Volts

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Volts guests have argued that data centers can be good for the grid if they’re built right. Here I hear the case against, from Ketan Joshi, a former wind-industry analyst who now tracks Big Tech’s climate claims. He sees data centers as the wrong kind of demand growth: lumpy, concentrated, unwanted by neighbors, and largely met with gas. Underneath it all is the worry that the backlash against data centers will become a backlash against electrification itself.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction

02:14 – How Ketan became a big tech critic

06:01 – The case against data centers

07:39 – What data centers add to emissions

11:57 – Isn’t more electricity demand good?

20:12 – Backlash and the NEXTDC power-pole protest

24:21 – AI claims 1: will AI help the climate?

27:53 – AI claims 2: machine learning vs. generative AI

33:47 – AI claims 3: inflated climate wins

36:51 – The gas rush: how much gets built?

44:49 – Would easier renewables fix it?

49:14 – Can data centers be flexible load?

55:41 – Do we actually want AI data centers?

59:39 – What should data centers do to plug in?

1:05:31 – Fake crackdowns and the risk to renewables

1:09:24 – What if AI is a bubble?

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Clean energy is the cheapest, fastest-growing source of power in the country, yet politically it barely registers. Republicans gutted its tax credits last year without fearing any consequences. The Invest in Tomorrow Coalition, a super PAC backed by clean energy investors, is trying to change that the old-fashioned way: by punishing the industry’s enemies. It went six for six in this year’s primaries; it’s now spending at least $15 million against seven Republican House candidates in the midterms. Its chair, Tom Matzzie, makes the case for fear as a political asset, explains why the industry has been so slow to throw elbows, and describes what it would take for clean energy to become a lion instead of a gazelle.

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction

02:55 - How the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition started

06:23 - Why a super PAC, and the idea of mythic power

09:50 - Punishing opponents to send a message to Congress

12:55 - Proving impact, and the permitting bill

17:13 - How ITC picks its general election races

21:41 - Does knocking out extremists help Republicans?

24:53 - Free riders and barriers to industry politics

28:58 - Who funds ITC, and why the industry underinvests

32:44 - Why clean power stays politically weak

38:28 - Did the IRA’s red-state investments pay off?

40:35 - Fear of Trump’s retaliation

45:05 - Avoiding the Democratic PAC label

49:30 - Presidential primaries and the ethanol playbook

53:20 - Gas inside the clean power trade groups

58:37 - Where ITC goes after November

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Collectively, the electric stack (batteries, motors, chips, power electronics) has gotten about 99% cheaper since 1990. It is quietly remaking every machine that turns electricity into motion, heat, or work. Problem is, China makes most of it. Sam D’Amico, co-author of “The Electric Slide” and founder of Impulse Labs, is betting the US can still claim a piece of that stack. He’s starting with a battery-powered induction cooktop. We talk about why domestic manufacturing matters, what America would actually have to build to compete, and how Silicon Valley’s founder world really thinks about climate change, geoengineering included.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction

02:52 – From VR headsets to kitchen appliances

07:07 – How a pizza oven inspired a battery stove

10:07 – Peak demand, at home and on the grid

13:25 – Which appliances could use a built-in battery

16:46 – Electric stack 1: the four technologies

20:28 – Electric stack 2: power electronics and motors

25:21 – China bets on hardware, the US bets on AI

30:08 – Why not just buy it all from China?

33:51 – Why engineers need to be near the factory

38:39 – How much does the US need to make at home?

45:19 – US EV policy and letting Chinese cars in

47:49 – Batteries in appliances vs. one home battery

52:04 – Impulse’s plan: its tech in other brands’ stoves

55:17 – What’s next after the stove

57:14 – Has Silicon Valley stopped caring about climate?

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American homes are filling up with batteries, EVs, and smart thermostats that could be coordinated to make the grid cheaper and more reliable — but almost none of them are. To understand why, it helps to watch what happens when the company best in the world at this tries to do it here. In Britain, Octopus Energy has built a giant virtual power plant out of its customers' devices. In the US, it has spent six years running into walls. Now it’s bought Uplight, which runs customer programs for 85 utilities. I talked with Nick Chaset, who runs both, about what's in the way and whether distributed energy can ever scale with US utilities … the way they are.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction

02:02 – Octopus’s past year and the Uplight investment

05:18 – What makes the UK market work for Octopus

11:12 – Texas: fast growth, flattened volatility

14:57 – Will flexibility put itself out of business?

