Amply CEO Vic Shao, a former battery storage lead at energy technology giant Engie, started Amply in 2018 to solve major problems that he saw holding back the electrification of big fleets of vehicles such as city buses when he realized managers of these fleets were unsure how to buy power, how to choose charging equipment, or what to do when the power goes out. This is a massive shift into unknown territory and Shao realized Amply could help smooth the transition with service model that...

Colin Gibbs joined us to discuss how Bidgely is not only helping its clients manage the sudden changes brought on by the pandemic, which he described in detail, but also how the firm is developing fast answers for utility firms around the globe to help their customers through these tumultuous times. He has an inspiring view of the industry, where it is headed in normal times, and how to help manage the current crisis.

Stem is a leader in energy storage using batteries and VP Ted Ko spoke to us about the state of storage in the electric industry including which states around the US have policies and budgets that are driving growth including California where funding for battery deployments in low-income facilities fell far short of demand. New York set what Ko called the gold standard with its storage roadmap and opportunities are flourishing in other states. Untapped value streams in distribution-grid...

Shuli Goodman in her second time on the program shared insights about how the pandemic offers urgent lessons for the electric industry that need to be heard to make sure the accelerating changes in the energy world do not take the industry by surprise. The LF in LF Energy stands for Linux Foundation and her organization is working with many big-name utilities and technology providers in the industry to develop software to help weather the upheaval that is already unfolding. She described how...

Jess Melanson is COO and president of Utilidata, a software firm that offers a grid-edge operating system that adds value to smart grid deployments. The firm started by delivering voltage optimization using AMI (smart-meter) data a decade ago and now offers that and much more for electric utilities to bring great value to their smart grid deployments by maximizing the returns on their technology investments with top notch software the firm created itself and also acquired. This is a real...

Patty Durand, CEO of the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative in a return visit to the program, this time spoke about her organization’s in-depth research on “beneficial electrification” – a phrase meant to encompass the massive shift in society toward electricity as the main energy for industry, homes, and transportation, and making sure the electricity used is generated with the least carbon emissions possible, preferably no carbon at all. This carbon-free energy goal is being set by...

Paul Dailey is director of product and market strategy for Outback Power, a subsidiary of storage giant EnerSys that is focused on pairing battery storage with distributed renewables generation. As one might guess from the name, the firm has roots in the off-the-grid sector of solar that has been growing for decades but his firm is seeing great opportunities in the solar boom and the need for distributed generation to store the product it generates onsite.

Zinc8 Energy Solutions CEO Ron MacDonald and Chief Technology Officer Simon Fan shared with us various compelling stories about the firm’s breakthrough, long-term, arguably almost infinite power storage technology, including how they won out against over 100 applicants for a New York Power Authority long-term storage demonstration where the utility, America’s largest publicly owned power producer, took some convincing that the firm’s eight-hour-and-above storage capacity was even real...

Brian van Buskirk is chief product officer for Arbnco, a company with a history of building optimization that is fast developing its relationships with electric utilities and large commercial and industrial clients to use advanced digital tools to maximize the benefits in energy management and hit carbon reduction targets. The name of the company refers to taking the carbon out of buildings and van Buskirk gave us lots of details about the value his firm delivers, his role in expanding the...

Kore Power developed the lithium ion power cells it uses in rack mounted energy storage systems for onsite storage deployments up to grid scale storage. The firm sees its software controls as critically important to the value of its products and sees the market for supporting solar and other distributed generation as a wide open field. Gorrill explained why his firm is well positioned to take advantage of the opportunities to serve electric utilities and their customers.

Maggie Alexander is director of business development at energy management technology firm Apparent, a firm that has developed microinverter and energy gateway hardware and the software that takes distributed energy resources in homes and businesses, including municipal bus systems and many others, and manages them intelligently to bring out the most value from the investments being made in solar and energy storage deployments. She told us about the technology and about use cases including...

ICF Lead Project Manager Laura Frantz and VP and Senior Technical Director David Meisegeier brought us up to speed on ICF's work with utilities using in-home smart speakers with voice assistants. This work, including ongoing in-the-field research at utilities like Con Edison in New York City and Southern Maryland Electricity Cooperative or SMECO, for example, reveals what people want, and frankly what they do not want from their voice assistant.

RadientREIT is pioneering the use of the REIT real-estate construct to treat solar generation deployments as real estate, making solar a very attractive investment. He also told us about his work using home solar plus battery storage to build virtual power plants. This industry is wide open and he has very few competitors, he told us, as he explained how to make the industry work, including how regulatory constructs around the map are blocking progress...

Bertolino is EnelX Head of E-Mobility for USA and Canada and explained how his department is focused on serving the EV charging needs of homes and businesses with 80,000 chargers already deployed globally and plans to deploy many, many more. His firm is owned by electric industry and utility giant Enel and is very much focused on the value the firm’s charging systems can bring on a large scale to the electric industry such as the 40-MW virtual power plant the firm’s charging technology has...

Line Vision offers a contactless HV transmission line monitoring system that is helping four of the top 10 US electric utilities, plus a consortium of utilities in Europe, extract lots more value from existing and new transmission lines. The system is deployed without interrupting the delivery of electricity and continuously gathers data on every contact point across these lines to help them run more safely and efficiently. Only a very small percentage of HV lines are being monitored today...

Redaptive Co-CEO Arvin Vohra and his fellow co-CEO were investment bankers who saw the potential for great value in the energy efficiency world and developed multiple services for C&I customers, helping them finance technology to save money on energy, through efficiency, onsite generation, and the management of the data they can generate to make their operations energy intelligent. The firm started with third-party technology and went on to develop its own applications and project...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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.

Arutyunovis VP of Product Management and a co-founder of Xage Security and returned to the podcast, this time to share details about how Commonwealth Edison 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.