We’re back! This time with Cole Ashman, Founder and CEO of Pila Energy. Permissionless DERs are one of most exciting new categories for us. With all the focus on permitting challenges, high soft costs, and long interconnection cues, what if we could just install DERs without all of that nonsense? In the ep, we talk about Cole’s journey from experiencing Hurricane Katrina awakening him to the need for resilience to working at Tesla, Span, and now Pila, Ben Franklin shocking people at parties, whe...
Jul 02, 2025•1 hr 38 min
We’re still laughing that we actually did this pod. Why it seemed like a good idea to book two of our favorite (outspoken) people, Jigar Shah (most recently led the DOE LPO) and Tim Hade (co-founder Scale Microgrids), at the same time continues to confound us. With two legends on the couch that each have a wealth of knowledge, it was basically impossible to ask them everything we wanted. It was probably one of the most fun recordings we’ve ever done, so we’re psyched to share it with everyone. W...
May 22, 2025•2 hr 1 min
We’re back with our longest pod ever! And deservedly so. When you get Lisan al Gaib on the couch, you use all the time you have to pick his brain. Jesse Peltan is one of our favorite thinkers in the entire space, and his brilliant insights are endless. We probably need another 3 hours with him to get even more out! In it, we discuss: the fundamental resource availability of various energy sources, what 24/7 solar + storage at $3/w means, China’s explosive solar installation and manufacturing gro...
May 05, 2025•2 hr 50 min
After a brief haitus to focus on 2025 planning, we’re back! Last week we sat down with Astrid Atkinson, CEO and co-founder of Camus Energy. We talked about all kinds of fun stuff: how this moment of grid expansion is like the expansion of cloud services, how it isn’t, how we can connect large loads faster via flexibility, where Astrid sees the grid going, how Camus started, what cool new stuff Camus is working on today, the nuance between distributed systems versus decentralized systems, and mor...
Apr 01, 2025•1 hr 49 min
Last week we sat down with Dana Guernsey, co-founder and CEO of Voltus. There was A LOT to talk about in this one. As you’d expect we went deep on Dana’s backstory, the history of DR, new DER participation models, and where we think the future is headed. But also, Voltus just went through a settlement with FERC and this was Dana’s first podcast appearance since, so we did our best to understand what happened and what the Voltus position on it all is. This is a public episode. If you'd like to di...
Feb 11, 2025•1 hr 25 min
We’re back! And this time, we’re starting a holy war. Duncan launched an amazing paper on solar (wow, total sleight of hand! Don’t you mean GAS BACKUP?) microgrids for data centers with Stripe’s climate team and other DERTF OGs like Kyle Baranko, and some big names on Twitter lost their s**t. Tune in to hear about the churches of Matt Yglesias, Mark Z Jacobson, and Alex Epstein, who our maud’dib is, how heat DERvos was, what ‘25 is all about, and so much more! This is a public episode. If you'd ...
Dec 21, 2024•1 hr 48 min
DERVOS, 10/25/24, NYC Demand growth has returned to the US electricity sector for the first time in two decades and the cracks are showing in the system. Reindustrialization, electrification, and the AI juggernaut have catapulted us into a new era. New loads are suddenly having trouble getting grid connections, interconnection times for new generation keep growing with no end in sight, and transmission and distribution costs are escalating faster than ever. And yet, technology costs continue to ...
Nov 22, 2024•50 min
DERVOS, 10/25/24, NYC New energy technologies can thrive or die due to regulatory policy. This unbelievable policy panel will feature regulators who have actually supported new technologies and advocates who have successfully fought for paradigm-shifting policies. We know we have great technologies--this panel will explore how we get them to scale. Speakers: Allison Clements (FERC), Marissa Gillett (CT PURA), Arushi Sharma Frank (Luminary Strategies, former Tesla) Moderator: Allison Bates Wannop...
Nov 20, 2024•1 hr 27 min
Where else can you witness a pot of water boil in just a few seconds, learn about a micro nuclear reactor that skips boiling water altogether, insane AI-powered electro-cartography, and SpaceX-caliber EV charging infrastructure? Tons of companies applied to showcase their products at DERVOS and DER Task Force selected these four because, well, they are badass. * 0:00 - Impulse Labs * 6:10 - Westinghouse eVinci * 15:50 - Paces AI * 27:20 - Electric Era If you’re listening to this as a podcast, we...
Nov 12, 2024•47 min
DERVOS, 10/25/24, NYC David Roberts (Volts podcast) and Mary Powell (CEO of Sunrun and DER legend) will sit down in a “fireside chat” style session to review the past year and chart a course for the future of DERs as two giants in our space. Speakers: David Roberts (Volts) and Mary Powell (Sunrun) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dertaskforce.com/subscribe...
