Show Notes
sustainable energy, transmission grids, electricity demand, microgeneration, renewable energy, AI in energy, Texas grid, energy innovation, energy policy, energy efficiency
summary
In this conversation, Reza and Doug Lewin explore the future of the energy grid, emphasizing the critical role of transmission grids in sustainable energy. Doug shares his journey from education to energy policy, highlighting the importance of modern electricity for quality of life. They discuss the increasing demand for electricity driven by AI and data centers, the potential of microgrids for resilience, and the political will needed to advance these technologies. Doug also highlights innovative companies making strides in energy solutions and concludes with a hopeful outlook on the future of the grid.
takeaways
- Transmission grids are essential for modern life.
- The expansion of the grid is crucial for sustainability.
- AI and data centers are driving electricity demand.
- Microgrids enhance resilience and reliability.
- Renewable energy is becoming increasingly affordable.
- Heat pumps and geothermal power are underutilized technologies.
- Distributed energy resources can solve multiple energy challenges.
- Political will is necessary for advancing energy technologies.
- Innovative companies are reshaping the energy landscape.
- The age of electrification presents new opportunities.
titles
- The Future of the Grid: A Conversation with Doug Lewin
- Unlocking the Potential of Transmission Grids
Sound Bites
- "The age of electrification is here."
- "We need a better transmission system."
- "AI will help with grid operations."
Chapters
00:00
Introduction to the Future of the Grid
05:44
The Importance of Transmission Grids
12:22
Meeting the Moment: Power Demand and Supply
19:22
Microgeneration and Resilience in Energy Systems
23:56
The Importance of Affordability and Sustainability in Energy
25:17
Electrification and Access to Energy
27:06
Innovative Solutions for Energy Access
29:33
Emerging Companies in the Energy Sector
39:01
Future Technologies and Innovations in Energy
Show Transcript
Reza (00:01)Hello, hello, hello everyone. This is Reza on Future Forward. Welcome to our listeners. Shay isn't here with me today, but I have a special guest, Doug Lewin. We go back a long way and I'm excited to have him talk about the future of the grid. But before we jump in, I'm gonna do a quick intro to our listeners and then Doug, I'll let you introduce yourself before we jump in.
So Future Forward is a conversation that Shae and I have been having for many years, where we talk about sustainable cities and thriving communities. And what we do in our episodes is, you know, take some historical perspective and provide some strategic foresight on these topics. But we also invite experts to our show. And today we have Doug Lewin and Doug and I worked
many, many years ago at a company called Clear Result. It was an energy efficiency consulting firm. And we've stayed in touch and you've done some very interesting things since then, Doug. But go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you and the story of how you became an expert on the Texas grid.
Doug Lewin (01:11)
Yeah. So, um, it's kind of a, uh, long and twisted journey, but I'll give you the short version. Cause I know we want to get into all these topics about the grid and all that, uh, uh, grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, came to university, Texas at Austin, like at least half the population in this town looked around and was like, yeah, I could live here. This is great. Never left. Um, and, uh, I actually was a teacher for the first five, six years of my career. I actually think the skills that I learned there have served me very well throughout my.
career. I actually had a master's in education and curriculum studies. So I've actually gone back to teaching a little bit where I taught a class last semester at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, which was ton of fun. So things kind of come full circle.
But when I was teaching, kind of like a lot of young teachers got burnt out on teaching and really wanted to change. And I got an internship at the Texas legislature working actually on education policy and just really fell in love with the policy making process. As weird as that is, I'm probably sick and need help, but I really liked it. just, I, you know, it's really just a fascinating process and you meet a lot of really interesting people get to dive deep into.
variety of different issues. So I did that first session working on education issues. This was 2005. So education issues are front and center because the Supreme Court had said that our school finance system was unconstitutional. So there was just a lot of things going on related to education. Really got to build up a bit of an expertise pretty quick. And one of the things you learn, think, rather than a role like that is like
There the you can with diligence and hard work and networking and meeting the right people and asking good questions. You can actually become an expert pretty quick. And I knew something about education. I know anything about school finance, but I came up the learning curve very fast and I really loved that experience. The I that I got hired by the next job I had at the capital.
