Ahad Esmaeilian is helping drive us toward the electricity system of the future. The director of business development for Avangrid, Ahad has earned a Ph.D. from Texas A&M and holds master’s degrees from universities in both the U.S. and his home country of Iran. And while Ahad’s daily focus is to work across the industry to advance clean energy through the interconnection of wind, solar and other utility-scale renewable energy resources, his academic and professional careers have largely focused on digital grids. That means he and host Sal Gill have plenty to talk about in this technical chat around how utilities can build an even greater grid.