October 23, 2025 • 43 mins
#315 The American grid faces a triple threat: climate disasters, explosive AI data center growth, and mass electrification. Paul Gerke, Content Director for Renewables at Clarion Events and host of Factor This podcast, breaks down how batteries, microgrids, and smart grid technology provide the path forward for grid resilience and reliability.
Paul leads content strategy for Factor This, the rebranded home of three legacy energy publications: Renewable Energy World, Power Grid International, and Hydro Review. He covers utility innovation, grid modernization, and clean energy deployment through both written journalism and weekly podcasting.
Key Discussion Points:
- The three forces stressing the grid: climate shocks, electrification of everything, and AI data centers driving 30-fold load growth
- Why the regulated utility monopoly model must transform to meet modern challenges
- How microgrids and battery storage deliver critical resilience during extreme weather events
- Texas ERCOT success story: 50% clean-powered, handling record heat without blackouts
- Air conditioning will drive more load growth than data centers over the next 30 years
- Blue Oval Initiative: Ford is building 120 GWh of domestic battery manufacturing capacity
- State-level leadership: California, New York, Illinois, and Massachusetts are driving grid innovation
- Clean energy economics: 90% of new generation is renewables, winning on cost without subsidies
- Political power gap: Clean energy invests 1/20th of what fossil fuels spend on political influence
The grid transformation is already underway. Utilities that break down silos and adopt batteries, microgrids, and smart technology will lead. Those that resist will fall behind as extreme weather, soaring demand, and economic reality force change.
You can find Paul Gerke here.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulrgerke/
Factor This B2: https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/podcasts/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB8XYCq2Wah9nfI7olK6If7DPUZADfYnZ
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Paul Gerke (00:00):
Let's, let's just level a little bit like we have
an excellent grid, but it's,it's antiquated, and it's
nowhere near what we need it tobe. And in many parts of the
country, it's aged well beyondits expected quality of life.
And you know, I keep going toChina as an example every time I
have this conversation, becausethey're having the opposite
(00:21):
problem as the United Statesright now, where over building
has always been the ethos, andnow this data center problem is
not a problem as much as it's asolution to soak up all that
extra generated electricity, andthat's why we're behind in the
AI race.
intro (00:35):
Are you speeding the energy transition here at the
Clean Power Hour, our host TimMontague, bring you the best in
solar, batteries and cleantechnologies every week. Want to
go deeper into decarbonization.
We do too. We're here to helpyou understand and command the
commercial, residential andutility, solar, wind and storage
industries. So let's get to ittogether. We can speed the
(00:57):
energy transition
Tim Montague (00:59):
today on the Clean Power Hour, we continue our
journey into our exploration ofbatteries and micro grids. The
grid is changing. There's aconfluence of things going on
that are stressing the grid. Theclimate is changing. The
(01:19):
technology is changing in oursociety. There is an explosion
of AI data centers coming on tothe grid. We have
electrification of everythingsimultaneously, and so this is
stressing the grid. The goodnews is we actually have really
robust technology to transformthe grid, and batteries and
(01:42):
micro grids are a big part ofthat. I'm joined today by Paul
Gerke. Sorry. He is the directorof renewables for Clarion events
and the host of factor thispodcast. Welcome to the show,
Paul.
Paul Gerke (01:56):
Thanks for having me. Tim. Really appreciate it
and your interest in this space,which, as we were just
discussing, off air, is justlike growing every single day.
It's getting bigger and deeperthis well, that you're digging,
Tim Montague (02:09):
it's a really wild time. It's the best of times and
the worst of times in some ways,right? We have some headwinds at
the federal level, but from theground up, right? If you're a
utility operator, you needbatteries, and you want micro
grids for your constituents,because they provide resiliency.
(02:31):
They allow you to isolateaspects of the grid and keep
them running in the event of alarger outage, and that that
resiliency is worth millionswhen the shit storm happens. But
Paul, for my listeners whoaren't very familiar with you,
give us a give us a cliff notesversion of what what you're up
(02:54):
to in the world, because there'sa lot going on there.
Paul Gerke (02:57):
Yeah. So just a quick perspective of where I
come from. You might know myvoice from the factor this
podcast. We do a once weeklyepisode called This Week in
clean tech with Mike Casey fromTiger com. And then on the
second Monday of each month, Idrop a standalone podcast also
branded factor this factor, thisis the rebranded version of
three legacy publications thatyou might be familiar with. They
(03:18):
were around for decades,renewable energy, world, power
grid, international and hydroreview. So now under one mass
dead said, it's modern day andage, and nobody's going to three
different websites trying tofind news. We've curated all
three of those sort of verticalsin one space that's called
factor this. And so on the dayto day operator we, you know, go
through in our content teamchat, what are the big stories?
(03:39):
What are we working on,everything from day to day
business to business news tolonger form features, and then,
in addition to that, thepodcast. So I have a really
close pulse on the utilityspace. Tim, because our company,
Clarion events puts on thelargest utilities conference in
North America, D tech. And so wesee both on the conference side
(04:01):
of things and on the contentside of things, this demand that
you're talking about forresilience and reliability, in
fact, it's so important rightnow to us that we created a
special section for it on ourwebsite, because it was like the
thing that everyone's talkingabout right now. And I could say
a lot about a testament to yourremark about utilities and how
important batteries are to them.
Look no further than my homestate of Michigan, which is one
(04:23):
of the fastest growing states interms of utility scale battery
adoption, and it's a good thing,because the outages I grew up
with were not something thatwould be acceptable in today's
day and age, and the batteriesprovide so much resilience, a
lot of other benefits we'll getinto. But anyway, that's the
Cliff's Notes version of who Iam and and what I'm talking
about and where I come from.
Tim Montague (04:45):
It's interesting how regional differences, how
there are regional differencesin the amount of outages here in
the Midwest, okay, I'm in I'm incentral Illinois, and here in
Champaign, we very seldom haveoutages. But apparently. See,
there's a C shaped region thatincludes parts of Michigan where
there are more frequent outages.
And this very likely has to dowith weather patterns and
(05:08):
storms. I was also the mostrecent outage I experienced was
in the Hudson Valley of NewYork, where I go every summer
for the Fourth of July, andthere was a really intense
Windstorm, and that knocks downtrees, and those trees fall on
power lines. There's a lot oftrees in New York. We don't have
a lot of trees here in theMidwest. It was the prairie
(05:31):
before there was corn and beans,but so and then I was, I was
preparing a talk that I'm givingat Tennessee in October on this
topic. And it turns out that in2024 there were several major
outages that impacted hundredsof 1000s of people. The three
(05:52):
noteworthy ones were one inMaine, which was caused by a
nor'easter, one in California,which was caused by a hurricane,
and there was one other which Ican't remember now, but these
events are happening on aregular basis. It's well
documented that the extremeevents, you know, these billion
dollar plus risk events, areoccurring more frequently.
(06:16):
There's just no questioning thatmath. Okay, it's happening. And
then you have this other layerright of AI data centers,
electrification coming on, andit's a bit of a clash. But from
where you sit, Paul, I'd love tohear kind of how you see grid
operators and other stakeholdersworking together to kind of
(06:41):
solve this, what I callresiliency gap.
Paul Gerke (06:48):
I think that we need to start by talking about the
way the industry is becoming unsiloed and fast, because it
needs to be. For the longesttime, utilities were able to
operate more or less the waythat they wanted to,
particularly when we're talkingabout relatively flat load
growth, as had been the case fordecades in the United States.
(07:10):
But now faced with thischallenge, coast to coast,
although much more dire in somesituations, like data center
alley in West or in Virginia,it's now an imperative that
these utilities break out oftheir silos and start
conversations with people thatthey never would have interacted
with outside of a courtdeposition, project developers.
(07:33):
We're talking about people thatare running studies to run right
of way, transmission lines tosupport data centers, these Co
Location conversations. I mean,these are things that would not
have been in the mix not thatlong ago. And I think some of
the larger utilities started tounderstand how they needed to
open their doors a bit soonerthan some of the smaller ones.
(07:54):
You could say much of the sameway with AI adoption, where
everyone wants to be nobodywants to be left behind, but
nobody really wants to be thefirst mover. First mover,
because once you let AI into agrid control room, there's a
whole new level of liabilitythat that utility is assuming,
or that transmission operator isassuming. So I think to circle
(08:15):
back to your question, it's it'san imperative that now that
these billion dollar events arehappening every single year. I
mean, okay, let me just give anexample. Tim, look at the look
at the wildfires in California.
Those three main utilities inCalifornia had assembled a
wildfire fund. I believe it was$14 billion that they could
share to protect the utilityagainst damages from wildfires.
