Grid Talk

DOE|Advanced Grid Research

Award winning energy journalist Marty Rosenberg shares insights from electric industry experts on emerging technology and trends for powering our lives. We highlight how the electrical grid is changing faster and more dramatically than ever. Grid Talk is part of the Voices of Experience Initiative sponsored by the DOE Office of Electricity’s Advanced Grid Research division.

  1. 20/01/2025

    Sustainability Will Remain the Focus

    With leadership in the government changing, the electric utility industry is anticipating major shifts in policy. But sustainability will continue to be a focus of the evolving electric and energy sector according to a strategic advisor for large commercial and industrial organizations looking to manage their sustainability and energy issues. In this episode of Grid Talk, we interview Drew Murphy CEO of Trio about what’s ahead for the energy industry. “There will be reversals, there wil...

  2. 07/01/2025

    Solar Power’s Growing Ag Footprint

    At first glance, solar energy production and livestock grazing don’t seem like they have much in common, but the two industries have formed a growing partnership with what’s known as solar grazing. This episode of Grid Talk features Nick Armentrout who is the president of the American Solar Grazing Association. Armentrout reports a steep rise in the use of livestock to graze under and around solar panel deployments in rural America. “There is vegetation in place to control stormwater. After t...

  3. 23/12/2024

    Energy Storage Moonshot

    Energy storage is considered the holy grail that would unlock a vast increase in solar and wind renewable electricity generation.  That’s the topic for the latest episode of Grid Talk featuring Will McNamara who is a Grid Energy Policy Storage Analyst with Sandia National Laboratories. Six national energy labs and a cohort of 200 partners across the energy industry have joined together in a moonshot effort to vastly expand energy storage in America. It is all being coordinated through the National Consortium for the Advancement of Long Duration Energy Storage (LDES) technologies.  “There was a proposal call issued by the Department of Energy offering funds to the national labs to create an industry forum focused on the many challenges that are facing long-duration energy storage technologies and create this forum so that the industry can come together and address these challenges,” said McNamara  The goal is to boost storage technology on a large scale from about four hours duration to 10 hours. “The sun doesn’t always shine, the wind doesn’t always blow so we need to find a way to store the energy to make it dispatchable, hence the need for energy storage, so we are absolutely in this evolutionary period. We are building the constructs for the future.” In his role as Grid Energy Storage Policy Analyst for Sandia National Laboratories, McNamara focuses on energy storage policy development at the federal and state levels. He has spent his entire 23-year career in the energy and utilities industry with a concentration on regulatory and legislative policy.  Additional areas of subject matter expertise include distributed energy resources, AMI/smart grid, renewables, and competitive retail markets. McNamara has an M.B.A. from University of Phoenix, an M.A. in Mass Communications from the University of Iowa, and a B.A. in Political Science and Journalism from the University of Iowa.

  4. 19/12/2024

    Stanford’s Uncommon Dialogues

    Solar siting, the future of hydroelectric dams, and grid transmission buildout have been some of the most contentious and important areas needing attention as the U.S. builds out the electric grid of tomorrow.  In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Dan Reicher who is a former Assistant Secretary of Energy and is associated with the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, as well as Dartmouth’s Irving Institute for Energy and Society. The discussion centers on a program at Stanford called Uncommon Dialogues which aims to sort out divisive issues and make progress solving them. “I started to look into this Uncommon Dialogue program, and I was really quite intrigued given the difficulties we have in resolving some of today’s big energy, climate and environmental issues,” said Reicher. The idea is to get opposing parties together at least once and see if there’s any interest in really trying to resolve some of their big differences. “I think we’ve got a good process, and we’ve tested it now in both hydropower and big solar, and I think it could work well on a lot of other issues. We got some of the biggest solar developers in the United States to sit down with some of the big environmental groups including The Nature Conservancy, the largest U.S. conservation group, and with tribal representatives and a whole host of others.” The result was the groups bought in on an agreement about how to proceed. “We’ve been moving forward ever since to really try to improve the way we site, operate, and transmit the power from these big solar projects, often measured in the hundreds and hundreds of megawatts and some of them approaching 1,000 megawatts.” Dan Reicher is a former Assistant Secretary of Energy in the Clinton Administration. Mr. Reicher is currently attached to the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. Mr. Reicher joined Stanford in 2011 as the executive director of Stanford's Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy & Finance. Before joining Stanford, he was the Director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives at Google. Mr. Reicher holds a B.A. in biology from Dartmouth College and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