Nov 07, 2024•47 min
DERVOS, 10/25/24, NYC Renewables have been breaking many of the mechanisms in our power markets, irrespective of structure. Across energy only, IRP, and capacity markets, we have been seeing "weirdness" in price action and regulatory responses as solar and wind continue to dominate new installs. It’ll be an acronym stew: from PCM and RUC buying in ERCOT, adjusting ELCCs in PJM leading to capacity prices 10x'ing, to NEM 3.0 in CAISO. We want to contend with what this means today and then try to m...
Nov 05, 2024•1 hr 2 min
DERVOS, 10/25/24, NYC Tim Hade is the co-founder of Scale Microgrids and the godfather of DER Task Force. He’s been an inspiration to so many in our community, so we couldn’t think of a better person to kick us off at DERVOS this year. After this keynote we heard someone say “I’m ready to run through a wall for Tim” and we can’t claim to have felt any differently. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dertaskforc...
Oct 31, 2024•19 min
A truly wild story is unfolding in Pakistan. Over the past few years the country has become the globe’s third largest importer of Chinese solar panels, and yet none of the resulting projects are operated by, or even visible to, the national utility. Simultaneously, demand from the grid has dropped 9.1% over the past 12 months, which has many scared of a potential utility death spiral. Here’s a recent story in the Financial Times on what’s been going on that’s good background. To unpack this, we ...
Sep 30, 2024•1 hr 10 min
We’re back! This time with Nic Freschi, Senior Associate at Gable Associates and all around PJM wizard. Nic is a friend and OG member of the DERTF. Almost a year ago, Nic’s models began predicting the ~10x increase in PJM capacity prices we saw in the recent auction. How did he know? In this ep, we go deep on every acronym you could ever imagine: ELCC, ORDC, PCM, LSERO, UCAP, ICAP, and so much more. Tune in to learn how ELCCs work, how prices clear in the PJM auction, if renewables can ever prol...
Aug 16, 2024•2 hr 6 min
Last week we were lucky enough to sit down with Arushi Sharma Frank, the policy wizard who while at Tesla Energy helped turn Texas into one of the DER capitals of the world. She gives us the in depth history of of how ERCOT’s VPP program was forged — a story our co-host James was also a part of. We also talk about the rest of her time at Tesla, case studies in Australia and the UK, how regulators still don’t understand organic consumer adoption patterns, the Obamacare of power markets, where res...
Jul 12, 2024•2 hr 18 min
We’re back! This time with Charlotta Holmquist, President and Co-Founder of Blixt. Blixt is based in Sweden and just closed a fundraise led by Union Square Ventures . Their solid state circuit breaker and x-verter technology have the potential to fundamentally change how we approach building the grid. We’ve never left a conversation so excited about what the future could look like. We discuss everything from transformers for data centers, what the benefits of solid state power electronics are, t...
Jul 02, 2024•1 hr 23 min
We’re back for our first solo pod in months! We talk about what everyone is talking about these days… VPPs and load growth from AI. Is all this hype and talk about our space a good thing? Tune in to hear the Task Force unpack and set the narrative straight. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dertaskforce.com/subscribe...
Jun 20, 2024•1 hr 22 min
We’re back, this time with Allison Bates Wannop, DERTF’s policy lead! We cover an absolute ton of stuff in this one: * Allison's background and introduction, Mother's Day acknowledgments * Mary Powell's influence, DER advocacy, the significance of FERC v. EPSA in shaping energy policy * Favorite DER categories, Vermont initiatives, impact of extreme weather on policy, details about the Green Mountain Power programs * Differences between RTOs and ISOs, complexities in regulatory work, challenges ...
Jun 05, 2024•1 hr 21 min
Last week we sat down with Dave Riess, the CEO and co-founder of Wunder. They’re working hard to scale mid-sized commercial solar projects, where they believe the real TAM is in this market. Dave is an awesome guy who’s been grinding in the space for years now, so we naturally had a ton to talk about. * (00:02:55) Introduction and Guest Overview : Introduction of the hosts and the guest, David Reese, co-founder, and CEO of Wonder (formerly Wonder Capital). * (00:07:33) Network-Based Energy Infra...
May 15, 2024•2 hr 16 min
We’re back! This time with Casey Handmer, founder and CEO of Terraform Industries. Terraform is building a system to turn cheap solar electricity into methane. To pull this off they’ll need to commercialize the most performant and lowest-cost electrolysis, carbon capture, and Sabatier reactors ever seen. Casey had a ton of interesting thoughts about how to pull this off from engineering fundamentals in a manner that is tailored to the capacity factor of solar. We also get into the history of the...
