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Episode #98: 'Maximizing Innovative Grid Tech to Transform the Power Sector' with David Groarke, Paul Sayour, and Leo Trudel of Indigo Advisory Group [an Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast]

The utility industry is amidst a revolution of the types, complexity, and scale of advanced technologies that are transforming the business. After many decades of incremental advancements to the technological side of the grid, we are now in the golden age where grid tech is bringing new possibilities to utilities, consumers, and stakeholders at every step of the power journey. While these rapidly accelerating advancements continue, though, stopping to take stock of that journey is critical.

 

 

As such, this episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast seeks to look at how the grid tech market has evolved over the years, establish how the current market for the technologies looks, and look forward to the new frontier technologies are going to continue that evolution. As such, to discuss these topics this week's episodes features a tremendous trio from Indigo Advisory Group. David Groarke (Managing Director), Paul Sayour (Strategy & Research Analyst), and Leo Trudel (Innovation & Technology Director) join podcast host Jason Price and producer Matt Chester to break down the fast-moving area of grid tech and give our listeners an inside view of the state of these markets and what they can look to happen to them in the years to come.

Prefer to Read vs. Listening? Scroll Down to Read Transcript.

Thanks to the sponsor of this episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast: Indigo Advisory Group. 

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TRANSCRIPT

Jason Price: 

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Energy Central, Power Perspectives Podcast. This is the show that brings together leading minds in energy to discuss the latest challenges and trends, transforming and modernizing the utility industry of the future. And a quick thank you to Indigo Advisory Group, our sponsor of today's show. Now let's talk energy.

Jason Price: 
I'm your host, Jason Price, coming to you from New York City, and with me as always from Orlando, Florida is Energy Central Producer and Community Manager, Matt Chester. Matt, today's episode brings another first for us on power perspectives, and that's the fact that we have not one, not two, but three guests joining us today. And this all star lineup of guests is because of the depth of the information and the vital importance of today's episode where we're going to tackle the world of Grid Tech. This is the type of term that can mean different things to different people. So Matt, can you level set for our audience what is it that we mean when we discuss the term Grid Tech?

Matt Chester: 
Certainly Jason, and you're definitely right that the term Grid Tech, it's one that covers a lot of different technologies, a lot of real estate. And really it's anytime something like a sensor, communication of data or new advanced software is added to the grid. That's the type of Grid Tech that we're talking about. Another term listeners are no doubt familiar with is the smart grid. And Grid Tech largely comprises the various pieces necessary to make this more intelligent smart grid possible. A grid where energy is flowing in two directions, where various assets are always talking to each other, and where algorithms and intelligence can be used to optimize everything from the quality, the quantity, and even the location of power on the grid.

Jason Price: 
Thanks for that, Matt. And as you noted, that's just the beginning. And so to really dive into the world of Grid Tech, we should waste no time bringing on today's guests and members of the Energy Central community will recognize these guests and this topic as they have submitted to the community a three part series about how the Grid Tech market has evolved, the current market dynamics and the applications and how frontier technologies will impact Grid Tech market going forward. And this podcast is our opportunity to dive even further into that topic with them. So first is David Groarke, Managing Director of Indigo Advisory Group. Welcome to the show, David.

David Groarke: 
Thank you Jason. Great to be here.

Jason Price: 
Yeah, so we're thrilled to have you. Next, this is colleague Leo Trudel, the innovation and Technology Director of Indigo Advisory Group. Pleasure to have you here as well, Leo.

Leo Trudel: 
Thank you for having me.

Jason Price: 
And last but not least, the super team is rounded out by Paul Sayour, Strategy and Research Analyst at Indigo Advisory Group. Thanks for being here today as well, Paul.

Paul Sayour: 
Yeah, it's a pleasure, Jason. Thanks for having us.

