Smart Grid Today Podcast

Rajendra Iyer is managing director of Grid Integration Solutions, a business within the renewables energy business of GE that makes and deploys high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission solutions that can be used to either augment existing AC transmission lines and make them run much better with load balancing and other features, or can be deployed anywhere new transmission infrastructure is needed. His vision of the future includes deploying this technology to improve grid operations everywhere but we also talked about how the optimized grid could enhance transactional electricity, the idea of prosumers generating and selling power from homes and businesses and even just removing the cost of electricity entirely from end users.

Google Director of Industry Partnerships Jeff Hamel joined us to update us on the progress his firm has been making in bringing control of energy into the hands of homes and businesses and the energy companies that serve them with its Google Nest Thermostat and with a variety of partner firms. Google rebranded its smart home technologies last year and Hamel explained the firm’s perspective on its role in the smart home, in multi-family residences, and to the utility industry going forward.

AI and cybersecurity firm Darktrace specializes in OT cybersecurity protection using AI to learn everything a system normally does so it can spot unusual behavior right away, helping many top electric utilities and other industries around the globe keep the watchful eye needed to secure their smart grid and smart technology deployments. Technology Director Andrew Tsonchev, like many in his field, balked at the term cybersecurity when it first became a catchphrase but he helped us understand how the word has helped the industry focus in on the kind of new threats its facing and that his firm’s technology was built to protect against.

EV Connect provides a software platform that sits at the heart of the EV charging experience for charging facilities owners including parking lot owners – such as hotels and shopping malls - and commercial and industrial fleet owners and residential EV owners and importantly for us – in many cases, their electricity providers. EV Connect has relationships with some 75 of the big investor-owned electric utilities in the US and others around the globe. For utilities, the platform can help with energy management and demand response and more – and his firm is teamed with General Motors, for example, to help foster the easy transition for that firm’s customers and really for our world to embrace the transition to electrified transportation.

EnergyHub VP of Business Development Matt Johnson shared with us details of the progress his firm has had deploying its distributed energy resource or DER management system (DERMS) with utility firms to help them see true value from the DERs deployed on their grids in the form of energy management and even voltage response. Of the firm’s 40-plus utility clients, mostly in the US, about 10 are now using the EnergyHub system with batteries deployed in customer premises, and this is up from about zero not too many years ago, he told us. The industry is quickly jumping past the piloting stage with full deployments, and the DERs being used include Wi-Fi enabled water heaters and more, he told us.

Marina Donovan returned to the podcast to tell us about a report the firm prepared based on surveys of the electric industry and its customers about emergency preparedness. She is vice president of global marketing and public affairs at Itron and shared what the utilities are doing, what their customers perceive them to be doing, and what more can be done as technology helps the industry cope with nature’s wrath to offer the best possible preparedness and resilience.

Joshua Wong is founder and CEO of Opus One Solutions, an electric grid software firm that works with top electric utilities putting the intelligence into grid operations. The firm started with DER management software (DERMS) but has grown in recent years to offering grid management systems covering many problems and opportunities for its utility clients including transactive energy, and he offered lots of insight into what his firm is doing and what the changing industry can achieve.

Arutyunov is VP of Product Management and a co-founder of Xage Security and returned to the podcast, this time to share details about how Chicago utility Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) is using Xage technology to secure distributed energy resources (DERs) – a timely subject as many experts are telling the electric industry how serious an issue this is today.

Activu Vice President John Stark is a long-time veteran in the utility control room view monitor space and, at Activu, is well versed in the latest developments in serving control room technology for utilities of all sizes along with transmission organizations including ISO/RTOs, along with many other industries that use similar technology. He explained how the control room at the top of today’s smart grids benefits from the latest in digital technology his firm offers and the systems it can interact with and help make more beneficial.

Centrica Business Solutions VP and Head of Sales for North America Kate Sherwood told us about how her firm offers services and technologies – including software, hardware, consulting, and energy procurement, especially focused on DER applications and management and planning for financial risks – for large energy users to help them modernize their operations to best take advantage of the digitalization of the energy world. This is an area of smart grid with big payoffs and she explained details and examples of how her firm delivers these.

