Planning the grid to meet future energy demand | A discussion on the future of the grid, AI, energy innovation, and delivering the electricity supply we will need in the coming decades

21:32But we've reached a point where it needs to be replaced, retrofitted, something needs to happen because it was not designed to last indefinitely. It's not a perpetual thing where it will just be able to, you know, operate for the foreseeable future forever and ever. The second thing is, I would like to point out that when it comes to outages and numbers and the Energy Information Administration, the EIA has great data on this. Your experience through your electricity system is very different in different parts of the country, even in the United States. So if you were in Louisiana, I'm going to pull this number.

22:01I think it was 82 or 83 hours of outages a few years ago across the state. Now, that was cumulative over the year. So I don't have at the top of my head how long each outage was because the extension of that outage matters a lot. Do you lose all the food in your fridge? Do you end up in an unsafe environment? if you have medical equipment, et cetera, or will your backup systems be able to hold together and keep you safe in your home? But the numbers are very different across the country. They're very different also within a region that may have low outage numbers, but you're at the end of a single line.

22:32And if something happens to that single line, you're stuck and out of luck. So just to make sure that we've lived in parts of the country, Ed, where we don't suffer from as many outages, that is not true everywhere in the country I've lived, being a military kid growing up. You know, it was something that was pretty common in some parts of the country when I was growing up. And as infrastructure continues to age, the question is, how are we going to invest? What future are we going to be building for? And how quickly are we going to step into that future?

23:00Melissa Lott:Yeah, that's a great point. And I think, as I say, thinking about that Department of Energy report, even if you want to quibble with the specifics of their analysis, the fact that they're putting a spotlight on this and thinking about it, and they do, for instance, present some pretty interesting numbers on reliability and grid failure in different parts of the country, as you say, making exactly that point about how the situation is very different depending on where you are in the US. I think that's a really valuable contribution and certainly worth looking at. Anyway, let's move on, though, to get back to, Alice, what you were talking about in terms of then what you do about this grid.

23:36Melissa Lott:So you've been talking about grid planning, and you said it brings together a lot of different aspects of thinking about the grid. Do you want to talk some more about that then? I mean, when you talk about planning the grid, what are you actually doing? Oh, goodness. There are so many components to being able to look at the different systems inside of the grid. But one of the things that I want to tie back to that Melissa was saying is that when you look at this as a big picture, there is variability across the systems. There are also, tying back to something, Melissa, you said earlier, is that there are a bunch of different drivers of what is changing our future grid needs going forward.

24:11It's not just any one thing. Yes, we see in the news, the report that you referenced to, Ed, you know, is looking at what kind of capacity and energy availability do we have to specifically meet AI, for example. and the data center demands that are coming our direction. But if you remember in that report too from the Department of Energy, they included 50 gigawatts associated with AI and they included 51 incremental gigawatts as well for other items, right, to cover that. So we're really, there's a whole bunch in there that we're looking at. What I would say from a modeling standpoint, so a couple of points that have been made.

24:44Number one, the investment in these grids is not short-term. The investment in these grids is a long-term investment. It is a 50, 60 year investment in these types of assets. Some other assets may be 20 to 30 years, but generally 50 to 60 years. So that means we have to make a decision and to look at what does the grid need to support when we're at, I'll call it the end goal. It's never an end, right? But we do have some pictures of what a ideal end goal would be, whether that's you're looking at from your own perspective, the decarbonization or not, whether you're looking at industrialization and onshoring that's going to have an impact, you have to make a decision on what is that going to look like, because it takes a long time to build these assets as well.

25:31So I'm going to go into the weeds just a little bit here, and y 'all can help pull me back up. But the distribution system, we have some very specific decisions we have to make about. How do we want this future system to operate? If you want a decentralized system, you have to make that decision today because you're going to design that and build that differently than if you want a more centralized system. The visibility that you need in order to maintain the reliability, the size of the wire. What are you going to assume as far as customers' participation and choices? That may precipitate a very different design basis.

26:07So you might change the voltage, for example, of your distribution network. You might change the size of the base transformer that you use, the number of customers that can connect to a tap. And all of this takes time in order to implement. So those decisions need to be made nearer term today so that you have the full 20, 25 years, if we're looking at 2050, as an example, as the end game, you have to make those now because it's going to take that long to implement. So that can be said as well for the bulk system. But those are the decisions that we have to get to the base of in order then to move into modeling, to go, this is what we need in order to get there.

26:43This is how much it may or may not cost, et cetera. And I'll pause there because I know there's a whole lot in there to dig into. Well, I think there's a couple things I have to jump in and talk about, which is that you also have that you have to consider in all this, not just the system you want in the future, but the system you have, correct? So within all this, when you're working in a system that hasn't been built out yet, you have a different set of options than when you're, okay, I have this infrastructure here. I have access to these stretches of land. I have access to, you know, I have this type of wire that actually delivers things at these points in this way today.

27:13And so the practical nature of that saying, okay, where can I actually use what I already have? I remember when I was at Department of Energy, I guess it was the second time, because this wasn't when I was at Cyndia National Labs, this was later when I was in Forestall in DC for the first time. And we had this, you know, the super grid analysis that I, yeah, we can all just smile about, which is the idea of, okay, if I could take the continental US and just pretend for a minute that I didn't have any practical constraints on access to land, you know, where population centers are, all this stuff, I would build a certain type of grid.