Um, that member was like, education's great, but I really need you to learn energy and environment, air quality issues. Great. Happy to do that. Came up to learning curve on that one and was like, this is really interesting. This was 2006. Um, governor period fast track, the building of new coal plants, uh, Al Gore's inconvenient truth had come out in 2005. So there was this rising awareness around climate change. It was just a fascinating time to kind of be in the mix of all of that. The.
Reza (03:30)
Thank
Doug Lewin (03:36)
competition in the ERCOP market. just started a few years before. There was a lot of ferment in the competitive market. Just a great time to do that kind of work. Actually went over to the Senate for my last session there where I was just exclusively working on energy, environment, and climate issues.
That was 2009. I actually was hired in that office in 2008. And that was during an election. People don't remember this. It seems like so long ago where both a Republican and a Democratic candidate had pretty extensive plans to deal with climate change, both Barack Obama and John McCain. So was just an interesting time where there was just a lot of policy making related to energy going on at the Capitol. I loved being in the mix of that. Left there, went to small consulting company focused on clean energy. There we started a nonprofit called Spear. It's still going strong. Great organization.
Organization called South Central Partnership for energy efficiency as a resource or spear I was the founding director was director of that fantastic nonprofit for five years When I left there I went to work for a member company of spear called clear result where I met you Reza We may have met before that but we definitely we got to work together at clear results Loved that experience. That was very different two and a half years Heading up regulatory affairs for a company with several thousand people
Reza (04:39)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Doug Lewin (04:53)
and having to cover regulation and policy in 40 states and provinces, because Clear Result had programs in 40 states and provinces. So that was no longer like a Texas thing. After that, I decided I would start my own consulting company and really focus on Texas. And that's really what I've been doing the last six years. That's sort of morphed and changed. I've worked for different folks. But really sort of central to what I do now is the Texas Energy and Power Newsletter.
Reza (04:58)
Mm.
Doug Lewin (05:21)
the energy capital podcast, which I've been able to grow over the last couple of years. And those have been a lot of fun. So I could say more, but that was probably too long already. So I'll stop there.
Reza (05:30)
That was
great. That was great. So Doug, where I'd like to start is sort of a broader question. You know, we talk about sustainability cities on future forward, and I'd like our listeners to understand, you know, why are transmission grids critical for building a more sustainable energy future?
Doug Lewin (05:52)
Yeah. So look, electricity, it would be hard to overstate. It's hard to find the words, right? I think everybody's aware of this, but it's good to like take a second and double click and go a little deeper into this, right? Pretty much every, not only modern convenience, but just like, just things we take for granted for survivability, the, the, you know, your hospitals, this is what, this is what was so interesting about winter storm Uri, right? Cause in Texas we had a very visceral
understanding of like, yeah, if you don't have electricity, like the quality of life deteriorates very quickly, right? You don't have refrigerated food. You're not able to store medicines. Your hospitals have a tough time functioning. Half of the dialysis centers in the state, right? You don't, there's no dialysis center without electricity, right? You can't, somebody who has kidney failure, before electricity was dead. That was it. You just didn't live more than a couple of weeks. Of course, people
With it with kidney problems can live for years and decades now, right? I mean The the list is too long, but but grids are Absolutely essential for modern life. There's just no other way about it this is you know, one of the things I think is one of the things I love about podcasting right being being a guest on podcast. I mean my own podcast is that too often today
Things are just too reductive in social media, right? It's like you got 280 characters and people are yelling at each other This is a very complicated, you know set of issues and even for like, know with oil and gas and coal people want to sort of villainize people or say, know that the industry is we have to understand that those industries actually created modern life created the the the conveniences the quality of life
healthcare, all of these things that we kind of just in a lot of sense really just kind of take for granted. So transmission grids are fundamental for cities and of course beyond cities, right? Rural communities just anywhere you could possibly go. One of the things I'm most excited about Reza is the expansion of the grid that I think is happening. This is still happening in real time.
