Aug 4, 2023 · 28m · catalyst
With Great Power: What other industries can teach utilities about innovation
Rayford Smith · 18m spoken Brad Langley · 5m spoken Daniel Waldorf · 1m spoken Jeff Bezos · 9s spoken News Anchor · 5s spoken
0:00 / 0:00
gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this crossover episode of With Great Power, AES Chief Utility Innovation Officer Rayford Smith discusses how the electric power sector can overcome regulatory bottlenecks, deploy artificial intelligence, and adopt tech-industry operating models to accelerate grid decarbonization.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
Shayle as informed peer 4.0 Guest teaching 4.6 Guest disagreement 1.1 Shayle pushing back 1.0
speaking balance: gold is Shayle, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 25:15 Audacious interconnection goals
Smith forcefully rejects conventional claims that grid interconnections cannot be completed in under 12 to 18 months, arguing utilities must aggressively aim for one to three months.
Hardest push from Shayle ▶ 22:36 Challenging rate-making timelinesLangley directly questions the standard 18 to 24 month regulatory timeline for rate adjustments, pressing on why it cannot be truncated down to three to six months.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 19:50 The temporal mismatch arbitrageSmith educates the listener by breaking down the structural arbitrage created when smart grid edge devices adjust in seconds while utility rate cases take over a year to update.
Shayle holds their own ▶ 16:44 Referencing the Bellefield project detailsLangley demonstrates deep sector awareness by citing AES's specific acquisition of the two-gigawatt Bellefield solar plus storage project in California.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Shayle as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Shayle pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google's Ambitious Leap to 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Host Brad Langley introduces Google's 24/7 carbon-free energy initiative with recorded clips before asking Rayford Smith to reflect on changes across his career. Smith provides nuanced context on how the core physics remain unchanged while regulatory and market structures undergo continuous waves of deregulation and innovation. | |
| Applying Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning from Google X to the Grid | 4 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Langley asks about moonshot projects at Google X and the emerging role of AI and machine learning. Smith provides a technical breakdown of model explainability challenges versus heuristic models while highlighting AI's potential to accelerate power flow iterations. | |
| The Next Frontier: Distributed Analytics and the Transactive Edge Grid | 4 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Langley prompts Smith on future grid technologies beyond AMI and the necessary talent shifts. Smith outlines edge-based distributed analytics and transactive grid concepts, noting the imperative for utilities to internally develop data science capabilities. | |
| Synergies and Collaboration Between Tech Giants and Utilities | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Langley asks how tech giants and power utilities can effectively collaborate. Smith illustrates how tech companies can dynamically shift data center power demand across time and space in response to real-time grid conditions and carbon intensity. | |
| Returning to Utilities and AES's Aggressive Clean Energy Strategy | 5 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Langley cites specific industry knowledge regarding AES's acquisition of the two-gigawatt Bellefield solar plus storage project. Smith explains how AES combines utility operations, clean energy assets, and internal innovation incubators. | |
| Railroads vs. Telecoms: The Strategic Crossroads for Utilities | 4 | 6 | 2 | 1 | Langley asks about Smith's railroad versus telecom metaphor for utility strategy. Smith details the dangerous pricing arbitrage between sub-second algorithmic edge responses and slow multi-month utility rate adjustment processes. | |
| Overcoming Regulatory Bottlenecks in Rate Making | 5 | 5 | 2 | 2 | Langley presses on why rate cases take up to 24 months and questions what must change to truncate that timeline down to months. Smith rejects complacency around interconnection delays, insisting the sector must set ambitious targets of one to three months. | |
| Career Legacy, Superpowers, and Final Reflections | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | The conversation concludes warmly with conversational questions about career legacy, personal superpowers, and the necessity of collaborative teamwork. |
Statements from this episode (11)
Langley: One-Third of World's Largest Companies Have Net-Zero Targets
“A third of the world's largest companies now have net zero targets in place for carbon emissions.”
Rayford Smith: 24/7 carbon-free energy is vastly harder than 100% renewables
“This is a fundamental sea change in how we do it, and it's considerably harder than what we had been accomplished up to that date.”
Rayford Smith: AI's lack of explainability hinders regulatory approval in utilities
“One of the areas that's challenging is the explainability of it. When you're training these models, you're trying to get them to do what they do, and then they go make decisions. It's really hard to kind of backtrace, like, why did you make decision X versus w…”
Rayford Smith: Utilities won't replace Newton-Raphson power flow models with AI soon
“The promise is there and we'll absolutely get there. But there's just some significant challenges technology-wise to make sure that, you know, no, you're not going to throw out your Newton-Raphson power flow model tomorrow because we've got this cool AI. Like,…”
Rayford Smith Predicts Power Grids Will Shift Optimization Algorithms to the Edge
“And I think what you're going to start to see is you're going to start to see those technologies show up at the edge. You're going to start to see a much more intelligent, interactive ecosystem along the lines of IOT. And I think ultimately what that looks lik…”
Smith: Google dynamically shifted computing loads based on grid constraints and carbon
“When I was at Google, one of the things we did was we created the ability to basically forecast forward power prices grid constraints, carbon content and then dynamically move our load around to take advantage of that. So if there was a storm and there was goi…”
AES acquired the 2-gigawatt Bellefield project, America's largest solar-plus-storage site
“I think you recently acquired the two gigawatt Bellfield solar plus storage project, which is under construction in California. It's set to be the largest solar plus storage project in the U.S. Once it's complete.”
Rayford Smith: Utilities naturally prefer acting like low-innovation railroads
“And I think that utilities, like, their natural inclination is to be the railroad because that's the safe and it's the consistent thing that they've always done, and it's explainable to regulators, it's explainable to shareholders, to Wall Street, like, that, …”
Rayford Smith: AES started a robotics company to automate solar panel installation
“We started a robotics company that can automatically lay those down. We have another one that can basically, it folds out like an accordion to basically speed up those sorts of challenges. We, we're an investor in, in one of the leading areas in, in terms of u…”
Rayford Smith: Google sometimes waited seven years for data center transmission access
“I can tell you when we were building data centers at Google, you know, in some places it took us seven years to get transmission access. In other places it took us, you know, 18 months to two years.”
Rayford Smith: Utilities should target one-month grid interconnections, not 18 months
“I've heard people say there's no way to get things on the grid faster than that, 12 to 18 months. I think fundamentally like that, then we still have a problem. Like we should be shooting for three months. We should be shooting for one month.”