Energy Changemakers Podcast

Depending on which side of the debate you're on, AI is either going to break the grid or save it. Jeff Willert, Director of Data Science for SE Advisory Services at Schneider Electric, has a different take: both camps are arguing about the two ends of a distribution and skipping the "missing middle," where purpose-built, right-sized AI is already doing real work. In this episode, host Elisa Wood and Jeff unpack what "frugal AI" actually means, why it starts with asking whether you need AI at all, how to judge AI's carbon cost against its benefits, and why efficiency alone won't settle the data center debate. It's a practical, jargon-friendly conversation, with a bonus segment on how Schneider breaks AI workflows into steps instead of routing them to bigger or smaller models.

Data centers get most of the attention, but they aren’t the only facilities stuck waiting on the grid. Manufacturers, campuses and other large energy users face the same problem: utility connections that can take four years or more.
In this episode, sponsored by Ameresco, Elisa Wood speaks with Greg Caplan, Senior Vice President - Federal and Utility Solutions Business Development at Ameresco. They discuss the new Ameresco and Energy Changemakers report, When the Grid Can’t Keep Up: Why Large-Load Developers Are Becoming Their Own Power Suppliers.
Greg explains why power has moved from a line item on the budget to the thing that decides where and when a facility gets built. He describes how onsite generation can serve as a “bridge and a blend.” It powers a site and earns revenue years before the grid connection arrives. He also covers how to size a system that starts at 5 MW and grows to 300 MW without overbuilding, and what Ameresco’s work on military microgrids teaches about serving mission-critical commercial loads.

70% of Americans say they don't want a data center in their town. How did one of the best-funded industries in the world lose the story so badly, and what does it mean for local energy?

Elisa Wood welcomes back Rich Miller, who has covered data centers for 25 years and founded Data Center Knowledge and Data Center Frontier. Rich now writes the Substack Data Center Richness. He explains how secrecy, NDAs, gigawatt-scale projects, and a wave of AI anxiety turned data centers into a national villain, and why governors who once cheered them on are now pulling back.

Then the conversation turns to the opening for distributed energy. Hear how developers are shifting to government-backed sites, tent-style and modular builds, and smaller networks of 5 to 10 megawatt facilities. Learn how Sunrun and SPAN plan to put compute nodes in homes, how Google is funding virtual power plants with Voltus and PG&E, and why a startup called Resilience Energy wants hyperscalers to pay for rooftop solar and batteries. Rich also flags the biggest disconnect between the two industries: the rush toward on-site power.
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John Berger has won big and lost big. He founded Sunnova out of his Houston apartment in 2012 and grew it into one of the largest residential solar companies in the country, before it ended in bankruptcy. Now he’s back as CEO of Otovo, betting that the next big solar business isn’t installing panels but keeping them running.
In this far-ranging conversation with host Elisa Wood, Berger explains why installation and service are two different businesses, what it means for a solar system to be “orphaned,” and why he built a company that avoids heavy debt and policy exposure. He also shares why he wishes the Inflation Reduction Act had never been so politically visible, why data centers and oil producers are turning to behind-the-meter power, how Otovo is using AI to run service operations, and whether humanoid robots could soon be working in the field.
Plus: Europe as a “sleeping giant,” balcony solar, and what eating glass has to do with entrepreneurship.
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Utilities and distributed energy companies often talk past each other, and each side blames the other for the stalemate. Navneet Trivedi, co-founder and COO of Vrinda Inc., has spent more than three decades working with over 100 utilities in eight countries, and he calls himself an "energy transition realist." In this episode, host Elisa Wood talks with Navneet about why utilities behave the way they do, why he called New York's REV initiative flawed when everyone else was celebrating it, and his proposal to change the relationship. If batteries, microgrids, and other DERs make customers more resilient, Navneet asks, should responsibility for reliability, and the pay that comes with it, be shared between the grid and distributed resources? It's a candid conversation from someone who loves utilities and wants them to change.

Check out Vrinda's latest white paper: https://energychangemakers.com/resource-library/grid-utilization/