Jason Price: 
Terrific. So the podcast booth is packed today. So what I'd love to do is first get each of you to speak specifically to the portion of the Grid Tech article series you reported on, and then we'll bring it all together with some added conversation. So let's start with David who wrote about the evolution of the market and the current macro trends. David, by this point in time, we're all familiar with the term smart grid and all the different technologies and practices that it covers, but the advent of the smart grid era was one of massive transformation. For our listeners, can you give a background to the early years of Smart Grid and how Grid Tech has evolved? Also, please elaborate on what are the current market drivers and what benefits are we expecting to see?

David Groarke: 
Great, thanks Jason. And great timely question. I think Matt done a pretty decent job of defining what Grid Tech is, but as you say, if we take up the industry, let's say 10 years ago where there was a lot of public funding through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, and utilities were rolling out and mesh networks, AMI programs, upgrading core systems and there was a lot of emphasis on the term smart grid and all of the activity and use cases associated with that. And really, the way we look at that is the smart grid era really ushered in foundational technologies for utilities to use. And we saw large programs, billions of dollars and benefits emerge from that. And the point we're at now and why it's interesting and to look at this market again is we're about to undergo another huge investment round. There's different drivers and different metrics in the industry.

David Groarke: 
So Grid Tech for us is all of that networking and software and data management processes that utilities deploy and manage the grid. And where we draw the line is we're not per se looking at generating technologies. We're looking at technologies that sit on the transmission distribution network. Those technologies that coordinate distributed energy resources, and it's a very software heavy market, and that's what Grid Tech means to us. It's a multi-billion dollar market. There's hundreds of use cases. There's thousands of vendors. And we felt it was important to look at this market in isolation from the other conversations because this is something utilities can control or power companies and there is a lot of startup activity here. We'll talk about some of that hopefully. But we wanted to look at this market, refresh it from 10 years ago and see what does Grid Tech, smart grid mean in the coming years for the tower sector.

David Groarke: 
To the second part of your question, Jason, the drivers. The drivers are different than they were 10 years ago, in the last random stimulus and investments here. In the last 10 years, in fact, the cost of delivery power has gone up. And so the EIA, say the cost has gone from 2.6 cents per kilowatt hour in 2010, 4.3 cents per kilowatt hour in 2020. So that's nearly equal that a cost of generating power and looking at technology and how it can bring them both key metrics is certainly a driver for the industry. Secondly, this time around, as opposed to 10 years ago, we've much more focused obviously in decarbonization and the electricity and heat sector must decarbonized by 7,700 million metric tons of CO2 by 2030. Some of that is new generating technologies, new transmission of course, but there's a component of this, about 500 million metric tons of CO2, which is related to technical losses on the grids.

David Groarke: 
So over 5% of total decarbonization efforts could be delivered directly by Grid Tech. And we think that that's an important focus for new technologies. There's other drivers here around the controlling new devices at the edge of the grid. One of the markets with another term, grid edge, that we've looked at, it has seen an explosion of attention, E mobility assets and new business models at the edge of the grid. And in order to enable these business models, there's a lot of foundational technologies utilities need to react to, let's say for 22, 22 DERM systems, virtual power plant software.

David Groarke: 
So we're seeing regulation lead to new business models and then technology having a role in that Grid Tech. And then finally there's a lot of drivers around deferred investment at the moment and looking at how digitalization perhaps in the entire sector could drive out 70 billion of deferred investment by 2040 according to IEA. So in some, we've matured a lot since 10 years ago, Jason. There was a lot of investment. We have a foundation, but by looking at this discrete market of non-generating technologies and everything that utility controls across the energy value chain, we think there's great value for analyzing this market for power companies, startups, investors. Hopefully that was helpful.

Jason Price: 
Oh, it certainly was. That's terrific context. Certainly critical towards recognizing why things are the way they are in today's landscape. So now the next stage of the series of articles you published, which can be found on Energy Central is with Paul, where you talked about the current environment of Grid Tech. So Paul, over to you. As you look at the state of Grid Tech today and the vast investments in innovation, where do you finding most interesting and where do you see the most exciting potential in the market?

