Dan Yates co-founded Opower in 2007, based on the belief that consumers want to use less energy—and that their utilities could actually help them do it. He was right. Opower took off, and Oracle bought the customer engagement platform in 2016. A year later, Dan became interested in another startup focused on residential energy: Dandelion Energy. Spun out of GoogleX, Dandelion developed a system for using geothermal energy to heat and cool buildings. 

Electrifying buildings is a major tenant of decarbonizing the power sector, but air-source heat pumps can be expensive. Installation costs are even higher with geothermal heat pumps, but they offer energy efficiency advantages. Dan is a big fan. After investing in Dandelion and serving on its board, he became CEO in 2023.

This week on With Great Power, Dan talks about the potential for residential geothermal heating and cooling, why it could be the clean energy that gains instead of loses federal support in the near term, and the role he thinks utilities can play in the technology’s deployment.

With Great Power is a co-production of GridX and Latitude Studios.  

Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this podcast, subscribe to Latitude Media's newsletter.

Credits: Hosted by Brad Langley. Produced by Erin Hardick and Mary Catherine O’Connor. Edited by Anne Bailey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. Sean Marquand composed the original theme song and mixed the show. The Grid X production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and Brad Langley.

Destenie Nock knows what it’s like to struggle with the high cost of energy. When she was in grad school, her electricity got cut off because she couldn’t afford to pay the bills. 

At the time, she was pursuing her doctorate in engineering with a focus on the power sector at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.  She knew many others struggled to pay their utility bills, and she wanted to find solutions. So years later, after joining the engineering faculty at  Carnegie Mellon University, she launched Peoples Energy Analytics –a startup working to improve how utilities connect with customers in need of bill assistance. 

This week on With Great Power, Dr. Nock describes the research behind Peoples Energy Analytics’ products and how Peoples Natural Gas is piloting them. She also shares why she thinks government programs for bill assistance are so important — and why she worries about the outlook for future funding.

With Great Power is a co-production of GridX and Latitude Studios.  

Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this podcast, subscribe to Latitude Media's newsletter.

Credits: Hosted by Brad Langley. Produced by Erin Hardick and Mary Catherine O’Connor. Edited by Anne Bailey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. Sean Marquand composed the original theme song and mixed the show. The GridX production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and Brad Langley.

Keith Collins knows electricity markets. After a stint consulting for the New York Independent System Operator, he joined FERC in 2004. After that, he spent years working for the California ISO and the Southwest Power Pool. 

But it wasn’t until he  joined the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) as vice president of commercial operations last summer that he started making waves. Unlike many electricity markets in the U.S., ERCOT is deregulated, and its grid is isolated from other systems. It drew a great deal of attention — and ire from some Texans — after a major grid failure during Winter Storm Uri back in 2021. But now, all eyes are on ERCOT as it turns to battery storage as a way to help meet surging demand for power. 

This week on With Great Power, Keith explains what makes ERCOT's approach to electricity different from other markets and how the incredible growth of solar generation and battery energy storage systems have changed the Texas grid. They also cover the role of ancillary services and look ahead to how ERCOT’s energy mix will continue to evolve.

With Great Power is a co-production of GridX and Latitude Studios.  

Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this podcast, subscribe to Latitude Media's newsletter.

Credits: Hosted by Brad Langley. Produced by Erin Hardick and Mary Catherine O’Connor. Edited by Anne Bailey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. Sean Marquand composed the original theme song and mixed the show. The Grid X production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and Brad Langley.

Right now, there’s not much growing in Iowa. But Nick Peterson, strategic partnerships manager for Alliant Energy, is already thinking about next summer’s yields. He’s spearheading a collaboration with Iowa State University, an Alliant customer, to evaluate a practice called agrivoltaics, which marries farming with solar energy generation.

Across ten acres, the utility installed a 1.35 megawatt solar installation, using both fixed arrays and tracker panels. Along with a team from Iowa State University’s agriculture and engineering schools, Alliant Energy is looking at the potential for growing high-value crops under the panels. One year into the four-year project supported by a $1.8 million Department of Energy grant,  early food and power generation results are promising.

This week on With Great Power, Nick tells Brad what scientists are learning from the project, why it could change how utilities think about agrivoltaics, and why one of the hardest parts of his job is addressing the fears some farmers have about the practice.

With Great Power is a co-production of GridX and Latitude Studios.  

Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this podcast, subscribe to Latitude Media's newsletter.