19:16 – Why Octopus stays out of Pennsylvania and New York

22:17 – Does residential retail competition have a future?

24:41 – Why utility programs trail Octopus on participation

32:17 – The demand stack and what planners can count on

39:11 – Kraken, Uplight and the overlap

46:04 – Consumer protection and the aggregator model

51:17 – Data centers and the social license to operate

55:11 – Do we need dynamic pricing?

58:30 – Five years out

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Denmark gets a large share of its power from wind and other renewables and has cut its emissions roughly in half since 1990, but independent analysts doubt it will hit its 70 percent target for 2030. Kristian Jensen, CEO of Green Power Denmark and a former Danish minister of taxation, foreign affairs, and finance, argues the next stage is electrifying how Denmark uses energy: heat, transport, and industry. I talk with him about district heating and heat pumps, EVs and vehicle-to-grid, municipally owned grid companies and hourly power prices, biomass, carbon capture, power-to-X, solar’s “fields of iron” backlash, a grid oversubscribed with data center requests (an October 1 agreement has since put most data centers at the back of the queue), and whether the country’s political consensus will hold.

Chapters

00:00 – Introduction: Denmark and industrial symbiosis

02:44 – Is the 70% target for 2030 out of reach?

06:24 – Carbon capture and storage, and the peatlands lag

09:57 – Why electrification has lagged: biomass and wood pellets

14:45 – Few batteries, many interconnectors

16:48 – Data centers and the grid-connection prioritization bill

21:34 – Municipally owned grid companies

24:32 – Smart meters, hourly prices, and thermal batteries

28:40 – The solar backlash and local ownership

35:04 – Agrivoltaics and biodiversity

37:24 – District heating: heat pumps, geothermal, and finance

43:24 – The EV transition and vehicle-to-grid

47:45 – Road pricing and fiscal room

50:07 – Power-to-X and eSAF

54:21 – Can Denmark build enough clean power?

57:12 – Will the political consensus hold?

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://www.volts.wtf/subscribe

On this episode, recorded live at Climate Week NYC, I talk with Matt Traldi. He’s the founder and CEO of Greenlight America, which finds the local meetings where clean energy’s fate is being decided and recruits supporters to attend. Traldi argues that siting and permitting approvals turn on who shows up, and that local partners, conservative groups included, outperform outside advocates. We discuss how to measure impact, recent wins and losses, blue-state resistance, data center backlash, and Greenlight’s growth.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction

02:09 – What Greenlight does and why Matt started it

04:41 – How Greenlight finds the decisions that matter

07:27 – Growth, and the tax credit deadline sprint

13:38 – Who shows up to local hearings

19:39 – Winning in conservative communities

22:35 – Bodies in the room, measuring impact, and win rates

27:46 – Losses, wins, and “there is no bag”

32:44 – Blue-state obstacles and organized opposition

36:31 – When data center backlash spills over onto clean energy

42:31 – Which projects Greenlight won’t back

45:38 – Lessons from housing and growing an organization

50:17 – Audience Q&A: disinformation and state permitting reform

54:39 – Audience Q&A: developers and elections

59:30 – Audience Q&A: funding local groups and designing community input

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The proposed bipartisan federal permitting bill is 417 pages filled with extremely consequential provisions that have left the climate community some mix of excited, infuriated, and confused. In an attempt to bring some clarity, I asked Daniel Palken of Arnold Ventures, a veteran of Senate permitting fights, to walk through what’s in it. We cover the blockbuster transmission reforms, the rule making data centers pay more than their share of grid costs, the wins for geothermal, and the fossil carve-outs. Then we get into NEPA reforms that render the act toothless, limits on state water permits, and the permit-certainty sections that have lawyers worried about “forever permits.” And finally: whether it restrains Trump, why Democrats shouldn’t wait for a better deal, what the modeling says about emissions impacts, and Daniel’s odds of passage. This is a long one, folks. Buckle up.