Reza (08:12)
Really?
Doug Lewin (08:13)
But
as we record here in early February, grid operator in Texas, ERCOT, and the Public Utility Commission, and the legislature are considering a great big build out of transmission to put in place high voltage lines, 765 kilovolts. We don't have any of that right now. The highest we have is 500. This would be a major expansion. And that allows more of the good things that we have in society. Energy is...
necessary for those things. So yeah, and then I guess the other sort of thing I would say about that too is that we're in this fascinating time where transmission grids, as you asked the question about transmission grids, you think of the big towers, the extra high voltage lines that are connecting our cities and connecting them out to areas where power is produced and all that.
are meeting up with, so you could call that the macro grid, are meeting up with micro grids, right? The very small stuff, solar on rooftops, batteries in garages, whether on the wall of the garage or in the car that's in the garage, right? All of these kinds of technologies, and now those things are starting to meet and to mesh. And sometimes people in the energy space get into arguments about this. Should we?
Reza (09:12)
Mm-hmm.
Doug Lewin (09:35)
Should we have more high transmission lines? Should we do more micro grids, solar and storage, and even gas backup and things like that? And the answer is, of course, both. Like both of these things. And they're very complementary to each other. It's really not an either or. It's a both and. And I'm just really excited about this next phase of electricity and of grids. The International Energy Agency, in their latest world energy outlook just out a couple months ago,
you know, said we are entering what they called the age of electricity, which is fascinating because like you would think, well, haven't we been there? Right. It's been going on a hundred years. The the the National Association of Engineers named the grid the greatest invention of the 20th century, which is phenomenal when you think about it. Right. Like computers and like all the things that were created in the 20th century. They named the grid the greatest invention. But I understand what IEA says when they mean that because we haven't seen anything yet.
Reza (10:10)
Yeah.
Really?
Yeah.
Doug Lewin (10:31)
Electricity is going to unlock so much more for humanity. I'm really excited for this next phase.
Reza (10:37)
Yeah,
that's fascinating. I love that answer, especially because Doug, it's like the transmission grid is like this friend that you don't think about that often, pretty quiet, just sort of does their thing, hard work. Or maybe a team member, at least in soccer, maybe a defensive midfielder. They don't seem to do much, but man, they're a critical part of the game. So you and I are big soccer fans, so we love talking about soccer on our show.
Doug Lewin (11:06)
If that defensive
midfielder gets hurt and you put the sub in, who's not as good, you notice real fast, right? It's the same with the grid. may not notice it, but when it's not there, you notice. Yeah.
Reza (11:09)
Yes.
Very powerful. Yes. Yes. Yes. And I love
how you describe that, you know, that snowpocalypse, the, you know, that storm that we had and where we lost power and life just seemed so hard. We can't imagine how difficult life is without this incredible piece of infrastructure that we've built. And I love how you described how the IEA
Doug Lewin (11:29)
Yes.
Reza (11:39)
talked about it being the greatest invention of the 20th century. And it's fascinating to think that there's so much more to come because we are electrifying more and more. And that electrification brings up the quality of life and the standard of living, not just for us, which we're already far ahead, but in other parts of the world as well. So that's a really good
overview and grounds us in why this is so important. Now I want to segue into something that you wrote about in your newsletter because this has kind of become topical and this is touching on that this age of electricity that we live in. And I'm going to quote from your newsletter. It says, a new ERCOT report, ERCOT's the regulator for the grid here in Texas, says that AI data centers
electrified oil and gas operations and other load growth could require three times the current amount of power. Now imagine this is not just in Texas, this is probably in other states as well. And so the question that I have for you, which you asked in your newsletter, which is how do we meet this moment?
