With Great Power

The smart meter unlocked a trove of data on how people use energy in their homes. And it created the opportunity for utilities to offer more services based on customers' individual needs and consumption habits. These demand-side services are crucial for decarbonizing the grid, enhancing reliability, and integrating more renewables.But many utilities are still in the early stages of digitizing their operations. As director of industry marketing for energy and utilities at Salesforce, Sharon Talbott is helping power providers get more digitally sophisticated. “Utilities still keep a lot of their data in different silos, and then a lot of their processes are done on spreadsheets and with people handing packets of paper to each other with wet signatures and things like that. So a lot of utilities want to change that,” explains Sharon.This week, Brad talks with Sharon about how she works with electricity companies to provide more digital services and products to their customers in order to modernize their operations.This podcast is produced by GridX. GridX is the Enterprise Rate Platform that modern utilities rely on to usher in our clean energy future.

Climate change is making extreme weather events more intense and more frequent, which strains the electric grid. As an employee of Southern California Edison, Katie Sloan is familiar with these events. From 2019 to 2021, the state had 44 weather-related power outages.Katie knows cleaning up the grid is a vital part of slowing climate change. She also knows it’s important for improving resiliency as extreme weather worsens, and helping customers when the grid is strained.This week, Brad talks with Katie Sloan, vice president of customer programs and services at Southern California Edison, about making the grid cleaner and more reliable. This podcast is produced by GridX. GridX is the Enterprise Rate Platform that modern utilities rely on to usher in our clean energy future.

There's a saying in the business world that if you're not innovating, you're dying. For Josh Gould, that applies to utilities, too.In the risk-averse utility industry, it can be hard to push for change, or do things unconventionally. Josh believes that getting people motivated around an idea is the key to success, which he learned in his time as an energy technology researcher for the government. This week, Brad talks with Josh Gould, director of innovation at Duquesne Light Company, about how he puts innovation into practice at the company.This podcast is produced by GridX. GridX is the Enterprise Rate Platform that modern utilities rely on to usher in our clean energy future.

Everything around us can be personalized. Our homes, our cars, our online shopping experience. And that’s what consumers have come to expect. As utilities work to grow their business, they're also thinking about personalization – designing programs for specific groups of people and not just mass offerings for all customers.But serving the needs of everyone means collecting more than just a few data points.Angie Ostaszewski spends a lot of time listening to customers. As an energy efficiency consultant at Ameren Illinois, it’s her job to make sure people enroll in the programs they offer. And she believes the best way to get customers to enroll in a utility program is to deliver what she calls non-energy benefits.This week, Brad talks with Angie about how to serve each customer as an individual as utilities ramp up their efficiency, demand response, and smart home offerings.This podcast is produced by GridX. GridX is the Enterprise Rate Platform that modern utilities rely on to usher in our clean energy future.

Buildings account for nearly 40% of America’s CO2 emissions, making the built environment critical for meeting net-zero goals. Utilities are starting to use efficiency measures and electrification to cut gas consumption and increase consumption of electricity. But these efforts also change the way they make money – and many utilities are still figuring out how to make the shift.As the strategic business planner for building electrification and energy efficiency at the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, Scott Blunk is working on how to electrify every home in Sacramento. “My job's about transforming the built environment. We're in a clean energy revolution right now, and really moving away from burning gas in our buildings. My job is to make sure that we land our customers on that path to zero so that we're, we're all moving in the same direction,” says Scott.This week, Brad speaks with Scott about how a utility like SMUD is structuring programs to electrify homes, while also making them more efficient. This podcast is produced by GridX. GridX is the Enterprise Rate Platform that modern utilities rely on to usher in our clean energy future.