Chapters:

00:00 – Intro: the bipartisan permitting bill

04:15 – Why permitting reform matters

12:23 – Agency staffing and capacity

16:59 – Past permitting attempts

20:26 – Transmission 1: planning and federal backstop

28:28 – Transmission 2: who pays and grid upgrades

38:17 – Data centers 1: paying more for grid access

43:20 – Distributed energy and geothermal

49:06 – Oil, gas, and mining provisions

57:06 – Data centers 2: will they go off-grid?

1:00:19 – NEPA 1: courts can’t halt projects

1:08:57 – NEPA 2: the main objections

1:17:10 – State water permits

1:23:35 – Endangered species

1:27:37 – Permit certainty 1: limits on revoking permits

1:36:43 – Permit certainty 2: lawsuits and damages

1:48:12 – Politics 1: Trump’s wind blockades

1:52:57 – Politics 2: why not wait for a better deal?

1:58:33 – Politics 3: elections, courts, and modeling

2:10:57 – Politics 4: next steps and odds of passage

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On September 14, I sat down with Leah Stokes in front of a live audience at Seattle’s Town Hall to talk about her new book, The Carbon Wave. It’s an insider account of how the Inflation Reduction Act got made, braided with the story of the high-risk twin pregnancy she went through while helping to make it. We get into why electrification is the heart of decarbonization, the enduring mystery of what’s going on in Joe Manchin’s head, what it means to trade your carbon footprint for a carbon wave, and how much of the IRA survives. It was followed by questions from the audience.

Chapters:

00:00 – Welcome and housekeeping

03:05 – The twins, the NICU, and writing the book

08:51 – Carbon footprint vs. carbon wave

13:39 – Sam Ricketts and 100% clean electricity

18:13 – Why electricity is the core of the solution

23:28 – Utilities and the politics of change

26:18 – Tech companies and data centers

29:11 – Inside the Manchin negotiations

33:57 – Why Manchin got to yes

38:46 – Trump, setbacks, and where things stand

42:55 – Clean energy politics and the global shift

46:25 – Audience Q&A: the transmission gridlock

48:59 – Institutions, speed, and structural reform

53:27 – If Democrats win the House, what next

55:43 – Permitting reform

59:06 – State utilities, coal, and getting involved

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit https://www.volts.wtf

Volts published seven conversations in September, which is a lot for anyone to listen to. We’ve rounded up the highlights into less than an hour. Enjoy!

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Heat pump water heaters use a fraction of the energy of conventional electric resistance heaters — which use more electricity in a year than an EV — but they're only 2 percent of the market, mainly because they tend to cost more, be slow and loud, and require a plumber and an electrician. Reservoir is a Boston company trying to fix all that, with a smarter, quieter machine and its own plumbers. I talk with CEO Luke Winston-Almanzar about how it works, what it costs, and its potential role in demand response programs.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction

03:06 – Why water heaters

06:34 – How gas, resistance, and heat pump water heaters work

09:33 – Size and slow recovery: predictive heating and party mode

15:31 – Installation and vertical integration

22:19 – Cutting electric resistance backup

20:31 – What Reservoir builds and what it sources

23:41 – Tankless gas, virtual capacity, and the booster heater

27:11 – Recirculation, freeze protection, leak detection, and Legionella

32:03 – What it costs and what it saves

36:01 – Placement: small rooms, basements, and cold climates

42:37 – Noise and durability

48:19 – Demand response and virtual power plants

53:22 – A. O. Smith’s CO2 split system and Reservoir’s moat

55:54 – Policy headwinds after the IRA

59:29 – What’s next for Reservoir

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Home batteries like the Tesla Powerwall are nice, but what about people who can’t afford them, or renters who aren’t allowed to install them, or people who just don’t want the hassle of dealing with a permit and an electrician? A company called Pila is selling small (1.6 kWh) batteries that simply plug into a normal electrical socket. They can serve as backup for a refrigerator or other appliance in the event of a blackout, but they can also “mesh” with one another to form a network, pair with rooftop solar, or participate in VPP programs. CEO Cole Ashman explains the value proposition.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

02:26 Lessons from Powerwall and Span

05:33 What Pila is and how it works

07:14 How long a fridge runs on one battery

09:28 Fire risk, LFP chemistry, and New York City

16:02 Why the price went up, and cost per kilowatt hour

19:55 Who is actually buying Pila

23:00 Financing models and free batteries

27:04 Do the bill savings add up?

