Energy Changemakers Podcast

Energy Changemakers
  • 4.5 (8)
  • Tech News
  • Updated Semiweekly

As the energy grid faces unprecedented changes, local energy solutions are increasingly needed. Hosted by Elisa Wood, an experienced energy journalist, The Energy Changemakers Podcast brings you into the heart of these transformations. Each episode features in-depth discussions with industry leaders pioneering the move toward a decentralized grid. From technological innovations to policy changes — discover actionable insights to help your company leverage emerging opportunities. Join us at The Energy Changemakers Podcast and be part of the conversation that shapes our energy future.

  1. 1d ago

    The Wild, Weird & Wonderful History of Solar

    Most people in solar assume the industry started with the trade-show boom of 2006–2007. It didn't. It started decades earlier, in the logged-over hills of Humboldt County, California, where back-to-the-land hippies were hacking a self-sufficient life out of the wilderness — powering their homes off car batteries, micro-hydro, and windmills just so they could keep the lights on and play a little music. Host Elisa Wood sits down with filmmakers Jeff Spies and Jason Vetterli, whose two-hour documentary Solar Roots: The Pioneers of PV traces how an expensive military, space, and petrochemical technology found its way into the hands of ordinary people — and, in doing so, became a real industry. It's a story of catalog salesmen, off-grid homesteaders, cannabis-funded land deals, conservative ranchers won over one panel at a time, and a scrappy magazine that connected them all. Along the way, Jeff and Jason make the case for why solar has already won the price war, why the remaining fight is cultural, and why this history had to be captured now, while its pioneers are still here to tell it.

    The Wild, Weird & Wonderful History of Solar

  2. Aug 5

    How Customers Are Reshaping the Grid

    From homeowners to businesses to AI data centers, customers are investing in distributed energy for their own reasons — and collectively rewiring how the entire electric system evolves. Recorded live to open The Great Transformation conference in Bend, Oregon, host Elisa Wood sits down with three people who aren’t just watching this shift — they’re shaping it: Cameron Brooks of Think Microgrid, Greg Castle of Schneider Electric, and Mike Grenier of Elexity. The panel digs into the data center power boom (a reported 114 GW of behind-the-meter generation in the pipeline — roughly 20% of U.S. peak load), why falling battery prices are flipping "two yeses out of ten" into "eight," the "Frankenstein microgrid" phenomenon, and how flexible interconnection deals in New Jersey and the Google–Voltus capacity agreement point toward a grid that’s built from the outside in. It’s a candid, optimistic conversation about ownership, resilience, and scaling what already works.

    How Customers Are Reshaping the Grid

  3. Jul 22

    Resilience as a Team Sport

    Wildfires, record heat, and a grid under more strain than ever have turned “resilience” from a buzzword into one of the fastest-growing categories in energy technology. Host Elisa Wood talks with Julia Hamm — who spent nearly 20 years growing the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) before becoming a partner at The Ad Hoc Group — about how resilience became its own market, the AI cameras and wildfire-spread software utilities are deploying today, why microgrids are still an emerging (not mainstream) resilience play, and why the length of the utility sales cycle remains startups' biggest obstacle. They also discuss why Julia launched the Power Resilience Forum to keep this conversation from being crowded out by the AI and data-center load-growth story dominating the industry right now.

    Resilience as a Team Sport

  4. Jul 8

    Plug-In Solar Explained: Answers to your top questions

    Plug-in solar — widely known as “balcony solar” — is one of the fastest-growing entry points into clean energy, and it is finally gaining a legal foothold in the United States. In this episode, host Elisa Wood talks with Stephan Scherer, co-founder and CEO of CraftStrom, who spent roughly a decade in the European plug-in solar market before bringing the technology to the U.S. The conversation unpacks what plug-in solar actually is, how small systems can offset a meaningful chunk of a household's electricity bill for a fraction of rooftop-solar costs, and why the technology sidesteps the interconnection agreements and “soft costs” that make traditional residential solar expensive. Scherer addresses the two big safety debates head-on — line-worker protection and grid export — and explains the certifications, anti-islanding shutoffs, and “zero-export” approaches that underpin safe deployment. They also explore the technical breakthroughs that made plug-in solar practical (lightweight bendable panels, integrated Wi-Fi monitoring, simplified installation), the economics and payback math, the addition of plug-in batteries and virtual power plants, and the wave of state laws — now five enacted — reshaping access for homeowners and renters alike.