Paul Sayour: 
Yeah, thanks Jason. So there's a lot of really important things to be excited about here. Like Dave mentioned, Grid Tech is a really high growth, large market. It's actually set to be valued at about $640 billion by 2030 with a compound annual growth rate of just coming in over 19%. And so when you break it down and look at it with a closer lens, you'll see that this market is actually comprised of six discrete sub markets. And each of these have their own flare and unique set of use cases, inventors. And so these sub markets are immobility, which is obviously encompasses EV charging infrastructure, but also other use cases like customer intelligence for informing EV propensity modeling. The second sub market is flexibility, and this is a really important one. This includes things like virtual power plants and DERMS for enabling flexible capacity as well as battery and building management systems.

Paul Sayour: 
Our third sub market is robotics and connected worker. Obviously this includes a range of robotics such as drones, climbers, dogs are coming into play here. And then a lot of software based use cases as well, such as damage prevention for gas infrastructure. Our fourth market is digital asset management. So this is also a really big one. This includes things like digital twins on the frontier side of things, but then also software solutions that are enabling vegetation management, including things like machine learning and artificial intelligence to help enable those solutions. And then you have your asset performance management with both preventative and predictive capabilities. Our fifth sub market is core systems. So this is a really legacy heavy sub market, but there's a lot of technological refresh going on here, particularly using artificial intelligence, machine learning to help bid renewables into the market and conduct energy market forecasting and predictions.

Paul Sayour: 
But there's also some, like I said, some refresh being done on these older systems. So advanced distribution management systems are being rolled out, which is combination of outage management systems and your traditional distribution management system. So a lot of really great things there as well. And then lastly, our sub market is optimization technologies. That's anything that has grid enhancing capabilities specifically, sort of on the transmission side of things. So that includes dynamic line rating, which helps increase line capacity as well as things like advanced power flow controls. So these sub markets, pretty vast and there's thousands of vendors like Dave have mentioned, that serves these. We're clocking in at about 175 unique high value use cases here. While there's a lot of difference, each one of these sub markets are actually essential to achieving future utility goals and outcomes. In terms of what we're really excited about though, there's a few high growth areas that I'd like to dive into.

Paul Sayour: 
And I think a great example of a high growth area is the flexibility sub market. So I'd just like to take a moment to really flesh out and break down what's happening here as an example of what's going on in Grid Tech as a whole. So our flexibility market currently valued at around $45 billion with a compound annual growth rate of about 17%. And we find that actually 25% of our use cases fall into our flexibility sub market. So a lot of activity happening on the financing side of things as well as the vendor delivery side of things. And so when we say flexibility, let's just take a moment to dive into that a little bit deeper. So what do we mean? So our flexibility sub market, we define it as including types of innovative tech that provide load balancing and resilient energy alternatives in times of grid uncertainty and grid stress.

Paul Sayour: 
So this could include things like micro grids for islanding during outages, demand response systems for peak load curtailment or battery and building management systems for additional flexible capacity. And there's a host of other software solutions and tech in this market as well that I'm just not going to touch on currently, but it's a really large and burgeoning sub market. And so why is this important? This is particularly important for utilities because rather than building out costly transmission infrastructure like they've traditionally done, utilities can actually implement some of these flexibility solutions to help defer their capital spending and unlock previously inaccessible generation capacity. And this generation capacity is both greener and more resilient. So that's a plus as well.

Paul Sayour: 
So another important reason that this sub market is really hot and we're really excited about it is that this is a main driver of deep carbonization. So helping roll out these VPPs and DERMS for example, it is really going to aid us in integrating this colossal influx of DERs onto the grid that we're seeing. The DOE estimates that the US needs an additional 1,000 gigawatts of solar capacity to be deployed on the grid by 2035, and that's in order to track to our national decarb targets in 2050.

