This Is the Case for Building a More Robust Power Grid

talking to on a daily basis? You're right, I'm talking to my my, my, my six year old Dodgers. Isn't it to be a lot? She says, Dad. It's great to have renewable energy, but our electrical power grid isn't that made for intermittent renewables. But you have for a group that's good. Yes, yes, there are lots of people, um, I mean not just in the energies is, but in politics as well who will make this point repeatedly. But

I actually don't know what that means. So I hear it it gets repeated, but actually I actually do not know what they're saying. When they say that, like it sounds like a smart thing to say, But I don't have any intuitive sense of like what that means or what the difference between our existing grid and how it works versus a grid that is optimized for a world of much more wind and solar and intermittent sources of

clean energy. I mean, I have this simplistic view of it, I guess, which is that I guess we need more grid, right, like just this is the simplest possible like interpretation of that, just that our infrastructure isn't where it should be and so we should be building newer. But you're right, I have no idea whether or not there are technical differences between like the types of electricity transmission you need for something like solar and wind versus more traditional energy generation

by you know, natural gas or coal or whatever. So the one thing that kind of does make sense to me and everybody knows, you know, it's like, you know, wind turbines don't do anything when the wind isn't blowing, or you don't get any solar power when the sun isn't shining, or if there's a lot of clouds or something. But if you had really widespread geographical reach of the grid, then you could sort of diversify away some of those risks, so that if there isn't wind in one area, maybe

it's more likely that at least somewhere it's windy. So you sort of ameliorate some of these risks by longer wire is a bigger grid, But beyond that, that's that's it. That's the only thing that I sort of like can sort of into it about maybe what's insufficient about our

existing grid. I mean, it also seems like doing something like that would just be a massive undertaking, both in terms of the actual amount of money you would need to build something like that, but also just getting different groups of people different states to work together, especially in

the current environment, that seems like a long shot. The idea that I don't know, you know, if Texas is generating a lot of energy from solar, that they're going to be willing to send it over to a place like Vermont or New Hampshire, and Texas of course has its own energy grid. So that's a really bad example, but it does kind of it gets to those issues. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,

and so I am also aware of this. There was, like I think there was some plan to bring in more quebec Qua hydro power in the Northeast, but there was like a vote in Maine and I think and they shot it down. And sometimes you hear about these big land use battles in the West where people want to make you know, wires over big ranches and those can get held up. Anyway, there's a lot we need to learn more about the grid itself. Yeah, let's do it. Okay,

I'm very excited to bring in our current guest. We're going to be speaking to Rob Gramleck. He is the president of Grid Strategies, which consults with all kinds of different players in the energy space on grid issues. He's been involved in the grid business for about three decades. He's going to explain what that actually means, what what an ideal grid would look like. So Rob, thank you so much for coming on odd lots right to be here.

Tracy and Joe I really appreciate it. So we do hear this cliche and again maybe it's not that common, but it is a thing that people say. But how would you summarize when people say, this is a grid that's not made for intermittent renewable power. What are people saying in reality, yeah, no, well you you both had it right in your in your intro, Tracy kind of said, we we need more gridge. You said, you know somewhere

it's windy. Uh, And those two of course go together. Yeah, And that's how renewable energy works, is that there there actually is pretty steady overall renewable supply, just not at your location. So everybody thinks about renewables as intermittent because they're looking at their spot in the country. But if you look at across the country, there's actually quite a steady supply of renewable energy. But what that means is you have to connect it and then we get into transmission.

So I have a really basic question before we go any further, And actually I have a feeling I'm going to have a bunch of basic questions during this conversation. But you know, Joe mentioned your company grid strategies and how you talk to different stakeholders when it comes to grids. Who are the stakeholders like, who is making the decisions

on how grids are designed and built? Sure, well, it's it's worth stepping back and saying that our electric utility business or industry in this country and around the world. Really grew up around electric utilities, and these are the

ones that send you your bill. Every every listener here kind of knows who they are in their in their community, and they were kind of vertical stylos, vertically integrated utilities doing soup to nuts generation transmission, distribution in their local area or sort of you know, around their city, or maybe they would cover half a state or something like that.