27:43Also, if I didn't already have a lot of just wires already strung, I would consider something different. So how do I factor that in? I will admit for a minute, Alice, when you said I'm going into the weeds, I thought you were going to throw the word plexos out there. And so we went in a different direction, but I like it because it's important that we consider not just the big wires that can move huge amounts of electricity around, but also the small wires that connect to our homes and our businesses. Because how those are designed will, as you say, and how quickly they're rolled out, determine what we're able to adopt back to the chicken and egg thing.

28:13If I don't have the right wires that can deliver the amount of electricity I need, I will be limited on what I can do in some practical ways.

28:20Melissa Lott:And sorry, just before you come in, we should just definitely explain Plexus, I think, for the people who might not be familiar with it, actually, to an extent, including me. So it is a what, a national model of the electricity system. How would you describe it? Alice, do you want to do it? You want me to? Go for it. Oh, man, I'm having some flashbacks to power systems engineering classes in school. And Stuart Cohen, who now works at the National Renewable Energy Lab, who actually helped me learn a bunch about different types of models back in the day. But essentially, it's a power system model.

28:50And what I say when I'm translating it to non wonky nerd out friends of mine, is what it allows us to do is check a bunch of potential risk areas within our systems. So we model out a part of the electricity system and we say, okay, not just, well, I have enough electricity over the course of a year, but Plexus allows us to look in an hourly basis, typically like how will our electricity demand and supply look? And will we have any gaps or just any concerns where there's a risk, there's a high probability that something could go wrong, maybe higher than we're willing to accept or no, no, flashing red light, you know, red check engine light, not yellow.

29:24You need to pull over. Something's going wrong here. That system won't work. So back in the day, what we did, Ed, is we used it to test things like, how high can I integrate wind? And this was, you know, 15, 20 years ago. How high can I integrate wind into a system? In the case, I was looking at Texas in this example. Given the amount of prediction ability we had around wind, which was way worse than we do today, to understand in different nodes. And then we said, okay, I'm pretty sure that this much demand is going to come at this point. Is my system going to be able to actually sustain that?

29:52Or how much firm power, energy storage, and other technologies do I need to complement it with? So basically, how high could renewables penetration go without having challenges in the system that you have to flex around? Does that help? Is that clear as mud?

30:04Melissa Lott:No, that's fantastically clear. And actually, that is exactly the model which the Department of Energy is using for that recent study they just published. Nerd alert comment, Ed. They have an entire methodology section that you can go through. And it's pretty early in the report. So for those who want to understand how these things are built, it's a huge thing I would teach my students at Columbia, which was, okay, understand not just what's in a report, but what's not. And so understanding the models that are used gives you an idea of blind spots. So what were these models designed to do? That means they're able to do those things.

30:36They might not do other things as easily, like looking at a supply chain to actually supply the technology that might be deployed. So just understanding different blind spots is really important when you're looking at these reports.

30:47Melissa Lott:so i want to use that framework then to think about a couple of big issues in the power industry today maybe alice to think first of all about that issue that the department of energy is very concerned about which is retirements of fossil fuel generation increased reliance on wind and solar in particular i think their numbers are they have something like about 100 gigawatts of fossil fuel generation, I'm sure most of that coal, probably just about all of that coal-fired power plants, scheduled to retire over the next five years. They have, I think, about 200 gigawatts of generation in line to be added to the grid over that same five-year period.

31:29Melissa Lott:But of that 200, only 22 gigawatts, as of the time they did the analysis, were new dispatchable plants, again, and presumably just about entirely gas-fired power plants there. Do you agree that that's a real concern? Is that something that makes you worried? And of course, then set in the context of growing demand as well, is that something that should be kind of signing the alarm for grid planners right now? I do believe that we have some risks that we are facing across our systems from the lack of dispatchable generation that is being invested in and approved through the processes and the systems that we have.

32:08In fact, I partnered in authoring a letter to the Public Utilities Commission here in Colorado in regards to the risks associated with the Colorado system before I departed Excel this past March. And so it's looking at the balance. Now, is that entirely attributable to retirements? Is that entirely attributable to intermittent energy? No. It's the combination of all of these things coming together along with the load growth that we are facing. And particularly what I would say something that is more wonkier in the weeds is the load factor that's changing on our systems as well. It is harder to meet the needs of the overall system and match them up with the clean energy that's been added, intermittent energy.

32:50When it's a higher load factor system, then it's a lower lower factor system. And for listeners out there, a load factor is the percentage of time that a system is used at its maximum as compared to what the capabilities are. And typical load factors are very weather dependent. That's when customers use energy. Think of those hot summer days when all the air conditioners are running. That's gonna be a high load factor day of utilization. In the days where everybody has their windows open because it's a lovely temperature, that's gonna be a lower load factor. But when we talk about these new loads that are coming on like the data centers, they operate at 97 % load factor, meaning they turn on and they stay on.

