With Great Power

 In 2015, Laura Sherman and her colleagues from Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet’s office rode horses into a special part of the Rocky Mountains called the Thompson Divide. Laura had landed in Sen. Bennet’s office after grad school as part of a policy fellowship with the American Academy for the Advancement of Science. At the time she was a legislative assistant to Sen. Bennet. She and her colleagues were working on legislation to protect federally-owned portions of the Divide from future energy and mineral extraction. It was all part of a plan she made years earlier, while studying geochemistry at the University of Michigan. Laura realized that to influence climate policy, she needed to connect her research to policymakers. Today, Laura continues to connect people and policy as president of  the Michigan Energy Innovation Business Council, a trade association that’s advancing clean power in the state.This week on With Great Power, Laura Sherman talks about the state of advanced metering infrastructure in Michigan, why she wants utilities to deploy next-generation smart meters, and the value the technology provides to Michiganders and consumers everywhere.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.

Mike Kramer has always liked puzzles. But in 2017 he faced one harder than any sudoku. This one involved the livelihoods of hundreds of American families. As director of business operations and the chief financial officer for Exelon Corporation’s eastern region, Mike Kramer was accountable for the financial health of seven nuclear generation facilities across four states. And things were not looking good.The trend lines for nuclear power had been heading down. In much of the country, renewables had reached grid parity and cheap natural gas was edging out nuclear power. He couldn’t make the math work at one of the reactors Exelon had operated for nearly 50 years – Three Mile Island Unit One. So in September 2019, it shut down. But last fall, things started turning around. Exelon spin-out Constellation, where Mike is now VP of data economy strategy, is restarting the plant as the Crane Clean Energy Center. And things are looking up at Constellation’s nuclear plant in Clinton, Illinois, which it is relicensing to operate for another 20 years.This week on With Great Power, Mike shares his take on the nuclear energy renaissance, what it’s been like to go from decommissioning to recommissioning a plant, and what growing demand for emissions-free power means for Constellation’s nuclear fleet across the country.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 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.

In the early 2000s, when she was doing legal work in her native Texas, Sheri Givens held state government roles that put her in the thick of energy policy-making. And in 2009, Texas Governor Rick Perry appointed Sheri the chief executive of Public Counsel of the Texas Office of Public Utility Counsel. That made her, in effect, the consumer advocate for all 20 million Texas utility ratepayers.To do that job well, Sheri wanted to sit down with consumers across the state. So she spent days crisscrossing the state in her truck advising consumers on their energy utility choices.Sheri went on to consultancy and executive roles in the energy sector. Now, as president and CEO of the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA), a non-profit organization for energy sector professionals, she still has that same enthusiasm for empowering people. Amid tremendous demand for clean energy and deep uncertainty around federal energy policy, SEPA convenes folks from across the sector, the country, and the world to learn from each other. This week on With Great Power, Sheri shares why she’s bullish on states' progress toward clean energy goals despite federal headwinds, and what strategies utilities are using to advance policy and innovation right now.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. The Grid X 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 rates have 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.

In December 2001, Carrie Simpson sat at her desk on the trading floor of Enron confused, disenchanted, and unsure of what would happen next. A recent college graduate and brand-new power trading analyst at the company, she could barely wrap her head around the news that the power trading giant had just filed for bankruptcy. So she left the world of electricity and became a teacher at her hometown high school just outside of Houston. But she knew she didn’t want to be a teacher for the rest of her life. In 2007 Carrie went back to the power sector, and since then has developed deep expertise in the arena of organized electricity markets. Today, as vice president of markets at Southwest Power Pool, she is helping implement SPP’s newest offering to the utilities of the American West: Markets+. This week on With Great Power, Carrie explains why utilities in the West are finally ready for more organized power markets; and how Markets+ was designed and is being implemented today. 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. Edited by Anne Bailey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. The Grid X production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and Brad Langley.