And there are hundreds of them around the country. Uh, those continue to be the main players in the electricity business when we are talking about these kind of large regional and interstate transmission lines. Because this is the bulk power system, it's a little bit of a separate world from what's happening locally on the distribution grid and in

your community. But this bulk power system, as you both said in the introduction, requires a heck of a lot of coordination and a lot more than it ever used to. So what we're doing in the electric industry, and we've actually been doing this for the three decades i've been in it, is working to develop these regional processes and institutions.

So we've gone from hundreds and hundreds of these little vertical styles two more connections between each of them, this sort of horizontal integration through the transmission grid, both with physical connections and the institutions that plan that and operate that. We have these organizations called Regional transmission Organizations that sometimes cover thirteen states, and they're regulated at the federal level.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is kind of a key federal entity that's been trying to put those in place around the country and as continuing to try to do that, and that was all happening in order to create mainly to create competitive markets so you could buy and sell

power from many states and different suppliers. But then as renewable energy came on the scene, really starting about two decades ago, suddenly the need increased dramatically to to do that because again, the wind is always blowing somewhere and you need to make the power output more steady and move the power back and forth. So that need increased. We're trying to do that, and now as people are talking about electrification of transportation with electric cars and electrified buildings,

just the whole demand for electricity goes way up. So now now you know all of this on steroids, and we really have to work on this regionalization of the power system. So first of all, it seems like, you know, even though we have yet to see the big upsurge in e V demand on the grid, we we all sort of expect that that's coming. But even before that, we're seeing strains on the grid right now. Of course, we all know about the blackouts that we've seen in Texas.

I know there are concerns about whether the grid strains in New England this winter and even in the Midwest. Can you just sort of maybe quantify or give us your summary of like, why is this happening, Why are we seeing the grid under such strain today, and how much worse is it going to get? What is the scale of the problem that needs to be solved as

we electrify more parts of industry. Sure, and and you're right, there are a few lenses through which to look at this power system and can forget about for the moment, climate change and clean energy. You can forget about competitive markets and just think about these severe weather incidents were getting and uh, for that reason. It turns out what happens, you know, not always, but maybe nine times out of ten, is that there's power sharing from one region to the

next that keeps the lights on. And the recent winter storm Uri experience, everybody knows about Texas, and it was a horribly tragic event for a few days in the middle of winter where people lost their lives and Texas imported all that could, but it just could not import much power because it's physically disconnected from the Eastern and Western grids, whereas all the states to the north of Texas going up through the Dakotas at the same weather situation,

but they did have strong interregional transmission connections and they did important tremendous amount of power from places like the mid Atlantic region. And what you tend to find again, not all ways, but almost always, is that the grid is physically bigger than the weather pattern. So even a big weather pattern like that big polar vortex was big, but the grid is bigger and can be bigger if we build it up, and so you can have this power sharing opportunity to save the day and keep the

lights on. So that's another completely separate reason to work on these large regional and in oregional connections. So the idea is that even if your short energy in one particular area, because maybe there's a supply disruption or there's a sudden surge in demand that you can get it from somewhere else where the weather is stable or things

are more normal. I have another basic question when it comes to this sort of grid interoperability, but is there a difference in the types of transmission mechanisms that you need for renewables versus more traditional energy sources, or is it just the case that you build more you know, electric wires. In general, generally it's the same technology, and our transmission system is regulated to be open access to all resources, and so you know, you can't even if

you wanted to. There's no there's no entity that could say block coal power from getting access to the grid, or gas or you know, whatever your preferences are. The federal regulators have to be technology neutral, and you generally use the same types of high voltage a C alternating current lines, interconnected networks across large regions that are the same types of lines we used decades ago, and some high voltage d C lines that tend to be more economic.

That's direct current. If you're going a really long distance, like it used to be, a hydro plant in the middle of the interior West trying to get to a major urban area or a mine mouth coal plant going hundreds of miles to a city. Uh. Now we have similar opportunities, but just with remote wind and solar areas on the on the end of the line that we're

trying to access. And so we do probably have a little bit more of a need for these very long distance types of lines, which tends to lead to more high voltage DC lines relative to the amount of a C. But you know, we've always had both, and we're going to continue to need both. So it's it's largely you know, similar from a technology standpoint. That said, there's a lot of if you look at the industry that there's a lot of dynamism in the in the innovation. There's advanced conductors,

there's grit enhancing technologies. The h v d C lines themselves and the converter stations provide tremendous reliability benefit that they didn't use to. So I mean, I would say it's, you know, generally the same type of network to any lay person looking at it. But for those people who kind of know what the capabilities of these new lines and the assets are, there's a there's a lot of opportunity to increase the reliability and services that they provide.

