After nearly 40 years at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Bruce Nordman has stepped into retirement — leaving with some big ideas about the future of our electricity system. In this episode of the Energy Changemakers Podcast, I spoke with Bruce about the insights he’s gathered over his career. He believes the electric system has strayed from its original purpose and explains why a more customer-centric grid is needed.
Bruce argues that today’s electricity system is structured around the needs of the grid, rather than those of the consumer. He makes the case for a reimagined model—one where electricity behaves more like the internet: plug-and-play, universal, and simple for the end user. From networking electricity inside buildings to creating globally harmonized standards, Bruce shares a vision for how to make energy systems both more efficient and more customer-friendly.
“Over the last 50 years, we’ve thrown away the phone system, and both in terms of the hardware and critically the technology infrastructure and ideas behind it, and replaced it with something much better, Internet technology. We can and we should do the same thing for electricity,” Nordman says.
This conversation covers:
- Bruce’s pioneering work on the energy use of electronics and IT networks at LBNL
- How a “lightbulb moment” in 2010 changed the trajectory of his career
- Why electricity should be networked like the internet—universal, seamless, and behind-the-scenes
- The hidden complexity of today’s demand response and why it burdens customers unnecessarily
- Why virtual power plants miscast customers as power plants rather than treating them as customers
- The three essential ingredients for a truly customer-centric electricity system:
- Dynamic pricing
- Communications infrastructure
- Automation at the device level
- Lessons from Scandinavia, California, and Australia—and why no place has yet put all the pieces together
- What global harmonization would mean for future innovation and affordability
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