33:29that changes systems dynamics. So, and I know that's a wonky weedy item, but when we're talking about reliability of the system, this is changing the way that even we've used our existing assets historically. So yes, Ed, I do believe that we have some risks that are coming. Some of that is absolutely added to by retirements, but good planning means that you're replacing the characteristics of the system that you're losing that you need. The compounding factor though, is that we're changing what the system needs at the same time as we're doing those retirements. And that change is coming faster than the planning that happened for the retirements.

34:06So we have a mismatch of how things are coming together. And yes, we are increasing the risk on the system at this point in time with all those variables combined.

34:14Melissa Lott:What about the role of technology then? So as you say, the grid is facing these various new pressures. You don't necessarily have to replace the system that's existed in the past with exactly the same type of system in the future. And again, I thought this was very interesting in this Department of Energy report, where they talk about sort of business as usual is not an option, and we should think about new approaches to the grid and grid planning, and we should think about the use of new technologies. Basically, they just sort of raise this as an issue, have a few lines of it, and then don't say anything more about it.

34:49Melissa Lott:And they kind of leave what feels like a huge blank in terms of finding creative and innovative solutions to the problems they address. And it sort of doesn't quite say so, but implicitly the argument of the paper is just, we need more dispatchable power plants. Where do you come out on that, Alice? I mean, do you think there's a real role for new innovation and doing things differently in order to avoid the need just to build a whole load more gas-fired power plants? or do you think at the end of the day that is what we're going to have to do? So I absolutely believe that we are going to have to have more gas-fired power plants, but I don't believe that it's the only solution to this problem.

35:34I believe innovation has a key part of this. So you heard me talking about the distribution system earlier. Those decisions are important because then you can look at the flexibility of load contributing to solving the problem and meeting the needs of the system in a more symbiotic manner. That is one aspect of innovation that we have to continue to have, whether that's on the software front, if that's on the visibility and communications pieces, but also the technologies that are out there. Long duration battery storage, the advanced nuclear that's being researched, the technologies for the transmission system like TS conductor and the carbon core conductor that can increase the capacity and may not necessarily need replacement of existing infrastructure as far as the poles.

36:19So there's lots of different things that have to come into this that I think you're not going to just rinse and repeat what we did in the 60s and 70s when we had the energy crisis. And we shouldn't, right? We should learn from that. We should take advantage of what it is that we have been able to do as advancement. I mean, everything from geothermal to, you know, time of use activities. Those are things that we need to take into account and make available and figure out how do we move faster through the innovation timeframe to get the investment in the ground. Because one of the things that I do think that we have as a barrier is getting to commercialization.

36:57And that is something that we need to address as we're moving forward with the innovation piece.

37:02Melissa Lott:Right. I was just about, even as you were talking about geothermal and demand response and some of these technologies, I was just thinking, well, okay, fine. But these things are typically at very early stages enhanced geothermal, just starting to see the first few projects crop up. Very promising and exciting technology, but definitely at an early stage. Demand response, we've talked about quite a bit on this show. There always seems to be a lot promised and not so much delivered. The promises and the potential there certainly seems to be enormous in terms of what people are actually able to do with it.

37:37Melissa Lott:still seems relatively minor, I think, to me. These are all things which could make a much bigger contribution over time, but they certainly don't seem like they're going to make a massive contribution to changing the balance of risks and opportunities and the operations of the grid over the next five years, let's say. And that seems to be when everyone's focused on this very, very near-term timetable, those technologies kind of are marginal at best, right? Yeah, I might push you a little bit on some of that, Ed, because to Melissa's point, I fully believe that we have two things we have to be looking at on the planning side right now.

38:13How can you get more out of the systems we already have, because they are the ones we have to live with? And then how do you transition them to an environment that is the new expectation that we have for how the systems are going to work, whether that's new load factor or others? in the systems of today, I think there are things that we don't have access to in order to be able to optimize a system to its highest capabilities. Number one, there are many utilities, whether they're large or small, so co-ops included in that definition, that don't have visibility into their distribution networks. We had the rollout of smart meters over a decade ago, but not everyone up took that at that point in time.

38:53We have more today, but we're not seeing that. I would also say that from a software perspective, we don't have good optimizing software for the distribution networks that gives you that visibility, that gives you the opportunity for flexibility. There's some out there and you hear a lot of talk about they can do all these things, but they're not generally adopted and tested on a broad scale basis and they need some more attention. But also things like inertia, if you want to really get down into the weeds, and Melissa, I'll leave it to you to explain inertia to the listeners. But at the end of the day, if you don't have visibility into inertia, especially we know as utilities from an operating standpoint, that there's inertia in that distribution system, but rarely can you see it.

39:33So you can't count on it. So then you can't operate your system differently to expect that it's going to take over from an ancillary services perspective. And I know now we're way in the weeds and my apologies, but these are pieces of the puzzle that make a difference. And so we are now seeing sensors being added to the system that give us an idea of real-time inertia. Those sensors then let you operate and get more out of your existing invested system. So those are the technologies, I think, that can really improve the world for us and give us more out of the existing system that we have that we need to encourage people to be adopting.

40:05And we need to lower the barrier to entry so that you can get that information and plug it into your systems.