(08:37):
And then was it the Eatonwildfire, the most recent big
one out there, the damages aremore than $14 billion just one
single fire. So that resiliencymeasure that those utilities
thought might save them is noteven close to what they'll
actually need in the face of thesort of climate disasters we'll
be facing. And so I think,especially as AI starts to take
(08:57):
more foothold and starts toprovide solutions that maybe
some other grid operators hadnot considered. We're going to
start to see these utilitiescontinue to break down those
silos and find ways to get moretransmission out of the lines
we've got, and find ways to getother projects online faster,
because even if a quarter of theprojections come through on load
growth, we got a lot of buildingto do.
Tim Montague (09:23):
Yes, a lot. I think the stat I saw is that
data center load is going togrow something like 30 fold in
the next decade, and that's justmind boggling. Now, one I'm
curious. One discussion that Idon't see a lot of is like,
(09:45):
Okay, we need more. There's moredemand on the grid, and that
stresses the grid. And sothere's, there's this, there's a
certain voice that we see insociety. Okay, let's build
smnrs, small, modular, nuclear.
Factors, let's continue to buildnatural gas power plants. Let's
not build wind batteries andsolar. There is that a certain
(10:08):
voice about that. Unfortunately,those are the most cost
competitive technologies thatare most timely to deploy on the
grid, and so those are going tocontinue to be deployed. And
there's so So, yes, you canbuild more power plants, but you
can also do things like buildmicro grids, where you don't
(10:31):
have to build transmission anddistribution lines. You can
build a battery generator, solarfarm micro grid that can isolate
from the grid and provideresiliency at the community
scale. You could alsoreconductor Your power lines,
and I don't, and maybe you knowabout this, like, how much of
(10:52):
that is going on to solve thisproblem?
Paul Gerke (10:56):
Yeah, so the reconductoring is a big thing.
You know, I recently did afeature on Heimdall power, which
has the the ball, the neuronball, that you may have seen on
some lines. They've rolled out afew pilots with utilities
started up in Minnesota, Ibelieve, up in our neck of the
woods in the Midwest, and Ibelieve they were able to get an
average of 30 or 40% more out ofthe lines just with that dynamic
(11:18):
line rating device, of course,that the utilities have got to
be pursuant to those FERC ordersthat mandate them knowing a
little more about what'shappening on their lines. The
reconductoring, it is a thing,and I think reconductoring is
going to solve a lot of theproblems that might otherwise be
solved by new transmission. ButI think it's it's technology in
(11:41):
general is what's exciting rightnow. It's everything from from
drone applications. Recently dida story about a company whose
drones charge conductively onpower lines, so you could
theoretically leave them up andoperating and maintaining and
this sort of like 360 degree24/7, grid edge visibility is
(12:02):
what reliability and resiliencyreally looks like in the future
for these utilities and Tim, Ilove the focus continuing to
come back into micro grids andthese community resiliency
endeavors, because it's of myopinion that eventually, all of
those major community centerswill have to be micro grids.
They'll be micro gridded by thevery nature of their existence,
your hospitals, your schools,your community centers. And I
(12:23):
think our ticket to that, andfrom where I sit, is EV to grid
technology. Every story I doabout electric school busses,
every story I do about Ford'sadvancements in EV to grid and
EV to x technology, you thinkabout factors of scale ahead of
Tesla power walls, and what youcould do with that power, if
it's wrangled correctly. And Ithink that's the really
(12:45):
encouraging part of this space,yeah,
Tim Montague (12:47):
when you think about electrifying every
vehicle, truck or passengervehicle, right, or bus, that is
a lot of gigawatt hours ofelectricity that is stored in
mobile batteries that can bedeployed. I love the school bus
analogy, right? That is a VPP onwheels man. And if you just took
(13:11):
a couple of school busses andtake them to a hospital or a
community center when there's astorm coming, you can power that
facility for a long time andthat, and that would be an
amazing thing right now, we'rejust, we're just just really
starting that journey, right?
Okay, in California, 20% of newvehicle sales are peer. EV, but
(13:32):
nationally, I think we're at 2%right? And we're taking away
incentives right now, there isstill an incentive in the US.
The window is closing, though,right to get that tax credit.
But, yeah, I love the mobilityplay for sure, for sure. And if
you know other experts on thistopic, I would, I would love to
(13:57):
do a deeper dive on that. So,you know, looking at the
landscape of how we haveestablished a utility industry
as a regulated monopoly, it isfundamentally designed to be
slow moving. And I think thatthat model is really not working
(14:22):
for society right now, becausethings are changing so quickly,
both on the tech side and on thenature side, and I feel this
tremendous push to say, let'skind of let go of that and re
imagine how we are deliveringreliability and resilience to
(14:48):
our to our nation. What are yourthoughts about that? How can we
transcend? Include. Best, right?
We have a very good, reliablegrid in America, which is a
wonderful thing. It's amazing,
Paul Gerke (15:06):
but we need to do better. Yeah, I mean, like,
it's, let's, let's, let's justlevel a little bit like we have
an excellent grid, but it's,it's antiquated, and it's
nowhere near what we need it tobe. And in many parts of the
country, it's aged well beyondits expected, you know, the
quality of of life. And, youknow, I keep going to China as
(15:28):
an example every time I havethis conversation, because
they're having the oppositeproblem as the United States
right now, where over buildinghas always been the ethos. And
now this data center problem isnot a problem as much as it's a
solution to soak up all thatextra generated electricity, and
that's why we're behind in theAI race. I think the imperative
(15:51):
to evolve the offerings of EVsin the United States is going to
be, is going to be whether it'sgoing to be the tipping point as
to whether or not we see thatpercentage of EV sales change.
Tim like, it's, it's, you seeFord's new offering, that sort
of universal base where they'regoing to build all sorts of
their models on top of it. Ithink that might be one of the
(16:13):
ways to keep EVs more costeffective. I'm curious to see
where that goes, because inChina, we couldn't even compete
with the EV market, the stuffthat they're selling, it's like
a third of the cost, and it'scooler than anything we have on
the market. And that's reallyfrustrating, but, like, it just
is what it is, and until we getthat innovation in the US.
Sorry, I got off on a tangentabout EVs. What was the original
(16:34):
question?
Tim Montague (16:36):
Well, I see a need to transform how we deliver
resiliency and a reliability,yeah? And this the utility model
of a regulated monopoly, yeah?
Paul Gerke (16:52):
Okay, I'm gonna interrupt you because I knew
exactly what I was gonna say.
Tim, okay, it has to changebecause power prices are out of
control. Like there will be animperative at some point. I live
in New Jersey right now, nativeMichigander, so I know what's
going on there, but I reallyknow what's going on in New
Jersey, because I have to paythe electric bill in this house,
and I believe it's gone upsomething like 30% year over
year out here, it was 20% andchange alone, just based off PJM
(17:12):
debacle of a power auction lastsummer when all of the red
lights flashed and everyonerealized That, holy smokes,
we've got a capacity problem outhere. And I think that the power
prices, Tim, are what's going todrive a change in that utility
model, because it is impossiblefor a lot of people to keep
paying what we're paying. And asthe summers get hotter and the
(17:33):
summers get longer and the theinclement weather events get
more severe, it's going tobecome more and more of a
problem for people to pay theirair conditioning bills. We talk
about data centers a lot. Myfavorite fact about load growth
in the United States right nowis it's not data centers that
are spurring the most loadgrowth. It's air conditioning.
We will put more into airconditioning load growth in in
(17:55):
the next 30 years than we willwith data centers. It just is
what it is. It's a very it's afundamental nature of living in
the the mess that we've createdin this era of of climate
change. So so the utility modelmust change, because I think the
consumers will be unable to payfor it. I think we're starting
to see the first cracks of thatcoming from the hyperscalers,
(18:15):
where they're injecting billionsof dollars to speed up processes
and get things online andworking directly with utilities,
maybe changing specs you want300 megawatts, we can give you
208 months. Is that okay? Allright, let's do it. Talk about
flexible load programs thatwe're just getting started on
that tip of that iceberg. Howflexible can you be? 50 hours?
(18:36):
Can you give us 75 hours? Thesesorts of conversations will
change fundamentally the gridthat we have. And in 10 years,
regardless of how this shakesout, we'll be looking back and
that model will havefundamentally changed. I don't
know how it's going to change.
Throw a dartboard. I guess
Tim Montague (18:54):
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or call, 855584716, 5847168, tofind out more. Yeah, I like to
think of the built environmentas a circuit board, right? You
see the solar farm behind me.
