With Great Power

Back in the early 2000s, Sanem Sergici met some researchers from The Brattle Group at an energy industry conference. She was pursuing a doctorate in applied economics at the time, and decided that a Brattle Group internship would be the perfect way to spend that summer. If one existed... 

It took some work, but Sanem convinced the firm that it needed an internship program. Twenty years on, that effort paid off. She’s now a partner at the firm — and she’s one of the power sector's leading experts on rate design and grid economics. 

This week on With Great Power, Sanem shares what recent Brattle research shows about how utilities can use technology, markets, and smarter rate design to address rising costs without leaving customers behind.

Credits: Hosted by Brad Langley. Produced by Mary Catherine O'Connor. Edited by Anne Bailey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. The GridX production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and Brad Langley.

As a young lawyer working for an environmental nonprofit, Allison Clements always thought politics would prevent her from becoming an energy regulator. But by the time Senator Chuck Schumer recommended her to replace Cheryl LaFleur on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2019,  Allison had already been practicing energy regulatory law for 15 years, and she had the clean energy deployment experience the commission needed.

When she left the Commission in 2024, Allison launched 804 Advisory to help  investors, developers, and nonprofits navigate energy decisions. 

This week on With Great Power, Allison shares why she thinks the energy affordability crisis and the growing data center backlash is quickening the pace of regulatory reforms. She also talks about how New Jersey and other states are advancing policies aimed at deploying clean, affordable energy. And she explains why she's so bullish on the opportunities for residential batteries and plug-in solar right now.

Credits: Hosted by Brad Langley. Produced by Mary Catherine O'Connor. Edited by Anne Bailey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. The GridX production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe and Brad Langley.

Some people turn to YouTube to watch music videos, clips of their favorite television shows, or how-to videos. Brian Lusher turned to it for a different reason. 

Years ago, Brian started downloading academic lectures about the energy industry on YouTube so he’d have something tolisten to on long drives. At the time, he was a reliability engineer for an on-site power plant at a manufacturing facility. But his self-guided, deep dive into the industry helped land him a job at Duke Energy, where he’s director of demand response today.

This week on With Great Power, Brian describes some of the programs that Duke has deployed to help both residential and commercial customers manage their energy use. He also shares how demand response and virtual power plant programs fit into Duke Energy's larger strategy to manage load growth, including from data centers.

Credits: Hosted by Brad Langley. Produced by Mary Catherine O'Connor. Edited by Anne Bailey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. The GridX production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe and Brad Langley.

Matt Ross feels at home in the ocean, on his surfboard. Strong currents, choppy conditions, and the occasional thrashing are all part of the experience — and the joy of a good, long wave makes it all worth it.

So when a job pulled him too far from his favorite surf spots in San Francisco, he wasn’t happy. He knew he needed to find his next work challenge closer to home. He found that at GridX, where for the past seven years he’s brought his interest in data analytics and design to product roles, working toward his current role as vice president of delivery. 

This week on With Great Power, Matt dives into the economics behind rising rates – and why he thinks that without affordable energy, the clean energy transition will stall. He shares some of his recent projects, designing and implementing time-varying rates with utilities. And he describes the ways that data centers could actually turn load growth into an opportunity to drive rates down. 

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

Alice Yake’s parents’ taught her and her brother the importance of fairness and discipline, but also how to overcome obstacles and tackle big problems. 

Those life skills have served Alice throughout her career in the power sector, from a false start at Enron — just months before it declared bankruptcy — to a long, successful career at Xcel Energy. Last year, she left her role as the utility’s chief planning officer to become VP of GRIDS at Breakthrough Energy, the organization founded by Bill Gates to accelerate clean energy using philanthropy and investment funding.

This week on With Great Power, Alice shares how she’s now helping energy planners across the world improve electric grids through open-source planning and modeling software. She also discusses the challenge of building a better workforce to modernize the grid, as well as the opportunities to integrate more distributed energy resources into infrastructure that can help meet growing demand for clean energy over the coming decades. 

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

Building a cleaner, resilient grid is no small task — especially today, as energy demand surges, electricity prices rise, and political headwinds strengthen. But over and over again, across six seasons of With Great Power, we've talked to people who keep charging ahead — turning obstacles into opportunity. 

Right now, we're gearing up for another season. We’re talking to utility leaders who are tackling affordability and load growth. We’re exploring the frontiers of technology, markets, and the shifting policy landscape. We’re connecting with some of the leading innovators in the power sector.

Season 7 of With Great Power starts soon. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

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

Brian Kurtz doesn’t shy away from a tough climb. He’s always loved the mountains, and in college he spent an entire semester “abroad” in the Western Rockies, learning about ecology while also trudging up and down mountains. 

That experience taught him a framework called expedition behavior — a methodical approach to planning and executing a mission. Years later, Brian and his team at PSEG Long Island took on a different kind of mission, but one that still required a thoughtful, patient approach. 

This week on With Great Power, Brian tells the story of how PSEG Long Island rose from the bottom of the 2014 J.D. Power customer satisfaction survey among large electric utility business customers in the East to the top in 2025. They talk about the key steps along the way — including a rate modernization program and improved customer communications.

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

Ellen Zuckerman followed her nose, literally, into her first career as an energy auditor in New York City. She had an uncanny ability to sniff out dangerous gas leaks in apartment buildings. 

That led to energy efficiency work in states across the country – everything from helping utilities, regulators, and businesses advance efficiency projects to helping ratepayers lower their bills through weatherization programs

In 2022, Google took notice and offered her a position with its community energy program – a program designed to fund energy efficiency programs in communities where the company is building data centers.

This week on With Great Power, Ellen describes how this program works. She also outlines how Google has worked with regulators and utilities in Nevada, Minnesota, and other states to develop large load tariffs in support of bringing hundreds of megawatts of clean energy and storage to the grid.

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

After emigrating from Cuba to the U.S. at age ten, Georges Gonzalez struggled to find his voice and his passion. It took joining the Civil Air Patrol and, later, the Air Force to boost his confidence and instill a work ethic he’d carry with him for years.

He began his post-military career as a delivery driver for Coca-Cola, where he quickly moved up the ranks. But after working for the company for more than a decade, Georges took a buy-out in 2015. Before long, he was on to his next adventure, working in the water utility sector, starting in Pinellas County in west-central Florida. Today, he’s the director of enterprise solutions for water resources in nearby Hillsborough County, Florida.

This week on With Great Power, Georges talks about how his team is evaluating AI tools for improving its customer service representative training, among other functions. Georges explains the county government’s careful approach to using artificial intelligence, how department staff have reacted to it, and how the water resources team is testing the technology.

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

Fifteen years ago, Scott Engstrom thought utilities were boring, bureaucratic organizations where people went for job security. But after co-founding GridX in 2010 during the smart meter era, he discovered an industry full of dedicated people tackling complex challenges.

GridX went the next five years without a paying customer. Then, in 2015, California mandated time-of-use rates, and the start-up found its footing. Today, Scott helps utilities nationwide design and implement sophisticated rates for a variety of programs, from electric vehicle charging to demand response programs and virtual power plants. Because as load growth from AI data centers and industrial customers strains the grid, sophisticated rate design has become more critical than ever.

This week on With Great Power, Scott outlines how rate design helps utilities manage unprecedented load growth from data centers and why "growth pays for growth" protects existing customers from new infrastructure costs.

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. The GridX production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and Brad Langley.