Smarter Grid Solutions offers distributed energy resources management software – or DERMS – that answers maybe the most critical dilemma of our time: How to deploy lots of renewable and variable distributed generation onto the grid. With headquarters in Glasgow, Scotland, and a laboratory in New York City, the firm is playing a key role in helping some of the largest utilities in the UK and the US, including Southern California Edison, understand the importance of overbuilding and compensation for curtailment risk. And he explained why.

Viking Cold Storage uses a proprietary technology with a patented approach to creating ice to store energy for industries that need to keep products cold or frozen – such as food, medicines, and others – and is as much a software firm, managing sensors, meters, and controls, as it is a hardware firm. He described incredible energy savings, up to half, that his firm has delivered to its clients, including household name food vendors like Whole Foods, and others across the US and the world. He definitely sees his product and service as a distributed energy resource and he told us about his vision for its role in the modernization of the energy world.

Urjanet gets data from an astounding number of utilities around the globe on behalf of its clients who then can use the data for their own benefit and savings, or pass those services and benefits to end users. The services that are created from the data cover a wide range of opportunities that vary depending on the type of utility the data comes from – not only electric but all kinds of utilities are involved – and can include not just energy savings and efficiency but many others including financial services and even identity verification, such as proving to a bank or other entity that residents live where they say they do. He explained for us how it works...

John Di Stasio is president of the Large Public Power Council (LPPC). He represents the larger municipal electric utilities in advising lawmakers and government officials in Washington, DC, on how laws and regulations can best support the goals his members share with the general public, namely foregoing command and control regulatory models in favor of allowing the ingenuity of the utilities to flourish in creating desired outcomes. His 35-year career in the electric industry includes having been CEO of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, or SMUD, for multiple years the utility was implementing smart grid. We talked about that and lots of relevant topics including how his group thinks the discussions in Congress about infrastructure upgrades need to include the electric industry.

Ryan Kennedy is co-founder and CEO of Atom Power, a company that invented what it believes is the first ever solid state digital breaker switch, allowing digital automation of electrical distribution – at variable scales within the same device. Kennedy described for us the huge values the device offers including virtually ending the deadly threat of arc flash events, allowing remote breaker control and monitoring, super-fast switching, DG scenarios that could change in an instant and whenever needed, and much more.

Bidgely CEO Abhay Gupta explained how Bidgely teams with utilities to build relationships with their customers using artificial intelligence that analyzes what appliances are being used when and even whether the customer has purchased an EV, for example. This lets the utility know who to offer special rates and rebates to and opens a world of value to utilities and their customers, letting that relationship be modernized in ways other industries have been perfecting for years.

This fairly new cybersecurity firm uses blockchain to secure energy infrastructure and has worked with GE on wind turbine security and other energy deployments and features decades of experience in cybersecurity. Arutyunov explained how blockchain makes cybersecurity work and how tackling legacy utility systems and protocols made for interesting challenges as the firm geared up for very large deployments of smart grid technology.

Leclanche Executive VP Bryan Urban sees big opportunities brewing for grid-scale battery systems – including the software that manages them – at the distribution and transmission levels, and is especially focused on how solar plus battery storage is starting to take on characteristics of baseload power generation in both expanding the hours the energy is available but also in frequency regulation and grid support around the globe.

Brent Alderfer is CEO of Community Energy and a former energy lawyer and former state utility regulator for Colorado. His firm for 20 years has been deploying large-scale renewables and he is outspoken about how to make reaching the climate goal of 80% renewables on the grid by 2030 not only doable but really economically attractive for utilities, large C&I customers and even the communities his firm is named for. Community Energy has been driving big deployments of wind and solar for two decades and is now offering big energy storage rollouts. He told us how all this can be so attractive for utilities and non-utility investors.

Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative CEO Patty Durand's organization tracks public awareness of smart grid and related developments in electric industry modernization and has put out multiple reports based on public surveys and surveys of industry executives to help the industry and its regulators understand how messages about the progress of the industry are being received – focused on what’s working where and how to maximize the benefits in the evolving relationships of electricity providers and their customers. Durand spoke to us in detail about a report compiled from several studies that was released this year.