Can you give us I don't know, like if you can, you know, explain it like I'm five, or how simple simple you can make it, But can you sort of explain either the math or the physics of very long distance transmission and how much degradation is there? And like what's realistic? Like can we get you know, if can we get electricity from can we get wind power in Iowa to Los Angeles or New York City? Like what

happens when it goes that far? Yes? Absolutely, and this is this is one of the marvels of the electric system. And you know it's worth noting. I mean, we we do have an engineering marvel on our hands here that we've inherited, and it provides tremendous reliability relative to other county reason you know what what anybody sort of expected years ago. You know, now as we look forward in this need to move power around, both for reliability reasons

and for clean energy and climate reasons. Yeah, we have to be realistic about that and think about what it can do. A short answer is if you're going from the middle of the country to the coast with a good high voltage line, you probably lose about ten of the power, which is pretty impressive. I mean, that's that's a yeah, right. I mean most people think about that and it and it and it is and it can

be if we have we have uh insufficient capacity. I mean that's why everything in the transmission business is about scale. There are massive economies of scale, meaning the cost per delivered megawatt is lower if you build it at a bigger size, and you have to build it at that bigger size to get those numbers of efficiency and productivity for your delivery. So Joe asked you about the technical aspects or some of the technical aspects of building long

distance lines. Can you talk to us a little bit about the social or political aspects of that, Like if I wanted to build or if someone wanted to build a line from what was the example, Ohio to New York or whatever, how easy would that be to do and what would it involve? It is very difficult, as you said at the outset, Tracy, even if it were easy from a financial and technical standpoint, how do you get the coalition and the support to build and construct

these major power lines? And I would on this score, folks who are interested recommend the book Superpowered by Russell Gold, very good read about you know, one experience, one company's experience trying to do this, and it is very hard. And there are more recent experiences like in Maine with the citizen referendum. I would say the problem in those instances, First of all, we can overcome those problems. I'm optimist

about this generally. I want to leave that impression because we've we've done it successfully in other instances, but there have been a lot of failed examples where there wasn't really the broad recognition of the problem or how everybody

would would benefit. So, for example, in Maine, almost nobody from the polling I've seen and talking to people there, almost nobody even really thought about the regional clean energy benefits of building that line to access Quebec and their hydro and wind and clean energy sources and the need to move power back and forth between the regions. It was really viewed as sort of you know, one one company who uh, you know, people thought, well, maybe it's

in their interest, but it's not mine. And similar instances around the country when one line was trying to traverse the state and local stakeholders said, well, some investor halfway across the country may like it, but why do I care about it? So I think we actually we should look instead at these successful examples, and we have built some very successful long distance lines that generally came out

of kind of open, transparent regional planning processes. Is probably boring as I as I say it out loud, but but they do work. And and even just recently this group called MYCEO the it's the grid operator and planner in a thirteen state region in the center of the country.

They just put together another agreement where all the states involved, all the utilities, and they put together a ten plus billion dollar transmission plan that would connect many many tens gigawatts of clean energy UH and also provide reliability benefits. And I think when everybody's engaged in that process, UH, and then it goes into a local or a state transmission permitting proceeding. Right, we have mostly local and state

authority over the permitting of these lines. Then that regional consensus can be reflected the the technical people from those planning organizations can come in and testify and say here the benefits. When that happens, the batting average has been over When it's just one developer on their own, the batting average has been closer to ten percent, And so I think we need to get more to the regional

planning process. There there can and will It should be some some of these independent developers out there picking off opportunities and if they can put together all the least agreements with rangers and farmers across along the way, and hopefully I know the administrations trying to open up interstate highways more and railway corridors some of these existing corridors, you know, then that could be more of an opportunity for independent developers. So I think we'll see some of

that too. But there are a couple of different ways to do this that I think can be successful. But you know, they have to work around exactly what you're asking about, these these occasional local resistance, largely with people who say, well, what's in it for me? Why is this something I should put up with? You know? Want to ask further about that is a actually two questions, but A are there other clear things that could be done at the federal level, either regulatory or bypassing laws

that might make it easier and be. We're recording this August five as of right now that the Climate Bill or the Inflation Reduction Act hasn't passed, so we don't know for sure if it will. But is there anything in there that affects grid specific development? So I would say, honestly, there's not a lot that has passed or is likely to pass real soon that that helps a great deal.

