I don't get all the rationalizing the utility rep is expressing. These utilities have an obligation to integrate innovations into their operations to increase reliability and resilience while reducing costs. An yet, for decades widely recognized problems with widely recognized technological solutions have festered. I also do not buy the claim that AI is the solution to all this. It seems to me AI is at least as much of the problem as it is the solution. You don't have to use AI to install GETs and grid shaping inverters on solar, wind, and battery storage systems. The main problem I see is regulatory capture of Investor Owned Utilities and a lack of oversight of munis and coops. Many coops are operated as personal fiefdoms of local yahoos.
Shouting from the rooftops again: the US has over 800 electric cooperatives and almost 2,000 publicly owned utilities, all of which are nonprofit! These utilities have extremely varied characteristics on revenue, member/customer base, internal engineering capabilities, and leadership (Boards of Directors and municipal councils) and they simply cannot do the research necessary for the kind of innovation you’re talking about. They rely on startups, product vendors and national research labs for innovation in equipment and software and many of them rely on consultants like me for some degree of planning innovation. But they’re still limited by their nonprofit organization! They just don’t have excess capital.
Sean, if publicly-owned utilities and cooperatives are so bad, why do they produce electricity for their customers at a fraction of the cost of big investor-owned utilities? Why would investor-owned utilities want to make electricity more efficient and cheaper when that will make less money for investors?
I wasn't trying to say that they're bad! I was trying to make sure they get acknowledged in these conversations. David and his guests are always talking about "Utilities" writ large when what they really mean is specifically investor-owned, for-profit, regulated utilities, which are a very small fraction of the total number of electric utilities that exist in the US (even if they serve a large portion of the population). Nonprofit utilities face an entirely different set of challenges and are on a totally different level when talking about "innovation". I absolutely don't think Cooperatives and municipals are bad; I've spent the last 18 years consulting for those utilities and helping them innovate wherever they can. I'm also active in industry conferences focused on innovating in the rural power space and would happily argue that rural utilities are doing quite a lot of innovation that gets largely overlooked or ignored by the rest of the electric power industry. Just because they can't do it at the speed or scale that huge IOUs can doesn't mean it isn't happening.
I took me 12 mos. (and over a dozen calls) to correct National Grid's failure to charge me for electricity. They didn't believe I had an electric meter installed and I needed to schedule four different inspections. Most of my calls began at scratch even though each support person told me they were annotating my file with great detail. It was a very sad experience.
The utility sector doesn't have a technology adoption problem. It has an accounting distortion that violates physical reality. ⚡
When a transmission line is treated as a 40-year static iron asset, every operational optimization looks like a financial liability. Regulated utilities earn returns on capital expenditure, not operational elegance. Installing a physical copper conductor yields a guaranteed rate base over four decades. Deploying dynamic line rating software or real-time phase balance controllers cuts through rate cases as immediate operational expense. OpEx hits next year's customer bills directly. CapEx spreads out smoothly. The balance sheet demands raw steel in the dirt, even when the physics screams for real-time digital orchestration. 🏗️
This is why 70% of grid tech startups die in pilot purgatory. The software isn't broken. The regulatory ledger is.
Look at the actual transmission capacity running through existing corridors. Ambient-adjusted ratings and dynamic thermal monitoring prove that transmission lines carry massive latent headroom during cold or windy conditions. We don't lack physical electrons or aluminum conductors. We lack a continuous state observer capable of turning static thermal ratings into dynamic, provably safe transmission envelopes. 📊
Here is the core thesis: electric transmission capacity isn't a fixed thermodynamic limit of metal in air. It's a measurement resolution problem. If you measure conductor temperature, sag, and local wind vectors at sub-second intervals, existing rights-of-way can safely carry 35% to 50% more throughput without laying an inch of new cable. 🔌
Treating software-defined grid controls as back-office IT expenses instead of core digital capital infrastructure is economic suicide when multi-gigawatt data center loads are coming online. You can't solve a multi-gigawatt load surge with a five-year procurement cycle.
If the entire utility ratemaking framework rewards building redundant concrete over maximizing the throughput of existing physical assets, how long before ratepayer backlash halts the next wave of industrial electrification entirely? 💬
It can be frustrating to be in a state with a democrat trifecta, which appoints the PUC, and a customer of the largest utility, and read about the nifty stuff we don't have here yet. We just got smart meters (hopefully gen 2) and TOU rates a few months ago.
EPRI was supposed to substitute for each utility doing duplicative R&D. They seem nuke-obsessed right now though. And the results of whatever R&D done elsewhere need to be accepted without reinventing the wheel with long slow pilot projects.
Maybe it's the PUC that needs R&D money of its own. Maybe it needs to be much larger and micromanage the utilities. I dunno, could go bad too.