40:12Melissa Lott:Every business has priorities to protect, goals to reach, and decisions that need to hold up. Energy should support all of that, not become one more thing to manage. That's why Engie takes the time to understand your business before building energy solutions around it. Your operations, your goals, your pressures, your plans for what's next. Because while Engie knows energy, no one knows your business like you. And when that expertise comes together, energy becomes more than something that powers your business. It becomes part of what helps move it forward. Engie helps turn energy plans into outcomes with solutions built around real business needs.

40:46Melissa Lott:Learn more at ngresources.com. That's E-N-G-I-E, ngresources.com. Yeah. And I'll just say, I keep coming back to this word flexibility. Like how do we get more flexibility in the system? And as you say, there are software and hardware ways to do this, but flexibility is absolutely essential. So we talk about the power grid being the backbone and the power grid includes transmission distribution. So the big wires, the small wires, how do we make sure that it's strong and flexible? We can think of our own backbone. If It's not both those things. We're in a world of hurt. You know, we need both those things in the system.

41:18And so from flexibility, I will push as well just on the idea that technology can't make a difference in the next five years. It can. But what I think about often is how big of a difference an individual tech will make and how quickly the techs that do have longer lead times will be able to deploy. And so what that does is it affects the overall balance of what's installed and what's not. So if we were able to speed up investments in the big bulk power system, that will change what investments we will see over time in the distributed side of the system. These things are related. They are not independent.

41:52And so we can see technologies that can deploy in the next few years. They are just a subset of the total available toolbox of technologies. Other ones just take a lot longer to deploy. One thing I will say in the Department of Energy report that I do want to make sure we discuss at some point, Ed, so we can put a pin in it, is this idea of firm power, intermittent power, the balance of those things. And I do appreciate the highlight in the report that essentially not all power sources are equal. I mean, they don't all do the same thing. That is not to say any one of them is bad. It's that they complement each other.

42:23And I know we've talked about the soccer team of players you need, Ed, right, to have an affordable, reliable and clean power grid over time. You want a mix of these things. You do want cheap intermittent resources of energy. But if you are taking firm power off the system, you need to understand how that's going to be replaced.

42:40Melissa Lott:Right. No, that is a great point. And so, I mean, to pick up one specific case of that, Alice mentioned inertia, and Melissa was asking you to give a view on that, which clearly inertia has been indicated to be one of the very significant factors in the Iberian Peninsula blackout earlier this year. Inertia, to me, does very much get to the point where you can only see the electrical system as magic. this is the point where you know these all these huge machines in different parts of the country running in these cycles that are kind of perfectly aligned and these things kind of flickering backwards and forwards that you know 50 60 times a second whatever it is and the electrons kind of going or not going where they go there's a whole lot of stuff there that feels kind of supernatural really I guess it isn't it works right and the lights come on when you flick all of it I am aware of the importance of inertia and I can sort of in the broadest terms see why it matters and as you say Alice you know some of those issues around sort of synthetic inertia and does synthetic inertia really supplant whatever you call what would you even call what's the opposite of synthetic inertia is it natural inertia or inherited inertia that you get from rotating machines that seems to be an issue that as I say deserves a lot more attention but I find it quite hard to get my arms around it.

44:07Melissa? I think high level, we can go into individual words and individual technologies and the idea of inertia and frequency regulation and all this stuff. Bottom line is we designed our whole system around a lot of motors and a lot of firm thermal power plants. So power plants, we burn stuff and we spend things and we have a lot of momentum in that system. Well, when you're not getting all those things in your future system, you just have to think about every component. And so that's the bottom line because we have to keep supply and demand balance, but we also have to keep the whole system stable as it operates.

44:39And so a system, again, that was designed for how we produced electricity and used electricity in the past compared to what we're planning to do with it, what we're already doing with it today, and then what we're planning to do with it in the future. These are just different things you have to consider different items. It's not just about inertia. There's a lot of stuff in the system. We designed it for a different era, a different time period when we were doing different things with it. And that's not a criticism of it. I mean, honestly, the power grid is fascinating. It's something that if you look at the past hundred years and how much has been invested in and what it's able to do and what it's still able to do, even though our demands have changed so much, I find it incredibly impressive.

45:17Again, I didn't give the power grid a C minus. ASCE did. I respect it. And the point is, how do we invest in it so it can be as continually impressive as it moves in the future and enable the things we want in life? Because as much as I find power grids pretty cool. What is even cooler and what most of us care about is the service it provides. Are my lights on? Can my business grow? That's the question we're asking. And so back to the report, I mean, it's highlighting essentially that we need to make investments. That's what I take away with it. We can go into individual components of it, Ed, but we need to invest in the system.

45:48How are we going to do it? And when we go back to what is already in the system in the United States, and Alice, you can go into this in great detail with your background and experience, but it's like we have sets of rules and restrictions and processes that dictate how we're able to invest and where we're able to invest. A lot of this makes sense because this is, again, something that supports our health and our well-being and our economic development, et cetera. So how do we think about those processes and make sure they still have the spirit of what they are there to do to protect communities, to protect people, while still allowing for the investment that provides those same people with opportunities?

46:21And so it's a million trillion dollar question about how much can we speed that up? I absolutely agree. I think the timing of this and, you know, when we reflect, and I spent a lot of time on this, is reflecting on the systems that we operate in. The systems that we operate in today have been created over the past 30 to 40 years, all with good reasons, right? Either something, you know, came up that needed to be solved, we needed a process to improve things, but at this point in time, they're also constraining us. So figuring out, and I love the way you put that, Melissa, is figuring out the way that we are still having the protections that are necessary and that need to exist.