  5. 01/11/2024

    Transmission and the Onrushing Energy Transition, The View from Kansas

    Kansas, in the heart of America’s robust wind belt, has approved a new direct current transmission corridor to help speed the transition to cleaner energy.  In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Andrew French, the chairman of the Kansas Corporation Commission. “Kansas actually approved a permit for the Grain Belt Express DC line to extend all the way across our state and all the way to Indiana,” said French. It comes at a time of increased demand for energy - particularly non-carbon emitting sources. French acknowledges that navigating the regulatory and permitting process is difficult. “Right now, you’re looking at a few years to get new generation online and it’s a tough spot. You’ve got a lot of customers that want power.” “This is a complex industry even for developers that are very sophisticated. As they’re developing a wind farm, a solar farm, some other generation source, it’s really hard for them to anticipate how much it’s going to cost for them to interconnect,” the Kansas regulator said.  He’s also optimistic about the future. “There are a lot of things moving in the direction of a successful energy transition. There are also a lot of things standing in the way or complications. There is of course, public sentiment that doesn’t understand some of the reasons why we may have need to build new infrastructure and transition to different resources.” Andrew J. French was appointed to the KCC in 2020. He has served as Chairperson since 2021. French currently serves as the Kansas representative to the Southwest Power Pool and regularly participates in various SPP stakeholder groups. He is also one of 10 state utility regulators selected to serve on the Joint Federal-State Task Force on Electric Transmission formed in 2021. Before his appointment to the KCC, French practiced law with a focus on energy policy and the regulation of utility rates and services.  French has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Kansas and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Kansas School of Law.

  6. 24/10/2024

    Three Mile Island Rises Again

    The sister plant to the ill-fated Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania is getting a new life. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Dan Eggers, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Constellation.  Constellation will pay $1.6 billion to refurbish Unit 1 at Three Mile Island by 2028. It sits near Unit 2, the reactor that suffered a partial meltdown in 1979.  Unit 1 is an independent reactor, and its long-term operation was not impacted by the Unit 2 accident.  Unit 1 closed in 2019 due to financial conditions, but Microsoft has now agreed to purchase all the energy from the plant to meet demand for its data centers. “They are undeniably a sustainability leader,” Eggers said of Microsoft. “When we realized that this was a viable project in the sense that we could bring it back from a mechanical and technical perspective, we brought the opportunity to them, explained what it could be, and they were very enthusiastic.”  Eggers says the need for additional generation made them take another look at TMI Unit 1.  “We ran it for 20 years. It ran incredibly well, safely, reliably, dependably over that time,” said Eggers. Daniel L. Eggers is the executive vice president and chief financial officer for Constellation. In this role, he is responsible for leading the execution of all financial activities for the Constellation business. He serves on the Constellation Executive Committee, which sets strategy and direction for the company. Eggers joined Exelon in 2016. Prior to that he was with Credit Suisse for 18 years with a focus on energy-related sectors.  Eggers received a bachelor's degree in Finance from Texas Christian University and received the Chartered Financial Analyst designation in 2000. He also completed the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Reactor Technology Course in 2023.

  7. 08/10/2024

    California’s Massive Grid Build Ahead

    One of the largest investor-owned utilities in the country is preparing for an 80% increase in electricity demand by 2045. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Steve Powell who is the president and CEO of Southern California Edison. With a customer base of 15 million people across a 50,000 square mile service area, Southern California Edison is changing the way it prepares for the increased demand. “Our engineers that are frankly used to dealing with relatively small ...

  8. 18/09/2024

    From America to Germany - The Race to Climate Neutrality

    Germany and Europe are somewhat envious of the massive federal spending now underway in America to ready the grid and the energy economy to combat climate change. That’s according to Simon Müller who is one of Europe’s leading thinkers on the future of energy and sustainability. As the director of the think tank Agora Energiewende, he took time to explain his views on the Department of Energy’s Grid Talk Podcast. “When it comes to the buildout of renewable energies actually what we see ...

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About

Award winning energy journalist Marty Rosenberg shares insights from electric industry experts on emerging technology and trends for powering our lives. We highlight how the electrical grid is changing faster and more dramatically than ever. Grid Talk is part of the Voices of Experience Initiative sponsored by the DOE Office of Electricity’s Advanced Grid Research division.

Information

  • Creator
    DOE|Advanced Grid Research
  • Years Active
    2019 - 2025
  • Episodes
    102
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Grid Talk
  • Show Website
    Grid Talk