Germany and Europe are somewhat envious of the massive federal spending now underway in America to ready the grid and the energy economy to combat climate change. 

That’s according to Simon Müller who is one of Europe’s leading thinkers on the future of energy and sustainability. As the director of the think tank Agora Energiewende, he took time to explain his views on the Department of Energy’s Grid Talk Podcast.

“When it comes to the buildout of renewable energies actually what we see in jurisdictions across the world is that now that you really have very competitive costs that it doesn’t take that much political will any more to go for quite large amount of renewables,” said Müller. 

After the global economic downturn from the Covid pandemic, Europe has watched the U.S. government put in place a stimulus package built around investments in clean energy and the electric power grid. 

“When you look at policymakers in Germany but also in Europe, they’ve been looking to the United States and the Inflation Reduction Act with a certain degree of envy. Why? Because it’s been perceived as being very successful at attracting investments in technologies that are very promising for the future and that are very strategic and position the United States on clean energy technologies.” 

Europe has struggled to match that government support.

“If we want to also play a role as a manufacturing hub going forward, we have to get our act together to find a response to that act in the U.S.”

Simon Müller is Director Germany at Agora Energiewende. He leads Agora's work in Germany on overarching energy and climate policy issues as well as in the areas of electricity, heat and energy infrastructure. Müller has advised governments in over 20 countries on six continents and coordinated and authored various studies on the transition of the power and energy system to renewable energies.

Müller is an alumnus of the Mercator Followship on International Affairs and is a member of the advisory board of the DLR Institute for Networked Energy Systems. He studied in Oldenburg, Bremen and Berlin (psychology, physics) and holds a M.Sc. in physics.

NV Energy and Google have pioneered new utility regulatory policy to help the tech company’s move to power its data center with renewable and green energy.

In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Doug Cannon, President and CEO of NV Energy. 

Google executives say the agreement could be a template for similar pacts with utilities around the country. Higher revenues from new fee structures will be used to fund new geothermal generation resources in Nevada. 

“We really quickly recognized is we couldn’t just rely on that tariff book anymore and we had, if we were going to stay relevant in the business and we were going to be a value-add energy provider for our customers we had to change our way of business.”

Utilities that don’t adapt to the green energy push of the likes of Google, Amazon and Microsoft may be headed to challenging times. 

“We’re going to see some utilities bypassed.”

“What this product, what we’re focused on is real time green generation being injected into the NV Energy grid at the same time as Google was utilizing energy… there’s absolutely a real time match on that energy.”

Doug Cannon leads NV Energy’s daily operations and oversees the company’s commitment to deliver low-cost energy, expand its renewable energy portfolio and maintain industry-leading reliability for its customers. He has been with NV Energy since 2013.

NV Energy delivers electricity to nearly 1.3 million customers and nearly 50 million tourists annually throughout its nearly 46,000-mile service territory in the state of Nevada. 

Cannon earned a juris doctor from the University of Colorado School of Law and a master’s degree in environmental studies from the University of Colorado. He holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental geoscience from Weber State University.

Google’s data centers consume an enormous amount of electricity. That’s prompted the information giant to proactively engage in the accelerating energy revolution. From Nevada to North Carolina and many points between, it is gearing up to power the Artificial Intelligence wave by striking novel relationships with utilities and encouraging the transformation of energy regulation, state by state. 

That is the focus of this episode of Grid talk. Host Marty Rosenberg interviews Amanda Peterson Corio, Google’s Global Head of Data Center Energy.

Google, citing industry sources, says and additional $2.5 trillion must be spent on clean energy over the next six years to address climate change. 

“What we have encountered is a universal recognition that we are in a unique moment in time,” said Peterson Corio. “For the first time in decades, we have real load growth in the U.S.”

Google’s response is to deepen its use of clean energy. 

“We are matching 100% of the electricity we use on an annual basis with new additional clean energy that we put onto the grid somewhere in the system or in the world.”

That effort will now be broadened. 

“Our higher standard of our 24/7 carbon-free energy goal actually takes that a step further and says if we’re truly going to decarbonize the grid where we operate, we need to make it first local, meaning we can’t just only sign a new contract for wind or solar, for example, in the Midwest to offset our data center in Singapore, right? Carbon is a global problem, but we also need to find solutions directly where we operate.”

