With leadership in the government changing, the electric utility industry is anticipating major shifts in policy. But sustainability will continue to be a focus of the evolving electric and energy sector according to a strategic advisor for large commercial and industrial organizations looking to manage their sustainability and energy issues. In this episode of Grid Talk, we interview Drew Murphy CEO of Trio about what’s ahead for the energy industry. “There will be reversals, there will be setb...
Jan 20, 2025•34 min
At first glance, solar energy production and livestock grazing don’t seem like they have much in common, but the two industries have formed a growing partnership with what’s known as solar grazing. This episode of Grid Talk features Nick Armentrout who is the president of the American Solar Grazing Association. Armentrout reports a steep rise in the use of livestock to graze under and around solar panel deployments in rural America. “There is vegetation in place to control stormwater. After the ...
Jan 07, 2025•29 min
Energy storage is considered the holy grail that would unlock a vast increase in solar and wind renewable electricity generation. That’s the topic for the latest episode of Grid Talk featuring Will McNamara who is a Grid Energy Policy Storage Analyst with Sandia National Laboratories. Six national energy labs and a cohort of 200 partners across the energy industry have joined together in a moonshot effort to vastly expand energy storage in America. It is all being coordinated through the Nationa...
Dec 23, 2024•31 min
Solar siting, the future of hydroelectric dams, and grid transmission buildout have been some of the most contentious and important areas needing attention as the U.S. builds out the electric grid of tomorrow. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Dan Reicher who is a former Assistant Secretary of Energy and is associated with the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, as well as Dartmouth’s Irving Institute for Energy and Society. The discussion centers on a program at...
Dec 19, 2024•25 min
Kansas, in the heart of America’s robust wind belt, has approved a new direct current transmission corridor to help speed the transition to cleaner energy. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Andrew French, the chairman of the Kansas Corporation Commission. “Kansas actually approved a permit for the Grain Belt Express DC line to extend all the way across our state and all the way to Indiana,” said French. It comes at a time of increased demand for energy - particularly ...
Nov 01, 2024•27 min
The sister plant to the ill-fated Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania is getting a new life. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Dan Eggers, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Constellation. Constellation will pay $1.6 billion to refurbish Unit 1 at Three Mile Island by 2028. It sits near Unit 2, the reactor that suffered a partial meltdown in 1979. Unit 1 is an independent reactor, and its long-term operation was not impacted by...
Oct 24, 2024•29 min
One of the largest investor-owned utilities in the country is preparing for an 80% increase in electricity demand by 2045. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Steve Powell who is the president and CEO of Southern California Edison. With a customer base of 15 million people across a 50,000 square mile service area, Southern California Edison is changing the way it prepares for the increased demand. “Our engineers that are frankly used to dealing with relatively small cha...
Oct 08, 2024•29 min
Germany and Europe are somewhat envious of the massive federal spending now underway in America to ready the grid and the energy economy to combat climate change. That’s according to Simon Müller who is one of Europe’s leading thinkers on the future of energy and sustainability. As the director of the think tank Agora Energiewende, he took time to explain his views on the Department of Energy’s Grid Talk Podcast. “When it comes to the buildout of renewable energies actually what we see in jurisd...
Sep 18, 2024•29 min
NV Energy and Google have pioneered new utility regulatory policy to help the tech company’s move to power its data center with renewable and green energy. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Doug Cannon, President and CEO of NV Energy. Google executives say the agreement could be a template for similar pacts with utilities around the country. Higher revenues from new fee structures will be used to fund new geothermal generation resources in Nevada. “We really quickly r...
Sep 04, 2024•29 min
Google’s data centers consume an enormous amount of electricity. That’s prompted the information giant to proactively engage in the accelerating energy revolution. From Nevada to North Carolina and many points between, it is gearing up to power the Artificial Intelligence wave by striking novel relationships with utilities and encouraging the transformation of energy regulation, state by state. That is the focus of this episode of Grid talk. Host Marty Rosenberg interviews Amanda Peterson Corio,...
