Utility
topic on 6 shows · 18 statements across 17 episodes
Sourcery 
Capital Allocators 
Catalyst 
the Green Blueprint 
the a16z Podcast 
20VC
18 statements about Utility, every show
Kann: Data centers entering a community tend to lower local electricity rates
“The objective truth, particularly today, is that a data center coming into a community tends to lower rates because nowadays, you
You know, the deal that the utility is striking with the data center is basically guaranteed to do that, sort of the whole point.”
Wong: Utility planning studies rarely feed into real-time operations
“Of course, each utility might be different, but that is a very, very rare scenario, that they, these study assumptions and results actually feed into operations because they're measured by the different results and KPIs and all that kind of stuff.”
Lopez: Utilities in regulated markets pay Base Power for home battery access
“And so in those markets, we partner with the utility. We still put the battery on the home. We own the battery, but the utility controls it, and then they pay us for access to the battery. So that's how we recoup, recoup the cost of the battery, so to speak, a…”
McAvoy: Data centers are funding off-site batteries to speed up grid interconnection
“We are seeing data centers like, you know, and even retail Energy providers who are coming to a utility hand in hand and saying, look, we want to put a data center here. I'm the retail energy provider. I'm going to provide this data center with energy. I neede…”
Utilities evaluate data center interconnections on peak capacity, not annual energy
“The problem we're trying to solve here is not that I need a 24 seven generation to match a 24 seven load. It's that I need to solve for The summer peaks and the winter system peaks in order to connect alone. That's what a utility does, and I think it's a, I th…”
Lafarge: Distributed capacity procurement is essentially a utility-led VPP
“We see the distributed capacity procurement concept as a part of the virtual power plant. Moment. I think a DCP is just one way to achieve that outcome. And the assets would be installed on customer locations. They're paid for by a utility as part of their inf…”
Waste services operate like utilities without regulatory return caps
“So when you think about a stable business model, waste really fits the bill, and it's in some measure like a utility, yet there's not a rate cap on the returns.”
Engstrom: Residential electricity customers buy convenience, not commodity electrons
“Residential customers who, you know, ultimately I believe don't think they're buying electrons from their utility. They're buying convenience. I come home. I turn on my lights. I turn on my air conditioner. It works. They're not thinking about how much am I pa…”
Shah: Zero-backfeed VPPs bypass utility permission hurdles by only offsetting load
“And so if you make a simplifying assumption, which is that no one is backfeeding anything into the grid. Right? Right? That the batteries you know, basically use case here is to make your home go off grid. Right? Sort of an energy efficiency play. So your home…”
Janus: Most utility employees have never worked during an era of load growth
“Most people that work at a utility today have never worked at a utility during an era of growth.”
Palazzi: One utility saved $5M in a month improving demand forecasts
“Apparently by improving the predictions, they saved more than five million dollars in a single month by avoiding exposure to a big real-time price spike.”
Downing: VPP peaking capacity can be 60% cheaper than gas peakers
“For a utility, procuring peaking capacity from a VPP can be 60% cheaper than procuring it from a natural gas peaker plant.”
Lubbershane: EV and Heat Pump Adoption Will Overwhelm Local Transformers
“We're going to start to see more and more instances in which that distributed load begins to have to be coordinated with the utility because it's going to overwhelm the capacity of, you know, network transformers and, you know, individual households who want t…”
Lubbershane: Distribution Transformer Prices Rose Up to 9x Between 2020 and 2023
“The average price for a 25 to 50 kilowatt transformer so pretty low level, something you would see at the edge of the electric distribution system increased by up to nine times from twenty-twenty to twenty-twenty-three. It used to pay, you know, 3500 bucks for…”
Systrom: Every successful social app begins as a utility before scaling
“Every app that is successful in social starts off as a utility, and it becomes a large social behemoth over time.”
Popham: Utilities must lead publicly on EV strategy or lose regulatory influence
“The first thing you should kind of do as utility is decide what your strategy and your outcomes are and then make that public. Have a public vision to your strategy you know, be a speaker and be seen as a leader, because what's going to happen is there's a lot…”
Kann: Solar and wind produce cheapest bids in most open utility RFPs
“Solar is cheap enough now that in most places, Solar and wind, I should say. Most places it is true today that if a utility or somebody issues an open RFP and just says, I want the cheapest power I can get, like, give me the cheapest kilowatt hours, the respon…”
Wilson: Digital connectivity should be treated as a public utility
“Not just the roads, the bridges, those physical things that immediately come to mind, but also those physical assets that help make modern society possible and connectivity, like, as something that should be viewed as a utility and as infrastructure to a moder…”