Amanda Peterson Corio has 20 years of experience in energy project finance, development, and the procurement of renewable and traditional energy generation. In her current role, Amanda manages power procurement, energy policy, and energy infrastructure development for Google’s global data centers. 

Amanda holds an MBA from The Wharton School of Business and a BA in Business Administration with Honors from Boston University’s School of Management.

TerraPower, fueled with $1 billion from Bill Gates, hopes to be first out of the gate with next generation nuclear projects that will complement and back up burgeoning renewable energy generation. 

In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Chris Levesque who is president and CEO of TerraPower. 

The company is developing its 345-megawatt prototype. Ultimately, the units will be plugged in to the grid and replace generation at many coal-burning power plants. That will allow the new units ready access to transmission lines.

“We are the only construction permit for a commercial reactor in front of the NRC (U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission) today so by that objective measure, it means we’re next. It means the next American reactor is our Natrium Reactor in Wyoming; yes, so we plan to receive that construction license in 2026,” said Levesque

All kinds of nuclear technology should soon follow. 

“All the models show that the optimum mix on an emission-free grid is going to be 20% to 30% nuclear,” Levesque said. “I wish we could move faster, though. TerraPower is the leader. We’re trying to deliver as fast as we can on the first one and scale as fast as we can but we’re going to need multiple technologies.” 

“We really do need to triple nuclear, and we’re excited about being first but even when we deliver hundreds of reactors to triple nuclear, it’s going to require a really massive deployment.”

Chris Levesque is president and chief executive officer of TerraPower and also serves as a member of the TerraPower Board. He was appointed to that position in November 2018 after having served as president of TerraPower since 2015. Levesque leads this nuclear innovation company in the pursuit of next-generation nuclear energy. His proven track record in scoping, planning and implementing complex projects began with his service in the U.S. Nuclear Navy and features more than 30 years of experience in the nuclear field.

Levesque holds a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a Master of Science in mechanical engineering and a naval engineer degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also serves on the board of the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Massive investments to overhaul our aging power grid are underway, but it’s going to require significant planning to be successful.

In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg sits down with Ron Ambrosio, an energy transformation professional, to talk about getting smarter and more deliberate how we plan for the future.

“One of the key themes that we’re trying to educate the industry on is the importance of not just looking at forward incremental steps and design, but also the importance of looking at that endgame and doing analysis on that from an architectural perspective,” said Ambrosio.

“The endgame is reducing carbon fuels, trying to depend on renewable energy more and more and trying to expand to the use of distributed energy resources.”

Limits on the grid today are delaying the deployments of new grid assets. 

“That bottleneck partially reflects the fact that our current grid design does have limitations in what it can absorb today.” 

Ambrosio noted that, when it comes to planning, we will always have the issue needing new transmission.

“There’s a lot of evolution that the distribution systems need to go through in order to accommodate a very high penetration of more distributed renewable energy and other types of DER resources.” 

Ambrosio is former chief technology officer of smarter energy research at the IBM TJ Walton Research Center and former chairman of the Gridwise Architecture Council. He is a senior technical executive and scientist with a focus on technology, business and policy issues related to energy transformation in the electricity industry. He has 40 years of software engineering experience in distributed, real-time systems and their interoperability with enterprise computing environments, and 20 years of experience specifically in the energy transformation space.

In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Shay Bahramirad who is the  vice president of T&D, strategy, and sustainability at LUMA and president of the IEEE Power & Engineering Society. The discussion focuses on rebuilding the grid in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017 and how the world is pivoting to a new electric grid.

Bahramirad is the point person helping to rebuild the grid in Puerto Rico and and go beyond what existed prior to Hurricane Maria. The federal government has earmarked $16 billion to Puerto Rico for grid related work.

“From that total $16 billion dollars, we have initiated over $13 billion dollars of scope of work and over $4 billion dollars of it is approved by FEMA and over $1.2 billion dollars has been constructed in the grid. That includes everything from poles that they would withstand 160 miles per hour winds to modernization of substations,” said Bahramirad. 

Part of the rebuild is making the grid more reliable for customers.

“It also suffered from decades of under investments and lack of maintenance that led customers and citizens of Puerto Rico to experience outages three times more frequently than any other utility in the United States. “

“We got to work. The frequency of outages experienced by customers has gone down by about 25% since we started.”