That's a behind the meterproject for a community college
which is in the distance. Andthese devices, these buildings,
are. Assets that can be rampedup and down. Right. Every
(20:01):
building is a battery. It haswarm air, hot water, things that
can be turned on or off asbatteries right to increase or
reduce load on the grid. We needto get much smarter about that.
We need to turn on vehicle togrid because electrification of
transportation is going tohappen. Look to the future. Go
(20:23):
to Northern Europe. Go to China.
You see that EV adoption isgoing to be very high. It is
going to be more economical.
Paul Gerke (20:34):
It's a better mousetrap. Ultimately, it's a
better mousetrap.
Tim Montague (20:39):
The shift from internal combustion engines?
Well, from from horse and buggyto internal combustion engines
is a great example, right here,there was one ice engine, right?
12 years later, it's all iceengines and there's one horse
and buggy. People had nothingagainst horses. Internal
combustion engines were justmore convenient, more cost
effective. You can go further,faster, and people like to move
(20:59):
around, apparently.
Paul Gerke (21:01):
So charging at home is a perk, and when it's a
resiliency measure, and you cankeep your power from going off
for six hours if you need it,that's another perk. And I don't
think rolling a BPP and makeresidual income with it, that's
another perk. You're not goingto be able to do that with your
car unless you're lettingsomebody else drive it, and
nobody wants that
Tim Montague (21:18):
until you own an EV. You don't realize how big
that battery is like my model Yhad a 60 kilowatt hour battery
to have a off grid solar andbattery home, you just need a 30
kilowatt or 40 kilowatt hourbattery. So the 60 kWh battery
in a model Y is awesome, right?
And these trucks have doublethat, or sometimes triple. So
the batteries in EVs are verybig. And not not to mention the
(21:42):
commercial vehicles, the bussesand the trucks, right? Huge
batteries. So if you're, ifyou're a PUC Paul, you know,
looking at this kind of shitstorm that's happening, good
things are happening here andthere, you know, and I would
look to California, I would lookto New York, I would look to New
(22:04):
Jersey, I would look toMassachusetts, I would look to
Illinois, for kind of some bestof breed things that are
happening legislatively. Jiggeris all excited about DCP in
Minnesota that Excel is pushingit's not rolled out yet, but
it's in the wings. Apparently, Idon't fully understand that. But
(22:26):
when you think about, you know,how we humans, organizationally
tackle this problem, what arethe bright spots, as far as
you're concerned?
Paul Gerke (22:41):
Oh, that's a tough question right now, because it
goes without saying that thereare a lot of dark spots right
now. I was having a lot of funin the end of the Biden
administration writing about allthe projects that were getting
LPO funding. You know, youbrought jigger Shaw into this
conversation, the former head ofthe LPO. He he's got a lot of
great ideas. He's an excitableguy. I'm not surprised that he
(23:01):
was excited about something verypassionate about all the cool
projects going on. What I reallyhope to see, and this is a
bright spot that I can relatedirectly back to that IRA
investment, that I still hope isa bright spot is the factories
like Blue Oval, talking aboutthe Ford battery factory, one of
those, one of those that gotsome late LPO funding when the
(23:24):
right side of the of the aisleis screaming, hey, hey, hey,
it's all being doled out toofast, no checks on it. We're
just handing out to green scamsort of deals. This is not a
green scam. We're talking aboutbuilding the next generation of
car batteries in the UnitedStates and supporting a big
three automaker. As a Michiganman, even though my dad was a
Chrysler guy, I still feel aneed to support Ford and their
(23:47):
efforts, and it sounds likewe're as long as for an entity
of concern, the Fiat clausesaren't too much of an issue. We
might still get the blue ovalfactories and still might be
able to build some of thatbattery capacity domestically,
that's a big bright spot for me.
I've covered a lot of how theAmerican Solar supply chain has
sort of come together over thelast couple of years. The big
(24:08):
players in that everybody fromthe track, the trackers, at next
tracker, to sort of the theHellions and the manufacturing
space with their modules, allthe way down to the the stuff
that q cells is doing in Georgiawith their end to end facility,
and that's really encouraging.
(24:29):
We've got to get the price down,and I don't know if that happens
by driving up the prices offoreign competition into, you
know, the 1,000,000% and now wejust have to use domestic or if
we actually improve themanufacturing methods and get
the market right. But as yousaid earlier, it's, it is still
the most cost effectivegeneration technology, solar,
(24:49):
wind, batteries. It is still thefastest to market, and by a fair
margin, the wind, wind turbineweight is four to five years.
And that's, if you've gotfriends, it's, it's going to be
a minute and. Nuclear is notgoing to show up at the front
door and save our asses either.
That's that's 910, years away,maybe, and that's if everything
goes on this current trajectoryof everyone's a fan of nuclear.
Wait until something goes wrong,and we'll see how many people
(25:11):
press the brake instead of thegas pedal, because this is not
going to just go smoothly. Idon't know. I'm a big proponent
of the wind and in solar andbatteries, and how flexible they
can be, and how we can useretired farmland to create power
at a much higher clip thanethanol can. And I think that no
matter how many people I screamthat to, it's, it's, it's not up
(25:34):
to me. It's up to the statesthat you mentioned to make sure
that they're passing legislationthat protects their constituents
as the tide shift federally,because on that side of the
water, it's all dark right now.
Tim, yeah,
Tim Montague (25:49):
yeah, I didn't realize the scale of the Blue
Oval initiative. There are threeor four factories being planned
in states, one, two, I think,Kentucky, Tennessee and
Michigan, yeah, and a total ofperhaps 120 gig watt hours
annually of LFP fortransportation. I mean, another
(26:12):
data point is that some of thesome of the battery factories
for EVs are now shifting over tostationary storage, because
there is, you know, a boom instationary storage. There's
still extended runway for ITCon, on storage and, and so it's
(26:33):
kind of a both and, but we needmore
Paul Gerke (26:35):
win, by the way, keeping that extended, you know,
runway for for storage. That'shuge. I mean, Tesla's a great
example, too. Their batterybusiness is killing it way
better than their car businessis doing right now.
Tim Montague (26:46):
Yeah, they're really the gorilla in the room
when it comes to stationarystorage. That as far as I know,
they don't really have acompetitor yet. There's a couple
of companies coming. I just had,I just had Attica ag on the
show, and they're rolling outthis very interesting oil
(27:07):
immersed technology, which isvery fire resistant, but they
don't, they haven't put steel inthe ground. And jigger
commented, this is interesting.
We maintain the 45x incentiveright for manufacturing. But
jigger commented that if youdon't have steel in the ground,
raising money for projects likethat right now is very, very
difficult. The factories thatgot going will see the light of
(27:29):
day, hopefully, but
Paul Gerke (27:33):
yeah, my conversations about the
bankability of those projectswas such that if you didn't have
a crystal clear case for thosecredits. You weren't there was
no lendability. You weren'tgoing to get money, because that
was going to be the collateralif everything went south. So
that makes total sense to methat if, especially as it looks
like the administration istrying to tighten those solar
(27:54):
and wind restrictions evenfurther, yeah, if you don't have
steel on the ground now, youneeded to do that yesterday.
It's so it's tough.
Tim Montague (28:04):
Yeah, I'm curious what you think about the
relationship between cleanenergy and utilities. There is a
fair amount of tension. But Irecently interviewed AJ Perkins,
who's a micro grid expert, andhis attitude is, look, if you
(28:24):
want to form partnerships andcollaborations with
organizations or companies, youneed to talk nicer. And while
I'm all about collective actionand pushing back on the
traditional model, I'm also kindof going, Yeah, we need to
(28:45):
figure out a way to work fasterand better together to solve
society's problem. We're all inthis together, right? We're all
people. We all want 24/7,reliability, and we want
resiliency. In the event ofnatural disasters, there's got
to be natural disasters. We knowthis, right? And no matter where
you are, it's something, whetherit's fires, floods, tornadoes.
(29:11):
That was the one I missed at thein the in the earlier there was
a tornado in Ohio that caused anoutage last year. So you know
it's coming. Nature is going tocome for us, but we can
modernize the grid and allow itto be more and, you know, allow
it to be more resilient. Whatare your thoughts about this,
(29:31):
this, this, this kind of clashof Titans. We're a big industry
now, but they're the they'rethey're like, God, the way the
utilities are empowered in thiscountry. I'll tell
Paul Gerke (29:44):
you. I'll answer your question by posing another
question, and that's I andthat's how much load growth do
we really get from these datacenter customers? Because I
start to worry about theutilities long term plans. Which
are not as long term anymore asthey used to be. Forget about a
10 year outlook. We're talkingabout two years, one year, next
(30:06):
year. What are we doing if that,if that gold rush goes away, I
worry about what's going tohappen, because you saw the chat
GPT five rollout wasn't sosmooth. Maybe Facebook's not
hiring AI folks anymore. Maybethat's a nothing burger story.