I would say, to the credit of the administration and some of the various centers, including Senator Mansion and uh, some of the Republicans, there seems to be a much greater will and interest in seeing this type of transmission infrastructure and supporting the clean energy evolution with it, and supporting reliability as well, but we haven't converged on exactly what that policy should be. There's despite a lot of the headlines, there really was barely any actual money, and

that by part of an infrastructure law for transmission. You know, I've folks like me had sort of argued, look what we spend Our industrate highways are paid for by taxpayers by the federal government. Shouldn't we have something closer to that for transmission, which our interstate highway in nature, and that everybody benefits across you know, dozens of states, and we almost got a tax credit for transmission, didn't make

it through. I think they are looking at alternative ways, and there's this uh conceptual agreement between Senator Schumer and Senator Mansion that holds great promise and hopefully that would

that would help a lot. And separately, at the regulatory level, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has very strong jurisdiction over this, and they have prioritized this very issue and are working on it, and thus far they've been moving forward on a bipartisan basis to try to fix some of these problems and get the transmission agreements together in these regional

planning processes. So there there is some there's definitely some hope, and you know, maybe where there's a will, there's a way. But I'm my honest scorecard of where we are sitting here today is that there hasn't been a lot that's passed that would really transform this, like I think needs

to happen. What would be the most helpful in terms of building out the grid, like if you could see anything, whether it's I don't know, just having people be more amenable to having electricity wires strung up in their backyards, or more funding from the federal government. What would you like to see? If I had my druthers, I would say, let's get these regional and interregional processes set up to plan a robust grid for the expected future power makes,

say thirty years out UM. Put together plans use as much as possible existing corridors. That example I mentioned in the Midwest, of those lines are going to be upgrades over existing rights of way in corridors, so you know, yes, there will be some new lines, but um, you know there will doesn't need to be that much. UM. You know, actual new new corridors and rights of way. UM. And then importantly, those regional agreements involve who pays and how much.

And I really think either Congress or this Federal Energy Regulatory Commission need to put together a policy where everybody share. Everybody who benefits shares in the in the payment. Um. The The economic problem here is the classic public good where if everybody benefits, uh. And you know, even if in some individual pays a lot into this fund, everybody else benefits just as much as they do, which means they don't have an incentive to do that. So there's

a strong disincentive to actually fund this infrastructure. So we need to get some kind of collective agreements together, you know, in partnership with states in the region. But what I just described as a million conversations with a million entities, and all of that has to has to go well. So it's it's hard work and it's not Maybe two doesn't sound too exciting, but it really needs to happen.

And if you know, Congress and Firk, the federal agency here can require that to happen, or directed or encourage it than than I think, we really can get this done and get a grid that's able to handle the climate, clean energy goals, the new severe weather challenge of whom getting as well as the coming electric electrification. You know, you mentioned the idea of improving the process for longer term planning of the energy grid, and I feel like it's it's difficult at the best of times to get

people interested in fixing long term problems. But secondly, what seems to complicate this with energy specifically, is it seems really difficult to predict what energy needs will be, you know, twenty or thirty years out, and it seems difficult to predict what the mix should be, um, what the weather might be. When we're talking about renewables, how much confidence can we have that the grid we're designing today or trying to design today is going to be the right

one twenty or thirty years out. Well, I think I think we should have a lot of confidence. We're using this transmission network uh at or beyond its capacity. Every decade since this thing was invented, we've relied on it more and more. Electricity is all through our daily lives at home and at work. And we know for a fact that there are theys going to be the vast tracts of land amenable to very low cost wind and solar development across this country, and almost all countries in

the world have that same phenomenon. And so it's not like, uh, sometimes you hear, oh, we don't want to build a bridge to nowhere. Well, look, you know, I can guarantee that our great great great great grandkids will come to this spot and say, western Oklahoma and it's going to be really windy, um, you know, and uh it's you know, and it's gonna be really sunny all through the Southwest. So you know, we we know that for you know, far more certainty than we have about anything else we

