Volts

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Volts published eight conversations in August — with two Idaho state legislators, a grid cybersecurity expert, the architect of Uruguay's energy transition, an EV charging exec, and more — which is a lot for anyone to listen to. We've rounded up the highlights into a single hour. Enjoy!
Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction and how the best-of series works
01:59 – Saleem Chapman on why every market design fails ratepayers the same way
07:51 – Patrick Miller on Chinese inverters and commodity boards
12:22 – Ben Toews and Megan Egbert on how Idaho's housing bills happened
18:34 – Seth Cutler on why an IONNA site is technically a bakery
22:52 – Ramón Méndez Galain on getting every Uruguayan party to sign one plan
28:00 – Quinn Nakayama on why a utility would adopt something that saves money
34:16 – Varun Sivaram on workload tiers and who pays when flexing goes wrong
38:44 – Todd Tucker on the Defense Production Act precedent
44:20 – Closing note and what to send in

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Disinformation about clean energy is showing up everywhere — online after every blackout, at county commission meetings about siting new projects, in regulatory dockets stuffed with fake comments. GoodPower, which combines a C3 education arm with a C4 advocacy arm, is trying to fight back with a network of thousands of content creators, rapid-response campaigns around storms and grid failures, and an AI tool that detects manufactured public comments. I talk with CEO Leah Qusba about what they've tried, what they've measured, and what actually works.
Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction
03:06 – What the disinformation claims, and who spreads it
05:57 – From Action for the Climate Emergency to GoodPower
08:38 – Building a creator network in non-political verticals
14:17 – Competing with talk radio and Fox News
18:26 – Winter Storm Fern and the rapid response system
23:26 – Measuring whether a deployment actually worked
27:24 – Pre-bunking and the 80-county experiment
33:18 – Getting people off the couch and into the room
38:10 – AI agents and where human judgment sits
42:05 – Keeping the C3 and the C4 distinct
47:13 – Battery fires, Moss Landing, and talking to fire chiefs
50:54 – TrueVoice and manufactured public comment
56:13 – Whether AI will overwhelm the comment process
58:11 – The best messages that actually land
1:04:22 – Super PACs, budgets, and what comes next

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

Even as he has torn down climate policy, Donald Trump has normalized the use of more powerful & aggressive tools of economic statecraft, like equity stakes in private companies, new federal authorities, and sovereign wealth funds. The Roosevelt Institute recently issued a collection of 17 essays exploring how a future administration could use the tools Trump has assembled for decarbonization. I talk with Todd Tucker, editor of and contributor to the volume, about these new industrial planning tools.
Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction
02:32 – Did Biden's green policy prove durable?
09:39 – The Defense Production Act and the Sable pipeline
14:59 – Whether to leave the DPA on the table
15:35 – Executive orders and the durability problem
19:01 – Whether the Supreme Court treats Democrats differently
22:03 – Executive power and a disempowered Congress
25:05 – Senate malapportionment and filibuster reform
29:43 – Court reform and the major questions doctrine
34:13 – Manufacturing vs. deployment
42:52 – Permitting, abundance, and theory of power
49:20 – Public ownership and the U.S. Steel golden share
55:22 – What state capitalism could look like for green ends
59:56 – Shelley Welton on utilities as planning tools
1:02:42 – Speed vs. deliberation before 2029

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

Typically, AI data centers are large, inflexible loads that the grid has to build around, which is one reason utilities take so long to connect them. Emerald AI has designed a “digital brain” that can ramp down, move, or delay computing jobs in a data center on demand, making a data center a flexible asset to the grid. I talk with CEO Varun Sivaram about how the software works, what flexibility costs the compute, why it beats just installing batteries, whether utilities can enforce it, and what it would mean for clean energy.
Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction
03:05 – Temporal, spatial, and resource flexibility
06:26 – What Emerald Conductor touches on site
08:35 – Who decides which workloads can flex
10:55 – Who is liable when a job slows down
13:45 – Who actually signs the contract
14:49 – Larger and faster grid connections
18:02 – Enforcing the flexibility promise
19:05 – What broke in the demos, from bad nodes to slow telemetry
26:41 – What flexing costs the compute jobs
29:21 – Why not just use batteries, and the demand merit order
35:44 – Training, inference, and substation-scale data centers
40:23 – PJM, ERCOT, and legal enforceability
44:50 – Renewables, gas, and consumer bills

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

When it comes to innovative new grid technologies, every utility wants to be the third in line to try them. None of them want to be the first to take risks and iron out new processes. That's one reason grid-enhancing technologies, better software, and smarter internal procedures stay stuck in pilot purgatory, even as the industry faces the biggest buildout since rural electrification. PG&E's Quinn Nakayama and Microsoft's Hanna Grene discuss what's actually blocking utility innovation — and Quinn offers a novel proposal for paying someone to go first.
Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction
03:44 – Why grid-enhancing technologies stall in the US
07:54 – Selling grid software into utilities: what goes wrong
11:08 – From a pipes-and-wires company to a technology company
12:38 – Pilot program hell and the last 30 percent
15:04 – Innovation as a bolt-on, and the three muscles
17:47 – The digital spine, data quality, and smart meters
23:56 – Org chart versus work chart
25:09 – Strategy, structure, people, process, technology
29:24 – Build, buy, and the ecosystem skill set
36:15 – Data leakage, shadow AI, and paying twice
41:12 – Why utility product cycles run five to seven years
46:27 – Human in the loop, and EPRI's SAFERai.power
49:06 – Advanced market commitments and the kingmaker problem
53:22 – EPIC, and whether software counts as infrastructure
01:00:05 – The CapEx incentive problem and final advice
1:04:34 – Digital Infrastructure as Capital Spend
1:06:53 – Final Advice