As for changes confronting IEEE Power & Engineering Society members, utilities, and customers – the organization is focused on building the electrical grid of the future and making sure all the players are working in unison.

“It’s an unprecedented time to be in this industry and the challenges that we deal with cannot wait for a decade to coordinate.”

Dr. Bahramirad is a leading figure in the industry. She is the President of the IEEE Power and Energy Society, an editorial board member of the Electricity Journal, a US CIGRE Executive member, an adjunct professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and the founder of IEEE Women in Power. Dr. Bahramirad completed her PhD in electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has issued a new rule to better coordinate the massive buildout of new electric transmission systems. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Ari Peskoe who is the director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program.

FERC is trying to help pave the way to get a reported 11,000 wind, solar, and battery projects online. Right now, they are in limbo because of the lack of transmission.

“There are massive amounts of generation, mostly clean generation, stuck in these interconnection lines or interconnection queues,” said Peskoe.

In May, FERC issued Order No. 1920 to coordinate information sharing and transmission buildout. 

“FERC is trying to motivate the industry to develop high-voltage transmission lines and to work together on that development through existing regional alliances.”

Peskoe says there have been tens of billions of dollars a year spent on transmission, but much of it has gone to rebuilding last century’s infrastructure.

“We need to keep the system working, but we also need to think about ways to expand it in a cost-effective way.” 

Order No. 1920 urges the industry to be more forward thinking rather than reacting to these generators on a project-by-project basis.

“Let’s look at the broader trends, the long-term trends that we’re seeing, both in the supply mix changes as well as the potential for increasing demand due to electrification and other factors and plan wholistically going forward to anticipate the future needs.” 

Ari Peskoe has written extensively about regulation of the U.S. power sector, on issues ranging from Constitutional challenges to states’ energy laws to interstate transmission development. Prior to the Environmental and Energy Law Program, Ari was an associate at a law firm in Washington, D.C. where he litigated before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission about the Western Energy Crisis. He received his J.D. from Harvard Law School and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with degrees in electrical engineering and business.

Countries around the world are stepping up efforts to combat climate change but mountainous challenges loom. That’s according to the guest on the latest episode of Grid Talk.

Host Marty Rosenberg speaks with David Waskow, director of International Climate Initiatives at the World Resources Institute. 

Waskow says non-governmental organizations (NGOs), are shoulder to shoulder with national governments’ stepped-up engagement.

“We’re both making a lot of progress and have enormous challenges ahead of us,” said Waskow.

According to Waskow the work is just beginning.

“I think one thing we haven’t taken into account is the depth of transformation that we need.”

Some countries are making notable progress. 

“The surge in renewables in India is just quite remarkable and there over 100 gigawatts at the moment I believe, and continuing to grow rapidly,” he said. 

And he’s talking about massive societal transformations.

“We are moving quickly on EVs but all the evidence is that we’re not only going to have to do EVs at a massive scale, we’re also going to have to shift to other modes of transport than passenger vehicles.”

AS the Director of WRI’s International Climate Initiative Waskow is focused on international cooperation that catalyzes and supports action on climate change at the national level in developed and developing countries Prior to WRI, David directed climate change policy at the development organization Oxfam America, where much of his work focused on the impacts of climate change on vulnerable communities. 

He has graduate degrees from the University of Chicago and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University; his undergraduate degree is from Brown University.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is gearing up to fund $40 billion of electric grid and sustainability projects. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks Zealan Hoover who is the EPA Administrator’s Senior Advisor for Implementation. They discuss the range of projects to be funded.

“We’ve received over $100 billion dollars in supplemental appropriations. A lot of that is for electric system decarbonization and other climate investments,” Hoover said. 

The amount far exceeds any effort the agency has undertaken in its 50-year history. 

“We have received tens of billions of dollars across multiple programs through the Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act to both accelerate grid decarbonization and to get more zero emission equipment plugged into that grid.”

States, cities, and tribes are now competing for $4.6 billion worth of projects, with awards to be announced starting in July. 

“We’ve received over $30 billion dollars in project proposals so we will be funding the best of the best. We’re seeing really innovative proposals that are tailored to the needs of local communities and states,” Hoover said.