May 02, 2024•1 hr 34 min
We’re back! This time we sat down with Quincy Lee, CEO and co-founder of Electric Era, an electric vehicle refueling company. Quincy has a super cool background - starting with designing skyscrapers, then moving on to space technology, and now he’s der-pilled. We talk about all kinds of stuff in this one: * what SpaceX and Starlink were like * why EV charging, or whoops, we mean “car refill” * EV charging reliability * grid constraints limiting EV infrastructure * the role of social media in sha...
Apr 10, 2024•1 hr 45 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.dertaskforce.com We’re back! This time with a VIDEO POD. We recorded this live at DTECH a few weeks ago and haven’t had time to upload it. But this is a fun one that you don’t want to miss. Not only did we finally find out what a DERMS is, but we also became fully converted distribution utility maxis after walking the show floor. We’re all quitting our jobs and starting hardware companies with the Gundo boys! Tune in to hear why! ...
Mar 27, 2024•3 min
We’re back, this time joined by Jesse Jenkins - professor at Princeton and lead of the Zero Lab. We cover a ton of ground in this one, including: * Jesse’s DERs journey, including skepticism at times and optimism at others. * A ton of discussion on rate design. * Jesse’s recent pod on rooftop solar. * How the hell is rooftop solar so expensive here versus Australia? * Where DERs are unfairly advantaged and disadvantaged. * How we’re going to deal with load growth, transmission buildout, intercon...
Mar 19, 2024•1 hr 11 min
We’re back! This time with Lynne Kiesling, Director of the Institute for Regulatory Law & Economics (IRLE) at Northwestern University. Lynne is an Economist who has been working on power systems issues since the early 2000s, with a focus on power markets, transactive energy, and “quarantining the monopoly” as she says. Lynne was a panelist at DERVOS, as paying subscribers know from our previously released episode. We felt her Hayekian perspective (distributed, emergent, local) rounded out th...
Feb 27, 2024•1 hr 23 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.dertaskforce.com Back in November we threw DERVOS, our annual distributed energy summit. It turned out awesome. We really couldn’t be happier or more grateful for how it went. The panels and speakers were great, the crowd that turned up was amazing, and the vehicle to rave afterparty was super fun. Because the talks and panels went so well, we’ve decided to release the r…...
Feb 14, 2024•6 min
We’re back! This time we sat down with Pier LaFarge, co-founder and CEO of Sparkfund. Those who listened to the DERVOS recording released last week may remember Pier pitching a utility-led DER deployment model. It was a pretty interesting idea that we felt deserved its own deep dive on a pod, so we invited Pier on to make the case for what is likely a very counterintuitive DERs approach for many in the space. In the episode he envisions a world where utilities determine the best locations for DE...
Jan 31, 2024•1 hr 31 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.dertaskforce.com Back in November we threw DERVOS, our annual distributed energy summit. It turned out awesome. We really couldn’t be happier or more grateful for how it went. The panels and speakers were great, the crowd that turned up was amazing, and the vehicle to rave afterparty was super fun. Because the talks and panels went so well, we’ve decided to release the r…...
Jan 10, 2024•10 min
Tune in for a chat on why ‘24 is TIME TO DER. Duncan and James reflect on the past 5 years before looking ahead at 2024 and beyond—and why the future is so exciting. We re-hash Dervos, retro our ‘23 new years resolutions, state our ‘24 resolutions, look back on the last 5 years in the space and where it is now, the current tech environment, building energy startups vs. thinking about energy, energy tech vs. climate tech, if CA grid failures are a canary in the coalmine for other regions, and so ...
Jan 02, 2024•1 hr 26 min
We’re back! This time with a perfect warmup for DERvos in a few days with DERTF OG Ben Carron. Ben has not only worked for FERC, Nat Grid, SunRun, E3, and now Enel X, but also was one of the earliest presenters at our original, pre-pandemic “DG Beers” happy hours. We wanted to have Ben on to get back to our energy market wonkery roots, so don’t worry—you won’t hear any stuff about twitter culture discourse on this ep. In it, we talk about the early “DG Beers” days, dunkelflaute, James’ take that...
Nov 07, 2023•1 hr 59 min
We’re back! And this time just Duncan and James to talk about weird twitter discourse again! Sorry… we promise we’ll go back to talking about wonky energy stuff in the next episodes. In this ep, we talk about Duncan’s Dad’s epic utility pole story, James’ other less successful business ventures, announcing the first ever V2R (Vehicle 2 Rave) application at DERvos, Marc Andreesen’s manifesto and Sam Altman on Joe Rogan, their (and the e/acc movement’s) views on energy and environmentalism, compar...
Oct 31, 2023•1 hr 42 min
