The full video is on Youtube

Texas isn’t just projecting future load growth; it’s happening now.

Maura Yates of Mothership Innovations set the stage for our discussion at GCPA’s Fall conference earlier this month in Austin.

“We are looking at meters that are 800 megawatts on a single meter… that’s crazy. We used to think 10 megawatts was a big deal…”

She also cut through the headline noise: “The next three years are really critical… This is the them we are hearing at this conference: it’s a near term discussion… We have a big, urgent discussion ahead of us.”

How much of the 200 gigawatt large load queue is real and how much will actually come in the next few years?

Hayden Stanley of Good Peak brought the developer’s eye to the near term. He sees a “whole new layer of infrastructure” coming as the grid gets smarter and more coordinated, but warned that SB6 complexity and behind-the-meter buildouts can slow timelines.

Tom McGinn with EnergyWell focused on “lifting the system load factor” with tools people don’t have to think about, built on “optimizing interval-level usage to respond to price signals.”

He added a sober note: in the next few years, mass-market customers could get squeezed by rising load in the short term, though he thinks in the longer term, Texas will have continued investment in the grid and new technologies and abundance for consumers.

Zach Dell of Base Power Company reframed things taking a much longer view:

You’ve got to make large investments with a long-term time horizon. And I think there are really strong precedents for this kind of orientation in other parts of technology. You saw Uber do it in transportation, Amazon in commerce, SpaceX in aerospace. We’re taking a similar approach to energy where we’re making 10, 20 year investments, both in terms of the technology that we’re developing, but also in terms of how we think about policy.

Base has added 100 megawatt-hours in the short time it’s been in business and is now adding 20 megawatt-hours per month.

Large loads are coming but so is innovation across the grid.

Timestamps

* 00:00 – Opening

* 01:00 – Guest introductions

* 03:30 – Load growth happening now much faster than expected

* 04:30 – Critical discussions are about the next 2-3 years

* 07:00 – Smarter grid, higher load factors, new infrastructure layers

* 09:00 – Potential bearish load growth over the next few years

* 10:30 – Thinking long term about resiliency and costs

* 12:00 – Is ERCOT still working to remove roadblocks? Are process changes needed?

* 17:00 – Smart meters enable design innovation and response to price signals

* 19:30 – Demand-side flexibility from batteries: “price down, reliability up”

* 22:00 – Base Power’s scale, the new factory in Austin

* 24:00 – Gigawatt scale virtual power plants (VPPs)

* 25:00 – Inflation Reduction Act repeal

* 26:30 – The advantage of distributed, smaller scale (<10MW) battery projects

* 28:00 – Senate Bill 6 and the case for a more bearish demand growth case

* 30:00 – What could slow down load growth

* 33:00 – Data problems with large load demand response

* 34:00 – Audience question: Data center water use, closed loop design

* 36:30 – Audience question: Doug’s one top policy change, would it be a carbon tax?

* 37:30 – Audience question: Zach- when will you expand to California?

* 38:30 – Audience question: Will grid tech still advance if there’s not load growth?

* 40:30 – Closing

Resources

Panelists & Company

* Maura Yates LinkedIn, Company Page & LinkedIn

* Hayden Stanley - Bio, Company Page & LinkedIn

* Zach Dell - LinkedIn, Company Page & LinkedIn

* Tom McGinn - Linkedin, Company Page & LinkedIn

* Doug Lewin - LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Bluesky, and Threads

Books, Articles & Podcasts Discussed

* Load Growth: What States Are Doing to Accommodate Increasing Electric Demand (EPRI) PDF (Clean Energy States Alliance)

* NRG’s Gigawatt VPP in Texas with Travis Kavulla (Energy Capital Podcast)

* Shape Load Perfectly, Inject Energy Optimally with Sonnen’s Blake Richetta (Energy Capital Podcast)

* The Year the Texas Legislature Changed the Energy Game Forever by Russell Gold (Texas Monthly)

* ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas Board Presentation:

Transcript

Doug Lewin (00:06 .464)

It’s great to be here this morning. Hope everybody’s doing great. It’s been a great couple of days. Really want to thank Gulf Coast Power for again putting together such a great event. I think my first Gulf Coast Power was like 15, 16 years ago. This is the 40th anniversary. It’s amazing to see you guys still going so strong. This has been a great conference. I’ve learned a ton, caught up with a lot of people. I am Doug Lewin. I do a couple of different things, but one of the things I do is I host the Energy Capital podcast. We are recording this today and we’ll release it as an episode. For those that are listening later, we are in Austin at the AT&T Conference Center at the Gulf Coast Power Conference. So I have four amazing panelists here. I can’t wait to get into this discussion. We’ve got a lot to talk about, but would each of you just briefly introduce yourselves and your companies so folks kind of know who you are. You want to start at the end? Go ahead, Zach.

Zach Dell (00:58 .366)

Hey everybody, I’m Zach Dell. I’m co-founder and CEO of BASE Power. BASE is a retail energy provider and battery developer based here in Austin. Started the company about three years ago. Our mission is to lower the cost of electricity for all. And we do that by developing technology solutions, hardware, software, and the like to help rebuild the infrastructure here on the power grid in Texas and beyond.

Doug Lewin (01:20 .458)

And I’ll just say I did record a podcast with Zach. It was like a year ago, more than a year ago now. Two years ago. Was it really that long ago? Wild. So for those that want to know more about BASE, you can go back, whether you’re in the room or listening later, you can go back and listen to that one. Go ahead.

Tom McGinn (01:35 .16)

Hi, I’m Tom McGinn. I’m Senior Vice President of Energy Trading at EnergyWell. EnergyWell operates a few different load-serving entities in competitive markets in the US, along with offering software and consulting services to other market participants. I’ve been working in competitive markets for almost 20 years now across all the competitive ISOs in the US, kind of at the intersection of the wholesale and retail functions in those companies. So yeah, happy to be here with everyone.

Doug Lewin (02:03 .694)

Thanks Tom. Hayden.

Hayden Stanley (02:05 .486)

How’s it going? My name is Hayden Stanley. I’m the co-founder and COO of GoodPeak. We’re involved with building out distributed generation assets in ERCOT. We’re vertically integrated. And we’ve recently also entered the digital realm with data centers. So excited to be here today.

Maura Yates (02:22 .466)

Maura Yates, the co-founder and CEO at Mothership Energy and Mothership Innovations. We are a retail electricity provider and ERCOT market service provider to large loads and load-serving entities across ERCOT. So everything from billing and operating services to QSE services, but again, really focusing on large complex loads across ERCOT.

Doug Lewin (02:44 .61)

Such a great panel, so much knowledge and experience and lots of different experiences and different businesses represented here. So let’s just start at a very high level with a question I like to ask on the podcast. Zach, I don’t remember if I asked you this one two years ago. I probably did, but it’d be interesting to compar