Zealan Hoover has led EPA's agency-wide implementation of more than $100 billion in programs authorized under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. Prior to that, he worked in the private sector advising organizations on a wide range of strategic and operational matters with an emphasis on decarbonization and managing climate risk. Hoover graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Offshore wind power generation is about to take off in a big way in the U.S. One of the biggest splashes will be made by Equinor which is building up to 130 ocean-planted wind turbines 15 to 30 miles off Long Island. Grid Talk host Marty Rosenberg goes in-depth on the project details with Equinor’s Vice President of Operations, Sam Byrne.

The operation will be anchored by operations based in Brooklyn, in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. The company’s Empire Wind farm will generate 2.1 gigawatts of electricity. New York State has declared that it wants 9 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030.

Byrne described the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal now being erected. 

“We’ll be building a building, we’ll be building a substation,” said Byrne. “We need maintenance technicians, marine and vessel crews to get out there, planning teams, medics…”

 Once offshore wind starts spinning, its appeal will be clear. 

“The wind resource blows more strongly and more consistently offshore and it better matches electric consumption patterns than a lot of other renewable sources.”

Byrne also talks about why the U.S. has been slow to adopt offshore wind and why that is changing.

“We’re starting to see the acceleration now. Some of it has to do with support; some of it has to do with the technology that’s come into being; some of it has to do with just the need for electricity.”

Sam Byrne is in his first year with Equinor. His responsibilities include leading and overseeing Equinor’s US offshore wind operations and maintenance activities, while ensuring development and execution of safe, efficient, and cost-effective operations. 

Byrne worked previously Vestas Wind Systems and McKinsey & Co. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Yale University and an M.A. in International Economics and International Relations with a concentration in Energy, Resources, and Environment from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded grants to two entities to enable a deeper dive into tidal energy generation. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Nate Johnson who is the Vice President of Development for ORPC. The Maine based firm will deploy two devices in Cook Inlet, Alaska to further study tidal generation.

“For decades folks have been trying to harness marine energy and I would say it’s still new because there’s only a handful of companies around the world that have achieved that and it’s a harsh environment, it’s complex,” said Johnson. 

The first phase of the study is being paid for with a $3 million DOE grant with a goal generating between one and five megawatts of power. 

“Alaska has an opportunity to produce way more than it needs and produce other forms of electricity, transportable electricity from tidal energies. In Cook Inlet alone in Alaska, we have the potential for 18 gigawatts.”

ORPC and the other grant recipient, a team led by Orcas Power and Light Cooperative in Washington, aim to raise the profile of potential tidal power. 

“A lot of folks aren’t aware that there are technologies out there than can produce electricity from tides or from rivers that aren’t dammed so we really focus on not only getting the device in the water but working with communities or customers to build awareness in different regions and try to grow that marketplace. That’s a big part of what we do.”

Nate Johnson leads ORPC’s development activities and the implementation of its innovative power systems in cost effective, environmentally responsible ways. A native of Long Island, Maine, Nate has a diverse background that includes renewable energy, commercial fishing, aquaculture, groundwater exploration and development, construction management and environmental engineering. He earned a Bachelor of Applied Science from Tufts University.

The grid is getting more complex, complicating the responsibilities of the entities responsible for keeping electricity flowing. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Clair Moeller who is the President and Chief Operating Officer for the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO).

The discussion focuses on the evolving power grid and the transition to clean energy.

 “Retirements are outpacing new installations of resources on the grid and that’s a problem that we haven’t had on the grid since its early formation period in the ‘30s,” Moeller said. “Things are moving in an uncoordinated fashion where we’re creating risk for the grid that we maybe didn’t anticipate.”

One of the risks is the need for more transmission to meet demand.

“By the time we’re all in, it will be over a hundred billion dollars’ worth of transmission investments.”

Spending for new generation and transmission will have an impact on consumers.

“Energy costs at the consumer level are going to go up substantially,” said Moeller.

Moeller also talks about the pace of the energy transition and the need for education. 

“We can reduce our carbon footprint faster if we build more gas-fired generation so that we can turn off coal plants. But that just doesn’t make sense to people that think we should turn off combustion because that’s how you reduce the carbon footprint,” he said.

Clair Moeller leads all aspects of the Operations division at MISO, including grid operations, forward markets, system planning, external affairs, information technology and corporate services. Moeller also has executive responsibility for the compliance and external affairs teams.

