Smart Grid Today Podcast

Avi Gopstein is the smart grid program manager and group leader at NIST, the US federal government’s National Institute of Standards & Technology, which has played and still plays an ongoing key role in the development of interoperability standards and testing in the smart grid world. He explained how standards enable the smart grid, especially behind the meter as the energy world works to abolish carbon emissions completely with renewables, demand response, and electric vehicles, and much more – and he shared examples of where the industry is headed with standards profiles that help bring order where existing or new standards can cover a complex variety of use cases.

Copper Labs helps utilities and their customers gain significant value from real-time energy monitoring using meter data – whether that’s smart meters or the drive-by AMR systems that are still widely used by electric utilities. The Copper Labs hardware ships with both systems to help utilities transition from AMR to smart grid as it delivers real-time data to a utility’s customer through a mobile app and to the utility through a web interface...

CPower has been offering demand response aggregation for C&I customers for many years and as the electric industry and marketplace has been evolving, the firm has gained lots of experience in turning opportunities to find great value in how energy and DERs are managed into grid-balancing and energy market financial wins for its customers and the utilities that serve them, and they told us all about it...

John Marcolini is senior VP of the network solutions business unit at Itron and his division was faced with the interesting challenge of deploying the network for the smart meter rollout of Con Edison in the five boroughs of New York City, a city of some 60,000 buildings plus all the subway stations – and he shared with us his insights about the project.

Andy has been working with utility software for many years including at IBM and Schneider Electric and started as CEO at MPrest in April, helping grow the company that invented the Iron Dome system that protects Israel from missiles and that helps electric utilities around the globe automate their critical systems. He told us about his firm’s technology and his predictions for the future...

Sonnen US VP Adam Gentner is in charge of the premium products and projects business unit that specializes in virtual power plants (VPPs) using the firm’s home- and business-based battery systems and its own proprietary software. Claudia Kolbinger is VP in charge of the consumer products business which is focused on business development with large partners. The firm has deployed a large VPP in Germany and has several others elsewhere and is building on its existing success to bring the prosumer, grid-balancing, wholesale market, and carbon reduction benefits of VPPs to homes and businesses everywhere.

Hitachi Energy Senior Vice President of Enterprise Software Solutions Bryan Freehoff spoke with us about his firm's Asset Performance Management software or APM and the value it brings electric utilities in multiple ways including critical safety awareness during fire season. Please note that since we spoke to Bryan on this call, his company changed its name from Hitachi ABB Power Grids to Hitachi Energy.

Allan shared with us details about how SEPA conceived of and created its first-ever utility transformation challenge, an in-depth series of surveys that culminated in a report issued this year to help SEPA members and the industry at large see clearly what can be accomplished as the industry ramps up its modernization efforts. This episode was recorded earlier this year but due to our scheduling limitations, it is being released at a key moment in history as the world meets in Glasgow Scotland and discuss what can be accomplished to further the battle against climate change...

Matthew Smith is Itron’s director of grid management and spoke with us about the growing applications that take advantage of grid-edge computing in the firm’s smart grid deployments with a special focus on wildfire prevention. We spoke about what applications Itron is offering now and also what is being tested in the field for release to customers in the near future.

EnerVenue formed to bring to market the unique hydrogen metal battery – that was reinvented by a leading materials scientist at Stanford University after decades of use in spacecraft, satellites, and the Hubble Space Telescope because it is extremely safe, extremely durable, and can take almost infinite charges and discharges. The original formula was extremely expensive but EnerVenue is here now with a much more affordable version that is ready to change the electric industry and Heinemann told us all about it.

Former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman and current Chief Regulatory Officer of Voltus Jon Wellinghoff told us about how when he led FERC, he helped establish the regulatory and legal foundation, through technical conferences, rulemakings, and ultimately in a case at the US Supreme Court, for how smart grid and its associated technologies, these days called distributed energy resources (DERs), would be introduced into markets. He helped us see the history and the very bright future he is working with Voltus to help create and this is one interview not to miss.

Foghorn COO Chris Penrose told us about his firm’s offering which began as a software platform to help manufacturers automate their operations has evolved into a flexible suite of advance automation and analysis programs being used in a wide variety of industries including buildings and campuses to monitor systems, find and fix energy waste, and help customers meet carbon reduction goals.

Sense CEO Mike Phillips and the other founders of Sense came from the speech recognition world, bringing their understanding of audio wave forms to the subtle but distinct electrical wave forms created in the home by electric appliances. The firm uses a device installed behind the meter – and more recently introduced software for use in the Landis & Gyr Revelo meter – that brings value to home owners and to their electricity providers by gleaning what devices are using how much power and when. Teamwork with Schneider Electric is bringing the firm’s software into smart homes and Phillips told us how the value of the firm’s offering is growing by sampling the waveforms on the distribution grid, too.

Brian Levite is regulatory affairs director for S&C Electric, a century-old firm that from the start was dedicated to making technology that transforms the grid into a safer and more effective system. His role allows him to deftly explain the benefits of smarter grids and he joined us to discuss the firm’s annual reliability report and some very surprising gaps in reliability that were recorded last year.

Electriq Power is an electricity storage provider for residential electricity customers that offers backup power plus the wide array of values that aggregated storage deployments can bring to electricity providers and their customers. He shared some details about a pilot project in the Caribbean and a commercial deployment in California along with his take on how the fast-paced evolution of the electric industry is creating really exciting opportunities that his firm is addressing.

Andrew Heath is a senior director at JD Power working in its utility intelligence practice. He shared lots of insights about the firm’s traditional utility customer satisfaction tracking and benchmarks and also about the new environmental and social governance metrics for the electric industry. How the tremendous investments that are being made in modernizing the industry are perceived is critical as the firm found out customers who know more about infrastructure work being done seem to have a higher level of satisfaction, but the industry is not always great at sharing the news of the benefits its work may be building.

Store Dot defied all the predictions and created a battery technology that lets batteries of any size be charged in five minutes. The accomplishment was built on a nobel-prize winning battery formula and the use of machinery built for the biotech industry to make nanomaterials that can safely take a charge at incredible speeds. The implications for the utility industry and every industry that uses electricity – including now the transportation sector with EVs and electric trucks, buses and trains – are tremendous and Myersdorf spoke to the role his products could play in the electric grid for load balancing and much more.

Coretec CEO Michael Kraft told us about a brand new battery breakthrough his company is bringing to market that improves the energy density of lithium ion batteries by two to three times. Kraft is well aware of how the battery market is preparing for massive growth and he described how his technology has an edge on the competition and how battery storage is the key to bringing within reach the decarbonization of the grid, and of transportation, and beyond.

Leclanche CEO Anil Srivastava’s knowledge and insights are fueled by a career that spans the smart grid story arc, from being an electrical engineer who worked with Hewlett Packard and a leading nuclear generator to taking the helm at a battery company that understands how electrochemistry, energy management software, and sound telecom networks merge to play a key role in the modernization of electric grids large and small being rolled out or still just imagined as the electric industry faces tremendous evolution – and he shared his vision with us.

Justin Fier is director of threat intel and analytics at Darktrace, a cybersecurity firm that uses artificial intelligence for many industries including electric utilities of all sizes to identify when bad actors are moving in the system and shut them down. This is the second visit of Darktrace to our show and Justin helped us look at recent developments in the industry and shared insights about why the risks of cybersecurity should not interfere with the modernization of industries including the electric industry.