Aug 19, 2024•26 min
TerraPower, fueled with $1 billion from Bill Gates, hopes to be first out of the gate with next generation nuclear projects that will complement and back up burgeoning renewable energy generation. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Chris Levesque who is president and CEO of TerraPower. The company is developing its 345-megawatt prototype. Ultimately, the units will be plugged in to the grid and replace generation at many coal-burning power plants. That will allow the n...
Aug 12, 2024•29 min
Massive investments to overhaul our aging power grid are underway, but it’s going to require significant planning to be successful. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg sits down with Ron Ambrosio, an energy transformation professional, to talk about getting smarter and more deliberate how we plan for the future. “One of the key themes that we’re trying to educate the industry on is the importance of not just looking at forward incremental steps and design, but also the importance ...
Aug 01, 2024•29 min
In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Shay Bahramirad who is the vice president of T&D, strategy, and sustainability at LUMA and president of the IEEE Power & Engineering Society. The discussion focuses on rebuilding the grid in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017 and how the world is pivoting to a new electric grid. Bahramirad is the point person helping to rebuild the grid in Puerto Rico and and go beyond what existed prior to Hurricane Maria. The federal ...
Jun 20, 2024•28 min
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has issued a new rule to better coordinate the massive buildout of new electric transmission systems. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Ari Peskoe who is the director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program. FERC is trying to help pave the way to get a reported 11,000 wind, solar, and battery projects online. Right now, they are in limbo because of the lack of tran...
Jun 10, 2024•29 min
Countries around the world are stepping up efforts to combat climate change but mountainous challenges loom. That’s according to the guest on the latest episode of Grid Talk. Host Marty Rosenberg speaks with David Waskow, director of International Climate Initiatives at the World Resources Institute. Waskow says non-governmental organizations (NGOs), are shoulder to shoulder with national governments’ stepped-up engagement. “We’re both making a lot of progress and have enormous challenges ahead ...
May 24, 2024•29 min
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is gearing up to fund $40 billion of electric grid and sustainability projects. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks Zealan Hoover who is the EPA Administrator’s Senior Advisor for Implementation. They discuss the range of projects to be funded. “We’ve received over $100 billion dollars in supplemental appropriations. A lot of that is for electric system decarbonization and other climate investments,” Hoover said. The amount far exceed...
May 07, 2024•32 min
Offshore wind power generation is about to take off in a big way in the U.S. One of the biggest splashes will be made by Equinor which is building up to 130 ocean-planted wind turbines 15 to 30 miles off Long Island. Grid Talk host Marty Rosenberg goes in-depth on the project details with Equinor’s Vice President of Operations, Sam Byrne. The operation will be anchored by operations based in Brooklyn, in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. The company’s Empire Wind farm will generate 2.1 gigawa...
Apr 16, 2024•29 min
The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded grants to two entities to enable a deeper dive into tidal energy generation. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Nate Johnson who is the Vice President of Development for ORPC. The Maine based firm will deploy two devices in Cook Inlet, Alaska to further study tidal generation. “For decades folks have been trying to harness marine energy and I would say it’s still new because there’s only a handful of companies around the world ...
Apr 02, 2024•27 min
The grid is getting more complex, complicating the responsibilities of the entities responsible for keeping electricity flowing. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Clair Moeller who is the President and Chief Operating Officer for the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO). The discussion focuses on the evolving power grid and the transition to clean energy. “Retirements are outpacing new installations of resources on the grid and that’s a problem that we have...
Mar 27, 2024•31 min
The federal government is poised to transform the United States' electric grid at an unprecedented, massive clip to fight climate change and embrace sustainability. That’s according to Sasha Mackler, head of the Bipartisan Policy Center energy program who is the guest on the latest episode of Grid Talk. “The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act are really two major achievements from a federal policy perspective,” said Mackler. “They’re very focused on the developments an...