He is an industry expert with experience in the operation of power systems throughout the Midwest. He is skilled at identifying and implementing the best practices in transmission planning and system operations.

Moeller completed the Oxford Advanced Management and Leadership course at Oxford Said Business School, the Executive Management program at the Carlson School of Business, University of Minnesota, and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Iowa State University. 

The federal government is poised to transform the United States' electric grid at an unprecedented, massive clip to fight climate change and embrace sustainability.

That’s according to Sasha Mackler, head of the Bipartisan Policy Center energy program who is the guest on the latest episode of Grid Talk. 

“The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act are really two major achievements from a federal policy perspective,” said Mackler. 

“They’re very focused on the developments and in particular the deployment of clean energy technologies across the American economy.”  

The result will unleash an enormous amount of new capital from the federal government into this energy transition and into energy modernization. 

“Dollars are being spent; small grants have gone out the door. Big grants and funding programs have been established and funding commitments have been made but the actual large dollars that are going to flow into the economy, those are still really getting setup because projects take time to sort of work through the commercial permitting phase, to get the consortiums together, to get the contracts in place so that they can actually get out into the market and attract the capital and start the construction.” 

Sasha Mackler has worked for more than two decades at the intersection of energy policy and commercial markets. Prior to leading the Energy Program, he spent nearly 10 years in the private sector, first as vice president of Summit Power Group’s carbon capture business and then overseeing market development activities for Enviva, the largest biomass fuel supplier to the global utility industry. His professional work has focused on the innovations necessary to scale emerging energy technologies along with developing the business models and policy frameworks that support the deployment of low carbon energy systems.

Mackler holds both a Master of Science in Earth Resources Engineering and Master of Public Administration from Columbia University. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Geomechanical Engineering from the University of Rochester.

Ontario Canada’s government is all in on nuclear technology as it stakes out a global leadership position in small modular reactors (SMRs). In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Todd Smith who is the Ontario Energy Minister.

Rapid population and economic growth, coupled with the province’s long reliance on nuclear technology, prompted its decision to pursue SMRs. 

“We felt very comfortable in moving forward with the technology we’d chosen which is a 300-megawatt boiling water reactor from GE Hitachi,” said Smith. “We’re partnering with U.S. Technologies on this and other U.S. and international partners to develop the first-of-the-kind SMR, small modular reactor, here in Ontario.”

“It’s baseload power, it’s there when you need it, it’s there and able to be relied on 365 days a year.”

The province expects to add five million residents over the next decade.

“That’s going to require a lot of electricity.” 

Todd Smith has been the Ontario Energy Minister since June of 2021. Smith has served in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario for more than a decade. He is a graduate of Loyalist College.

Small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) could play an important role in meeting future energy needs. 

In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Sandra Dykxhoorn, the vice president of New Nuclear Growth at Ontario Power Generation (OPG), based in Toronto.

“It’s a game-changer,” said Dykxhoorn about SMRs. “We are really at the front of the pack here. OPG is recognized now globally as a world leader in its small modular deployment.”

SMRs will make their international debut in the free world in Ontario, Canada in five years.

“The reason why small modular reactors exist at all and why people are investing in this technology is because we know there is a need for smaller, clean base load power options that can replace gas and coal,” Dykxhoorn said. 

“Part of the solution with the small modular reactor is that it’s smaller so that should be quicker to build; doesn’t take as long,” she told Grid Talk. “Additionally, it’s more modular and more standardized. What we try to do is introduce factory buildout components.”

It will be safer than conventional nuclear plants around for decades. 

“Essentially what they’re trying to do is remove the humans that need to be involved in managing a nuclear reactor in the event that there’s an emergency or something happens. Ultimately, there’s something called passive safety.”

As the Vice President of New Nuclear Development for Ontario Power Generation, Sandra Dykxhoorn oversees the company’s long-term new nuclear growth strategy, building external relationships and creating a pipeline of opportunities. She has been with OPG since 2016
 
 She graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Carleton and is a proud alumnus of the Laurentian Leadership Program in Ottawa and the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (IEP) in Grenoble France.

The federal government is accelerating its support of pathbreaking fusion power research, ramping up three fusion research hubs and developing private sector engagement in next generation nuclear power. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Kramer Akli who is with the Department of Energy’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences.

“What we are hoping on for the hubs in four years is to give us a clear picture which inertial fusion approach we can pursue,” said Akli.