Doug Lewin (12:56)
Great question. And when I obviously think about a lot, and when you say it applies to other places, of course it does. Data centers can be cited anywhere. But if you talk to folks in that world, which I often do, Texas is one of the only places they think that they can scale quickly. And they need to scale quickly, yes. And there's a couple of reasons for that. One, a lot of the country has what are just sort of like monopoly utilities in order to...
Reza (12:57)
Ha
Really? Yeah.
Doug Lewin (13:24)
connected. It's all it's all mother may I like it's all completely controlled by one entity. The southeast largely has that kind of system. A lot of other places and in PJM and MISO the Midwest the Northeast it's just much much harder to build things in the West for that matter as well. Texas has a competitive electricity market with a ton of market dynamism in it. It's a much easier place to build which is a double edged sword right. I mean like you can end up
with, you know, we have, you know, oil and gas drilling in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex, sometimes very, very close to childcare centers and schools because the state doesn't regulate very well. It also means that, you know, if you want to bring solar or storage to the grid in, a lot of most parts of the country, that'll take four to five years. In Texas, 12 to 18 months.
Reza (14:19)
Wow.
Doug Lewin (14:20)
So, you know, it's definitely a double-edged sword. It's complicated. Something we could certainly...
You know talk about more but if there is this and I think or caught, know Sometimes when you're looking out they're looking out when they did that study that showed we would need Between in a high load growth scenario. We would need between 425,000 megawatts and 500,000 megawatts. have about 170,000 megawatts of capacity. That's all of it That's wind solar gas coal nuclear about 170,000 now they said we might need up to about 500,000 and I think that
that
study was only looking out to like 2039. Yeah, it was a it was a 15 year lookout. That's just so so when when you know, the IEA says age of electrification, like this is what they mean. Like we are we're looking at growth rates that would rival the growth rates of the post World War Two era. Right. So, you know, what do we need to see us? What do we need to do to meet this moment? There's I think there's a lot of things we have to do. One, we're going to need a better
Reza (15:14)
Wow.
Doug Lewin (15:25)
transmission system to we're going to lots of renewable energy. There are different reasons why I think we need more renewable energy. And for, you know, anybody listening, who, you know, I think everybody cares about the environment on some level, right? I had nobody wants to breathe dirty air. But if that's a lower priority for you, just the affordability of renewable energy.
should be a reason to support it. is, again, according to the International Energy Agency, in 2022, they declared solar power to be the cheapest form of power ever invented. It is the cheapest form of power. It is highly reliable, predictable. You know when the sun's gonna come up. You know when it's gonna go down. We're gonna need a lot more renewable energy. We're gonna need to figure out how to have
what I would call clean firm. This is not, come up with that. should give credit. Jesse Jenkins out of Princeton. Look at all his stuff. He's brilliant. But I think he was maybe the one that coined this term. Maybe somebody else did. But clean firm, those would be things like nuclear, like geothermal, like gas with carbon capture. There's a lot of different ways that you can generate clean firm. Solar storage paired together.
We've seen internationally an announcement in the Middle East actually of a solar and storage system co-located with enough storage to go all the way through the night. Batteries continue to get cheaper. Batteries will continue to get cheaper mostly because they're driven by consumer electronics, right? Like the, you remember how bad the battery quality was in your phone five or six years ago, right? It's much better now and it's going to continue to get better because everybody around the world will
Reza (17:05)
Yes.
Yes. Yes.
Doug Lewin (17:16)
demand that. So, clean firm is another one. And I'll just, I'll, I'll end with one more thing we're going to have to do to kind of meet that moment to, to allow for this growth of AI, which I think really that's really much of the demand is being driven by AI. It's not all AI in the article. And you quoted it. I referred to industrial electrification, the electrification of oil and gas electrification again, according to the IAs and even bigger source of
Reza (17:40)
Mm.