you know, we invest in. So I think we can very solidly invest in that. I think there is a question of, you know, how much realistically are we going to get done. There are a lot of people like me who would say we need to build this vast network and make it a whole nationwide, in fact, continental macro grid. And I believe that, but I also think, you know, I might not want to bet my you know, kids college tuition on that happening. That's going to be

very hard. So I know you've had people like you've had Jigger Shaw on this on this show, and you know, he I think believes in that, supports that, but also he does he doesn't want all of his eggs in that basket. And other things like small modular nuclear reactors that you could put on the site of a closing coal plant. You know, there's hydrogen. There's a lot of other things that we can and should do as well. I don't want to rely on this, you know, this

this opportunity alone. So just you know, as long as we're talking about your sort of dream, if you could, if you could just write the policy and get it implemented. What are we talking about from a dollar perspective in terms of what you think it takes to invest and get to this more modern grid? And what do we talk about even in terms of physical you know, what

do we talk about in terms of miles? What do we talk about in terms of the raw materials that we need for the wires and the labor like give us a sense of the scale of the project in the ideal scenario. Sure like if Eisenhower came back, he said, all right, we built that system. Now it's time let's get this grid and our energy problem. And we want you know, domestic, home grown energy that's very affordable and reliable for everybody. Honestly, I think the current president is

interested in doing that to the extent he could. I would say, a two hundred billion dollar investment in a national macro grid, which would take ten years if everything goes right, putting a lot of it along existing corridors, highway and rail systems, UH that would enable. That would be the best two billion dollars our government could spend. Because energy important to our lives, reliable energy is so important to our lives. The climate is such a problem,

and if you build a network. We have very cheap wind and solar all over the country that can utilize that, and we know it's going to be there. Uh. Certainly, there's supply chain problems in every in every sector, and there will be materials needed, but I think those are solvable given the materials needed needed here, and you know, certainly we can. If we do that and commit to it, then we get more and more of that business in manufacturs We attracted to this country put a lot of

people to to work. You know, it's no surprise ib E W the Labor Union for Electrical workers, you know, loves this idea. That tremendous number of well paying jobs in this and I think it would lead to the lowest cost because what I said earlier about scale, scale is everything in transmission. To build a bigger the dollars

per delivered megawater cheaper. So uh. You know, consumer advocates are a very important player in this space, and I have a lot of conversations with them, and it's it's tough, right because what they're being asked to do is authorize a big spend of rate payer dollars for something that's super long term in nature and benefits everybody across everywhere. But you know, that's the way to get the cheaper power ultimately the cheapest delivered costs to the customers in

the long run. So I think we all need to, you know, look at look at this opportunity. Certainly consider you know, different scenarios and and tested out and kick the tires. But I think that's the scenario that that is best for reliability and clean energy and affordability in

the long run. Let me just get your take on a different vision because I have I see people, many of whom will interact with me on Twitter, and they say, you know what, instead of building all these like wires that go all the way across the country and all these fights with like farmers and ranchers and all this stuff, why not just build a bunch of nuclear plans locally and just have that be the silver built bullet solution. Yeah. Well, I thought you were going to go to uh rooftop

TV and batteries in your garage. I was going to do batteries. Actually also the question. But you know, both other Vision camps are out, Yeah, both camps are out in force on Twitter, that's for sure. Um. Look, um, you know I think there are opportunities for nuclear, particularly the small modulent nuclear, especially in that case, you know, putting them at the sight of the old co plants, and it's great for the communities there, UH to keep

the jobs going and plants. I do think, you know, it is expensive now and it is going to take quite a while to like get to commercialization and wide deployment. In contrast to you know, we're doing UH wide deployment of wind and solar all over the country, all over the world. So really the you know, it's the renewables that are the church technology. And you know, I never want to say that what we have now is going

to beat out everything that could come. But I also don't put too many eggs in the basket of things that are not not there yet. So that's the I think the main nuclear answer, and heck, we're going to need all of it if we really want to be carbonized. It's worth noting that the properties of nuclear is that it can operate at all times. Some of them can be dispatchable, they can ramp up and down. That's obviously