DOE has committed to spend $42 million over four years to support research into the use of lasers to fire up fusion, the process that powers the sun. This comes after researchers achieved a significant milestone in 2022 called "scientific breakeven." 

 “For the first time in history we have achieved ignition and that you can get more energy out of the target,” he said. 

Overall, DOE is spending $500 million dollars a year on fusion.

“With these three national hubs, we have leading institutions, but they bring together more than 30 institutions from national labs, universities, and the private sector to tackle some of these challenges.” 

“What we have today that we didn’t have five, 10 or 20 years ago is we have a private sector, more than 50 companies, that are pursuing fusion energy and we have attracted more than $6 billion dollars in investments,” said Akli.

Kramer Akli has been with the Department of Energy since 2016.

He has a PhD in Applied Science from the University of California, Davis. He received a BS in Plasma Physics from National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute). 

The recent United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) meeting in Dubai confirmed it will take a combination of generation sources to decarbonize electricity production, and nuclear energy will play a key role. 

In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Arshad Mansoor who is the President and CEO of the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). Mansoor provides his takeaways from the conference. 

“Now (there is) almost unanimous agreement on the importance on both large nuclear central station and small modular reactors. You can call this COP28 the Nuclear COP28 because I haven’t seen this (before) from leaders, from organizations, from industries,” said Mansoor.

Other generation sources are also needed.

“We should double-down, triple-down on wind and solar but we should triple-down on offshore wind.”

Mansoor said that EPRI research priorities align well with the global direction of energy and climate policy. 

“I think our long-term focus is spot-on which is, we’ve got to double-down on innovation on SMRs and long duration energy storage and on carbon-capture.”

Arshad Mansoor is responsible for the EPRI’s operation and portfolio of R&D programs. Mansoor has been with EPRI for 21 years and previously served as SVP of research and development, and VP of the Power Delivery and Utilization sector. He earned a B.S. in electrical engineering from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology; and a M.S. and doctorate in electrical engineering from the University of Texas in Austin. 

Solar power generation deployments are accelerating worldwide - and the grid must evolve to accommodate it. That’s the topic of this episode of Grid Talk. Host Marty Rosenberg talks with Mary Werner who is the Solar Program Manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado. 

“We did a Solar Futures Study in 2020 and in that report, we said that if you want to go to a decarbonized electric grid by 2035, we have to ramp up from our 2020 level by 9½ times and that’s just in the United States,” said Werner.

Werner explained the world is on pace to erect $1 billion a day in solar assets.

“By 2035, if we also plan on electrification which would then increase the amount of electricity needed, we would have to get to 12½ times.” 

Production is gearing up in tandem with the escalating need for solar. 

“In a report last week that I saw, our quarterly Market Industry Report, says that there have been 240 gigawatts of solar manufacturing announced since the Inflation Reduction Act passed in August 2022,” Werner said. “That is the kind of ramp up is what we need.”

Mary Werner joined NREL in 1995 as an engineer in the Federal Energy Management Program and eventually became the program manager. She has also managed programs for NREL's Building Technologies Program, Integrated Deployment, the Deployment and Market Transformation organization. In 2015, Werner became the program manager for the Solar Program, the flagship program at the lab.

Ms. Werner has an Executive MBA from the University of Colorado, Denver and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from California State University, Sacramento.

Community solar allows households and businesses to access the benefits of solar energy, such as lower electricity costs, regardless of whether they’re able to host a system on their own roof.

In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Jeff Cramer who is the president and CEO of Coalition for Community Solar Access. 

“We’ve figured out a way for any electricity customer to be able to participate and benefit from local clean energy deployment in less than five minutes with guaranteed savings,” said Cramer. 

And interest in community solar projects is growing, with more states considering community solar programs.

“It’s thousands of projects around the country in over 20 states across the country.”

By the end of the year there will be six gigawatts of community solar on the system. Cramer expects that to grow significantly in the future. 

“What Community Solar offers is it offers a sort of a hub for the deployment of, a central hub for the deployment of distributed generation.”

Jeff Cramer has served as President and CEO of CCSA since its founding in 2015. Prior to CCSA, Cramer co-founded and served as a Partner at 38 North Solutions, a Washington DC public affairs firm that focused exclusively on federal clean energy and sustainability policies and advocacy. He has a B.A. in government, philosophy from Clark University.

