Podcast
With Great Power
Hosted by GridX and Latitude Studios · EN
The electric grid is one of the most complex machines ever built. And it’s changing faster than ever. ‘With Great Power’ is about the people building the future grid, today. Each episode features stories about the technology, climate, security, and economic shifts that are reshaping utilities and the electricity system.
20episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
How a Florida water utility is tapping into AI
2w ago00:21:18Tap to summarizeAfter emigrating from Cuba to the U.S. at age ten, Georges Gonzalez struggled to find his voice and his passion. It took joining the Civil Air Patrol and, later, the Air Force to boost his confidence and instill a work ethic he’d carry with him for years. He began his post-military career as a delivery driver for Coca-Cola, where he quickly moved up the ranks. But after working for the company for more than a decade, Georges took a buy-out in 2015. Before long, he was on to his next adventure, working in the water utility sector, starting in Pinellas County in west-central Florida. Today, he’s the director of enterprise solutions for water resources in nearby Hillsborough County, Florida. This week on With Great Power, Georges talks about how his team is evaluating AI tools for improving its customer service representative training, among other functions. Georges explains the county government’s careful approach to using artificial intelligence, how department staff have reacted to it, and how the water resources team is testing the technology. 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.
Transcribe →Taming explosive load growth with rate design
4w ago00:25:08Tap to summarizeFifteen 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 rate design has 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. 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 GridX production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and Brad Langley.
Transcribe →Optimizing distributed energy resources
Apr 2800:19:22Tap to summarizeAudrey Zibelman’s first job as a trial lawyer in a male-dominated firm in Minneapolis wasn’t a good fit. So she moved to the state’s attorney general office, a place known for being more supportive of working mothers like her. But she never would have guessed that the shift would lead her into the power sector. But it did. After a dynamic career as a utility executive, regulator, and founder, Audrey now serves on corporate boards and in advisory roles where she advocates for designing responsive power systems and focusing on consumers’ needs. This week on With Great Power, Audrey Zibelman talks about lessons learned and walks Brad Langley through the distributed energy resource (DER) policy and research tools she recently helped develop as part of the Distributed Energy Resources Initiative Advisory Council for the Pew Charitable Trusts. Those tools include a state-by-state policy explorer that tracks how states are advancing DERs, as well as a DER policy playbook. 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.
Transcribe →How VPPs came of age
Apr 1400:19:41Tap to summarizeIn 2007, Apple released its first iPhone. That same year, Seth Frader-Thompson co-founded EnergyHub, planning to leverage smartphones to help consumers save energy. But over time, the startup realized there was actually a bigger opportunity: helping utilities centralize and control the growing list of distributed energy resources, like smart thermostats and rooftop solar, that their customers were installing. In fact, EnergyHub was so early to the build-out of virtual power plants and distributed energy resource management systems that Seth has been called the OG of DERMS. This week on With Great Power, Seth tells Brad Langley what EnergyHub has learned about how virtual power plants mature – and the test they’ve developed to track maturity – as well as how EnergyHub plans to meet its goal of bringing 100 gigawatts of dispatchable flexibility online by 2035. 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.
Transcribe →PJM’s high stakes reform
Mar 3100:22:31Tap to summarizeIn 2019, when Julia Hoos moved to Houston for a role with Boston Consulting Group, she had no interest in the energy industry. For one thing, it was — and largely remains — a boy’s club. For another, energy just didn’t excite her. But as she started learning about the energy transition, Julia became curious. Before long, she was crunching numbers for an oil and gas client looking to understand how California’s zero-emissions vehicle mandate would impact demand for its fuel products. Then, in 2022, Julia joined power market analytics firm Aurora Energy Research, where she focuses on the eastern U.S. and the PJM power market. This week on With Great Power, Julia talks to Brad Langley about the pressures that PJM is facing, and its reform efforts. They also discuss how demand flexibility could support more data centers without adding new generation, and how utilities are using large load tariffs to manage costs and grid reliability. 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.
Transcribe →Can AI help save the grid?