Paul Sayour: 
And so this flexibility sub market is going to be crucial in helping us get there. And so why is this such a hot market? What's going on here? So there's three key drivers that are creating a perfect storm for this sub market. The first being, it's a really great regulatory environment currently, and it's conducive to innovation on both the business model and tech front, as you probably know for 22 22 was passed back in 2020. And so that's opening up all these wholesale markets across the RTOs and ISOs to distributed energy resources. And so it's allowing for much more flexible capacity to come online. And so we're seeing utilities across the board prepare for this wave of market innovation and market opportunities in parallel with all of the compliance meetings that the ISO and RTOs have been having with furk over the past couple months.

Paul Sayour: 
So that's one reason. The second reason is just simply utilities are on board with decarbonization. They've set really progressive decarb targets and these aggressive targets are helping them drive the need for clean, non-traditional forms of generation. So that's another key driver. And lastly, the technology here is ready with advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning and unsupervised learning and other pattern recognition methods. It's really allowing for a lot of startups and vendors to develop things like BPPS and DERMS that we're pretty costly and complicated to develop in the past. And these are essential for controlling these clean distributed assets cheaply and really effectively. So those three drivers are really creating the perfect storm for the flexibility market. We're really excited about that right now. There's a lot of financial activity as well. These larger private equity and venture firms such as Energy Impact Partners, Blue Bear Capital, there's a couple of venture arms from the utilities such as National Grid partners and BP Ventures that are all pouring money into this space.

Paul Sayour: 
I mean they're pouring money into Grid Tech as a whole, but specifically into flexibility. So that's really exciting to see. And with all that money, there's been a bit of a Cambrian explosion of vendors and startups that are really driving success in this sub market. Another great piece of evidence as to why this is such a great area right now is that there's a lot of incumbent activity surrounding acquisitions of startups. GE, Generac, Schneider Electric, have all acquired smaller BPP and DERMS startups within the past year, but of course we've seen larger companies like Stem go public.

Paul Sayour: 
So this is just a bit of a taste of what we're covering in Grid Tech as a whole. But in terms of areas that are really hot, really excited about flexibility has got to be included in there. And again, we're tracking deployments across all of these sub markets. And so we've actually identified a list of high performing vendors that we're naming our Grid Tech 150. So this is basically an all star list of vendors that participate in the markets and it doesn't just include flexibility, but between all that there's a lot of healthy activity and we're really excited about Grid Tech going forward.

Jason Price: 
That's great and there's a lot there and I really appreciate how you framed it with the sub markets, so thanks Paul. But as you've already heard, this space seems to be one of rapid development, being state of the art one year could readily turn into falling behind the curve and ensuing years of utilities don't continue to evaluate and improve. So over to you Leo. Your part of the article series was to look at the future of Grid Tech. I just want to turn it over to give our listeners a taste from you. How are Frontier Technologies impacting the Grid Tech market and what can we come to expect from Grid Tech landscape in the next five to 10 years?

Leo Trudel: 
That's a great question Jason. And it's closely connected to the shifting macros that will define the utility sector going forward. In order to decarbonize, utilities are going to have to make their grids more connected and more capable of collecting and transferring much, much more data as they'll need to enable more automation and automated decision making to manage the flow of power from distributed energy resources. Utilities are also going to have to lower their costs and get better at managing employee turnover as both of these things are rising as a result of higher complexity and in accelerating retirement rate. So on the technical front, utilities are playing catch up because they have historically prioritized reliability and grid security over modernization and there's good reason for this. Protocol driven processes are great for administering systems that deliver uninterrupted power 24/7, 365, but they're not so great for experimenting and learning what new technologies work best.