The utility sector is embracing new values and attracting a new kind of work force as it empowers America with a sustainable, affordable, secure grid. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Tom Kuhn, president and CEO of the Edison Electric Institute which represents investor-owned utilities providing electricity to 235 million Americans. 

The discussion focuses on the current state of the industry and its future. 

“We are very cognizant of how important electricity is to every household in this country so it’s very, very important for us to maintain reliability and affordability, but what is going to have to change is obviously our response to increasing growth and the need to maintain reliability for our customers,” said Kuhn.

Additionally, Kuhn talks about the impact electric utilities adopting new cultural values.

“We have gotten so much cleaner and we are so much committed to it, we are attracting really a tremendous number of young people into this business right now and they’re coming because they see a purpose in life.”

He also discusses how recent federal initiatives are spurring deep changes. 

“The Congress and the White House led the charge on the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill that we got a few years ago and clean energy tax credits, the Inflation Reduction Act. They were historic pieces of legislation that our infusing-needed capital into this business to help us to achieve this clean energy transition and to enable us to bring on new technologies.”

Tom Kuhn joined the Edison Electric Institute in 1985 as executive vice president, was named chief operating officer in 1988, and elected president in 1990.

Prior to joining EEI, he was president of the American Nuclear Energy Council, which subsequently merged with the Nuclear Energy Institute. The Council represented virtually all of the companies in the commercial nuclear power industry. 

Mr. Kuhn served on the Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board and the Board of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He currently serves on the Boards of the Alliance to Save Energy, the United States Energy Association, the Electric Drive Transportation Association, and the American Council for Capital Formation. 

Mr. Kuhn received a BA in Economics in 1968 from Yale University, served as a Naval Officer following his graduation, and received an MBA in 1972 from George Washington University. 

Hawaii gets about one-third of its energy from renewables, and it aims to get to 100 percent by 2045. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Stephen Walls, the deputy chief energy officer of the Hawaii State Energy Office.

The state is still busy assessing the impact of Maui’s devastating fires on its electric grid. 

“The office is going through an exercise of trying to think through and identify what resources the state does have, to make sure that the energy system remains available, even in, during strange or extreme weather events,” said Walls.

Long term, the question is how the state gets to 100 percent renewable generation. 

“I think we’re encouraged by a few things. One, Kauai - over half of its energy supplied is renewable and if they are able to complete their pump storage hydro project, then they’ll be pushing over 70 percent and they’ll still have the rest of the time to figure out what else they should do”

Walls says the state is banking on continued technology change and cost improvements.

“We’ve led with the use of and reliance on distributed energy renewable resources and will continue to do that and be at one of the leading voices in smart inverters and inverter-based resources in providing grid services there.

Stephen Walls has worked on energy and climate issues in the private, public, non-profit, and academic sectors. Prior to working for the Hawaii State Energy Office, he worked for the U.S. Department of Energy and General Electric.

Stephen earned his J.D. with honors from The George Washington University Law School and studied International Relations (B.A.) and Economics (B.S.) at the University of Delaware. 

Artificial intelligence and machine learning will make a big difference in boosting our reliance on intermittent renewable wind and solar power.

In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Dalia Patiño-Echeverri, professor at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. 

With renewable energy being deployed at a rapid pace, making sure there is back up, or reserve, power available to meet peak demand is critical. Patiño-Echeverri is using sophisticated forecasting models to precisely predict fluctuations in renewables and reserve generation needs to be ramped up or down. 

“We will be in a better position to integrate the valuable renewable energy that we get from solar and from wind because we will be considering all the possibilities and we’ll be prepositioning our system in the best way to cope with the variability and the uncertainty of these resources,” said Patiño-Echeverri. 

“The number one benefit that we see in our technology is that we’re going to have the right level of reserves at each moment and in time in our system.”

“And with artificial intelligence and with machine learning, we have found ways to run these models that are more sophisticated, more demanding of computational resources. We have found ways to simplify those requirements and we have found ways to run them faster.”

interviews Dalia Patiño-Echeverri Dalia Patiño-Echeverri is the Gendell Associate Professor of Energy Systems and Public Policy at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University where she explores, assesses, and proposes technological, policy, and market approaches to contribute to the goal of striking a balance between environmental sustainability, affordability, and reliability in electricity systems. She received B.S. and M.Sc. degrees in Industrial Engineering from University of The Andes, Bogotá, Colombia and the PhD degree in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University.