Doug Lewin (17:44)
demand growth in AI, but AI will also be a very large demand growth. So what we'll be able to do is have more manufacturing at lower costs, AI to hopefully if we use it for good, humanity's got a big question in front of it as to how we use AI. But my hope is we use it to solve things like cancer and Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's and to actually create the ability
Reza (17:58)
Yeah. Yeah.
Doug Lewin (18:10)
I think AI will actually help with grid operations too. AI has so many different applications, but I think one of those, and this is where the sort of fourth one I'd put on this list, is having a more dynamic demand side of the grid. So if you have, the easiest example, there are dozens of examples, but the easiest example I think is an electric vehicle, because you don't really care when that vehicle charges.
Reza (18:15)
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Doug Lewin (18:37)
You
just want to charge to the level you need at the time you're ready to drive. So if you plug that in and you get a quick prompt that's like, when are you going to drive next? it's tomorrow morning. Now AI finds the time, not only when the power is the cleanest, but when it's the cheapest. And those two things now, the beauty is those are the same, right? That wind energy generated overnight, that solar power generated at the middle of the day, those two things are the same. And so you can see where we might start doing that with
Reza (18:41)
Yeah.
Interesting.
Doug Lewin (19:05)
and electric hot water heaters and air, even air conditioning, pre-cooling when we have, or preheating when we have plenty of power. So those, those would be, I think the four things transmission, more renewable energy, like wind and solar, more, clean firm, kind of what you'd call base load. And then a much more active demand side, which, which includes energy efficiency, wasting less energy.
Reza (19:10)
Really.
Yeah.
Doug Lewin (19:32)
using more energy when we have plenty of it, that's a form of energy efficiency and using less when we're in times of scarcity and prices are high.
Reza (19:40)
Yeah, that's a great answer. it brought up another question for me that she and I have talked about, which is this idea of more decentralized energy sources. I know you talked about sort of more renewables. You did touch on sort of demand side. But what are your thoughts on microgeneration and nanogrid? Are those viable? Can they make cities more resilient, the grid more resilient?
you know, us as citizens, you know, live in a better way.
Doug Lewin (20:15)
Yes, that's the short answer. Obviously, I have a longer answer. I am who I am. So I like to talk. So yes, but the short answer is yes, there is no doubt that micro grids can improve quality of life, can make the grid, the overall grid, the transmission grid, much more reliable by adding supply. But also you get into this notion of resilience, right? What happens when a hurricane hits the Gulf Coast?
Reza (20:16)
That's really it.
Doug Lewin (20:44)
And maybe you have plenty of supply, right? I this happened in July, right? Houston was hit with a, with a major tragedy when hundreds of thousands of Houstonians did not have power for a full week. That was not a problem of supply and demand. There was plenty of supply. You just couldn't get it where it needed to be because the poles and wires were down. Right? So it's very interesting. Actually, I write about this a lot at my newsletter and talk about it a lot at the, at the podcast. The.
Reza (20:54)
Yeah. Yeah.
No.
Doug Lewin (21:11)
The legislature actually did a really interesting thing last session in the 2023 session. They passed something called the Texas energy fund. Most of that, and what gets most of the headlines and most of the press is most of the, and most of the money is going to large centralized central station gas plants. This is the old way of doing things. And I'm not even saying it's necessarily a bad thing. Most of them are going to be peakers. They're going to run it very, very few hours out of the year. Peaker plant just means right when
You have peak demand and you have scarcity. turn them on. They're off most of the rest of the time. but there was actually what I think is a much more important part of that bill, which was $1.8 billion. It has not yet been appropriated. It's in the bill. It's it passed as law, but you can't appropriate money through a bill. can't make law through the budget. You can't appropriate the money through a bill. So the bill says the money should be there, but it hasn't been appropriated yet.