46:58At the same time, I'm going to go back to the word flexibility, give us the flexibility to make the investments that are necessary to move forward is incredibly important. And so that is the crux of the question right now, because it comes back to rules and regulations. How do you change those with speed at the same time as we're trying to make the investment with speed? And we haven't even mentioned supply chain yet on the ability to make these investments. And so there's all kinds of layers to this system that have to be taken into account when we talk about the reality and what's realistic for us to accomplish in the next several years.

47:36I do agree. The report really highlights the need for investment. We know about the need for investment. We've been feeling the need for investment across the system for quite some time. I do believe that people were less aware of that need until some of these conversations are coming to the forefront. And it'll be very interesting to see how reactions come along and how do we move through these processes and decide what is the right path forward. I think that the public interest, which is the balance between what the people need and how do we preserve and keep the risk low for them at the same time as you balance the need for the investor, meaning the utility, into the process.

48:20Those are going to be real questions. And I think coming back to technology, there are some needs that we have to cover there on the risk side of the equation in order to be able to move it faster. And one thing I've got to say in all this, and I don't think it's wrong that we've been focusing in on increasing electricity demand from new things connecting to the grid. That's great. But we also, we have to put another one out there, which is that the same time we're having a changing climate, additional stress on the grid, which is changing our demand patterns and also changing our peaks. So when you look at emergency orders that have been issued in the past and how many of them are related to heat waves, and this isn't just in the U.S., but the equivalents in other places around the world.

48:56You look at Europe and summer heat waves and the stress it's putting on the system. This is a very real issue. So we're looking at, okay, let's make this challenge even more. Alice, you have a really interesting job. I'll just say that. I guess we both do, but it's like, okay, we're trying to operate a system that it was not designed for what we're trying to do with it. I mean, it was designed for the core components supplying electricity, but we are definitely pushing it to its limits. we are not used to our muscle memory is is low when it comes to building new capacity to meet increasing demand and at the same time we have a changing climate where the extremes are are worse where demand that we thought we could you know predict pretty well well it's not the same as it was before we can't just use the weather of the past to say okay project it forward and we'll be all right it's like more strain is being put on the system so we have to solve for all those things at once and i for one am just glad that our energy and climate models speak to each other a little bit better than they used to in the past, because in the past, we didn't have those two kind of data sets actually contributing to decisions.

49:54And it's not perfect, and it's not everywhere, but we do have more of that communication happening today.

49:59Melissa Lott:Didn't know that was the case. That's really interesting that now energy and climate models are integrated. That, as you say, makes an enormous amount of sense. And I want tons of caveats. They're not fully integrated. They're not perfect. They aren't having dinner every night at the table together or anything like that. But we have instances where we have seen analysis in Argonne National Laboratories as one of these examples where they've looked at infrastructure and not just energy, but also telecommunications, which is very important as well. Like, okay, what happens in the face of a changing climate?

50:27How do the risk profiles change over time? And so that's why I had all the caveats of not everywhere, not perfectly, not how I would ideally want it to if I had the magic fairy wand today. But it is still more than when I started in my career, which was they just didn't. They didn't ever hang out. They never met up. They never spoke to each other. So we are in a better place than we were. Yeah. So when we talk about what needs to change here, Melissa, you are spot on with all the weather pieces. So I'm going to geek on modeling for just a minute. At the root of the modeling components, the number one driver of what it's going to look like is your load forecast.

51:02The load forecast is the starting point for everything. So whether you're talking about climate and what's changing, the adoption of new technologies and it's changing, whether you're adding AI or you're driving your load growth from EVs or from on-showing, the load forecast is the starting point. So once you get to a point of like, we think this is a realistic load forecast, you then go through your capacity expansion model, look at what generation do I need to meet that load? Then you look at, okay, when I add that generation, do I have the transmission to move the electrons that are being harnessed to the customers that need it in this new way?

51:38But then you have all of these other pieces because when you put your load forecast together, you put it together based on average. You put it based on average weather. You put it on based on average utilization. You put it based off of average production. And so therefore, you have to build something around it. And I like to talk about this with people when I'm trying to explain it to them. When you go and you plan your retirement with your financial planner, you don't sit there and say this is the single outcome because you have no idea if the stock market is going to return you 8%, 23%, or negative 10.

52:10And likely you're going to see all of those at some point in time, right, across the time frame that you have to get to retirement, especially if you're in your 20s and you're looking at this. So what do they run? They run Monte Carlo simulations. And they sit there and say, if you go on this trajectory, then you end up with the probability of getting to the outcome you are looking for of this. And if you don't like that probability, you make a change, Right? You change the way that you're saving money or where you're investing or things along those lines. So when I think about what we are marching forward into, the uncertainty around exactly what climate is going to do, the uncertainty on the data center, how fast is it going to come?

