building.

Store Dot defied all the predictions and created a battery technology that lets batteries of any size be charged in five minutes. The accomplishment was built on a nobel-prize winning battery formula and the use of machinery built for the biotech industry to make nanomaterials that can safely take a charge at incredible speeds. The implications for the utility industry and every industry that uses electricity – including now the transportation sector with EVs and electric trucks, buses and trains – are tremendous and Myersdorf spoke to the role his products could play in the electric grid for load balancing and much more.

Coretec CEO Michael Kraft told us about a brand new battery breakthrough his company is bringing to market that improves the energy density of lithium ion batteries by two to three times. Kraft is well aware of how the battery market is preparing for massive growth and he described how his technology has an edge on the competition and how battery storage is the key to bringing within reach the decarbonization of the grid, and of transportation, and beyond.

Leclanche CEO Anil Srivastava’s knowledge and insights are fueled by a career that spans the smart grid story arc, from being an electrical engineer who worked with Hewlett Packard and a leading nuclear generator to taking the helm at a battery company that understands how electrochemistry, energy management software, and sound telecom networks merge to play a key role in the modernization of electric grids large and small being rolled out or still just imagined as the electric industry faces tremendous evolution – and he shared his vision with us.

Justin Fier is director of threat intel and analytics at Darktrace, a cybersecurity firm that uses artificial intelligence for many industries including electric utilities of all sizes to identify when bad actors are moving in the system and shut them down. This is the second visit of Darktrace to our show and Justin helped us look at recent developments in the industry and shared insights about why the risks of cybersecurity should not interfere with the modernization of industries including the electric industry.

Strohecker is company managing director for Hitachi ABB Power Grids in Canada. He shed light on multiple facets of his firm’s smart grid deployments including how ABB has been managing to continue its critical smart grid work during the pandemic, about the key roles smart grid technology plays in the global transition to carbon-free electricity including multiple examples of projects his firm has been involved with, and also about the combination of ABB Power Grids with Hitachi and why that pairing offers big opportunities to both firms.

Six-K is a firm using a novel plasma-furnace process developed at MIT to manufacture key battery components that cut the time and cost of battery production by a very dramatic percentage. Holman is a long time veteran of battery technology firms including A123 and he described how the traditional approach to creating some battery parts takes a couple days to complete while his firm uses its microwave-based plasma process that burns at 6,000°F, hence the name of his company, to make the ingredients in mere seconds, a time and cost savings he believes can drastically improve the economics for battery storage on the grid.

Sam duPont is a principal for strategic programs in the strategy group at Baltimore Gas & Electric and he spoke to us about a smart city/smart home pilot program being rolled out in Annapolis, Md, using smart meter data and connected devices to offer a select group of opt-in residential and small business customers control over their energy use He told us about the success of the messaging the utility used and the focus on groups such as low-income customers to make sure the feedback was coming not just from early adopters.

Anterix owns the licenses for 900 MHz spectrum used by electric utilities and others to deploy private LTE broadband networks used for smart grid and other purposes. The firm recently saw the culmination of a five-year FCC rulemaking that set the rules for the use of 900 Mhz spectrum for utilities and President Rob Schwartz told us about the history and the benefits this spectrum offers – and why utilities want to deploy private broadband networks using this cell-phone standards, and how several utilities already deployed pilots of it including Ameren, Florida Power & Light, New York Power Authority, and how Southern Company was the first to roll it out in earnest.