Who cares? Maybe funding isgetting a little rougher for
(30:27):
some of the outliers that aren'tthe big players. But like, this
is a bubble that's sort ofholding up the US economy right
now. Like, if you strip all theenergy stuff out of it, Nvidia
is about 8% of the stockexchange at the moment. So I do
worry about, I just want to addthat caveat, I guess that I do
worry about all of this. If allof a sudden the load growth went
from 5% projection in PJM topoint 4% what's going to happen
(30:53):
to a lot of these initiatives,especially the smart grid stuff,
and getting the stuff where weneed to be Now, to answer it
more directly, I think itdepends on where you live and it
depends on the disaster thatyou're dealing with. If you're
in California right now, youshould be encouraged by all the
undergrounding efforts that aregoing on and all the wildfire
mitigation, the AI detectionsoftware that's being installed
(31:14):
out there. California utilitiesjust let AI into their control.
It was a big announcement fromdtech this past year. OA ti had
one of the first softwareclients that's actually being
allowed to interact with thegrid and manage I don't know if
it's directly power flow quiteyet, but making some decisions
and using analysis, thathopefully is the implication
it's like that we talk about AIas like the problem, but also
(31:37):
potentially as a solution. Andthis is potentially part of the
solution we're starting to seenow. So, but if you're in
California, it's wildfires. Ifyou're in the Midwest, you're
worried about those thosethunderstorms. You're worried
about those big tornadoes, likethe one in Ohio you mentioned. I
remember countless times as akid in Mid Michigan sheltering
from tornadoes as a kid, and Iknow the weather there is more
supercharged than it was when Igrew up. If you're in Florida,
(32:01):
if you're on the coast, it'sabout flooding, and it's about
how do you protect that utilityinfrastructure from these high
winds and potential hurricanesthat that might show up every
single year, and how do youensure your infrastructure
against that is another questionthat's becoming a more and more
of a thing as insurers back outof some of these markets. So I
think that the it's the it's adynamic conversation that
everyone in the United States isa part of in some capacity. But
(32:24):
it's different conversationsdepending on where you are, and
all of us are being dependent onthis growth that is, that is
data centers and electrificationof everything. And you know, I'm
sort of torn, as a journalist,you don't want to see machines
take my job, but at the sametime, I want everyone to have
jobs. So maybe supporting AIeconomy is ultimately a good
thing. I don't know, Tim, it's,it's probably a too complex
(32:44):
discussion to have in a singleconversation.
Tim Montague (32:47):
Well, I mean, I think the theme of AI is not
going away anytime soon. Forsure, there is going to be a
bubble. There's no doubt aboutthat. But it's like, the
internet, okay, yeah, there wasa bubble, and there's a lot of
blood in the water when thatwhen that bubble bursts, but we
still have and need an Internet,and we're right now, we're still
(33:08):
gonna have AI and we're going toneed it, because the AI tools
are so good and so smart. Okay,they're not conscious. Will they
ever be I don't know. Will weever be able to what? Hopefully
not. Okay, well, yeah, I'm goodwith them staying unconscious.
(33:28):
Will we be able to upload ourbrains to the internet, that
kind of thing? Like I was askedin an interview, what if I could
take any genie out of a bottle?
What would that be. And I said,Well, I would gladly create 100
digital clones of myself so Icould just have a bigger impact
in the world. I'm a missiondriven entrepreneur. I want to
(33:48):
speed the energy transition. I'mmaking a very small impact
today. If I could do 100 timesmore, why wouldn't I? And I
think many companies are going,Well, yeah, if I can be 50 times
more productive and profitable,I have to do that. That's my
fiduciary responsibility to myinvestors and owners, and
they're right, and they'reglomming on. I mean, major
(34:12):
companies are integrating AIinto their DNA as we speak.
Paul Gerke (34:18):
And to circle back on the clean energy component of
that too. You raise, you raiseanother good point, and that's
the relationship with utilitiesand clean energy. And you
touched on it a little bit, andI kind of skirted around the
answer, but it's a, it's arelationship of convenience. Now
more than ever. Yes, there arestates, I believe there's a
dozen or so that have codifiedtheir intentions to be, you
(34:38):
know, carbon free, whateverpercent by whatever date, 50% by
2030, 100% by 2040, whatever thestate is. Yes, those state laws
will still encourage the cleanenergy transition. But in the
other places, and very much soin those states, it's about the
cheapest to market. It's aboutthe lowest cost generation. It
solar, wind and storage willstill. Ultimately went out
(35:01):
because it's the better mousetrap. And I know that the
federal, the Federal jargon andand hate speak doesn't doesn't
speak to that right now. But Ithink the people that are
actually getting power online,and the utilities that are
actually putting pen to penciland figuring out which projects
actually work for them, arechoosing renewables over and
over and over again, like 90% ofall generation that's coming
(35:24):
online right now is renewables.
If that doesn't speak to theirutility, for utilities and
beyond, I don't know what does
Tim Montague (35:32):
Yeah, it's, you know, subsidy free solar, wind
and batteries is within sight,and photons are free and super
abundant. The wind is superabundant, and it's just very
hard to argue with that. Yeah,we have a lot of fossil fuels,
and I think we should sip thefossil fuels instead of guzzle
(35:54):
them. Save them for a rainy day,okay? Because there will be
times when renewables fail. Butas Storm URI demonstrated,
right, all of our infrastructureis vulnerable, not just wind
turbines, okay, all of ourinfrastructure is vulnerable,
and we need to harden ourinfrastructure. We need to get
(36:16):
much smarter about that andcreating a more resilient
society. Yeah, it's
Paul Gerke (36:21):
interesting. You bring up hurricane Yuri, though,
because ERCOT has really done anamazing job at hardening its
grid over the last couple ofyears. And I know that the Texas
grid gets a lot of flack, anddeservedly so, but I also got to
give them credit where credit isdue, and the last two summers
have been some of the hottestever in the southwest. And they
haven't. There hasn't been asingle call for Conservancy.
(36:42):
There hasn't been a single brownout or big outage. As a result,
I think they learned a lot fromthose big storms that messed up
a lot down there in Texas. Andthe scale at which they've added
renewables, particularlybatteries, to their grid, has
fundamentally changed the waythat they handle peaks, and it's
not as much of a problem forthem anymore. There's like, I
think it was a sub 1% chance ofa blackout this summer, and
(37:06):
that's just mind blowing,considering just a few years
ago, what we were dealing
Tim Montague (37:09):
with, that huge red state is now 50% clean
powered, with solar, wind andbatteries, more
Paul Gerke (37:17):
renewables in California, believe it or not,
and DFW, I believe, iscompletely wind powered. I flew
into there earlier this year foran event, and I saw the big sign
that was like, wow, oh, I didn'tknow that powered by wind. I did
not know that,
Tim Montague (37:29):
yeah, I mean clean, clean energy is big
business. That's the that is thetheme that I love from my
conversation with jigger Shaw.
We are a major force. Now weneed to start to behave more
like we truly are. Right. Thestat that he uses that is a wake
up call, okay, we're installingtwice as much capex than fossil
(37:52):
fuels, but we're investing 1/20into political power as the
fossil fuel industry, we'rebeing outspent. There's many
ways to gain political power.
Money is just one collectiveaction, organizing coming
together, and we're doing someof that, but we're not doing
(38:15):
enough. So if you're listeningto this, Join your local
Renewable Energy Association,your state organization, your
Gulf States organization,whatever that association is,
join. Be active. Support it.
Those organizations are veryimportant for our industry to
have a collective voice. JoinSEIA, our national organization,
(38:35):
or ACP American clean power.
Those voices really do matter.
Hey guys, are you a residentialsolar installer doing light
commercial but wanting to scaleinto large C&I solar? I'm Tim
Montague. I've developed over150 megawatts of commercial
solar, and I've solved theproblem that you're having you
(38:57):
don't know what tools andtechnologies you need in order
to successfully close 100 KW tomegawatt scale projects. I've
developed a commercial solaraccelerator to help installers
exactly like you just go tocleanpowerhour.com click on
strategy and book a call today.