52:48How big is it going to be? How long is it going to be there? On the adoption curves and the propensity for customers to change their preferences, whether it's on their transportation modes or their heating questions in their homes, or if they're going to adopt a rooftop solar or not. All of those things compound the probabilistic outcome of accuracy on your load forecast. So we need to run these more flexible pieces. You run your capacity expansion model, you get an outcome. Once you have that outcome, then you have to run it through all kinds of different scenarios that range on what is this going to look like and how is it going to come together.

53:22That way, just like in your financial forecast, you can come back and you can have like, this is the probabilistic outcome that I'm going to meet this variety of scenarios. That, to me, is where we really have to take the modeling component. And right now, the barrier to doing that is actually processing. You would need NREL's supercomputer, InvisLab, to go through this for each and every utility. And so we have to find a way to bring these tools to where we need them to be, to be able to do this kind of probabilistic analysis, to get people to a point where it's just like your financial planning is, I am now good with the direction this is going because I can satisfy what I am looking for in a variety of situations to meet the needs of the system that I'm moving towards.

54:05And a quick comment on that is just that if you look at the acknowledgments in this report from, what was it, July 7th, when this evaluating U.S. gradual liability and security report came out, they cite Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, PNNL, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, NREL. And it's the idea of like, where do we actually have the power to compete this? Now, at the same time, let's back up for a minute and say, and this is not me in And anyway, pushing back on everything you just said, Dallas, you saw my face. I was like, yep, load forecast. Let's talk about it. But OK, back up for a minute.

54:34Let's make it really simple, just in a hypothetical situation for one second, which is we have, let's just take the bottom of a load forecast with all the uncertainties, the bottom of it. How do we make our systems even able to meet that? Like, how do we make them be able to meet that very quickly? How do we streamline processes? Because you don't just have all these models that have to be run. You then have all these processes that have to happen around them. And so how do you get the computational power? Sure. But even if we took that out of it, it's still slower than maybe we're hoping it was a process right now, just based on all that.

55:06OK, now that we know this, what's the decision that we make and how do we make it? How do we bring people in? How do we come to consensus? How do we actually get the thing built, get the steel in the ground?

55:14Melissa Lott:yeah right so this is something I wanted to ask about and interested to get your thoughts Alice on how your work relates to this which is a practical example of the kind of things Melissa has just been talking about interconnection cues it takes a very long time often for projects to get through them yeah so anyway I'm interested in your thoughts about that and how your work relates to that issue and whether you think it might be possible to make some progress there in order to speed up that process? Yeah, I think from the work that I'm doing now through Breakthrough, it doesn't have a significant impact on the queues, other than to the extent that we can improve the tools that have to run the processing in order to look at who's on first, what are the cost allocations, all of those pieces of the puzzle.

56:03Speed there would help. But I will tell you is I have somewhat of a mixed view of queues because of the length of time I've spent in the industry and the complications that have come around them. One, some people have stayed in the queue just to be able to sell their queue slot, right? So some people are in line just because there's profitability potential, not actuality all the time, but potential. And so therefore it skews the queue as to what is actually real and what is not. Others have stayed in the queue because of the fact that, well, they may not have a project that is necessarily viable at that point in time, but there's the hope that with their spot, they will have a project that's viable because they may not have an offtaker.

56:49Other problems come back to the modeling and actually moving through the processes. So there's a bunch of different layers as to the complications behind the queues. I don't think that there's much that I'm working on currently in my most recent in the role that I'm sitting in now that's going to impact the queues. But I do know that is excessively frustrating, especially in areas where you have significant load growth even today and you have to run an RFP. So for example, we ran an RFP when I was still at Excel last year, 2024. And unless you were done with the interconnection queue in 2016, you couldn't even submit a bid.

57:29So that tells you how far off some of these things are in the processing. And this is before load growth became a real issue, right? So it's not like the current day environment is what's causing some of these problems. They have persisted for quite some time. and the uncertainty that comes with the transmission costs because you haven't finished your queue, well, then utilities have a really hard time committing to the project because the regulator wants to know how much it's going to cost. And you have a range that goes from, okay, we can do it here to no, I absolutely can't do it over here.

58:06And that's where the problems come in is that you can't move forward. So there is not just one answer to this one. It's a whole lot of different things that have to come together.

58:17Melissa Lott:Yeah, just going back to Melissa's point then, I mean, sorry, I don't want to put words in your mouth, Melissa, but as I understood what you're saying, it's basically that, you know, you can do what you like with technology, and you can have new tools, and you can use massive amounts of computing power to analyze issues rapidly. But at the end of the day, when there are sort of fundamental issues of law and regulation and competing commercial interests and so on, actually, that's always going to put sand in the machine. It's always going to make it more difficult to get things sorted quickly. And so as much progress as you might make on the technological side, some of these things are pretty difficult to change.

59:00I'll phrase it a little bit differently, Ed, as what I think is practical pathways forward involve more than just, okay, great, I'm able to model this out. It's like, okay, well, what's in your model? What are the exogenous constraints you put on it? Have you considered the development of your supply chain? When does that signal need to be sent for certain technologies to grow out? And I'm not just thinking about newer technologies, the big batteries that weren't a thing 50 years ago when we were building out lots of these systems because price points weren't there, technology wasn't there. I'm also thinking about like natural gas turbines.