Distributed energy resources, or DERs, can be a powerful tool for managing the local grid. They’re more complicated to manage than traditional electricity delivery from central power plants, but they are vital for making the grid cleaner, more dynamic, and more resilient.Brenda Chew has been researching this concept for years. Now, she's helping put it into practice as the Director of Product Management at Virtual Peaker.“I think we're past the early adopting phase. It's just a lot more approachable or available for utilities of all different shapes and sizes to be thinking about how to stand up a program,” she explains.Grid management is constantly evolving. This week, Brad speaks with Brenda about her research on demand response, how it shapes her work as an innovative technology provider, and what it means for the future of the electricity system.This podcast is produced by GridX. GridX is the Enterprise Rate Platform that modern utilities rely on to usher in our clean energy future.

Finding the local value of renewables can be a complex exercise. If rates don't properly reflect the value of distributed energy and the central grid together, it can create an imbalance in economic benefits.Rooftop solar is one prominent example of a technology disrupting the utility business model – changing the way utilities make money and spread costs among consumers. Lon Huber has spent his career figuring out how to make shift work for everyone.As the Senior Vice President for Pricing and Customer Solutions at Duke Energy, Lon is working on new solutions that can benefit customers, distributed energy providers, and the central grid.“I continue my advocacy for fair treatment to all customers, while at the same time encouraging new technology and maximizing the benefits,” he says.This week, Brad speaks with Lon about how his team analyzes and creates new rates to build programs and services for specific groups of customers – including efficiency and distributed energy.This podcast is produced by GridX. GridX is the Enterprise Rate Platform that modern utilities rely on to usher in our clean energy future.

The grid is no longer the biggest source of carbon emissions in America. It's transportation.Electric vehicles are a key part of decarbonizing the transportation sector – making utilities an important force in growing EV adoption.Electric cars will create a new opportunity for power providers to scale their business. But first, they need to get people to buy them. And that's where people like Karl Popham come in.“The mindset is how can we get EVs to your customers as quickly as possible and as profitable for the salesperson as possible,” explains Karl, who is manager of electric vehicles and emerging technologies at Austin Energy.This week, Brad speaks with Karl about Austin Energy’s work in making electric cars as accessible as possible by taking a dealership-centric approach.This podcast is produced by GridX. GridX is the Enterprise Rate Platform that modern utilities rely on to usher in our clean energy future.

This summer, a combination of extreme heat and soaring natural gas prices hit electricity customers hard along the gulf coast. And Tara Seavers had a front row seat.Tara oversees the customer experience at Entergy. And this was one of the highest-stakes customer problems imaginable. Record numbers of people were calling the utility with a dire choice: do they buy groceries or pay their utility bills?Tara and the Entergy executive team jumped into action, creating a “bold and aggressive” plan to relieve the financial burden on customers. It’s one example of the connection that Tara’s team is forging between the utility and the people it serves. “I'm not in the business of just getting a piece of paper or an email to a customer. I want folks to feel confident [in the utility]. That's important to me, and I think it's important to customers,” explains Tara.This week: the shifting utility-customer experience. Inflation, extreme weather, digitization, distributed energy are all changing expectations around how power companies interact with and serve their customers.Brad talks with Entergy's Tara Seavers about how this is playing out in the American south.This podcast is produced by GridX. GridX is the Enterprise Rate Platform that modern utilities rely on to usher in our clean energy future.

When smart meters came on the scene, the industry talked about them in transformational ways. And while smart meters have given utilities more insights into the distribution grid through digitization, they haven't transformed grid management, or the customer experience. That's why Carlos Nouel decided he needed a new type of meter – one that could recognize every single device in the home. With this level of information, he believed utilities could offer better insights to customers that would save more energy and money. Carlos is the Vice President of Transformation Programs at National Grid. Part of his job is educating customers to make better energy choices. The other part of his job is offering them personalized experiences to make it as easy as possible to change their behavior. This week, Brad speaks with Carlos about how he makes this a reality at National Grid. How can utilities make cutting-edge technologies just a normal part of operations?This podcast is produced by GridX. GridX is the Enterprise Rate Platform that modern utilities rely on to usher in our clean energy future.