A Jurassic Park clip at an audio-visual store in Indianapolis got Seth Little thinking about smart homes as a teenager in the 1990s. That moment led him to a career in energy efficiency. Today, he's the director of market development and partnerships at CLEAResult, one of North America's largest energy efficiency implementation firms.Seth has a provocative take on the energy transition: attic insulation is a grid-responsive asset. While the industry has been moving toward digital solutions, Seth argues that traditional efficiency measures should complement, not replace, active technologies. Unlike demand response programs that require internet connectivity, a well-insulated attic is always working to reduce peak demand—and it's often more cost-effective than deploying multiple digital systems.This week on With Great Power, Seth explains why we need a full set of solutions to achieve grid responsiveness, how high-resolution meter data is changing program design, and why utilities need to do more with customer data.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. Edited by Anne Bailey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. The Grid X production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and Brad Langley.

Adam Helman has spent his entire career in emergency management. But after working for the New York State Department of Health during the COVID pandemic, he wanted something new. So in 2023, Adam moved from responding to a public health emergency to responding to the climate emergency, in addition to other hazards utilities have dealt with for decades. Just two years into his role as director of emergency services for the energy services company Avangrid, he’s already seen a number of back-to-back emergencies caused by everything from winter storms to gas leaks.This week on With Great Power, Adam shares with Brad some of the ways that Avangrid’s emergency response operations are evolving as intense weather and other hazards put more physical and mental stress on first responders. They also discuss why  meteorologists play an increasingly vital role in utility emergency response, and how utilities are integrating new threats, like wildfires in the Northeast, into their planning.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. The Grid X production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and Brad Langley.

In 1994, Joaquin Ramirez took a job with a wildland fire-fighting crew in his native Spain. That year, Spain saw some of the most destructive fires in its history, and Joaquin quickly realized he just wasn’t cut out to be a wildland firefighter.He left the crew, but he kept thinking about the outdated maps his fellow firefighters had relied on, and wondering how better sensing and mapping technologies could make fighting wildfires safer and more effective. That curiosity led him to found Technosylva in 1998 to provide firefighters with advanced fire mapping and prediction tools. In 2007, the company expanded to the U.S.This week on With Great Power, Joaquin tells Brad how Technosylva provides wildfire risk analysis services to utilities and fire agencies, and how incorporating AI into its wildfire risk forecasting tools can help utilities make more informed decisions in managing power infrastructure.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. The Grid X production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and Brad Langley.