Wind production in America’s wind basket, a 14-state region including Iowa and Kansas, fell off the table in June, yet the region has served its power load during the hot summer.

In this episode of Grid Talk host Marty Rosenberg interviews Lanny Nickell who is executive vice president and CEO for the Southwest Power Pool. Nickell talks about the summer’s wind mystery.

“We have over 32,000 megawatts of nameplate wind capacity in SPP. Again, that’s across 14 states. On June 6 of this year at 10 o’clock in the morning, out of the 32,000 megawatts of nameplate wind capacity, only 110 megawatts of energy was actually produced,” he said. “That’s less than 0.4% and what’s remarkable about that number is that you would expect across a broad geographic footprint covering all or parts of 14 states that you would see more wind than what we saw.”

It’s alarming because during our peak conditions, we expect to see a little over 5,000 megawatts of wind production,” he said. 

The system avoided blackouts and brownouts but not by much. 

“It was stressed, absolutely.”

Lanny Nickell – As executive vice president and chief operating officer, Lanny Nickell is responsible for SPP’s provision of engineering, operations, and information technology services to members and customers. These services include coordination of reliable power system operations, development, design and administration of energy markets, development of transmission expansion plans needed to facilitate delivery of reliable and affordable energy to consumers, and administration of resource adequacy policies.

Nickell received a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tulsa and is a graduate of Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program

Federal spending of one-trillion dollars is aimed at transforming the electric grid and transitioning to clean energy. In this episode of Grid Talk, we talk with Sheri Givens, president and CEO of the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA). The discussion focuses on the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. 

“In looking and listening to our many members and regulators who are involved in accessing those funds, I think it’s an exciting time for clean energy investment and investment in infrastructure,” said Givens. 

There are still many questions about how the influx of funding will flow down into actual projects.

 “I know it takes a while to ramp up such large targeted investment and I know a lot of the utilities and the stakeholders are waiting for clear guidance from the federal government,” Givens said. 

Other challenges include implementing new ideas.

“Sometimes innovation can be stymied by the regulatory process. There’s going to need to be some openness and some agility and some flexibility to allow for utilities and third parties and other entities to come in and to make some of these innovative solutions available to customers nationally.”

Sheri Givens joined SEPA as president and CEO in November 2022. Her professional experience includes nearly twenty years in legal, regulatory, legislative, and external affairs in both the public and private sectors. She previously served as vice president of US Regulatory and Customer Strategy at National Grid. Prior to joining National Grid, she consulted on utility consumer education and regulatory policy issues in energy markets nationwide.

Givens earned a Bachelor of Arts in government from the University of Texas at Austin and a Juris Doctor from the University of Houston Law Center.

The electric grid in in America’s northeast industrial heartland is in the midst of profound transformation. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Kenneth Seiler who is vice president for PJM Interconnection. 

Seiler talks about how the electric system is rapidly evolving with PJM evaluating 2,700 new major grid related projects. 

“We just went through the interconnection reform process to get those most-ready projects out the door.” said Seiler.

There are some difficult challenges to getting new projects connected to the grid.

“There’s a lot of energy being put on this right now to address any number of these issues whether it’s the queue reform and the bottlenecks that we’re experiencing based on the volumes we’ve been seeing; whether it’s supply chain issues; whether it’s the financing; whether it’s local opposition.” 

Within PJM, there are 1,500 generation units touched by the transmission grid. 

“With the amount of renewables that we’re seeing with solar and wind and storage facilities, that number will increase greatly,” Seiler said. 

“I don’t know what that number will be in the next five years but I will tell you that a lot of the people who are looking to build solar panels and solar farms right now are looking to interconnect at the same exact spot where we have a retired fossil unit,” he said.

Kenneth Seiler has been with JPM Interconnection for 23 years. He is responsible for all activities related to resource adequacy, generation interconnection, interregional planning and transmission planning, including the development of the Regional Transmission Expansion Plan.

Prior to joining PJM, Seiler worked for Metropolitan Edison Company/GPU Energy for nearly 14 years in various operations and engineering roles. Seiler earned a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from The Pennsylvania State University and a Master of Business Administration from Lebanon Valley College.