very helpful. Wind and solar operate when they have their power source and not when they don't uh, And so you do need other resources. I don't want to necessarily advocate for wind and solar because then what do you do in the other times. For quite a while, we're going to be using dispatchable gas plants uh, and we may either continue that or use other clean, firm dispatchable sources as they come on in the future. So it is I think more of a portfolio outlook than any

single technology. You know, it's not going to be a winner take all times. Who So can you talk a little bit more about storage then, because if the issue is that we have you know, intermittent energy supply, then could we just have everyone or large population centers build giant batteries where they could store excess energy when they have it um to make up for times when they don't, rather than build multiple um long distance electricity lines. Yes

in theory, yes. And what we have commercially ready and being deployed all over the country are roughly like four hour batteries, so people call them short duration batteries. It's the same technology that's in the car with the m

I on and they are very helpful. They provide provide a number of different services on the grid, and in some places, like if you're in the Southwest, you can go a long way with solar and short duration batteries together because the batteries will provide your power from you know, say five pm through you know ten eleven on a hot day, you're still air conditioning and you're doing it

with your batteries. Um. And then you know, if it's a cloudy day and you didn't get to charge as much because you didn't have as much solar, well that's okay. You probably don't need as much air conditioning on those days.

So that works. It doesn't do everything, but you can do a lot other places, Like I grew up in Michigan, and there's a lot of parts of the country where you're not going to be able to do that in the in the winter for certain, And a lot of these systems are becoming more winter peaking than the old regime where uh, you know, you thought it was a typically a you know, late July afternoon was going to be your peak. It's going to be more of a

winter situation. It's dark, it's not as sunny, and really everywhere you will have multi day periods could be six eight days with very little wind and sun. They have a word in German for that, don't go flout to course sort of you know, dark and still time periods and then what do you do? So you have to have something else around for that, and that's where we

get into the portfolio that you need. And maybe while on storage, you know, we might we we do have some promising interesting technologies that are longer duration and there's a tremendous amount of research and development going into that. Everybody recognizes that we want longer duration storage and if we get it, then great, that will provide tremendous value and we can we can do a lot with that.

It it's hard to see you know, that coming in sufficient scale to sort of replace the need for moving power around geographically, but it's absolutely a promising opportunity. What about other storage technologies. When we had a jigger shot on UH a month or two ago, he talked about hydrogen stward of salt caves too. You have the wind turbines spin in UH in the winter when there's not

as much electricity demand from air conditioning. Also talked about you know, things like water elevators or sand elevators, other types of technologies that can maybe store, uh, potential energy long term for use when we actually need it. Yes, there are a lot of promising opportunities. Hydrogen is really

exciting and different forms of storage. And I think people generally in the in the business recognize what we're looking for is something that can produce when the wind and solar are not both kind of on a daily basis, but also a sort of seasonal and annual basis for these other time periods when you need something. And what that means, by the way, is you don't necessarily need something that operates seven or even operates very much at all.

You just needed as backup. If we can rely on wind and solar for let's say seventy or eight percent of our energy and that's providing the carbon free energy the megawatt hours, Uh, then what you're looking for is the is the backup. So I think about it like our you know, we have a gas powered minivan that sits in my driveway almost all the time, uh, and we put all our miles on the little Chevy Bolt

ev um you know, around town. But every once in a while, we you know, we need to you know, put more people in the car or go along the distance or or what have you, and it's sort of there as a backup. I think we're going to have some variety of different backup sources. There's a lot of competition for what technology is going to be that best backup source. And that's great because we need we need a lot of options, and right now we don't have a perfect one, so we need we need more innovation

in that area. One of the political question that comes up is, you know this idea of smart grids and okay, if we're gonna put if we're gonna be electrifying more things in cars at the end, then you know, you create incentives to charge your car maybe at a certain time when there's less demand. But then that also like raises its own set of politics questions. So we talked

about the politics of land use. But then there's also like, well do people want the UH the utility nudging them or monitoring what they're using their electricity for it given time? Like perhaps some people feel it's invasive or people feel like is a privacy violation in some way, or that maybe the UH the utility operator is just going to unilaterally warm up their house or cool it down at a time because they've decided you know, whatever, do you

encounter much of that? Like, how real is that sort of impulse against grid modern modernization? Yes, that's uh, that's also important there there there's a tremendous opportunity first of all in the whole demand side of the equation here. Uh.