I don't get all the rationalizing the utility rep is expressing. These utilities have an obligation to integrate innovations into their operations to increase reliability and resilience while reducing costs. An yet, for decades widely recognized problems with widely recognized technological solutions have festered. I also do not buy the claim that AI is the solution to all this. It seems to me AI is at least as much of the problem as it is the solution. You don't have to use AI to install GETs and grid shaping inverters on solar, wind, and battery storage systems. The main problem I see is regulatory capture of Investor Owned Utilities and a lack of oversight of munis and coops. Many coops are operated as personal fiefdoms of local yahoos.
Shouting from the rooftops again: the US has over 800 electric cooperatives and almost 2,000 publicly owned utilities, all of which are nonprofit! These utilities have extremely varied characteristics on revenue, member/customer base, internal engineering capabilities, and leadership (Boards of Directors and municipal councils) and they simply cannot do the research necessary for the kind of innovation you’re talking about. They rely on startups, product vendors and national research labs for innovation in equipment and software and many of them rely on consultants like me for some degree of planning innovation. But they’re still limited by their nonprofit organization! They just don’t have excess capital.
Sean, if publicly-owned utilities and cooperatives are so bad, why do they produce electricity for their customers at a fraction of the cost of big investor-owned utilities? Why would investor-owned utilities want to make electricity more efficient and cheaper when that will make less money for investors?
I wasn't trying to say that they're bad! I was trying to make sure they get acknowledged in these conversations. David and his guests are always talking about "Utilities" writ large when what they really mean is specifically investor-owned, for-profit, regulated utilities, which are a very small fraction of the total number of electric utilities that exist in the US (even if they serve a large portion of the population). Nonprofit utilities face an entirely different set of challenges and are on a totally different level when talking about "innovation". I absolutely don't think Cooperatives and municipals are bad; I've spent the last 18 years consulting for those utilities and helping them innovate wherever they can. I'm also active in industry conferences focused on innovating in the rural power space and would happily argue that rural utilities are doing quite a lot of innovation that gets largely overlooked or ignored by the rest of the electric power industry. Just because they can't do it at the speed or scale that huge IOUs can doesn't mean it isn't happening.
Thanks for your reply, Sean. I misunderstood. I think we are on the same page.
I took me 12 mos. (and over a dozen calls) to correct National Grid's failure to charge me for electricity. They didn't believe I had an electric meter installed and I needed to schedule four different inspections. Most of my calls began at scratch even though each support person told me they were annotating my file with great detail. It was a very sad experience.
The utility sector doesn't have a technology adoption problem. It has an accounting distortion that violates physical reality. ⚡
When a transmission line is treated as a 40-year static iron asset, every operational optimization looks like a financial liability. Regulated utilities earn returns on capital expenditure, not operational elegance. Installing a physical copper conductor yields a guaranteed rate base over four decades. Deploying dynamic line rating software or real-time phase balance controllers cuts through rate cases as immediate operational expense. OpEx hits next year's customer bills directly. CapEx spreads out smoothly. The balance sheet demands raw steel in the dirt, even when the physics screams for real-time digital orchestration. 🏗️
This is why 70% of grid tech startups die in pilot purgatory. The software isn't broken. The regulatory ledger is.
Look at the actual transmission capacity running through existing corridors. Ambient-adjusted ratings and dynamic thermal monitoring prove that transmission lines carry massive latent headroom during cold or windy conditions. We don't lack physical electrons or aluminum conductors. We lack a continuous state observer capable of turning static thermal ratings into dynamic, provably safe transmission envelopes. 📊
Here is the core thesis: electric transmission capacity isn't a fixed thermodynamic limit of metal in air. It's a measurement resolution problem. If you measure conductor temperature, sag, and local wind vectors at sub-second intervals, existing rights-of-way can safely carry 35% to 50% more throughput without laying an inch of new cable. 🔌
Treating software-defined grid controls as back-office IT expenses instead of core digital capital infrastructure is economic suicide when multi-gigawatt data center loads are coming online. You can't solve a multi-gigawatt load surge with a five-year procurement cycle.
If the entire utility ratemaking framework rewards building redundant concrete over maximizing the throughput of existing physical assets, how long before ratepayer backlash halts the next wave of industrial electrification entirely? 💬
(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡⚡
It can be frustrating to be in a state with a democrat trifecta, which appoints the PUC, and a customer of the largest utility, and read about the nifty stuff we don't have here yet. We just got smart meters (hopefully gen 2) and TOU rates a few months ago.
EPRI was supposed to substitute for each utility doing duplicative R&D. They seem nuke-obsessed right now though. And the results of whatever R&D done elsewhere need to be accepted without reinventing the wheel with long slow pilot projects.
Maybe it's the PUC that needs R&D money of its own. Maybe it needs to be much larger and micromanage the utilities. I dunno, could go bad too.