A decade ago, Zach Borton had a lightbulb moment when studying energy economics at Ohio State University: the grid was trending toward decentralization. That realization set him on a path that would eventually lead him to Colorado, where he now serves as DER services manager at Platte River Power Authority.Platte River's 2024 integrated resource plan includes an ambitious goal: 30 megawatts of virtual power plant capacity by 2030. But building a VPP across multiple utility territories isn't just about technology -- it's about coordination, customer engagement, and breaking down organizational silos.This week on With Great Power, Zach explains the technical architecture behind Platte River's VPP strategy, which relies on two interconnected systems: grid derms and edge derms. He also discusses the challenges of aligning five different organizations, the importance of seamless customer enrollment, and why he believes curiosity-driven leadership is his superpower in the energy transition.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. The Grid X production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and Brad Langley.TRANSCRIPT:Brad Langley: Back in the early 2010s, apps skyrocketed in popularity. Apple had just launched its famous "There's an app for that" commercial, and within a few years, more than a million apps were available for download in the app store.Commercial clips: Ever wish you could really read people's emotions? Well, now there's an app for that. Don't have a great voice or any real musical talent? Well, there's an app for that too. You want to get the potholes filled? Well, there's an app for that. There's an app for that...Brad Langley: Zach Borton's family was right there with the rest of America, feverishly downloading apps to manage finances or track the weather or achieve personal fitness goals.Zach Borton: Fitbits were becoming popular and my mom and dad would all compete against different steps, and we wanted to bring that kind of competitive element to the energy space.Brad Langley: At the time, Zach was studying business and sustainability at The Ohio State University.Zach Borton: Most of my classmates were going down the road of corporate social responsibility, sustainability reporting, but I took an energy economics course and that kind of shifted my path.Brad Langley: As part of that course, Zach was presented with some graphics of the power system. One showed the traditional energy value chain with big centralized generation. Another showed the declining cost of rooftop solar and an upward trend for installations.Zach Borton: I realized at that moment we're going from this horse and buggy to car event. Every few generations will have that shift, and I wanted to be a part of that shift.Brad Langley: After graduation, Zach and two friends decided to launch their own energy-focused app, the idea was to show people the impact of their environmentally focused investments.Zach Borton: What we were trying to build is a visualization tool to track environmental metrics such as carbon saved or trees planted, and also kind of that competitive nature of seeing what your friends were investing, what types of projects they were investing in, and then competing with your friends or tracking that with your friends to drive that competitiveness.Brad Langley: Unfortunately, for Zach and his friends, their app didn't make millions, but it did motivate Zach to keep working on some of the big complex problems unfolding in the power sector. So he took a job at American Municipal Power in Columbus, Ohio.Zach Borton: I was a power supply engineer. There was learning kind of the nuts and bolts on how to serve a community with generation, really how to stack those assets for energy, capacity, and transmission. But really despite everything I was learning, I kept going back to those two graphics from that energy economics course.Brad Langley: He just couldn't get one question out of his head. How would the legacy power system interact with all these new DERs? And he wasn't the only one thinking about it.Zach Borton: There was utility of the future white paper coming out of MIT, and so we were really going through that and understanding rather than a centralized approach from these large generators, how can we hedge against energy, capacity, and transmission from within the load?Brad Langley: Once Zach locked into this problem, he just couldn't let it go. So he headed west to Colorado where he now works at a public power utility helping build a virtual power plant.Zach Borton: My job is to take distributed energy resources and make use of them as we transition to a non-carbon grid.Brad Langley: This is With Great Power, a show about the people building the future grid, today. I'm Brad Langley. Some people say utilities are slow to change, that they don't innovate fast enough, and while it might not always seem like the most cutting edge industry, there are lots of really smart people working really hard to make the grid cleaner, more reliable and customer centric. This week I'm talking to Zach Borton, the DER service manager at Platte River Power Authority, a public power utility that serves the communities of Estes Park, Fort Collins, Longmont, and Loveland in Colorado. Platte River provides wholesale electricity generation and transmission for its member communities, each of which has its own local electric utility. So a major part of Zach's job is figuring out how to build a VPP across all of those different utilities.Zach Borton: So each have their own technology suite, which makes integrations maybe a little bit more difficult. So we're all at different paths in this integration and technology suite, but getting there is going to require more collaboration and breaking down those silos.Brad Langley: I wanted to dive into the mechanics of building this kind of VPP, but first I asked Zach how the initiative came about and how Platte River planned to break down those utility silos. So let's dig into your work at Platte River. Platte River's 2024 Integrated resource plan includes 32 megawatts of VPP by 2030, which is a significant amount. Tell us about that project. How did the initiative come about?Zach Borton: Yeah, so it can all kind of go back to the 2018 resource diversification policy. In that policy, there's a few things that line out how we can get to a non-carbon future, but it really suggests better integration and coordination across the systems from the generation transmission system down to the distribution. So senior managers, utility directors, and a few different public engagement sessions really sparked this vision and guiding principles for a DER strategy. Next came kind of a gap analysis, so we tried to understand what systems we have today and what we need, and so this really showed us where we need to go with how to make this technology work. Finally, we got to that potential study, which you saw in the 2024 IRP. This showed us kind of the market size and the potential and really gives us a goal to hit. It tells us what types of programs we should run and where we should head into that 2030 mark that you said, 30 megawatts.Brad Langley: And what is your role as DER services manager on the project? What are you specifically tasked with?Zach Borton: It's really trying to coordinate and develop these programs with our owner communities. We can think about our strategy in two different approaches. It's really that best thinking available today, which you can see in the SEPA article Decoding DERMS. It's going to require two different systems, and that's the grid DERMS and the edge DERMS. But really I want to circle back to VPP isn't just a piece of software, it's a utility strategy. It's a system level approach that brings together people, technology and data to orchestrate this cleaner and more flexible grid.Brad Langley: So we've established there's two main components to this. There's the grid DERMS and there's the edge DERMS. Talk me through specifically what the grid DERMS is doing as well as what the edge DERMS is doing.Zach Borton: Absolutely, yeah. So we can think about the grid DERMS as the brain of the future utility operation. It's going to hold our network model. It's going to monitor the state of the distribution in real time, say watching for those stress points and identifying where flexibility could be made available. Some of this technology is in place today, but a lot of this needs to be developed over the next several years, whereas the edge DERMS manages the customer side. It's going to help us enroll devices into the programs, optimize them, and then deliver those optimized energy shapes, load shapes or blocks into the grid DERMS as kind of like, here's a block at this hour. Here's the shape that you can use here for this stress point, and together these two systems kind of coordinate those individual devices into actionable blocks.Brad Langley: Can you go into more detail in terms of what those components are? I assume it's a mix of hardware and software, but any specific technologies you're able to call out.Zach Borton: When we think about our owner communities, they're kind of laying the foundation for the grid DERMS for that distribution system awareness, whether that's smart metering, switching, things like that. We need to build out that process with our owner communities to bring in those data points and make that distribution grid a little bit more intelligent. We can think about the future of advanced distribution management. When we think about the edge DERMS, there's a lot of processes and pe