Leo Trudel: 
In terms of modernization, the utility sector is gradually adopting solutions that are already in use in other asset heavy industries. And here are a few themes that we're seeing. The first is robotics. So this is one area that is logically taken utilities more time relative to other asset and is heavy industries to adopt. And this is because other industries that utilize robots generally use them on assembly lines, whereas utility robots need to be mobile, agile, dynamic and have advanced battery technology because they won't be very useful plugged into a wall. There are four main robot types that we're seeing, and these are drones, agile mobile robots or dogs, which Paul referenced earlier. These are the quadrupedal designs that were popularized by Boston Dynamics, wall climbing robots and underwater autonomous vehicles or subs. These four models provide for flight, mobility across uneven terrain, mobility up vertical walls and poles and mobility through water, which accounts for most of the mobility requirements utilities need.

Leo Trudel: 
Another theme that is taken over in adjacent industries and is in the early innings in the utility sector, is softwares a service for SaaS. Most utilities continue to run software on local servers just as everyone did in the nineties. The problem is this is extremely inefficient because it requires maintenance of server stacks which are virtually always under utilized and often outdated. It is also increasingly a complicated strategy because most software is developed for the cloud these days, meaning that utilities don't have access to the most advanced software capabilities on the market today. One reason why utilities continue to do this is because of the perception of increased security, but the bigger cause actually is that cloud software generally cannot be added to the rate base. Plus utilities may spend 10 times what they would pay for cloud software on maintenance of server stacks, but the cost of server infrastructure can be passed to customers while SaaS fees generally cannot, plus utilities that invest in cloud software, generally do so at the expense of their margins.

Leo Trudel: 
It's up to regulatory authorities to change this. And while there are some early proposals and forward thinking states, regulators need to accelerate this so utilities can embrace a transition to the cloud as soon as possible. Doing so will accelerate decarbonization and also lower energy cost for consumers. A final thing I want to highlight from the technology perspective is distributed intelligence. This includes the move to the cloud, which we just discussed, but it also includes edge computing. Edge computing is useful for high volumes of data that need to be actionable in near real time. For example, let's say a transmission utility wants to reduce line loss by optimizing the phase angle using phasor measurement units or PM uses they're called. This involves taking numerous measurements per second and reacting to them in real time. If you need to send all that data over a network to a server and wait for that server to respond, network latency will eat up too much time for this use case to work.

Leo Trudel: 
But if you can use an edge device to do the data reduction before it hits the network, or if you can use an edge device to do the analysis and make decisions without using the network at all, then this use case works. So we're seeing movement in that direction. A final point I want to make here is that we're also seeing transformation from an organizational perspective in that we are seeing more internal innovation teams than ever before. Many utilities already support R and D teams that take on long term projects, but innovation teams tend to focus on near and medium term deployment of technical capabilities.

Leo Trudel: 
So much of their work is focused on identifying internal processes and routines that could be made more efficient, finding the right technical capabilities to evolve how that work is done, sourcing and diligence in vendors, ensuring those vendors can work with existing tech stacks, structuring and commissioning pilot demonstrations and proof of concepts and assessing the results to determine if they should be scaled organization wide. This trend is leading to faster deployments across the three technical areas I highlighted earlier, which were robotic SaaS and distributed computing. And we expect this trend to continue and in fact accelerate.

Jason Price: 
That was terrific Leo and no doubt hitting high notes for our listeners. So let's now open up the floor. As you know, our podcast listening audience is made up of leaders in the utility sector. So knowing you have their attention, I'm curious what messages you have for those utility professionals, both the ones that are perhaps not integrating Grid Tech at the speed that they should, but also the ones that are constantly seeking to innovate and welcome any of you to speak and respond to that question. So floor is yours.

David Groarke: 
Great question. Jason and power companies, utilities, they're all at different levels of maturities, depending on their local jurisdiction and their regulatory framework or their appetite for risk or technology or just their general internal capabilities. And so there's a real range of preparedness across the industry. Because it's such a complicated market and there are so many use cases, deciding on what use cases to focus on or what technologies are commercially available and to bring in house and who to partner with, is pretty key. So firstly, as in 2010 when utilities are building out these large AMI business cases and it's important to build out these holistic business cases that aren't double dipping on benefits and that reflects the utilities goals around decarbonization and better cost management and better capital management, et cetera. So really understanding the tech, building out the business cases and understanding those multi-year IT OT roadmaps are important at this time and just given the level of activity in the startup community, giving the funding and so on.