59:28You know, Ed, I've been following that and just wondering, okay, if we need to replace one, how far in advance do I need to order it? And so this goes back to putting practical constraints within your model. And it changes what tools come out of your toolbox. So let's say you've got 10 different tools in your toolbox, you might deploy any number of a mix of those to like get the job done. But then I tell you, you know what, I'm going to take that wrench out. Because while the wrench could in theory work, here's an another constraint we just haven't thought of that makes it practically impossible for you to be able to use in that situation.

59:57You're under your sink and that wrench can't get behind the thing that you have to loosen. Okay, well, now I can't do it. So we have to think about all these things. And how many times, Ed, I mean, how many times do you think we could like do a little checker of how many times have I said practical pathways forward, practical pathways forward. So I can model it, but what's the practical way that something gets built? And the stuff when I hear you talk about these restrictions, Alice, about when you would have had to get into the queue, well, okay, that means one tool in my toolbox is gone. I can't use that tool anymore.

1:00:24So what am I left with? And what would I use in that? Okay, not ideal deal and theoretically perfect world, but in the world that I'm living in.

1:00:31Melissa Lott:Yeah, that's a really good point so I want to throw in another example then another big current controversy that people talk about a lot which is the difficulty of getting new transmission infrastructure built and again something makes just having started your project back in 2016 seem mild right there are transmission projects now getting finished that they started building or started thinking about back in the early years of this century. So a lot of that seems to come down, doesn't it? Not to technology at all, but to regulation, political interests, what people want in different communities around the country, the structure of American democracy, which means that a lot of people have a say in things, the structure of the American legal system, which means that it's pretty easy to challenge things in the courts and so on.

1:01:21Melissa Lott:Do those things then end up being really fundamental barriers to getting the grid developed. And as I say, as much as you want to do with technology and tools, planning the grid is made much harder because of those structures. So when I think about the transmission and being able to get it built, I think that there's a variety of pieces of that puzzle again. It's not just one thing. And I think it depends also on where you're located. For example, the Colorado Power Pathway, a 560 mile, 345 kV transmission line through the eastern plains of Colorado that will deliver gigawatts of energy back to load centers for renewables and other assets that can be built out on the plains beneficially for customers.

1:02:06So that project started in 2021 and is in construction today. So when you talk about timelines, that's not terrible. Some people might sit there and go, that's bad. But no, in the grand scheme of transmission projects, that's not terrible. But it also faces challenges, right? There are some counties that, you know, sit there and say, yes, while we're getting the generation built here and we get the tax base that comes here, the electrons don't necessarily benefit the people here. And so we don't necessarily want it built here. And you have to work through those processes, those permitting components, the conversations with the communities, the routing, and all of that impacts time as well as cost.

1:02:45And that is repeated across this country and around the world. It's not just unique to the U.S. that we have this issue time and time again. And a lot of people say, well, why don't you underground it? Well, the expense associated with that is much higher. In some places, it makes sense. In others, it doesn't. But there are, you know, whether it's environmental reasons, it's personal preference reasons for landowners, we have a lot of things that we've got to look at if we're truly going to meet this energy need that we've been talking about in this conversation. We have to be able to build infrastructure.

1:03:16I agree that infrastructure is not always pretty to everyone. For those of us in the industry, sometimes it's beautiful. But for most people, it is not the prettiest thing to look at. But it is necessary to once again, get back to our vitality, our health and our wellness is we have to have the infrastructure in order to be able to deliver it. So finding a pathway, literally, for permitting and routing and being able to build the infrastructure is critical.

1:03:40Melissa Lott:So thanks so much. Been fantastic talking to you. Unfortunately, we do just about have to leave it there just about out of time just before we go we have time for our free electrons um personal items that we brought in things we want to talk about i don't know who wants to go first melissa do you want to start i was signaling over dallas it's her first time on the show of course i'm sorry of course as you think it'll limit the number i'm able to give so there we go indeed indeed yeah coming into this conversation i had one thought that i wanted to share is the free electron but i think i'm going to pivot a little bit uh because some of our conversation around inertia and go a little bit of old school in this free electron.

1:04:18And that is, I wonder how many people remember that your digital clock is actually keeping time because of the grid. That 60 hertz is the heartbeat of your digital clock. So when you think about that clock on your oven or the one that maybe is still old and sitting on your bedside table, the heartbeat of that time is the grid. So when you think about how important this underpins our lives, it is literally keeping time for you. And I think that that is a important fundamental foundation of thinking about the importance of energy in our lives, how it impacts things. And then you can extrapolate upon that into the inertia conversation.

1:05:00So just one more second here. When your clock doesn't keep good time, you notice it, right? It doesn't match up with your phone or whatever else is going on, that's when something has deviated on the grid and that heartbeat hasn't been where it needs to be. That inertia piece, those large generators that can take and give inertia back to the system, it's kind of like a pacemaker. So if the energy is the heartbeat, the pacemaker are these grid assets that can make sure that that heartbeat stays in the pattern it's supposed to be in. So with that, I'll leave that as my little nugget.

