The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 9 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
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: 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.”
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…”
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: 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…”