But it would be $1.8 billion for what they call backup power packages. These would basically be some people will say they're not exactly micro grids. There's, different terminology around this, but basically you're talking about a combination of solar storage and gas on site at critical facilities, hospitals, nursing homes, water treatment facilities, police stations, fire stations. I think we ought to have a broader conversation about this too.
What about the individuals living in our communities who rely on medical equipment to stay alive? I think those folks should also have 100 % reliable backup on site at their homes. So once we start to roll those out, assuming the legislature appropriates the money, and I think they're gonna do this, they passed the bill, I think there's an awareness, particularly after Hurricane Barrel, something like.
Reza (22:41)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Doug Lewin (23:05)
40, 50 legislators in the legislature in Houston, including Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Senator Betancourt, Senator Alvarado, lot of leaders in the legislature live there and experienced these outages during barrel. And so I think there is this growing awareness that, these distributed energy resources really have a lot of value. And why would we at a point in time when those technologies have come so far down the cost curve
Reza (23:20)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Doug Lewin (23:35)
that
they actually make a ton of sense. There are problems, there's market failures that keep them from getting to people, and we can talk about those if you like, but there is no doubt the technology is here, they are affordable, you get into this situation where they're high capital costs, so how do you make that more affordable for folks to sort of get over that hump and adopt those technologies? And what they do, Reza, is they...
You know, I like to say like when you're, when you're looking at the grid, kind of have these four problems you need to address and people put these in different priorities depending on who they are and how they grew up. But I don't judge anybody for which one you put. They're all really important. And whichever one you put at the top of the stack is fine. Reliability, which again is like having enough supply to meet demand resiliency, which I define as like when you take a punch from a hurricane or a wildfire or heat wave or drought or whatever, you're to be able to keep that power running.
Affordability right that's absolutely key not only because we don't want people we don't want I don't think anybody wants to live in a society where a lot of our neighbors are having their power shut off because they can't pay for it we have a lot of that in Texas we have a lot of folks that are struggling to pay their bills and it's a drag on the economy if you have high power prices right we've seen a Manufacturing renaissance in this country, and I think we want to keep that going we don't want to send all we know all of our ability to make stuff
over to China, like we need to make stuff here in the United States. So affordability is really important for a number of reasons. And then sustainability, right? Do you have a system that is creating a lot of pollution, you know, like coal plants are creating all this coal ash that what are you actually going to do with that? You need a sustainable system too, that has that has less emissions. And when you look at these distributed energy resources, you look at energy efficiency, you look at solar and storage located at homes and buildings, you
Reza (25:01)
Yes.
Doug Lewin (25:27)
You're actually checking every single one of those boxes, right? You're, you're making it more likely that we're not going to have a supply demand imbalance in the wintertime. Cause you're, if you're doing microgrids, you're adding resources. If you're doing energy efficiency, you're reducing that demand. Both of those are positive. You're putting the power source where it's needed. So if the bulk grid is down for whatever reason, it could be a cyber attack. You know, that's another reason why DERs are great. It could be a lack of.
Reza (25:30)
Mmm, yeah.
Doug Lewin (25:54)
Supply to meet demand could be a hurricane could be a wildfire We have to shut the grid down in advance of wildfire conditions to keep the wildfires from happening Those are gonna solve that affordability when you're generating power closer to where it's used You're actually bringing prices down and they're sustainable because there's no emissions associated with that. So I Think that the technology is here. I think this is going to be a mega trend over the next 10 20 years
I think we're at the other, I'll say one more thing on this. other thing I'm really excited about for micro grids is the ability to electrify the parts of the world that still aren't a lot of times in these conversations, we forget that with 8 billion people on this planet, 1 billion of them do not have access to electricity. One out of eight people alive in the year of our Lord, 2025 don't have access to electricity. That is unconscionable.
Reza (26:39)
Wow.