Mar 1700:19:32Tap to summarizeGrowing up in Silicon Valley, Varun Sivaram didn’t look to Elon Musk or Sergey Brin to learn about success stories. He looked to his dad, a material scientist who immigrated from India. But Varun’s own dreams of pursuing a career in technology took a circuitous path. His physics lab at Oxford discovered a promising new solar material, but when he emerged from graduate school in 2012, it was no time to launch a renewables startup. After a successful early career pursuing his other love, foreign relations, he pivoted to tech. In 2024, Varun founded Emerald AI, which helps data centers adjust their workloads to use energy more efficiently. This week on With Great Power, Varun explains why he thinks AI can help save the grid. Varun and Brad talk about the demonstration pilots Emerald AI has completed and Varun’s vision for a massive AI factory the company is helping to build, in Virginia. 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.
Transcribe →National Grid maps its wildfire risk
Mar 300:18:22Tap to summarizeFrom his early days as a paper boy and eagle scout to his time as a naval officer decades later, Casey Kirkpatrick has always believed in service. Today, after more than 25 years with the energy giant National Grid, he’s still serving. Casey directs National Grid’s strategic engineering team, where he focuses on an emerging threat that most of its east coast ratepayers don’t think much about: wildfires. To get ahead of that growing risk, National Grid has partnered with Rhizome, a company that helps utilities understand their wildfire vulnerabilities. This week on With Great Power, Casey tells Brad what National Grid has learned from its work with other utilities and with Rhizome — including a few surprises. They also explore how wildfire preparedness fits into National Grid's broader climate resilience planning, and why the threat looks somewhat different across the utility's UK operations. 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.
Transcribe →How millions of small shifts make gigawatts of energy capacity
Feb 1700:22:17Tap to summarizeMost kids don’t think much about how buildings are powered or how much energy they waste. But growing up in an old, inefficient apartment building in New York, Ben Brown did. From an early age he knew he wanted to work on climate solutions and energy efficiency. That interest led him to Google, where he worked on Nest Renew, which allowed Nest thermostat users to adjust their energy usage to times when electricity is cleaner or cheaper. In 2024, Nest Renew merged with the demand response platform OhmConnect to form a new venture, Renew Home. In November, Renew Home released a study showing that small shifts in five million of its smart thermostats across the U.S. can provide utilities with four gigawatts of energy capacity.This week on With Great Power, Ben Brown dives into how Renew Home conducted its study, what it says about the bigger potential for shifting capacity nationwide, and why he says thermostats are just the beginning when it comes to connecting utilities with available energy capacity inside homes. 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.
Transcribe →How Eversource became the first US utility to provide geothermal power
Feb 300:21:56Tap to summarizeNikki Bruno learned early in her career that debates over climate change – and how to respond – are seldom black and white. Progress comes from honest discourse and collaboration.At Eversource, where she leads the utility's thermal solutions and operational services, Nikki manages a geothermal project that has brought together environmental activists, the utility’s gas infrastructure team, ratepayers, and government leaders in Framingham, Mass. The result is the first utility-led geothermal network in the country, which came online in 2024.This week on With Great Power, Nikki Bruno describes how the gas and electric utility Eversource uses geothermal energy to power 140 homes and businesses. She talks about challenges and successes of the project, how Eversource is now expanding it with Energy Department funding, and how the utility is measuring success.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.
Transcribe →High stakes for state-level clean energy
Jan 2000:22:52Tap to summarizeHeather O’Neill’s career in energy started in a pretty unusual place: working for a Republican billionaire. But in 2004 she joined the Robertson Foundation as a program officer just as it was exploring clean energy investments. In 2012, Heather joined Advanced Energy United — an industry association that promotes grid-scale and distributed energy innovations — to focus on state-level and regional energy policy. Today, she leads the organization as president and CEO.This week on With Great Power, Heather O’Neill reflects on some state-level clean energy policy wins from an otherwise dark 2025. She describes Advanced Energy United’s strategies for supporting policy in 2026, and explains why she’s focused on the 36 gubernatorial races and midterm elections in the coming year.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.
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