And you know that is the perfect example. If you know, if you buy an electric vehicle, you don't have to necessarily charge it at six pm when you pull in your driveway, because that's probably the time, certainly in the summer, where you know, everybody's coming home, plugging in, everybody's cranking up their air conditioning. If you if there were just a way to shift that charging to be you know between midnight and four am, say, you could save a

tremendous amount on electricity infrastructure. And so how do we put that actual retail customer in the position where they benefit from that, you know, and they trust that it's for the benefit because, as you say, people don't people don't trust many institutions at all anymore, let alone you know, big electric utilities. And there was a lot of pushback to the smart meters when people thought they were you know, they were being monitored and all these sorts of privacy concerns.

But on the other hand, you know, people who buy you know, teslas for example, where or there's you know, different states allow a different rate plan where you you know, you come home, you just push a button and say, you know, do you want discount power or do you want to pay for premium power? Push a button, boom,

discount power. That's all they know. They hop out of their car, they've pushed discount power, and then they go on their home and about their business and you know, behind the scenes, what's happening is that battery knows to start charging itself at midnight rather than at seven pm. There's got to be a lot more ways to do that that people will be comfortable with, that will trust, and it will be to their benefit where they save money.

You know, they get paid for for doing that. There really are a lot of ways, but it goes through this process of retail rate making, and there's always politics around, you know, the pricing and the terms of that retail rate making. So it's you know, it's it's hard, but we absolutely have to do more with that, and there's a huge, a huge opportunity to do that. So we've been talking a lot about the US for obvious reasons. But of course America isn't the only country that's trying

to up graide um. It's electrical system and it's power grid. And I'm thinking specifically about China, which I think is about to start upgrading it's great or building out a super grid I think sometime this year later this year, and they're spending billions and billions of dollars to do it. But when you see a massive project like that, what sort of takeaways or lessons um would that have for the US or you know, looking across the world, what sort of things can we learn from the way other

countries are upgrading their electrical systems. Yes, I think there is a lot going on around the world on that these large connections between countries, because the physics and the economics are pretty much the same everywhere. Okay, there's certainly exceptions, but like those are like Hawaii. Okay, Hawaii is a whole different situation. They're just not going to string a line to some other place. But there's a lot of talk about stringing a line from Morocco to England and

between different Southeast Asian countries and across China. And you know between Ireland and other countries and all sorts of subsede cables in the North Sea Baltic Sea. You know, this is happening all over the world because again, the technology opportunity and the value of remote renewable resources is such in the know ability to move power back and forth when you need it really is there now in all these cases you need some type of cooperation. I

look obviously more to Europe than China. Is the government political situations a little bit different in terms of permitting lines and you know, figuring out who pays and all that arguably a lot easier, which is why China is way ahead on this whole large scale transmission agenda. But you know, we have the government system, we have Europe pass what it has. There are ways to do it, just you know, requires a lot more coordination and work.

So one simple question that I don't think we've asked yet is, Okay, the biggest are a big source of electricity demand coming forward or new electricity demand is going to be in cars and electric vehicles? What are we talking about specifically, Like, you know, if we wanted to have an all e V fleet in twenty years or ten years or something like, what are the numbers in terms of how much more we're gonna power we're gonna

need to have on the grid than we have today. Sure, I would estimate in a core to a third increase in overall power for that, which in one sense is is huge for grid planners, But in another sense, there's a lot less than what most people expect. And the reason for that is that, Uh, it turns out internal

combustion engines on your car are extremely inefficient. And if you compare, even if we didn't clean up electric power production and we just had a whole bunch of coal plants producing all the power going to e vs would be tremendouslyly you know, beneficial from both an environmental perspective and a cost What are we talking about? What's the efficiency gained by just by having a generation of power at a at a at a power plant as opposed to and a power plant within each car? Great question.

I don't want to give you the wrong answer, but I'm just going to guess. You know, it's sort of an order of magnitude, sort of tenfolds. Just you know the fact that you're burning in this tiny little power plant inside your car under the hood compared to a massive, uh, you know, scaled power plant that could be a thousand megawats in size, there are massive efficiency gains. Again, it's all about scale and the electric industry, and you know, it's just a lot cheaper to do things at large scale.

