With Great Power

Marc Spieler had been at the oil and gas giant Halliburton for 13 years when he first saw inklings of the energy transition – like Shell’s investment in geothermal and Exxon Mobil’s wind and solar PPAs. Once EVs started to go mainstream in 2019, he knew the energy transition was for real. And he wanted in. 

So he got a job at NVIDIA the same year the tech giant launched a new line of semiconductor chips specifically designed for processing artificial intelligence. Now, Marc works with other software companies and utilities to use technology to drive down the cost of the energy transition and speed up decarbonization. 

This week on With Great Power, Marc tells Brad about how advanced processing and artificial intelligence are changing utility operations, and why not all technology solutions need to be built from scratch. 

This podcast is produced by GridX in partnership with Latitude Studios. GridX is the Enterprise Rate Platform that modern utilities rely on to usher in our clean energy future.

Hudson Gilmer worked in telecom in the 90’s when the industry transformed how data moved. And it didn’t take long for him to realize that a similar transformation would happen with electric utilities – and he needed to be a part of it.

So he started a dynamic line rating company, LineVision, that uses sensors and data to show what is happening on transmission lines in real time. But, like other start-ups in the power sector, LineVision was stuck in pilot purgatory for years, until 2022 when they were awarded a big contract from a utility in the northeast. Now they are working on projects with utilities across the country. 

In this episode of With Great Power, Hudson tells Brad why dynamic line rating technology is picking up momentum, and how it can help meet growing electricity demand. 

This podcast is produced by GridX in partnership with Latitude Studios. GridX is the Enterprise Rate Platform that modern utilities rely on to usher in our clean energy future.

In Nigeria, tens of millions of people live without access to reliable power. Utibe Bassey grew up in Lagos, and knows what it’s like to not have electricity to perform simple daily tasks. 

When she moved to the United States as a teen, she didn’t think much about electric utilities. But she did think about how managers treat employees – a thought spurred by an unfortunate instance she witnessed while working at a fast food chain. Ever since then, Utibe has refined her personal philosophy, “Love as a KPI,” which prioritizes kindness and human connection in the workplace. 
In this episode of With Great Power, Utibe tells Brad about how she puts her personal philosophy to work at Dominion Energy, where she is vice president of customer experience. She also talks about what it means to work in the power industry, having lived without access to reliable power in her youth. 

This podcast is produced by GridX in partnership with Latitude Studios. GridX is the Enterprise Rate Platform that modern utilities rely on to usher in our clean energy future.

Sarah Kapnick has always been drawn to solving complex problems, and as a kid she dreamed of being a mathematician. But a stronger desire to work on more tangible things, led her to blaze a career path that combined climate science and financial risk. 

Since becoming NOAA’s chief scientist in 2022, one way that Kapnick has applied her unique skill set is by helping utilities better leverage climate data and predictions in resiliency and operational expenditures.

In this episode of With Great Power, Sarah tells Brad how NOAA is supporting the Electric Power Research Institute, how she has seen utilities’ response to climate threats evolve, and why the power sector needs to monitor another possible threat: space weather.

This podcast is produced by GridX in partnership with Latitude Studios. GridX is the Enterprise Rate Platform that modern utilities rely on to usher in our clean energy future.

Luis Reyes is a lifer at Kit Carson Electric, a rural energy co-operative in northern New Mexico. He grew up in a home powered by the utility and has been its CEO for 30 years. Under his leadership – and the direction of co-op members – Kit Carson has moved all of its daytime energy needs to renewables.

Now, in a push to hit 100% round-the-clock renewable energy, he wants to develop a green hydrogen project for long-duration storage – at a Superfund site, of all places. 

In this episode of With Great Power, Luis tells Brad how this Superfund site project originated, and how it fits into the bigger vision for transitioning a community of 30,000 members away from fossil-based energy.

This podcast is produced by GridX in partnership with Latitude Studios. GridX is the Enterprise Rate Platform that modern utilities rely on to usher in our clean energy future.

Mark Waclawiak was tuned into energy issues at an early age. Both his parents worked in the industry: his mom designed electrical systems for buildings and his dad worked at the utility. So the importance of electricity was always apparent to him.

