With Great Power

The 2018 Camp fire was the most destructive wildfire in California's history. By the time the smoke cleared, more than 150,000 acres had burned. Damages surpassed $16 billion. Dozens had died. Thousands more were displaced. So how did it all happen? 

The increasingly hot and dry conditions in the region coupled with the high Diablo winds turned the forest floor into a powder keg. Within hours, thousands of homes were destroyed in Butte County and the surrounding areas. 

Katherine Blunt was just a few days into her new role as a reporter covering renewable energy and utilities for the Wall Street Journal when the fire blew up.

She chronicled how the blazed occurred and the aftermath for Pacific Gas & Electric — the utility whose equipment caused the fire — in her 2022 book “California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric and What it Means for America’s Power Grid.” 

This week, Brad talks with Katherine about reporting on the Camp fire and its ramifications for the local community and PG&E, and what it all means for the utility industry.

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

A third of the world's largest companies now have net-zero targets in place for carbon emissions. Google was ahead of the curve. Back in 2007, it had already achieved its goal of going carbon neutral across all of its offices and data centers around the globe. 

But as demand for Google's services expanded, it knew that it had to overhaul its energy goals. At the time, Raiford Smith served as Google's global head of energy and location strategy. And part of his job was jump-starting this massive effort.

In 2021, Google launched one of the most ambitious corporate energy strategies ever. And Raiford and his team made it possible.

After a career spanning more than 30 years at utilities like Duke Energy, CPS, Entergy, and Southern company, and two years at Google, Raiford knows firsthand that change is possible at power companies.

This week, Brad talked with Raiford, now the chief innovation officer at AES, about what's needed to spur tech innovation at utilities, and the technologies that will be integral to the energy transition.

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

Over the last 12 episodes, we have heard some fascinating personal and professional stories about people who are pushing innovation on the grid – from smart meters to electric cars to culture shifts.

And we have great news: we are hard at work on another season that will feature more executives and deep thinkers who are moving the utility business into a dynamic, digital, distributed era. There are now many thousands of you who listen to the show. And as we develop the next season, we want to hear from you.

We have a brief survey for our listeners.  It’s just a few questions that will help us gauge your interests and expertise. And we are randomly giving away three $100 Patagonia gift cards to listeners as a token of appreciation.

So stay tuned for a new season. If you want to email us directly with some ideas for guests, you can send Brad a note at [email protected].

As we like to say: when an industry that’s remained the same for almost 100 years starts to change quickly, there are a lot of questions to answer. And we’re here to ask – and answer – them.

In 2005, Lisa Schwartz was stunned when a colleague at the Oregon Public Utility Commission told her utility distribution planning budgets never saw the light of day. She thought it was a missed opportunity for consumer and stakeholder feedback on planning the future of the grid. 

Ever since, she has worked to increase transparency in utility planning. 

“In my view, having really meaningful stakeholder engagement can improve outcomes because you can get good input and a review from stakeholders. And sometimes utilities move the needle in response.”

Lisa is a senior energy policy researcher and strategic advisor at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She's spent her career studying utility distribution systems. Now, she works with state commissions to make grid planning more transparent and forward looking.

This week, Brad talks with Lisa about distribution plan filings, the extensive outlines for  how utilities plan to spend money maintaining and upgrading power infrastructure. The filings create an opportunity for non-utilities and other stakeholders to share their ideas for the future of the grid. 

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

For Katherine Hamilton, working at Dominion Virginia Power ran in the family. Her grandfather Leon built a career there. As a young engineer, she learned the ins and outs of the electric utility business, and was inspired by the problem solving and creativity her job required. 

“It was a very innovative place to be. It wasn't that they were necessarily innovative because they wanted to be creative. It was out of necessity. They had to be because they had to serve their customers.”

But over time, creativity faded into the background for many power providers. Katherine is pushing utilities to bring innovation back to the forefront – and she believes policy can help do that. 

Katherine is the co-founder and chair of 38 North Solutions, a public policy firm focused on promoting clean energy policy at the state and federal level. She has a storied career in energy, ranging from utilities to finance to trade groups. And she has played an instrumental role in passing ambitious pro-clean energy policies.

This week, Brad talks with Katherine about her policy work  – like the recent infrastructure bill and the historic Inflation Reduction Act – and how it will push utilities to be more innovative.

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

The smart meter unlocked a trove of data on how people use energy in their homes. And it created the opportunity for utilities to offer more services based on customers' individual needs and consumption habits. These demand-side services are crucial for decarbonizing the grid, enhancing reliability, and integrating more renewables.

But many utilities are still in the early stages of digitizing their operations. As director of industry marketing for energy and utilities at Salesforce, Sharon Talbott is helping power providers get more digitally sophisticated. 

“Utilities still keep a lot of their data in different silos, and then a lot of their processes are done on spreadsheets and with people handing packets of paper to each other with wet signatures and things like that. So a lot of utilities want to change that,” explains Sharon.

This week, Brad talks with Sharon about how she works with electricity companies to provide more digital services and products to their customers in order to modernize their operations.

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

Climate change is making extreme weather events more intense and more frequent, which strains the electric grid. 

As an employee of Southern California Edison, Katie Sloan is familiar with these events. From 2019 to 2021, the state had 44 weather-related power outages.

Katie knows cleaning up the grid is a vital part of slowing climate change. She also knows it’s important for improving resiliency as extreme weather worsens, and helping customers when the grid is strained.

This week, Brad talks with Katie Sloan, vice president of customer programs and services at Southern California Edison, about making the grid cleaner and more reliable. 

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

There's a saying in the business world that if you're not innovating, you're dying. For Josh Gould, that applies to utilities, too.

In the risk-averse utility industry, it can be hard to push for change, or do things unconventionally. Josh believes that getting people motivated around an idea is the key to success, which he learned in his time as an energy technology researcher for the government. 

This week, Brad talks with Josh Gould, director of innovation at Duquesne Light Company, about how he puts innovation into practice at the company.

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

Everything around us can be personalized. Our homes, our cars, our online shopping experience. And that’s what consumers have come to expect. As utilities work to grow their business, they're also thinking about personalization – designing programs for specific groups of people and not just mass offerings for all customers.

But serving the needs of everyone means collecting more than just a few data points.

Angie Ostaszewski spends a lot of time listening to customers. As an energy efficiency consultant at Ameren Illinois, it’s her job to make sure people enroll in the programs they offer. And she believes the best way to get customers to enroll in a utility program is to deliver what she calls non-energy benefits.

This week, Brad talks with Angie about how to serve each customer as an individual as utilities ramp up their efficiency, demand response, and smart home offerings.

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

Buildings account for nearly 40% of America’s CO2 emissions, making the built environment critical for meeting net-zero goals. 

Utilities are starting to use efficiency measures and electrification to cut gas consumption and increase consumption of electricity. But these efforts also change the way they make money – and many utilities are still figuring out how to make the shift.

As the strategic business planner for building electrification and energy efficiency at the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, Scott Blunk is working on how to electrify every home in Sacramento. 

“My job's about transforming the built environment. We're in a clean energy revolution right now, and really moving away from burning gas in our buildings. My job is to make sure that we land our customers on that path to zero so that we're, we're all moving in the same direction,” says Scott.

This week, Brad speaks with Scott about how a utility like SMUD is structuring programs to electrify homes, while also making them more efficient. 

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