    Plug-In Solar Explained: Answers to your top questions

  5. Jun 17

    Coming Together for Energy's Great Transformation

    The grid is straining under AI-driven demand, aging infrastructure, and climate-fueled weather events — and Robert W. Cross believes the answers already exist. The harder question is whether the industry can come together to deploy them. In this episode, host Elisa Wood talks with Cross, founder of Cross Consulting and principal at the cleantech design studio Outfit, about why distributed energy may be the relief valve utilities need, why storytelling is the industry's most underrated tool, and what he's building at The Great Transformation 2026, a curated, single-track summit in Bend, Oregon (July 8–10). They dig into the collision between an "irresistible force" — distributed energy resources — and the "immovable object" of the legacy utility model, the gap between feasibility and bankability, and why Cross is intentionally designing his event to create constructive professional conflict. It's a candid conversation about scale, finance, policy whiplash, and the case for getting builders, bankers, regulators, and dreamers into the same room. Learn more and subscribe to the free newsletter at energychangemakers.com.

    Coming Together for Energy's Great Transformation

  6. Jun 10

    How Utilities Can Do Less and Make More Money

    Electricity prices are rising, data centers are struggling to connect, and consumers are feeling the pinch — yet utilities keep reporting record earnings. What's going wrong, and how do we fix it? In this episode, Elisa Wood speaks with Michael Lee, former CEO of Octopus Energy US and founder of Distributed Grid, about the structural flaw at the heart of the American utility model: an incentive system that rewards building infrastructure regardless of whether it is needed. Lee argues that this cost-of-service model — largely unchanged for a century — is driving an inflationary spiral in electricity rates and blocking the distributed energy resources that could make the grid more affordable and resilient. But his argument is not simply that utilities are bad actors. It is that utilities are rational actors operating under the wrong rules. Change the rules — and the business model — and utilities could earn more revenue by coordinating a decentralized grid than by building poles and wires. Lee lays out a detailed roadmap: from reframing utilities as "network coordinators" to paying them for outcomes (reliability, affordability, speed to power) rather than capital deployed. He also confronts the political and social complexities — utility shareholders who depend on dividends, governors who fear blackouts, and a public that has never had to think about how electricity works. The conversation is both an indictment of the status quo and a genuine blueprint for a better grid.

    How Utilities Can Do Less and Make More Money

  7. May 29

    Why the Microgrid Community Needs to Come Together Now

    Produced in partnership with Xendee, this podcast explores the market dynamics that led the company to create a free, non-commercial gathering for the microgrid industry. In their conversation, Elisa Wood and Xendee CTO Michael Stadler discuss what's been holding microgrids back from achieving their full market potential, how utilities treat them, and why data centers are opening up opportunities that are reconfiguring what microgrids look like.Called University Week, the virtual event will be held June 8-10, 2026. Sessions will focus on:—Misperceptions and limited knowledge about microgrids and DERs—Macro market challenges—Older centralized technologies and grid limitations—Fragmented market with no common voice for the industryRegistration is free: https://xendee.com/xendee-university-week?.

    Why the Microgrid Community Needs to Come Together Now

  8. May 27

    The Big Wide Door Opening for Biofuels

    What does it take to build a billion-dollar biofuels company from inside one of energy’s most durable entrepreneurial firms? Michael Bakas has spent 25 years at Ameresco — and now he’s leading Neogenyx Fuels, a new $1.8 billion joint venture with HASI. Elisa Wood of Energy Changemakers gets the full story: the cocktail-napkin founding of Ameresco, the dual energy crisis (geopolitics + AI demand), and why RNG’s global moment has arrived. Whether you work in energy development, finance, policy, or utilities — or you’re simply watching the clean energy transition unfold — this conversation is a rare look at how one company has been building the infrastructure for what now appears to be America’s biofuel moment.

    The Big Wide Door Opening for Biofuels
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4.5
out of 5
8 Ratings

About

As the energy grid faces unprecedented changes, local energy solutions are increasingly needed. Hosted by Elisa Wood, an experienced energy journalist, The Energy Changemakers Podcast brings you into the heart of these transformations. Each episode features in-depth discussions with industry leaders pioneering the move toward a decentralized grid. From technological innovations to policy changes — discover actionable insights to help your company leverage emerging opportunities. Join us at The Energy Changemakers Podcast and be part of the conversation that shapes our energy future.

Information

  • Creator
    Energy Changemakers
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    57
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Energy Changemakers
  • Show Website
    Energy Changemakers Podcast

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