When he started working for a utility in 2015, he quickly identified an opportunity to use data to improve reliability, which led to running the operational performance team. The team moved data out of Access and Excel into SQL databases, which now serve as the foundation for AI applications. 

This week, Mark talks with Brad about how Avangrid replaced legacy data management systems with SQL databases to support AI projects.

On June 13th, Latitude Media and GridX will host a Frontier Forum to examine the importance of good rate design – and the consequences of getting it wrong. Register at latitudemedia.com/events. See you there!

This podcast is produced by GridX in partnership with Latitude Studios. GridX is the Enterprise Rate Platform that modern utilities rely on to usher in our clean energy future.

Kim Getgen moved to Silicon Valley from Washington D.C. in 2000, just in time for the dot com bubble burst. Despite her timing, she fell hard for the excitement and opportunity of startups and technology innovation. 

Kim launched and worked at many startups, but also took roles in larger organizations where she gravitated toward “intrapreneurship.” But after suffering burnout four years ago, she started thinking about ways to encourage innovation among intrapreneurs in risk-averse sectors like utilities.

In 2021 she founded InnovationForce to guide innovators, and their teams, through a repeatable, rigorous, and democratic process for vetting and testing new technologies. Kim’s goals are to promote workplace psychological safety for intrapreneurs and to help utilities keep new decarbonization technologies out of pilot purgatory. 

On June 13th, Latitude Media and GridX will host a Frontier Forum to examine the importance of good rate design – and the consequences of getting it wrong. Register at latitudemedia.com/events. See you there!

This podcast is produced by GridX in partnership with Latitude Studios. GridX is the Enterprise Rate Platform that modern utilities rely on to usher in our clean energy future.

Ahmad Faruqui has been researching electricity pricing since the mid 1970’s, when the cost of a kilowatt-hour was flat. But in the 80’s and 90’s, he started working on dynamic pricing – pioneering the concept of time-of-use rates.

The big breakthrough for time-of-use rates came during the fallout from the California energy crisis. Later, thanks to the rollout of smart meters, more power providers started experimenting with dynamic rates.

Now, new technology is making time-of-use rate design more transparent. This week, Ahmad talks with Brad about why dynamic pricing is gaining momentum among electric utilities – and what makes for good rate design. 

On June 13th, Latitude Media and GridX will host a Frontier Forum to examine the imperative of good rate design – and the consequences of getting it wrong. Register at the link in the show notes, or go to latitudemdia.com/events. See you there!

This podcast is produced by GridX in partnership with Latitude Studios. GridX is the Enterprise Rate Platform that modern utilities rely on to usher in our clean energy future.

Heather Rock has always liked grappling with big, existential questions. Knowing she wanted to “serve a carbon-neutral future,” she left Chevron in 2018 to become senior director of strategy for Pacific Gas & Electric. 

When she joined PG&E, it was on the brink of bankruptcy due to billions of dollars in liability after its equipment sparked wildfires. But Heather says the utility is now building a safer grid that is more resilient to climate change. In her current role she’s also scaling innovations to improve the customer experience and lower costs.

This week, Heather talks with Brad about how PG&E is using batteries to resolve a service bottleneck in northern California. She also weighs in on being an agent for change in a large organization. “Because of the size and the scope and the scale, if you can make change internally, you can really steer a ship in a different way,” she says. 

This podcast is produced by GridX in partnership with Latitude Studios. GridX is the Enterprise Rate Platform that modern utilities rely on to usher in our clean energy future.

From his early days working on regulatory policy on the Hill to his current role as president of Grid Strategies, Rob Gramlich has been focused on future-proofing the electrical grid.  

Twenty years ago, utilities invested heavily in load demand forecasting. But as load growth fell precipitously in the 2000s, those departments shrank. Now, with load growth skyrocketing from increasingly-electrified manufacturing, burgeoning data centers, and electrified homes, planners are struggling to keep up. The grid simply isn’t ready for what’s coming. 

This week, Rob talks with Brad about how to mitigate the risks of this impending load demand, including how recent federal funding could help improve grid planning. They also dig into some  systemic fixes that could improve the grid’s health in the long term. 

This podcast is produced by GridX in partnership with Latitude Studios. GridX is the Enterprise Rate Platform that modern utilities rely on to usher in our clean energy future.