Credits: Hosted by Brad Langley. Produced by Erin Hardick and Mary Catherine O’Connor. Edited by Anne Bailey. Sean Marquand composed the original theme song and mixed the show. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. The Grid X production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and Brad Langley.

Chéri Smith  is a descendant of the Mi'kmaq Nation, native to northeastern North America. She has worked in clean energy for most of her career, but it took a 2016 visit to the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana to understand the severity and persistence of energy poverty on tribal lands.

For 14% of households on tribal lands, electrification isn’t about replacing gas appliances with electric ones. It’s about having electricity at all. Chéri launched the Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy in 2016 to change that reality.

This week on With Great Power, Chéri explains why – despite a historic commitment of federal funds for clean energy development – tribes still face significant hurdles to building clean energy projects. The Alliance is working with philanthropic donors to raise $100M for the  Indigenous Power and Light Fund for Energy Sovereignty to address those challenges. 

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.

With their short, predictable routes and large battery size, electric school buses are well suited for vehicle-to-grid applications, especially since they’re available during periods of high electricity demand. 

Last year, bus maker Zum launched a fleet of 74 electric school buses — the country’s largest — for the Oakland Unified School District in California. It worked with Pacific Gas & Electric to build a network of chargers and integrate the buses to the local grid to form a virtual power plant. 

This week on With Great Power, Rudi Halbright – expert product manager on vehicle-grid integration at PG&E – shares insights from launching the V2G program with Zum as well as lessons learned on how to deploy vehicle-grid infrastructure.

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.

When Winter Storm Uri hit Texas in 2021, it led to more than 240 deaths and hobbled the electric grid for days. At the time, Arushi Sharma Frank was working on Tesla’s U.S. energy policy team, trying to convince Texas regulators to allow it to connect a 100 megawatt battery to the grid. It was part of a larger effort to encourage distributed energy resources (DERs) as a means of improving grid resiliency. After Uri, regulators greenlit Tesla’s pilot projects.

Today, Arushi runs her own grid resiliency consultancy and recently helped community groups in New Orleans draft a proposal for a $32M virtual power plant and microgrid project. The  city council quickly approved the proposal after hearing from locals and advocates from other cities that have already seen the benefits of grid resiliency projects.  

This week on With Great Power, Arushi tells Brad why she thinks experiencing grid failures has turned stakeholders – from regulators to politicians to consumers – into advocates for grid resiliency. 

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 2014, Nathan Shannon was working for a community land trust in Georgia, building affordable housing. But following his interest in behavioral economics, he attended the Behavior, Energy, and Climate Change conference. That event piqued his interest in how and why consumers make economic decisions related to their homes, and that led him to the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative (SECC), a nonprofit that surveys energy consumers in North America and works across the industry to share best practices in consumer engagement.

One of the key insights he brought to SECC — where he is now president and CEO — is that housing affordability is tied inextricably to energy affordability. That’s evident in SECC’s research, too. 

This week on With Great Power, Nathan discusses the findings of SECC’s latest consumer survey and Modern Energy Messaging report. It shows that as energy costs have risen in recent years, consumers are less motivated by environmental messaging — and what it takes for energy providers to keep consumers engaged in clean energy programs. You can learn more about SECC’s research here.

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.

Toby Ferenczi used to work for an energy provider that marketed 100% clean energy but also ran a demand response program. When customers started asking him why they should shift their energy use to certain times of day if their energy was totally clean, he didn’t have a good answer.

During the pandemic he spent a lot of time ruminating on this disconnect and ultimately helped develop a new standard for tracking the renewable energy credits behind clean energy claims. He says his startup Granular Energy, which grew out of that work, ensures companies buying those credits are really moving the needle on a cleaner electric grid. 

This week on With Great Power, Toby shares his journey into the world of RECs and explains why there’s a big debate among some of the world’s biggest tech companies about the best path forward.

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.

Sonia Aggarwal spent the early years of her career moving between nonprofits and the private sector, supporting renewable energy deployment. But after watching early climate policies fail in Washington D.C., she realized her energy modeling skills could better serve the clean energy transition. 

In 2012, she co-founded Energy Innovation, a nonpartisan energy and climate research organization that works with policymakers on policy design. Today, after a two-year stint advising Biden’s climate team, Sonia leads Energy Innovation’s team of nearly 45 policy analysts, economists, and energy modelers. 

Kicking off the fourth season of With Great Power, Sonia tells Brad why the 2024 election is likely to send the energy transition down one of two very different paths. But, she explains, some areas of progress will continue, regardless of shifts in the White House.

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.