(39:19):
It's totally free, with noobligation. Thanks for being a
listener. I really appreciateyou listening to the pod, and
I'm Tim Montague, let's growsolar and storage. Go to clean
power hour and click strategytoday. Thanks so much, Paul. How
can our listeners find you
Paul Gerke (39:38):
factorthis.com? When you when you when you put that
into your URL, it'll probablyreroute you from
renewableenergyworld.com whichwas part of our rebrand back in
February. Butfactorthis.com oryou can just check out the
podcast, look up, factor this onSpotify or Apple Music, or
wherever you get your podcast,and you'll find our once a week
this week in cleantech and ouronce monthly standalone and we'd
love to hear your feedback onit. Feel free to. Reach out
(40:00):
anytime. If you've got a storythat you think that we should be
writing about or talking about,I'd love to hear from you.
Tim Montague (40:06):
Check out all of our content at
cleanpowerhour.com. Please giveus a rating and a review on
Apple or Spotify. Tell a friendabout the show and reach out to
me on LinkedIn. I love hearingfrom my listeners and energy
professionals writ large. I'mTim Montague, let's grow solar
and storage. Thanks so much,Paul,
Paul Gerke (40:23):
thanks for having me. Tim. You.
Let's, let's just level a little bit like we have
an excellent grid, but it's,it's antiquated, and it's
nowhere near what we need it tobe. And in many parts of the
country, it's aged well beyondits expected quality of life.
And you know, I keep going toChina as an example every time I
have this conversation, becausethey're having the opposite
(00:21):
problem as the United Statesright now, where over building
has always been the ethos, andnow this data center problem is
not a problem as much as it's asolution to soak up all that
extra generated electricity, andthat's why we're behind in the
AI race.
intro (00:35):
Are you speeding the energy transition here at the
Clean Power Hour, our host TimMontague, bring you the best in
solar, batteries and cleantechnologies every week. Want to
go deeper into decarbonization.
We do too. We're here to helpyou understand and command the
commercial, residential andutility, solar, wind and storage
industries. So let's get to ittogether. We can speed the
(00:57):
energy transition
Tim Montague (00:59):
today on the Clean Power Hour, we continue our
journey into our exploration ofbatteries and micro grids. The
grid is changing. There's aconfluence of things going on
that are stressing the grid. Theclimate is changing. The
(01:19):
technology is changing in oursociety. There is an explosion
of AI data centers coming on tothe grid. We have
electrification of everythingsimultaneously, and so this is
stressing the grid. The goodnews is we actually have really
robust technology to transformthe grid, and batteries and
(01:42):
micro grids are a big part ofthat. I'm joined today by Paul
Gerke. Sorry. He is the directorof renewables for Clarion events
and the host of factor thispodcast. Welcome to the show,
Paul.
Paul Gerke (01:56):
Thanks for having me. Tim. Really appreciate it
and your interest in this space,which, as we were just
discussing, off air, is justlike growing every single day.
It's getting bigger and deeperthis well, that you're digging,
Tim Montague (02:09):
it's a really wild time. It's the best of times and
the worst of times in some ways,right? We have some headwinds at
the federal level, but from theground up, right? If you're a
utility operator, you needbatteries, and you want micro
grids for your constituents,because they provide resiliency.
(02:31):
They allow you to isolateaspects of the grid and keep
them running in the event of alarger outage, and that that
resiliency is worth millionswhen the shit storm happens. But
Paul, for my listeners whoaren't very familiar with you,
give us a give us a cliff notesversion of what what you're up
(02:54):
to in the world, because there'sa lot going on there.
Paul Gerke (02:57):
Yeah. So just a quick perspective of where I
come from. You might know myvoice from the factor this
podcast. We do a once weeklyepisode called This Week in
clean tech with Mike Casey fromTiger com. And then on the
second Monday of each month, Idrop a standalone podcast also
branded factor this factor, thisis the rebranded version of
three legacy publications thatyou might be familiar with. They
(03:18):
were around for decades,renewable energy, world, power
grid, international and hydroreview. So now under one mass
dead said, it's modern day andage, and nobody's going to three
different websites trying tofind news. We've curated all
three of those sort of verticalsin one space that's called
factor this. And so on the dayto day operator we, you know, go
through in our content teamchat, what are the big stories?
(03:39):
What are we working on,everything from day to day
business to business news tolonger form features, and then,
in addition to that, thepodcast. So I have a really
close pulse on the utilityspace. Tim, because our company,
Clarion events puts on thelargest utilities conference in
North America, D tech. And so wesee both on the conference side
(04:01):
of things and on the contentside of things, this demand that
you're talking about forresilience and reliability, in
fact, it's so important rightnow to us that we created a
special section for it on ourwebsite, because it was like the
thing that everyone's talkingabout right now. And I could say
a lot about a testament to yourremark about utilities and how
important batteries are to them.
Look no further than my homestate of Michigan, which is one
(04:23):
of the fastest growing states interms of utility scale battery
adoption, and it's a good thing,because the outages I grew up
with were not something thatwould be acceptable in today's
day and age, and the batteriesprovide so much resilience, a
lot of other benefits we'll getinto. But anyway, that's the
Cliff's Notes version of who Iam and and what I'm talking
about and where I come from.
Tim Montague (04:45):
It's interesting how regional differences, how
there are regional differencesin the amount of outages here in
the Midwest, okay, I'm in I'm incentral Illinois, and here in
Champaign, we very seldom haveoutages. But apparently. See,
there's a C shaped region thatincludes parts of Michigan where
there are more frequent outages.
And this very likely has to dowith weather patterns and
(05:08):
storms. I was also the mostrecent outage I experienced was
in the Hudson Valley of NewYork, where I go every summer
for the Fourth of July, andthere was a really intense
Windstorm, and that knocks downtrees, and those trees fall on
power lines. There's a lot oftrees in New York. We don't have
a lot of trees here in theMidwest. It was the prairie
(05:31):
before there was corn and beans,but so and then I was, I was
preparing a talk that I'm givingat Tennessee in October on this
topic. And it turns out that in2024 there were several major
outages that impacted hundredsof 1000s of people. The three
(05:52):
noteworthy ones were one inMaine, which was caused by a
nor'easter, one in California,which was caused by a hurricane,
and there was one other which Ican't remember now, but these
events are happening on aregular basis. It's well
documented that the extremeevents, you know, these billion
dollar plus risk events, areoccurring more frequently.
(06:16):
There's just no questioning thatmath. Okay, it's happening. And
then you have this other layerright of AI data centers,
electrification coming on, andit's a bit of a clash. But from
where you sit, Paul, I'd love tohear kind of how you see grid
operators and other stakeholdersworking together to kind of
(06:41):
solve this, what I callresiliency gap.
Paul Gerke (06:48):
I think that we need to start by talking about the
way the industry is becoming unsiloed and fast, because it
needs to be. For the longesttime, utilities were able to
operate more or less the waythat they wanted to,
particularly when we're talkingabout relatively flat load
growth, as had been the case fordecades in the United States.
(07:10):
But now faced with thischallenge, coast to coast,
although much more dire in somesituations, like data center
alley in West or in Virginia,it's now an imperative that
these utilities break out oftheir silos and start
conversations with people thatthey never would have interacted
with outside of a courtdeposition, project developers.
(07:33):
We're talking about people thatare running studies to run right
of way, transmission lines tosupport data centers, these Co
Location conversations. I mean,these are things that would not
have been in the mix not thatlong ago. And I think some of
the larger utilities started tounderstand how they needed to
open their doors a bit soonerthan some of the smaller ones.
(07:54):
You could say much of the sameway with AI adoption, where
everyone wants to be nobodywants to be left behind, but
nobody really wants to be thefirst mover. First mover,
because once you let AI into agrid control room, there's a
whole new level of liabilitythat that utility is assuming,
or that transmission operator isassuming. So I think to circle
(08:15):
back to your question, it's it'san imperative that now that
these billion dollar events arehappening every single year. I
mean, okay, let me just give anexample. Tim, look at the look
at the wildfires in California.
Those three main utilities inCalifornia had assembled a
wildfire fund. I believe it was$14 billion that they could
share to protect the utilityagainst damages from wildfires.
(08:37):
And then was it the Eatonwildfire, the most recent big
one out there, the damages aremore than $14 billion just one
single fire. So that resiliencymeasure that those utilities
thought might save them is noteven close to what they'll
actually need in the face of thesort of climate disasters we'll
be facing. And so I think,especially as AI starts to take
(08:57):
more foothold and starts toprovide solutions that maybe
some other grid operators hadnot considered. We're going to
start to see these utilitiescontinue to break down those
silos and find ways to get moretransmission out of the lines
we've got, and find ways to getother projects online faster,
because even if a quarter of theprojections come through on load
growth, we got a lot of buildingto do.
Tim Montague (09:23):
Yes, a lot. I think the stat I saw is that
data center load is going togrow something like 30 fold in
the next decade, and that's justmind boggling. Now, one I'm
curious. One discussion that Idon't see a lot of is like,
(09:45):
Okay, we need more. There's moredemand on the grid, and that
stresses the grid. And sothere's, there's this, there's a
certain voice that we see insociety. Okay, let's build
smnrs, small, modular, nuclear.
Factors, let's continue to buildnatural gas power plants. Let's
not build wind batteries andsolar. There is that a certain
(10:08):
voice about that. Unfortunately,those are the most cost
competitive technologies thatare most timely to deploy on the
grid, and so those are going tocontinue to be deployed. And
there's so So, yes, you canbuild more power plants, but you
can also do things like buildmicro grids, where you don't
(10:31):
have to build transmission anddistribution lines. You can
build a battery generator, solarfarm micro grid that can isolate
from the grid and provideresiliency at the community
scale. You could alsoreconductor Your power lines,
and I don't, and maybe you knowabout this, like, how much of
(10:52):
that is going on to solve thisproblem?
Paul Gerke (10:56):
Yeah, so the reconductoring is a big thing.
You know, I recently did afeature on Heimdall power, which
has the the ball, the neuronball, that you may have seen on
some lines. They've rolled out afew pilots with utilities
started up in Minnesota, Ibelieve, up in our neck of the
woods in the Midwest, and Ibelieve they were able to get an
average of 30 or 40% more out ofthe lines just with that dynamic
(11:18):
line rating device, of course,that the utilities have got to
be pursuant to those FERC ordersthat mandate them knowing a
little more about what'shappening on their lines. The
reconductoring, it is a thing,and I think reconductoring is
going to solve a lot of theproblems that might otherwise be
solved by new transmission. ButI think it's it's technology in
(11:41):
general is what's exciting rightnow. It's everything from from
drone applications. Recently dida story about a company whose
drones charge conductively onpower lines, so you could
theoretically leave them up andoperating and maintaining and
this sort of like 360 degree24/7, grid edge visibility is
(12:02):
what reliability and resiliencyreally looks like in the future
for these utilities and Tim, Ilove the focus continuing to
come back into micro grids andthese community resiliency
endeavors, because it's of myopinion that eventually, all of
those major community centerswill have to be micro grids.
They'll be micro gridded by thevery nature of their existence,
your hospitals, your schools,your community centers. And I
(12:23):
think our ticket to that, andfrom where I sit, is EV to grid
technology. Every story I doabout electric school busses,
every story I do about Ford'sadvancements in EV to grid and
EV to x technology, you thinkabout factors of scale ahead of
Tesla power walls, and what youcould do with that power, if
it's wrangled correctly. And Ithink that's the really
(12:45):
encouraging part of this space,yeah,
Tim Montague (12:47):
when you think about electrifying every
vehicle, truck or passengervehicle, right, or bus, that is
a lot of gigawatt hours ofelectricity that is stored in
mobile batteries that can bedeployed. I love the school bus
analogy, right? That is a VPP onwheels man. And if you just took
(13:11):
a couple of school busses andtake them to a hospital or a
community center when there's astorm coming, you can power that
facility for a long time andthat, and that would be an
amazing thing right now, we'rejust, we're just just really
starting that journey, right?
Okay, in California, 20% of newvehicle sales are peer. EV, but
(13:32):
nationally, I think we're at 2%right? And we're taking away
incentives right now, there isstill an incentive in the US.
The window is closing, though,right to get that tax credit.
But, yeah, I love the mobilityplay for sure, for sure. And if
you know other experts on thistopic, I would, I would love to
(13:57):
do a deeper dive on that. So,you know, looking at the
landscape of how we haveestablished a utility industry
as a regulated monopoly, it isfundamentally designed to be
slow moving. And I think thatthat model is really not working
(14:22):
for society right now, becausethings are changing so quickly,
both on the tech side and on thenature side, and I feel this
tremendous push to say, let'skind of let go of that and re
imagine how we are deliveringreliability and resilience to
(14:48):
our to our nation. What are yourthoughts about that? How can we
transcend? Include. Best, right?
We have a very good, reliablegrid in America, which is a
wonderful thing. It's amazing,
Paul Gerke (15:06):
but we need to do better. Yeah, I mean, like,
it's, let's, let's, let's justlevel a little bit like we have
an excellent grid, but it's,it's antiquated, and it's
nowhere near what we need it tobe. And in many parts of the
country, it's aged well beyondits expected, you know, the
quality of of life. And, youknow, I keep going to China as
(15:28):
an example every time I havethis conversation, because
they're having the oppositeproblem as the United States
right now, where over buildinghas always been the ethos. And
now this data center problem isnot a problem as much as it's a
solution to soak up all thatextra generated electricity, and
that's why we're behind in theAI race. I think the imperative
(15:51):
to evolve the offerings of EVsin the United States is going to
be, is going to be whether it'sgoing to be the tipping point as
to whether or not we see thatpercentage of EV sales change.
Tim like, it's, it's, you seeFord's new offering, that sort
of universal base where they'regoing to build all sorts of
their models on top of it. Ithink that might be one of the
(16:13):
ways to keep EVs more costeffective. I'm curious to see
where that goes, because inChina, we couldn't even compete
with the EV market, the stuffthat they're selling, it's like
a third of the cost, and it'scooler than anything we have on
the market. And that's reallyfrustrating, but, like, it just
is what it is, and until we getthat innovation in the US.
Sorry, I got off on a tangentabout EVs. What was the original
(16:34):
question?
Tim Montague (16:36):
Well, I see a need to transform how we deliver
resiliency and a reliability,yeah? And this the utility model
of a regulated monopoly, yeah?
Paul Gerke (16:52):
Okay, I'm gonna interrupt you because I knew
exactly what I was gonna say.
Tim, okay, it has to changebecause power prices are out of
control. Like there will be animperative at some point. I live
in New Jersey right now, nativeMichigander, so I know what's
going on there, but I reallyknow what's going on in New
Jersey, because I have to paythe electric bill in this house,
and I believe it's gone upsomething like 30% year over
year out here, it was 20% andchange alone, just based off PJM
(17:12):
debacle of a power auction lastsummer when all of the red
lights flashed and everyonerealized That, holy smokes,
we've got a capacity problem outhere. And I think that the power
prices, Tim, are what's going todrive a change in that utility
model, because it is impossiblefor a lot of people to keep
paying what we're paying. And asthe summers get hotter and the
(17:33):
summers get longer and the theinclement weather events get
more severe, it's going tobecome more and more of a
problem for people to pay theirair conditioning bills. We talk
about data centers a lot. Myfavorite fact about load growth
in the United States right nowis it's not data centers that
are spurring the most loadgrowth. It's air conditioning.
We will put more into airconditioning load growth in in
(17:55):
the next 30 years than we willwith data centers. It just is
what it is. It's a very it's afundamental nature of living in
the the mess that we've createdin this era of of climate
change. So so the utility modelmust change, because I think the
consumers will be unable to payfor it. I think we're starting
to see the first cracks of thatcoming from the hyperscalers,
(18:15):
where they're injecting billionsof dollars to speed up processes
and get things online andworking directly with utilities,
maybe changing specs you want300 megawatts, we can give you
208 months. Is that okay? Allright, let's do it. Talk about
flexible load programs thatwe're just getting started on
that tip of that iceberg. Howflexible can you be? 50 hours?
(18:36):
Can you give us 75 hours? Thesesorts of conversations will
change fundamentally the gridthat we have. And in 10 years,
regardless of how this shakesout, we'll be looking back and
that model will havefundamentally changed. I don't
know how it's going to change.
Throw a dartboard. I guess
Tim Montague (18:54):
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(19:37):
or call, 855584716, 5847168, tofind out more. Yeah, I like to
think of the built environmentas a circuit board, right? You
see the solar farm behind me.
That's a behind the meterproject for a community college
which is in the distance. Andthese devices, these buildings,
are. Assets that can be rampedup and down. Right. Every
(20:01):
building is a battery. It haswarm air, hot water, things that
can be turned on or off asbatteries right to increase or
reduce load on the grid. We needto get much smarter about that.
We need to turn on vehicle togrid because electrification of
transportation is going tohappen. Look to the future. Go
(20:23):
to Northern Europe. Go to China.
You see that EV adoption isgoing to be very high. It is
going to be more economical.
Paul Gerke (20:34):
It's a better mousetrap. Ultimately, it's a
better mousetrap.
Tim Montague (20:39):
The shift from internal combustion engines?
Well, from from horse and buggyto internal combustion engines
is a great example, right here,there was one ice engine, right?
12 years later, it's all iceengines and there's one horse
and buggy. People had nothingagainst horses. Internal
combustion engines were justmore convenient, more cost
effective. You can go further,faster, and people like to move
(20:59):
around, apparently.
Paul Gerke (21:01):
So charging at home is a perk, and when it's a
resiliency measure, and you cankeep your power from going off
for six hours if you need it,that's another perk. And I don't
think rolling a BPP and makeresidual income with it, that's
another perk. You're not goingto be able to do that with your
car unless you're lettingsomebody else drive it, and
nobody wants that
Tim Montague (21:18):
until you own an EV. You don't realize how big
that battery is like my model Yhad a 60 kilowatt hour battery
to have a off grid solar andbattery home, you just need a 30
kilowatt or 40 kilowatt hourbattery. So the 60 kWh battery
in a model Y is awesome, right?
And these trucks have doublethat, or sometimes triple. So
the batteries in EVs are verybig. And not not to mention the
(21:42):
commercial vehicles, the bussesand the trucks, right? Huge
batteries. So if you're, ifyou're a PUC Paul, you know,
looking at this kind of shitstorm that's happening, good
things are happening here andthere, you know, and I would
look to California, I would lookto New York, I would look to New
(22:04):
Jersey, I would look toMassachusetts, I would look to
Illinois, for kind of some bestof breed things that are
happening legislatively. Jiggeris all excited about DCP in
Minnesota that Excel is pushingit's not rolled out yet, but
it's in the wings. Apparently, Idon't fully understand that. But
(22:26):
when you think about, you know,how we humans, organizationally
tackle this problem, what arethe bright spots, as far as
you're concerned?
Paul Gerke (22:41):
Oh, that's a tough question right now, because it
goes without saying that thereare a lot of dark spots right
now. I was having a lot of funin the end of the Biden
administration writing about allthe projects that were getting
LPO funding. You know, youbrought jigger Shaw into this
conversation, the former head ofthe LPO. He he's got a lot of
great ideas. He's an excitableguy. I'm not surprised that he
(23:01):
was excited about something verypassionate about all the cool
projects going on. What I reallyhope to see, and this is a
bright spot that I can relatedirectly back to that IRA
investment, that I still hope isa bright spot is the factories
like Blue Oval, talking aboutthe Ford battery factory, one of
those, one of those that gotsome late LPO funding when the
(23:24):
right side of the of the aisleis screaming, hey, hey, hey,
it's all being doled out toofast, no checks on it. We're
just handing out to green scamsort of deals. This is not a
green scam. We're talking aboutbuilding the next generation of
car batteries in the UnitedStates and supporting a big
three automaker. As a Michiganman, even though my dad was a
Chrysler guy, I still feel aneed to support Ford and their
(23:47):
efforts, and it sounds likewe're as long as for an entity
of concern, the Fiat clausesaren't too much of an issue. We
might still get the blue ovalfactories and still might be
able to build some of thatbattery capacity domestically,
that's a big bright spot for me.
I've covered a lot of how theAmerican Solar supply chain has
sort of come together over thelast couple of years. The big
(24:08):
players in that everybody fromthe track, the trackers, at next
tracker, to sort of the theHellions and the manufacturing
space with their modules, allthe way down to the the stuff
that q cells is doing in Georgiawith their end to end facility,
and that's really encouraging.
(24:29):
We've got to get the price down,and I don't know if that happens
by driving up the prices offoreign competition into, you
know, the 1,000,000% and now wejust have to use domestic or if
we actually improve themanufacturing methods and get
the market right. But as yousaid earlier, it's, it is still
the most cost effectivegeneration technology, solar,
(24:49):
wind, batteries. It is still thefastest to market, and by a fair
margin, the wind, wind turbineweight is four to five years.
And that's, if you've gotfriends, it's, it's going to be
a minute and. Nuclear is notgoing to show up at the front
door and save our asses either.
That's that's 910, years away,maybe, and that's if everything
goes on this current trajectoryof everyone's a fan of nuclear.
Wait until something goes wrong,and we'll see how many people
(25:11):
press the brake instead of thegas pedal, because this is not
going to just go smoothly. Idon't know. I'm a big proponent
of the wind and in solar andbatteries, and how flexible they
can be, and how we can useretired farmland to create power
at a much higher clip thanethanol can. And I think that no
matter how many people I screamthat to, it's, it's, it's not up
(25:34):
to me. It's up to the statesthat you mentioned to make sure
that they're passing legislationthat protects their constituents
as the tide shift federally,because on that side of the
water, it's all dark right now.
Tim, yeah,
Tim Montague (25:49):
yeah, I didn't realize the scale of the Blue
Oval initiative. There are threeor four factories being planned
in states, one, two, I think,Kentucky, Tennessee and
Michigan, yeah, and a total ofperhaps 120 gig watt hours
annually of LFP fortransportation. I mean, another
(26:12):
data point is that some of thesome of the battery factories
for EVs are now shifting over tostationary storage, because
there is, you know, a boom instationary storage. There's
still extended runway for ITCon, on storage and, and so it's
(26:33):
kind of a both and, but we needmore
Paul Gerke (26:35):
win, by the way, keeping that extended, you know,
runway for for storage. That'shuge. I mean, Tesla's a great
example, too. Their batterybusiness is killing it way
better than their car businessis doing right now.
Tim Montague (26:46):
Yeah, they're really the gorilla in the room
when it comes to stationarystorage. That as far as I know,
they don't really have acompetitor yet. There's a couple
of companies coming. I just had,I just had Attica ag on the
show, and they're rolling outthis very interesting oil
(27:07):
immersed technology, which isvery fire resistant, but they
don't, they haven't put steel inthe ground. And jigger
commented, this is interesting.
We maintain the 45x incentiveright for manufacturing. But
jigger commented that if youdon't have steel in the ground,
raising money for projects likethat right now is very, very
difficult. The factories thatgot going will see the light of
(27:29):
day, hopefully, but
Paul Gerke (27:33):
yeah, my conversations about the
bankability of those projectswas such that if you didn't have
a crystal clear case for thosecredits. You weren't there was
no lendability. You weren'tgoing to get money, because that
was going to be the collateralif everything went south. So
that makes total sense to methat if, especially as it looks
like the administration istrying to tighten those solar
(27:54):
and wind restrictions evenfurther, yeah, if you don't have
steel on the ground now, youneeded to do that yesterday.
It's so it's tough.
Tim Montague (28:04):
Yeah, I'm curious what you think about the
relationship between cleanenergy and utilities. There is a
fair amount of tension. But Irecently interviewed AJ Perkins,
who's a micro grid expert, andhis attitude is, look, if you
(28:24):
want to form partnerships andcollaborations with
organizations or companies, youneed to talk nicer. And while
I'm all about collective actionand pushing back on the
traditional model, I'm also kindof going, Yeah, we need to
(28:45):
figure out a way to work fasterand better together to solve
society's problem. We're all inthis together, right? We're all
people. We all want 24/7,reliability, and we want
resiliency. In the event ofnatural disasters, there's got
to be natural disasters. We knowthis, right? And no matter where
you are, it's something, whetherit's fires, floods, tornadoes.
(29:11):
That was the one I missed at thein the in the earlier there was
a tornado in Ohio that caused anoutage last year. So you know
it's coming. Nature is going tocome for us, but we can
modernize the grid and allow itto be more and, you know, allow
it to be more resilient. Whatare your thoughts about this,
(29:31):
this, this, this kind of clashof Titans. We're a big industry
now, but they're the they'rethey're like, God, the way the
utilities are empowered in thiscountry. I'll tell
Paul Gerke (29:44):
you. I'll answer your question by posing another
question, and that's I andthat's how much load growth do
we really get from these datacenter customers? Because I
start to worry about theutilities long term plans. Which
are not as long term anymore asthey used to be. Forget about a
10 year outlook. We're talkingabout two years, one year, next
(30:06):
year. What are we doing if that,if that gold rush goes away, I
worry about what's going tohappen, because you saw the chat
GPT five rollout wasn't sosmooth. Maybe Facebook's not
hiring AI folks anymore. Maybethat's a nothing burger story.
Who cares? Maybe funding isgetting a little rougher for
(30:27):
some of the outliers that aren'tthe big players. But like, this
is a bubble that's sort ofholding up the US economy right
now. Like, if you strip all theenergy stuff out of it, Nvidia
is about 8% of the stockexchange at the moment. So I do
worry about, I just want to addthat caveat, I guess that I do
worry about all of this. If allof a sudden the load growth went
from 5% projection in PJM topoint 4% what's going to happen
(30:53):
to a lot of these initiatives,especially the smart grid stuff,
and getting the stuff where weneed to be Now, to answer it
more directly, I think itdepends on where you live and it
depends on the disaster thatyou're dealing with. If you're
in California right now, youshould be encouraged by all the
undergrounding efforts that aregoing on and all the wildfire
mitigation, the AI detectionsoftware that's being installed
(31:14):
out there. California utilitiesjust let AI into their control.
It was a big announcement fromdtech this past year. OA ti had
one of the first softwareclients that's actually being
allowed to interact with thegrid and manage I don't know if
it's directly power flow quiteyet, but making some decisions
and using analysis, thathopefully is the implication
it's like that we talk about AIas like the problem, but also
(31:37):
potentially as a solution. Andthis is potentially part of the
solution we're starting to seenow. So, but if you're in
California, it's wildfires. Ifyou're in the Midwest, you're
worried about those thosethunderstorms. You're worried
about those big tornadoes, likethe one in Ohio you mentioned. I
remember countless times as akid in Mid Michigan sheltering
from tornadoes as a kid, and Iknow the weather there is more
supercharged than it was when Igrew up. If you're in Florida,
(32:01):
if you're on the coast, it'sabout flooding, and it's about
how do you protect that utilityinfrastructure from these high
winds and potential hurricanesthat that might show up every
single year, and how do youensure your infrastructure
against that is another questionthat's becoming a more and more
of a thing as insurers back outof some of these markets. So I
think that the it's the it's adynamic conversation that
everyone in the United States isa part of in some capacity. But
(32:24):
it's different conversationsdepending on where you are, and
all of us are being dependent onthis growth that is, that is
data centers and electrificationof everything. And you know, I'm
sort of torn, as a journalist,you don't want to see machines
take my job, but at the sametime, I want everyone to have
jobs. So maybe supporting AIeconomy is ultimately a good
thing. I don't know, Tim, it's,it's probably a too complex
(32:44):
discussion to have in a singleconversation.
Tim Montague (32:47):
Well, I mean, I think the theme of AI is not
going away anytime soon. Forsure, there is going to be a
bubble. There's no doubt aboutthat. But it's like, the
internet, okay, yeah, there wasa bubble, and there's a lot of
blood in the water when thatwhen that bubble bursts, but we
still have and need an Internet,and we're right now, we're still
(33:08):
gonna have AI and we're going toneed it, because the AI tools
are so good and so smart. Okay,they're not conscious. Will they
ever be I don't know. Will weever be able to what? Hopefully
not. Okay, well, yeah, I'm goodwith them staying unconscious.
(33:28):
Will we be able to upload ourbrains to the internet, that
kind of thing? Like I was askedin an interview, what if I could
take any genie out of a bottle?
What would that be. And I said,Well, I would gladly create 100
digital clones of myself so Icould just have a bigger impact
in the world. I'm a missiondriven entrepreneur. I want to
(33:48):
speed the energy transition. I'mmaking a very small impact
today. If I could do 100 timesmore, why wouldn't I? And I
think many companies are going,Well, yeah, if I can be 50 times
more productive and profitable,I have to do that. That's my
fiduciary responsibility to myinvestors and owners, and
they're right, and they'reglomming on. I mean, major
(34:12):
companies are integrating AIinto their DNA as we speak.
Paul Gerke (34:18):
And to circle back on the clean energy component of
that too. You raise, you raiseanother good point, and that's
the relationship with utilitiesand clean energy. And you
touched on it a little bit, andI kind of skirted around the
answer, but it's a, it's arelationship of convenience. Now
more than ever. Yes, there arestates, I believe there's a
dozen or so that have codifiedtheir intentions to be, you
(34:38):
know, carbon free, whateverpercent by whatever date, 50% by
2030, 100% by 2040, whatever thestate is. Yes, those state laws
will still encourage the cleanenergy transition. But in the
other places, and very much soin those states, it's about the
cheapest to market. It's aboutthe lowest cost generation. It
solar, wind and storage willstill. Ultimately went out
(35:01):
because it's the better mousetrap. And I know that the
federal, the Federal jargon andand hate speak doesn't doesn't
speak to that right now. But Ithink the people that are
actually getting power online,and the utilities that are
actually putting pen to penciland figuring out which projects
actually work for them, arechoosing renewables over and
over and over again, like 90% ofall generation that's coming
(35:24):
online right now is renewables.
If that doesn't speak to theirutility, for utilities and
beyond, I don't know what does
Tim Montague (35:32):
Yeah, it's, you know, subsidy free solar, wind
and batteries is within sight,and photons are free and super
abundant. The wind is superabundant, and it's just very
hard to argue with that. Yeah,we have a lot of fossil fuels,
and I think we should sip thefossil fuels instead of guzzle
(35:54):
them. Save them for a rainy day,okay? Because there will be
times when renewables fail. Butas Storm URI demonstrated,
right, all of our infrastructureis vulnerable, not just wind
turbines, okay, all of ourinfrastructure is vulnerable,
and we need to harden ourinfrastructure. We need to get
(36:16):
much smarter about that andcreating a more resilient
society. Yeah, it's
Paul Gerke (36:21):
interesting. You bring up hurricane Yuri, though,
because ERCOT has really done anamazing job at hardening its
grid over the last couple ofyears. And I know that the Texas
grid gets a lot of flack, anddeservedly so, but I also got to
give them credit where credit isdue, and the last two summers
have been some of the hottestever in the southwest. And they
haven't. There hasn't been asingle call for Conservancy.
(36:42):
There hasn't been a single brownout or big outage. As a result,
I think they learned a lot fromthose big storms that messed up
a lot down there in Texas. Andthe scale at which they've added
renewables, particularlybatteries, to their grid, has
fundamentally changed the waythat they handle peaks, and it's
not as much of a problem forthem anymore. There's like, I
think it was a sub 1% chance ofa blackout this summer, and
(37:06):
that's just mind blowing,considering just a few years
ago, what we were dealing
Tim Montague (37:09):
with, that huge red state is now 50% clean
powered, with solar, wind andbatteries, more
Paul Gerke (37:17):
renewables in California, believe it or not,
and DFW, I believe, iscompletely wind powered. I flew
into there earlier this year foran event, and I saw the big sign
that was like, wow, oh, I didn'tknow that powered by wind. I did
not know that,
Tim Montague (37:29):
yeah, I mean clean, clean energy is big
business. That's the that is thetheme that I love from my
conversation with jigger Shaw.
We are a major force. Now weneed to start to behave more
like we truly are. Right. Thestat that he uses that is a wake
up call, okay, we're installingtwice as much capex than fossil
(37:52):
fuels, but we're investing 1/20into political power as the
fossil fuel industry, we'rebeing outspent. There's many
ways to gain political power.
Money is just one collectiveaction, organizing coming
together, and we're doing someof that, but we're not doing
(38:15):
enough. So if you're listeningto this, Join your local
Renewable Energy Association,your state organization, your
Gulf States organization,whatever that association is,
join. Be active. Support it.
Those organizations are veryimportant for our industry to
have a collective voice. JoinSEIA, our national organization,
(38:35):
or ACP American clean power.
Those voices really do matter.
Hey guys, are you a residentialsolar installer doing light
commercial but wanting to scaleinto large C&I solar? I'm Tim
Montague. I've developed over150 megawatts of commercial
solar, and I've solved theproblem that you're having you
(38:57):
don't know what tools andtechnologies you need in order
to successfully close 100 KW tomegawatt scale projects. I've
developed a commercial solaraccelerator to help installers
exactly like you just go tocleanpowerhour.com click on
strategy and book a call today.
(39:19):
It's totally free, with noobligation. Thanks for being a
listener. I really appreciateyou listening to the pod, and
I'm Tim Montague, let's growsolar and storage. Go to clean
power hour and click strategytoday. Thanks so much, Paul. How
can our listeners find you
Paul Gerke (39:38):
factorthis.com? When you when you when you put that
into your URL, it'll probablyreroute you from
renewableenergyworld.com whichwas part of our rebrand back in
February. Butfactorthis.com oryou can just check out the
podcast, look up, factor this onSpotify or Apple Music, or
wherever you get your podcast,and you'll find our once a week
this week in cleantech and ouronce monthly standalone and we'd
love to hear your feedback onit. Feel free to. Reach out
(40:00):
anytime. If you've got a storythat you think that we should be
writing about or talking about,I'd love to hear from you.
Tim Montague (40:06):
Check out all of our content at
cleanpowerhour.com. Please giveus a rating and a review on
Apple or Spotify. Tell a friendabout the show and reach out to
me on LinkedIn. I love hearingfrom my listeners and energy
professionals writ large. I'mTim Montague, let's grow solar
and storage. Thanks so much,Paul,
Paul Gerke (40:23):
thanks for having me. Tim. You.
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