So again, if we were only you know, shifting from internal combustion gasoline engines to uh, central station coal power, we would get a lot of environmental and efficiency improvement. But what is happening is that we're also replacing you know, old fossil power plants with clean mainly wind and solar, and so that that power source is getting cleaned up.

So but again those those uh that increase in electricity demand isn't as large as a lot of people think, just because the engines in your car are so inefficient today and the you know, the batteries in your car and the evs are so efficient by composed. Well, Rob Graham like this was an extremely helpful conversation in terms of sort of getting our heads around the scale of the need and the opportunity and the challenge. So really really appreciate you coming on online. Great to be here.

Enjoyed the conversation. Yeah, that was great, Thanks so much. Yeah, that was really interesting. Well, thank you both, Tracy. I thought that was a very helpful conversation. That last point at the end was actually particularly interesting. That even if you don't decarbonize the grid at all, and it makes sense,

but you know, people don't talk about it that much. Uh. I sees are not particularly internal combustion engines are not particularly efficient at turning fossil fuels into motion in your car, and so the idea of like big gains just by having the power done centrally is kind of interesting. Yeah, totally.

I mean the other thing, well, I didn't realize the grid in the US was sort of like source agnostic, that it doesn't really matter where the energy comes from, and that it has to accept energy from all different types of things. I thought that was kind of interesting. You should set up a little coal plant with the coal and your evasement if they if they have to take anything, I mean there might be some other permitting or something, I don't know, but if they have to

take anything, he's like, hey, I have some coal. I'm setting up a little coal plant in my basis. Is this like like small batch electricity supply, like just out of my backyard, just burning a bunch of coal and sending it back into the grid. Okay, people add solar to their roofs, so why can't you do that with call? But no, I thought that was a really interesting conversation.

And I do you know if you look at it on the surface, um, just at the US, and you think, oh my gosh, this seems so difficult, not just because it's really expensive to build these power lines, but just because you have to get so many different people and bodies on board to do it, you know, ranging from federal and state legislature to individual homeowners or property owners who might not necessarily want to have lines running through

their yards or whatever. But on the other hand, you know, if you look at the rest of the world, they're having these same discussions. And China might be an extreme example, because of course China is quite good at central planning uh and and these large scale infrastructure projects. But there are places in the world where these are getting done.

It's not impossible. And if you think about, you know, the two things that people really need on a day to day basis, it has to be energy and food, right, So we should be paying attention to this and we should be trying to build it out and improve it. Yeah.

The interesting thing though about the politics and what you say sounds exactly right, is like, you know, you do get conflicts in what is even the sort of environmentally friendly solution because a lot of those people who say voted down that new transmission line that would have brought in hydro power from Quebec in the northeast, they argued that they were doing something for the environment because they didn't want you know, new uh, new towers put up

through old growth forest and areas of the state that had never been touched. And so, you know, there's different parties. But to Rob's point, you know, we already have we have the federal highway system, we have rail system, and so to the extent at which physical corridors which have already been you know, developed for some sort of interstate used, could also be places where we just put a lot

more lines. Obviously that sounds telling, but it does seem like there needs to be more active effort, at least nationally on some level to get all the stakeholders on board and move these things along. Yeah. The one thing I was I don't want to say not convinced by.

But the one thing I had a little bit of reservation about was the question over long term planning of the grid and whether or not we can be confident that the thing we're building right now is something that will be useful in thirty years, because I think maybe I'm just scarred by the experience of the summer with multiple heat waves and lots of talk about the impacts

of climate change and things. But it does seem like there are things happening right now which we did not anticipate twenty or thirty years ago when we were building, for instance, a nuclear power reactor that needs a certain amount of cool water in order to function. Right, Yeah, but you know, probably are going to be using a lot of electricity in the future. Yeah, Okay, Yes, that's right. Okay, shall we leave it there, Let's leave it there. Okay.

This has been another episode of the All Thoughts Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at Tracy Alloway, and I'm Joe Wisn't Paul. You can follow me on Twitter at the Stalwart. Follow our guest Rob Graham Like on Twitter. He's at Rob Graham Like DC. Follow our producer Kerman Rodriguez at Kerman Armand and check out all of our podcasts under the handle at podcasts. Thanks for listening one