Yeah.
is.
Doug Lewin (26:48)
And a lot of times you'll hear folks, I won't name names, but there's some pretty prominent folks out there that'll say, this is why we have to continue using fossil fuels because it's not fair to the, to the parts of the world that don't have electricity to use less fossil fuels because they haven't had access to them yet. They're not going to get you. are not going to string high voltage transmission lines across the continent of Africa and build big central station power plants to serve.
Reza (27:04)
Yeah.
Doug Lewin (27:16)
All of these villages spread out across the, you know, this massive continent, right? But what you are starting to see, and again, I think is a mega trend, we'll see a lot more of is think of how modular solar and storage and led lights are, right? You can start with one panel and one battery and one led light, and then you can add to it. Here's another panel. Here's another battery. And, and we are starting to see this. It's slow.
Reza (27:22)
Thank
Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I love her. Yes.
Doug Lewin (27:43)
But this is why the International Energy Agency believes that if we reach net zero by 2050, nobody will be without access to electricity. It's because those distributed technologies, they're literally that's in the name, they're distributed. It's easier to distribute them than it would be to string a high voltage transmission line and connect it to a remote African village. So I am super bullish on microgrids and distributed energy resources.
Reza (27:59)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah,
that's fascinating. really like how, you know, it sounds like at least in Texas, it's a matter of political will to push this forward. But our, you know, our political leaders have experienced what it was like not to have electricity. And so there's probably more enthusiasm for trying to push this forward. And their benefits not just, you know, for resilience, but just it's better for the grid overall.
And then more importantly, you're talking about how this trend, this set of technologies can drive electrification in parts of the world where it's difficult to drive it, to bring that quality of life to places that don't have it yet. And I especially love how you describe the modularity of these decentralized resources like the solar power.
Doug Lewin (28:59)
Exactly.
Reza (29:08)
battery and LED light, you can do one of each and then just keep adding to it as opposed to having to spend all this money on a huge power plan, string these transmission lines, which are probably overly expensive with too much investment for the capacity in those areas. So just a fantastic answer. I love that. I learned so much through it. I Shane, I've talked about it, but this is a really good way of bringing to light why this
is not just a good thing, but a possible thing as well.
Doug Lewin (29:43)
Yeah, yeah, it is. It's very possible. It'd be hard to overstate how much of a difference solar.
has already made and we're just at the very beginning, like solar really is one of those things that it's a technology that really just fundamentally changes so much, opens up so much possibility. And by the way, that age of electrification thing IEA was talking about, this is part of what they mean too. IEA is very focused on, it is not acceptable to have a billion people in the world that don't have
access to electricity. it's not just me saying this, like folks at the IEA are looking at the cost declines happening from solar and going, wow, this really opens up literally a world of possibilities.
Reza (30:22)
Yes.
Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. know, Shay wanted me ask this question, which is, you know, let's touch on a couple companies that are trying to do things, you know, innovatively and base energy and octopus energy, maybe give you your thoughts on, you know, what's working, like what's happening out there, you know, at the forefront of some of these companies trying to change the way, you know, we tackle some of these issues.
Doug Lewin (30:53)
Yeah, so it's funny you asked that. Zach Dell, who is the founder and CEO of Base Power, I did a podcast with him. I don't think I've told Zach this. Zach, I'll have to send you this podcast, but it is it is that is the most listened to podcast I've done on the energy capital podcast. Obviously, people are very, very interested in base power company. It's a very innovative company. I think what they're doing
Reza (31:13)
really?
Doug Lewin (31:23)
is really interesting. Basically what they're doing is they are making it affordable. So like I was just talking about earlier, like DERs are great, but there is this barrier of it like costs a lot of money, right? A solar installation could be 20, $25,000. A power wall costs about $10,000 give or take. And a power wall is 13 kilowatt hours, which is a lot, but like, you know,
My electric vehicle has 91 kilowatt hours in