32:05 Why utilities want small batteries in VPPs

36:58 Pilots with Holy Cross Energy and Brooklyn SolarWorks

41:09 Solar pairing and the Pila mesh network

47:14 Camping batteries and built-in storage

54:19 Utilities and visibility at the grid edge

55:58 Bidirectional outlets and the next five years

1:00:10 Clean energy as invisible infrastructure

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit https://www.volts.wtf

Back in 2011, I wrote that fossil fuel interests had a much better media game than clean energy. My example was Frank Maisano, a media relations guy for coal utilities and the natural gas industry. Thirty years on, he’s still at it — still writing his newsletter, still connecting reporters to sources, still better at it than anyone on the clean side (sigh). So I’m finally talking to him about it: clean energy trade groups nobody in Washington fears, Trump’s daft efforts to kill renewables, the PAC picking off dirty-energy Republicans, permitting and data center fights, and the climate denial shop he worked for in the ‘90s. Spoiler: he regrets nothing.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction

03:46 – What a DC media strategist actually does

09:50 – Republicans, Trump, and a narrow House majority

15:29 – Why tax cuts beat energy in the OBBBA fight

18:54 – Competing with China on AI without the electric stack

21:15 – Paying $4 billion to hand back offshore wind leases

28:07 – Red-state wind and the orders keeping coal plants open

32:52 – Clean energy trade groups and the building trades

38:41 – Gas as a bridge, and what longer term means

44:55 – Whether a half-gas trade group can serve clean energy

48:43 – A coherent clean vision against an incoherent coalition

51:14 – Do the green groups still scare anyone

55:18 – Permitting reform and the Whitehouse-Capito path

59:46 – Data centers, animal spirits, and the midterms

1:06:48 – The revenge PAC, and whether it is working

1:12:31 – Congress, the courts, and what Democrats could do

1:18:53 – COP, climate change, and the client he would turn down

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://www.volts.wtf/subscribe

Verrus is building data centers designed to address every objection the public has raised: they use batteries instead of diesel generators, which makes them grid assets that help hold down power prices; they use closed-loop cooling, which uses a tiny fraction of the water; their equipment is quieter; and as a bonus, they squeeze more servers into the same grid connection. Yet both of Verrus’s proposed sites, in Michigan and Oregon, are mired in fierce local opposition. In this episode, CEO Nelson Abramson walks through the engineering — and the politics that the engineering hasn’t quite solved.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction

02:43 – Three decades in data centers

05:05 – What a Verrus data center looks like

07:39 – The medium voltage power plane

12:13 – UPS batteries vs. the big LFP battery

17:27 – Priority aware capping and provisioned utility capacity

22:31 – Why not buy the pieces off the shelf?

25:42 – Duration: what happens when four hours runs out

34:28 – Diesel backup and what customers ask for

37:15 – How flexible is compute, really?

42:37 – Noise, fans, and the sound studies

48:42 – Water use and the 12 million gallon question

52:19 – Industrial land and by-right zoning

56:07 – Public opposition, recall petitions, and community benefits

1:00:07 – Oregon, Salem, and the moratorium

1:03:56 – Ride-through, NERC, and losing the moat

1:07:11 – What V2 looks like

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://www.volts.wtf/subscribe

Jane Flegal has worked inside philanthropy at the Hewlett Foundation, industrial emissions policy at the Biden White House, and carbon-removal market development at Frontier; she's now a senior fellow at the Searchlight Institute, writing some of the smartest climate policy analysis around. We cover a lot of ground: industrial policy versus market approaches, what the IRA got right and wrong, philanthropy's proper role, data centers and the case for an infrastructure fund, and behind-the-meter gas, among other things. This is a long one, and spicy!

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction

03:11 – Flegal's thesis: building a clean grid fast enough to power growth

06:29 – Why she rejects degrowth

09:27 – The Roosevelt essay: climate as more than a market failure

13:30 – Why clean energy underuses its political muscle

15:24 – Industrial policy and the green spiral theory of change

20:40 – Was IRA the right approach?