1:05:32Melissa Lott:That is fantastic. That's really lovely yeah thanks very much and as i say i'm always interested in learning more about inertia and that's a lovely little example of it and a great illustration of how it's uh important um melissa what's yours um so i was going to bring up a uh it's a pbs episode that features a good friend of mine cheryl kerschenbaum and a gentleman named chef chris galarza uh the reason i bring it up is because this episode is called gas first induction stoves the heated debate. And I bring it up because we're talking about electrification. It made me rethink of this, but also something I learned from Chris, because I did this documentary with PBS Nova a number of years ago that Chris was in.

1:06:12And he was talking about, you know, someone who, I mean, I delivered dishes to a commercial kitchen, but I was never a chef in a commercial kitchen. And he is, he's a very widely recognized, very accomplished chef. And he says, you know what, one of the biggest things he ran into in his kitchens was the just oppressive heat and the health impacts from that in addition to all the air pollution in particular sit in the air in those kitchens and what happened when he started designing his kitchens to work with induction the number of injuries that didn't happen um how much healthier and happier his staff were he's like you know i'd have my little thermometer in my pocket maybe 109 110 in the teens in that kitchen and you're cooking cooking cooking and then you would leave and now with induction he's like, it's great.

1:06:55It's quieter. It's healthier. I have riskless injuries. My entire staff is healthier and happier. Anyway, I just thought it was a really cool episode that Cheryl, who I used to work with at the University of Texas at Austin, she hosts the show and Chris did together. It's an oldie goodie, but I don't think I've mentioned it on the show before. So I just want to throw it out. I was rediscovering it this last week on my phone.

1:07:15Melissa Lott:Yeah, no, it does sound great. And sorry, tell us again, what's the name of the show? What's the episode? Where do we find it? It's called Serving Up Science. And the episode, it's episode two of season five, apparently. I just looked it up on here. And it's called Gas vs. Induction Stoves, The Heated Debate. And it talks about how gas stoves have ruled the kitchens for so long and what is happening when it comes to induction, specifically induction, not just electric cooking, but induction. I will say in the Nova episode I was in, they did a quick shrimp stir fry, Ed, and the speed with which he cooked it and the precision he said he got with his ingredients, which I eat it and enjoy it.

1:07:53And that's great. He understands what goes into that enjoyment. It was really impressive and fascinating. And it's just an angle on it I hadn't thought of. Yeah. Because I come at it from the climate and efficiency angle.

1:08:03Melissa Lott:No, but that's a great example of something we talk about quite a bit on the show, which is the need for your low carbon future product to be superior to what it's replacing. So my free electrons, that is something else we talk about. Alice, you were talking about people often not liking to look at energy infrastructure. I'm currently in Massachusetts. sits and I've just been in Rhode Island over the weekend and still struck by the number of people that are protesting against offshore wind here and you see quite often you know the little signs with the wind turbine crossed out and it's obviously still a real issue in some of these communities and it's interesting we at Wood Mackenzie we've just published a recent report we do a kind of quarterly monitor of clean energy with ACP America's Clean Power which is the industry group.

1:08:57Melissa Lott:And if you look at what's happening to the wind industry because of various factors, but including strong opposition from the Trump administration, of course, it does look like offshore wind is going to be stalled in the US. I was just looking at the numbers here. So there's a few projects that are under construction and something like 5.9, just under six gigawatts of offshore wind capacity will be installed we think in the US over the next four years or so by 2029 but then after that really there are no new projects coming those projects that are underway already look like they're going to go through but as I say no one's going to come up with a new project and there's various reasons for that and partly it's about issues in the industry and upward pressure and costs and so on and if you think that offshore wind was going to be an important part of the energy mix needs to be an important part of the energy mix in the long term it certainly had a real setback in this country and certainly not going to be that as they perhaps it'll start picking up again into the 2030s but not at all for the foreseeable future.

1:10:12Melissa Lott:I guess you can debate whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, and maybe some of the pressures that have driven the growth of offshore wind in Europe don't exist in the same way in the US, so maybe there's less need for it here. But still, it's one of those things that is, I think, certainly at least, put it this way, it is disappointing to see that the industry that so many people pinned so many hopes on, that's not now going to happen. it's interesting in some of the areas within texas i mean um alice ed knows i'm a deep texas root person um so i was smiling earlier at the top of the show and you're talking through your background and you know the no wind when the onshore wind boom was coming when the crezzo and the competitive renewable energy zone lines were going out and all of that and which which different towns are being cited the fredericksburg problem was one where you know and i don't like the word problem it's just the fredericksburg barrier was a big one i'm thinking about that But I'm also thinking about the differences I've seen in different countries.

1:11:08So when I'm on the southern coast of England and it's offshore and one popular thing to do there is to get on the boat for the tours around the offshore wind turbines. And it's a it's a popular thing to do. It's a fun tourist activity. So it's just it's very interesting to see those things. And I will say locals seem to enjoy that tour as well. So with that, I always wish we had more time. But it's just a it's an interesting practical set of comments you made about consumer preferences.

1:11:32Melissa Lott:yeah no indeed indeed which are so important as you say that we are unfortunately out of time we do have to leave it there many thanks alice for joining us thank you so much for having me it's been a joy many thanks melissa thanks for having me on i hope you will um when we or another be back on again very soon thanks to our producer toby biggins gilchrist and above all many thanks to all of you for listening we really value your feedback as well please keep that coming and And we'll be back in two weeks with all the latest news and views on the energy transition. Until then, goodbye.