David Groarke: 
And so that's one piece of it. So understanding what's out there and understanding the capability and maturity within the utility and their local drivers and aligning their own roadmap in light of all of these opportunities and some of the use cases we've touched on in markets. A piece of that is really understanding interoperability of these use cases across transmission distribution, the network and NIS had it reported last year that the cost of integrated, non interoperable technology in the power sector a year, ranges from about $140 million to a billion. Pretty big range, but there's certainly a cost with not creating that reference architecture and looking at and text acts that are interoperable and really getting your Grid Tech 18 together on whatever vertical or problem it is across vendors. That's a big emphasis right now. And part of that and related to doing your business case and looking at your reference architecture, we're encouraging utilities and some utilities are doing this very well and are rolling and scanning and scaling functions.

David Groarke: 
So in order to better understand the markets and the vendors, the different use cases, what other utilities are doing and having those dedicated roles will serve utilities well. And they're related to the role that Leo actually just mentioned around those innovation teams that are deploying commercially available solutions. We feel that's pretty key. The main point of all of this is, because Paul covered what all these markets are and Leo the Frontier Technologies, it's a pretty diverse landscape and each of these use cases solve for different metrics. And so really understanding your business drivers and aligning your technology vision to the utility vision and creating that multi-year roadmap is a really big opportunity now, and particularly with the funding that's coming available and just the maturity of the solutions, we think that will serve our companies well.

Leo Trudel: 
I'll piggyback on this question and say that utilities should partner with more startups. Another contributing factor to utility slowness in adopting good software solutions is that they rely on their trusted manufacturing partners to develop it for them. Companies like BB, GE, Siemens and Schneider Electric, those companies will continue to have a major role as the sector's primary vendors, but like utilities, their organizational designs are optimized for reliability, not for innovation. This means that their innovation cycles are slow and some of the software they develop isn't best in class, doesn't integrate well with existing tech stacks and ultimately doesn't move the industry forward at the rate it needs to, contrast this with smaller software focused companies that do have organizational designs that are optimized for rapid cycle innovation. These are the companies that will transform the sector not only the quickest but will result in higher levels of reliability. There are separate risks obviously to working with startups and internal innovation teams should focus on understanding those risks so they can properly assess them.

Jason Price: 
That makes complete sense and there's certainly a lot to think about and we've seen that in parallels in other industries, right. So I agree with you. Paul, you had said some comments around the funding environment, so I want to pull that thread a little bit further if I may. So recent legislation has seemed to open up new levels of funding that might be going towards this type of Grid Tech. So how do you see that availability of public money influencing the speed and direction of the sector?

Paul Sayour: 
Yeah, great question, Jason. So like you said, there's been some really historically significant energy related activity in the legislative space, both between the Build Back Better Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. And so between the two of those, we're actually tracking $350 billion of direct and indirect public money. And this includes billions for Smart Grid Technology and that's flowing into Grid Tech as well. And so the public money is very, very significant here. However, it's not just public money. Between the past two years, we've actually seen $23 billion invested in startups and M and A activity and SPACs as well. So there's a healthy stream of both private capital and public capital directed towards this market right now.

Paul Sayour: 
And so that's going to see, similar to about 10 years ago, there's going to be a significant boom in both vendors and valuable solutions. In order for utilities in states that actually take advantage of this money and this high capital influx, they should stay tuned to the DOE schedules and the various releases for the grants and loans coming out. But in parallel, and Leo mentioned this as well, utility should be building partnerships with vendors and labs and research institutions to accelerate their Grid Tech deployments to ultimately unlock this large flow of capital that's coming into the industry.