Since her first power sector job with Pacific Gas & Electric, Hannah Bascom knew she wanted to focus on people and clean energy — not on what she calls “the pipes and wires part of the business.”That interest led her to Nest in early 2014, just a few months after Google had acquired it. Almost a decade later, she moved on to SPAN and then Uplight, a technology partner for energy providers. Today, as Uplight’s chief growth officer, Hannah thinks more than ever about how people interact with energy — and how to better manage that demand.This week on With Great Power, Hannah talks with Brad about the vital role of demand side management, also known as DSM, for managing load growth, and why she thinks leveraging the demand stack can help utilities to better manage that growth. They also discuss how Puget Sound Energy is using a VPP and rate program to reduce peak demand. And she talks about the important role that rate design can play in encouraging consumers to electrify their homes.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. The Grid X production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and Brad Langley.

If you’re a With Great Power fan, you know that we launched this show over two years ago to explore how people are tackling some of the biggest problems in the power sector – from grid reliability and resilience to skyrocketing electricity demand. Over four seasons, we’ve told you stories about the people working to make the grid cleaner, more reliable, and more equitable. And we’re just getting started. In our upcoming season, you’ll hear from some of the biggest names in grid-management; utilities building brand new programs from scratch; and non-profits pursuing their clean energy goals in a chaotic, dynamic market.   Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts for the latest episodes when season 5 drops.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. The Grid X production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and Brad Langley.

During her early days in Quaker schools, Alexina Jackson learned to question everything and examine how systems work. Years later, those same principles are guiding her work to help build a clean, resilient, and modern electric grid.Following an 11-year run at AES, Alexina recently launched a clean energy advisory called Seven Green Strategy, a reference to the seven greenhouse gases that cause climate change. As a lawyer and utility innovation leader, Alexina founded Seven Green Strategy to help large and small organizations accelerate their efforts to decarbonize. And sometimes, that starts by questioning the status quo.This week on With Great Power, Alexina talks with Brad about what excites and frustrates her about grid enhancing technologies; why she thinks data efficiency and a strong data architecture are essential for the digital grid; and why she wants to see utilities change how they think about everything from competition to customer data. 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. The Grid X production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and Brad Langley.

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.