Mar 08, 2024•31 min
Ontario Canada’s government is all in on nuclear technology as it stakes out a global leadership position in small modular reactors (SMRs). In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Todd Smith who is the Ontario Energy Minister. Rapid population and economic growth, coupled with the province’s long reliance on nuclear technology, prompted its decision to pursue SMRs. “We felt very comfortable in moving forward with the technology we’d chosen which is a 300-megawatt boiling wa...
Feb 14, 2024•28 min
Small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) could play an important role in meeting future energy needs. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Sandra Dykxhoorn, the vice president of New Nuclear Growth at Ontario Power Generation (OPG), based in Toronto. “It’s a game-changer,” said Dykxhoorn about SMRs. “We are really at the front of the pack here. OPG is recognized now globally as a world leader in its small modular deployment.” SMRs will make their international debut in the ...
Feb 08, 2024•31 min
The federal government is accelerating its support of pathbreaking fusion power research, ramping up three fusion research hubs and developing private sector engagement in next generation nuclear power. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Kramer Akli who is with the Department of Energy’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences. “What we are hoping on for the hubs in four years is to give us a clear picture which inertial fusion approach we can pursue,” said Akli. DOE has comm...
Jan 30, 2024•26 min
The recent United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) meeting in Dubai confirmed it will take a combination of generation sources to decarbonize electricity production, and nuclear energy will play a key role. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Arshad Mansoor who is the President and CEO of the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). Mansoor provides his takeaways from the conference. “Now (there is) almost unanimous agreement on the importance on both large nu...
Dec 18, 2023•32 min
Solar power generation deployments are accelerating worldwide - and the grid must evolve to accommodate it. That’s the topic of this episode of Grid Talk. Host Marty Rosenberg talks with Mary Werner who is the Solar Program Manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado. “We did a Solar Futures Study in 2020 and in that report, we said that if you want to go to a decarbonized electric grid by 2035, we have to ramp up from our 2020 level by 9½ times and that’s just...
Dec 04, 2023•30 min
Community solar allows households and businesses to access the benefits of solar energy, such as lower electricity costs, regardless of whether they’re able to host a system on their own roof. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Jeff Cramer who is the president and CEO of Coalition for Community Solar Access. “We’ve figured out a way for any electricity customer to be able to participate and benefit from local clean energy deployment in less than five minutes with guara...
Nov 17, 2023•27 min
The utility sector is embracing new values and attracting a new kind of work force as it empowers America with a sustainable, affordable, secure grid. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Tom Kuhn, president and CEO of the Edison Electric Institute which represents investor-owned utilities providing electricity to 235 million Americans. The discussion focuses on the current state of the industry and its future. “We are very cognizant of how important electricity is to ev...
Nov 10, 2023•30 min
Hawaii gets about one-third of its energy from renewables, and it aims to get to 100 percent by 2045. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Stephen Walls, the deputy chief energy officer of the Hawaii State Energy Office. The state is still busy assessing the impact of Maui’s devastating fires on its electric grid. “The office is going through an exercise of trying to think through and identify what resources the state does have, to make sure that the energy system remain...
Sep 28, 2023•24 min
Artificial intelligence and machine learning will make a big difference in boosting our reliance on intermittent renewable wind and solar power. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Dalia Patiño-Echeverri, professor at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. With renewable energy being deployed at a rapid pace, making sure there is back up, or reserve, power available to meet peak demand is critical. Patiño-Echeverri is using sophisticated forecasting ...
Sep 18, 2023•26 min
Wind production in America’s wind basket, a 14-state region including Iowa and Kansas, fell off the table in June, yet the region has served its power load during the hot summer. In this episode of Grid Talk host Marty Rosenberg interviews Lanny Nickell who is executive vice president and CEO for the Southwest Power Pool. Nickell talks about the summer’s wind mystery. “We have over 32,000 megawatts of nameplate wind capacity in SPP. Again, that’s across 14 states. On June 6 of this year at 10 o’...
Sep 07, 2023•27 min•Season 4Ep. 1