David Groarke: 
I'll just jump in there quickly on that too there. So specifically getting familiar with the DOE's grid deployment office, and particularly their grid resilience and innovation partnership program, and that's pretty focused on Grid Tech market. They have about $10 billion deployed right now and their scheduled funding is that, and so tracking that is pretty key. But also taking those lessons learned from the ARA, looking through the startups that have deployments elsewhere and really understanding who your Grid Tech A team is at this point, will serve you to these as well as they go look at this public money and interact with the market. We think that that's a really key first step for the next generation of Grid Tech, Jason.

Jason Price: 
Well that was excellent and incredibly thorough. So really appreciate the conversation here and we've definitely learned a lot and there's a lot to think about around Grid Tech, but we also want to learn more about you three. So to do that, we're going to put you through our traditional lightning round, which gives us an opportunity to learn more about you, the person rather than you, just the professional. We're going to ask you a set of questions. You'll have one word or phrase response. Let's go with the order of David, Leo and Paul. Is each of you ready?

Leo Trudel: 
Ready as I'll ever be?

David Groarke: 
Sure.

Leo Trudel: 
Let's do it.

Jason Price: 
What's your favorite piece of technology or gadget you use in your day to day life?

David Groarke: 
Mine is a remarkable, it's a paper tablet that I have attached to me at all times.

Leo Trudel: 
My iPhone.

Paul Sayour: 
Mine's got to be my Apple AirPod pros.

Jason Price: 
What is your dream vacation?

David Groarke: 
In vacation, that's East Asia, one of the countries.

Leo Trudel: 
The Congo River Basin.

Paul Sayour: 
I'm going to have to copy Dave on this one. It's going to be Southeast Asia, but I want a motorcycle throughout the entirety of it.

Jason Price: 
Name one guest, past or present that you'd have at your ideal dinner party.

David Groarke: 
I would definitely have a place sitting for Bono from U2.

Leo Trudel: 
Trey Parker, creator of South Park in the Book of Mormon.

Paul Sayour: 
Mine's got to be Jimmy Hendricks.

Jason Price: 
What's the best career advice you've ever gotten?

David Groarke: 
I think, don't overestimate the impact of technology in the short term, but don't underestimate them in the long term.

Leo Trudel: 
The best career advice I ever got was listen to your collaborators.

Paul Sayour: 
The best career advice I've ever gotten was just be authentic.

Jason Price: 
And what are you most passionate about?

David Groarke: 
Passionate about working as part of the decarbonization mission and professionally and personally in driving towards the goals we set ourselves and achieving those.

Leo Trudel: 
Yeah, so I'm going to stick with a theme here and say that going to have to copy Dave. I worked in another sector prior to moving over to Cleantech and made the move with a lot of uncertainty, but did so because I think it's the most important thing I can spend my time working on right now.

Paul Sayour: 
So for myself personally, I'd say music, but professionally I got to go with trying to overcome one of the greatest challenges of our generation, which is climate change and being part of the decarbonization movement.

Jason Price: 
Terrific. Thank you for indulging us in the lightning round and getting to know a bit more about each of you. And now as we wrap up the show, it's time for you to deliver your final message. And I want to go around the horn and ask each of you for one takeaway note or piece of advice that you hope sticks with our audience of listeners today. David, you want to start?

David Groarke: 
Sure, Jason. Yeah, I think that the key message is that there is huge opportunity in Grid Tech and by really examining the market, the use cases, vendors, the benefits, aligning those to utility strategy, you can create a pretty holistic strategy. This requires systems thinking to deploy all of the technology that we're looking at and having the knowledge available of what's available, is pretty key and we're hoping that we are providing some of that.