22:12 – Lily Bermel's paper and the fight over what survived

23:21 – What she would have done differently under IRA

30:11 – Philanthropy, Silicon Valley, and what government is for

33:29 – The epistemic crisis inside environmental NGOs

39:09 – The abundance movement and what each faction misses

44:16 – What establishment Democrats get wrong on climate

46:06 – Why issue polling misleads

50:34 – Republicans and the Cold War analogy

52:47 – Data centers and the American Grid Infrastructure Fund

59:13 – Affordability politics and who pays for the grid

1:08:14 – Emissions, behind-the-meter gas, and flexible load

1:13:57 – The clean firm debate: storage plus transmission?

1:20:14 – Capacity markets, ERCOT, and the case for planning

1:24:32 – Utility incentives, public power, and affordability fixes

1:35:55 – Permitting reform and the land footprint asymmetry

1:41:05 – NEPA reform and the political window

1:48:21 – Where fresh policy thinking comes from

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://www.volts.wtf/subscribe

Zanskar argues that the US is badly underestimating its conventional geothermal resources — that there are far more undiscovered hydrothermal systems, and that each one can produce far more power, than people think. They think AI can help find those resources, and they have drilled three sites to back it up, including a “blind” discovery in Nevada with no surface signs and no prior exploratory wells. If they're right, terawatts of firm, carbon-free power are reachable with off-the-shelf drilling technology. Co-founders Carl Hoiland and Joel Edwards make the case.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction

03:29 – Heat, permeability, and how resources have been found

04:49 – Why conventional geothermal stalled, and why the estimate is stale

09:22 – Applying AI to old exploration data

11:10 – The data Zanskar works with

13:09 – Models, field testing, and the feedback loop

15:02 – How much more resource is really out there

20:22 – Lightning Dock: reviving a written-off field

22:14 – What has changed in drilling technology

28:37 – Pumpernickel and the permeability question

31:08 – Natural permeability vs. enhanced geothermal

34:21 – Big Blind, the first blind discovery in 30 years

37:09 – Improving the models to keep getting better

40:51 – Financing exploration: the development capital facility

44:38 – The NV Energy PPA and data center demand

47:42 – The skeptical case and geographic limits

54:20 – Policy dependence and public lands

58:11 – What's next for Zanskar

Volts published eight conversations in August — with two Idaho state legislators, a grid cybersecurity expert, the architect of Uruguay's energy transition, an EV charging exec, and more — which is a lot for anyone to listen to. We've rounded up the highlights into a single hour. Enjoy!

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction and how the best-of series works

01:59 – Saleem Chapman on why every market design fails ratepayers the same way

07:51 – Patrick Miller on Chinese inverters and commodity boards

12:22 – Ben Toews and Megan Egbert on how Idaho's housing bills happened

18:34 – Seth Cutler on why an IONNA site is technically a bakery

22:52 – Ramón Méndez Galain on getting every Uruguayan party to sign one plan

28:00 – Quinn Nakayama on why a utility would adopt something that saves money

34:16 – Varun Sivaram on workload tiers and who pays when flexing goes wrong

38:44 – Todd Tucker on the Defense Production Act precedent

44:20 – Closing note and what to send in

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://www.volts.wtf/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://www.volts.wtf/subscribe

Disinformation about clean energy is showing up everywhere — online after every blackout, at county commission meetings about siting new projects, in regulatory dockets stuffed with fake comments. GoodPower, which combines a C3 education arm with a C4 advocacy arm, is trying to fight back with a network of thousands of content creators, rapid-response campaigns around storms and grid failures, and an AI tool that detects manufactured public comments. I talk with CEO Leah Qusba about what they've tried, what they've measured, and what actually works.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction

03:06 – What the disinformation claims, and who spreads it

05:57 – From Action for the Climate Emergency to GoodPower

08:38 – Building a creator network in non-political verticals

14:17 – Competing with talk radio and Fox News

18:26 – Winter Storm Fern and the rapid response system

23:26 – Measuring whether a deployment actually worked

27:24 – Pre-bunking and the 80-county experiment

33:18 – Getting people off the couch and into the room

38:10 – AI agents and where human judgment sits

42:05 – Keeping the C3 and the C4 distinct

47:13 – Battery fires, Moss Landing, and talking to fire chiefs

50:54 – TrueVoice and manufactured public comment

56:13 – Whether AI will overwhelm the comment process

58:11 – The best messages that actually land

1:04:22 – Super PACs, budgets, and what comes next

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://www.volts.wtf/subscribe

Even as he has torn down climate policy, Donald Trump has normalized the use of more powerful & aggressive tools of economic statecraft, like equity stakes in private companies, new federal authorities, and sovereign wealth funds. The Roosevelt Institute recently issued a collection of 17 essays exploring how a future administration could use the tools Trump has assembled for decarbonization. I talk with Todd Tucker, editor of and contributor to the volume, about these new industrial planning tools.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction

02:32 – Did Biden's green policy prove durable?

09:39 – The Defense Production Act and the Sable pipeline

14:59 – Whether to leave the DPA on the table

15:35 – Executive orders and the durability problem

19:01 – Whether the Supreme Court treats Democrats differently

22:03 – Executive power and a disempowered Congress

25:05 – Senate malapportionment and filibuster reform

29:43 – Court reform and the major questions doctrine

34:13 – Manufacturing vs. deployment

42:52 – Permitting, abundance, and theory of power

49:20 – Public ownership and the U.S. Steel golden share

55:22 – What state capitalism could look like for green ends

59:56 – Shelley Welton on utilities as planning tools

1:02:42 – Speed vs. deliberation before 2029

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://www.volts.wtf/subscribe

Typically, AI data centers are large, inflexible loads that the grid has to build around, which is one reason utilities take so long to connect them. Emerald AI has designed a “digital brain” that can ramp down, move, or delay computing jobs in a data center on demand, making a data center a flexible asset to the grid. I talk with CEO Varun Sivaram about how the software works, what flexibility costs the compute, why it beats just installing batteries, whether utilities can enforce it, and what it would mean for clean energy.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction

03:05 – Temporal, spatial, and resource flexibility

06:26 – What Emerald Conductor touches on site

08:35 – Who decides which workloads can flex

10:55 – Who is liable when a job slows down

13:45 – Who actually signs the contract

14:49 – Larger and faster grid connections

18:02 – Enforcing the flexibility promise

19:05 – What broke in the demos, from bad nodes to slow telemetry

26:41 – What flexing costs the compute jobs

29:21 – Why not just use batteries, and the demand merit order

35:44 – Training, inference, and substation-scale data centers

40:23 – PJM, ERCOT, and legal enforceability

44:50 – Renewables, gas, and consumer bills

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://www.volts.wtf/subscribe

When it comes to innovative new grid technologies, every utility wants to be the third in line to try them. None of them want to be the first to take risks and iron out new processes. That's one reason grid-enhancing technologies, better software, and smarter internal procedures stay stuck in pilot purgatory, even as the industry faces the biggest buildout since rural electrification. PG&E's Quinn Nakayama and Microsoft's Hanna Grene discuss what's actually blocking utility innovation — and Quinn offers a novel proposal for paying someone to go first.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction

03:44 – Why grid-enhancing technologies stall in the US

07:54 – Selling grid software into utilities: what goes wrong

11:08 – From a pipes-and-wires company to a technology company

12:38 – Pilot program hell and the last 30 percent

15:04 – Innovation as a bolt-on, and the three muscles

17:47 – The digital spine, data quality, and smart meters

23:56 – Org chart versus work chart

25:09 – Strategy, structure, people, process, technology

29:24 – Build, buy, and the ecosystem skill set

36:15 – Data leakage, shadow AI, and paying twice

41:12 – Why utility product cycles run five to seven years

46:27 – Human in the loop, and EPRI's SAFERai.power

49:06 – Advanced market commitments and the kingmaker problem

53:22 – EPIC, and whether software counts as infrastructure

01:00:05 – The CapEx incentive problem and final advice

1:04:34 – Digital Infrastructure as Capital Spend

1:06:53 – Final Advice