Beyond the Electron: The Energy Cloud

Decarbonization and clean energy is just one component of sustainability. Large corporations and utilities are also increasingly focused on topics such as environmental justice and habitat protection. Understanding the increasing focus on sustainability, how to define it, and opportunities and challenges to achieving sustainability objectives will be our topic on this episode of Beyond the Electron: The Energy Cloud podcast series.

No other industry faces quite the same challenges and responsibilities in responding to increasingly fierce storms as the electric utility industry. Put simply, society depends on the safe and reliable delivery of electricity. It’s a challenge that utilities clearly need to face because extreme weather events caused nearly 70% more power outages in the U.S. between 2010 and 2019 than during the previous decade. Understanding how to devise and implement effective storm protection plans will be our topic on this episode of Beyond the Electron: The Energy Cloud podcast series.

All too often, conversations about electric vehicles (EVs) and the major role they will play in global transportation focus on technology and policy. While both are obviously critical for EVs to deliver their environmental and economic benefits to society, these discussions often leave out the most important factor in the success of electrified transportation: actual drivers. Navigant Consulting’s Derek Jones and New York Power Authority’s (NYPA) Doug McMahon join us to explain why it’s so critical to focus on the priorities, concerns, and experiences of drivers in order to unlock the enormous benefits of electrified transportation.

Last July Arizona regulators opened the country’s first docket focused exclusively on transactive energy. In doing so, Arizona joined a host of other states and utilities in attempting to grapple with the opportunities and challenges associated with transactive energy. In a nutshell, transactive energy refers to the power and energy platform that facilitates decisions and transactions involving the generation, distribution and consumption of power. For example, the ability of rooftop solar and electric vehicle owners to trade electricity and other energy services is one type of transactive energy. And as the energy system as a whole evolves to become cleaner and more distributed, the concept of transactive energy and how it could work in practice is becoming less and less abstract. Understanding transactive energy and its potential impact on utilities and customers will be our topic on this episode of Beyond the Electron: The Energy Cloud podcast series. Dan Bradley, a Managing Director in Navigant’s Energy Practice, and Joshua Wong, president and CEO of Opus One Solutions, will lay out what has already been accomplished with transactive energy and where it’s headed in the future.

As the energy system evolves to become cleaner and more distributed, there is an increased demand for better communication to ensure the grid remains as reliable as it has always been. It’s already happening, and the technologies and flows of information are referred to as the Neural Grid. Navigant Consulting’s Mike Bianco and PSEG’s Joseph Santamaria join us to explain why improved communication is so vital to the transformation of the energy system and why it’s every bit as important as advances in solar, wind and storage technologies.

Clean, distributed energy resources, or DERs, are rapidly transforming our power system. But how all of those solar systems, batteries and other DERs will be integrated matters. Raghu Sudhakara from New York’s Con Edison and Navigant Consulting’s Ted Walker join us to explain what integrated distributed energy resources, or iDER, means and why it’s so important for utilities to stay focused on delighting their customers.

The answers are as varied as the hundreds of cities around the globe pursuing smart city efforts. Jerome Davis and Nadia El Mallakh from Xcel Energy give us the view from Denver, while Navigant Consulting’s Rob Wilhite provides the broader perspective. One lesson: It helps when city stakeholders and utilities work together.

Navigant Consulting calls the rapid energy transformation taking place around the globe the Energy Cloud. Green Mountain Power CEO Mary Powell and Navigant Consulting’s Mackinnon Lawrence dissect the challenges and opportunities in this move to a cleaner, more decentralized energy system.