Leo Trudel: 
Yeah, I would say that the bottleneck in my view, to decarbonization is implementation. Obviously it's a very complex path to decarbonization and there are a lot of factors that limit the speed that we can go at here, but the bottleneck is implementation. But I do think that with focusing attention in the right areas, by identifying the right capabilities, by changing organizational design and setting up the right teams to focus on speeding up implementation timelines that we can hit our target. I'm optimistic of that.

Paul Sayour: 
I'd say one takeaway here is to take risks with this new technology, but be trackable about it. Don't bite off more than your organization can chew and make sure you be pointed about the deployment. And this could be partnering with startups, research labs, and running pilots or proof of concepts. In the industry, it's time and time again, proved that these smaller deployments with really targeted scopes, have been successful and then you scale out from there. Rather than trying to implement something enterprise wide, you do a step change about it. So cautious innovation would be my takeaway from this.

Jason Price: 
Outstanding. Thanks all three of you for being here today and you've given our audience a lot to think about. We really appreciate it and we look forward to digging further into your paper and learning more about what this is all about. So again, this can be found on the Energy Central platform by searching the Indigo Advisory Group and it will be posted in the podcast as well. Also, I'm sure these gentlemen would love to hear from you, so please leave your comments on the Energy Central platform and keep the conversation going. So until then, thanks once again to the three of you for your time today in your insight and joining us on the Energy Central Power Perspectives podcast.

Leo Trudel: 
Thank you Jason. Thanks Matt.

David Groarke: 
It was a pleasure.

Jason Price: 
You can always reach David, Leo and Paul through the Energy Central platform where they welcome your questions and comments. We also want to give a shout out of thank to the podcast sponsors that made today's episode possible to Indigo Advisory Group. Indigo works with utilities and energy companies to deliver market leading strategy, technology and innovation services. Indigo's Research provides timely, actionable market intelligence for rapidly changing Grid Tech market. And once again, I'm your host Jason Price. So stay plugged in and fully charged in the discussion by hopping into the community at energycentral.com and see you next time at the Energy Central, Power Perspectives Podcast.

 

About Energy Central Podcasts

The ‘Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast’ features conversations with thought leaders in the utility sector. At least twice monthly, we connect with an Energy Central Power Industry Network community member to discuss compelling topics that impact professionals who work in the power industry. Some podcasts may be a continuation of thought-provoking posts or discussions started in the community or with an industry leader that is interested in sharing their expertise and doing a deeper dive into hot topics or issues relevant to the industry.

The ‘Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast’ is the premiere podcast series from Energy Central, a Power Industry Network of Communities built specifically for professionals in the electric power industry and a place where professionals can share, learn, and connect in a collaborative environment. Supported by leading industry organizations, our mission is to help global power industry professionals work better. Since 1995, we’ve been a trusted news and information source for professionals working in the power industry, and today our managed communities are a place for lively discussions, debates, and analysis to take place. If you’re not yet a member, visit www.EnergyCentral.com to register for free and join over 200,000 of your peers working in the power industry.

The Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast is hosted by Jason Price, Community Ambassador of Energy Central. Jason is a Business Development Executive at West Monroe, working in the East Coast Energy and Utilities Group. Jason is joined in the podcast booth by the producer of the podcast, Matt Chester, who is also the Community Manager of Energy Central and energy analyst/independent consultant in energy policy, markets, and technology.  

If you want to be a guest on a future episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast, let us know! We’ll be pulling guests from our community members who submit engaging content that gets our community talking, and perhaps that next guest will be you! Likewise, if you see an article submitted by a fellow Energy Central community member that you’d like to see broken down in more detail in a conversation, feel free to send us a note to nominate them.  For more information, contact us at [email protected]. Podcast interviews are free for Expert Members and professionals who work for a utility.  We have package offers available for solution providers and vendors. 

Happy listening, and stay tuned for our next episode! Like what you hear, have a suggestion for future episodes, or a question for our guest? Leave a note in the comments below.

All new episodes of the Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast will be posted to the relevant Energy Central community group, but you can also subscribe to the podcast at all the major podcast outlets, including: