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.

Severe storms are fast-tracking grid resiliency projects