Energy Changemakers Podcast with Host Elisa Wood

The Voice of Distributed Energy

April 29, 2026

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2026

Chaos, Meet the DER Playbook

The Pew Charitable Trusts has released a long-awaited policy playbook for scaling distributed energy resources (DERs) across the United States. In this episode, host Elisa Wood sits down with the two co-chairs of the Pew DER Advisory Council — Audrey Zibelman and Pat Wood III — to unpack what the playbook says, why DER deployment has stalled despite a clear business case, and what policymakers can do right now to change the trajectory.

The conversation moves from high-level regulatory philosophy to the practical mechanics of utility incentive design, FERC jurisdiction, virtual power plants, and the pros and cons of America’s 50-state laboratory approach to energy regulation. Both guests bring decades of first-hand experience reshaping the grid — Zibelman from New York’s REV framework and Australia’s national DER strategy, Wood from opening the Texas and wholesale power markets.

Microgrids Are a Goldmine for Grid Operators — They Just Don’t Know It Yet

The US grid is under pressure — surging demand from data centers, EVs, and industrial expansion is forcing expensive infrastructure upgrades. But what if a significant share of that relief could come for free? In this bonus episode, Elisa Wood sits down with Vincent Petit, SVP of Climate and Energy Transition Research at the Schneider Electric Sustainability Research Institute (SRI), to explore a provocative finding from the institute’s latest research: when building owners invest in microgrids to optimize their own financial returns, the grid benefits as a byproduct — at zero marginal cost to grid operators.

The research, spanning five commercial building types and 13 geographies worldwide, finds that microgrids can deliver 20–40% power headroom recovery on average, with some configurations reaching 60%. And in 80% of modeled scenarios, the building owner achieves payback in under ten years — meaning the grid gets relief without spending a dollar.

This conversation reframes microgrids not as niche resilience tools, but as a scalable, privately financed mechanism for managing the coming demand surge — if the price signals are right.

Inside America’s Most Forward-Thinking Energy County

Montgomery County, Maryland — located just outside Washington, D.C. — has emerged as one of the most ambitious local governments in the United States when it comes to distributed energy, microgrids, and clean power resilience. Since its first microgrid went online in 2018, the county has built out a portfolio of advanced installations at public safety facilities, a correctional facility, electric bus depots, and smaller community sites. Now, with 23 “resilient hub” microgrids under development and plans to produce on-site green hydrogen for its transit fleet, Montgomery County is redefining what local energy leadership looks like. In this conversation, host

Elisa Wood sits down with two key architects of this vision: Michael Yambrach, Chief of Montgomery County’s Office of Energy and Sustainability, who has overseen the county’s energy evolution since 2014; and Khaled Fakhuri, Senior Vice President of Schneider Electric’s Microgrid Business, the county’s long-term development partner. Together, they unpack how the county got here, how the public-private partnership model works, and what the future of microgrids looks like at local, national, and even data-center scale

Utilities Are Warming to DERs. Thank Data Centers
For years, utilities and the distributed energy industry fought bitter battles over net metering, revenue erosion, and who controls the grid. Now, something has shifted. In this episode of the Energy Changemakers Podcast, host Elisa Wood sits down with Marco Krapels, SVP and chief marketing officer at Enphase Energy, to explore a striking reversal: utilities that once viewed rooftop solar as a threat are now actively seeking out DER companies as partners. The catalyst? Data centers. The explosive growth of AI and digital infrastructure is driving electricity demand at a scale that centralized generation simply cannot meet fast enough — and utilities are starting to realize that 80 million untapped American rooftops may be part of the answer.

What Makes A Community Microgrid Actually Work For The Community?
According to Markus Virta, co-founder of Cascadia Renewables, the answer has almost nothing to do with solar panels and batteries—and everything to do with listening. Markus—who has spent 16 years at the intersection of clean energy and Pacific Northwest policy—explains why microgrids fail when engineers lead and communities follow, and how inverting that paradigm leads to faster projects, fewer change orders, and infrastructure that communities actually use.

Distributed Wind’s Second Act?
Distributed wind has long played third wheel to solar and storage — but new market conditions may be opening the door to a comeback. In this bonus episode, Elisa Wood speaks with analyst Peter Asmus about whether distributed wind can find new life in microgrids, virtual power plants(VPPs), and rural energy systems. They explore wind’s surprising early dominance in microgrids, why it lost ground to solar, and how rural co-ops, farm policy, and complementary generation profiles could bring it back into the mix. While unlikely to compete head-to-head with solar, distributed wind may play a valuable supporting role in hybrid, distributed energy systems.

How Your Home May Save the Grid
Ben Brown, CEO of Renew Home, to explore how millions of ordinary homes are being quietly transformed into virtual power plants (VPPs) — aggregated, AI-coordinated, and capable of delivering what a gas-fired peaker plant once did, at a fraction of the cost and with zero emissions. From Jimmy Carter’s thermostat appeals to today’s invisible, personalized energy shifting, Ben and Elisa talk about why the future of grid stability runs directly through your living room.

Jigar Shah’s Surprising Stand on This Utility Program
Jigar Shah is one of clean energy’s most influential — and outspoken — figures. In this episode, he takes a surprising stand on a utility battery program that has the distributed energy world divided, makes the case that the solar industry is now the battery industry, and lays out a policy blueprint for new governors that starts with one bold number: cut electricity bills 20% by 2030.

How Microgrid Finance Suffers from Stranded Abundance
Eliot Assimakopoulos, CEO of Realizse and former GE microgrid pioneer, discusses a critical barrier to clean energy deployment: “stranded abundance.” Despite available capital and valuable incentives, friction in finance prevents these resources from connecting, limiting microgrid and DER project development.

Gigawatt-Scale Data Centers Push the Grid to Its Limits. What’s the Fix?

The explosive growth of AI training centers is creating unprecedented challenges for the electric grid. In this eye-opening conversation, Kay Aikin reveals why gigawatt-scale data centers like Stargate aren’t just about needing more power—they’re creating stability threats that could collapse entire grid systems. Learn why virtual power plants can’t solve this problem, what new technologies are needed, and how the regulatory landscape must adapt to handle loads that can spike by several gigawatts in seconds.

The Many Ways Data Centers Try to Achieve Speed to Power

This episode explores “speed to power” – the urgent need for data centers to access electricity quickly to support AI infrastructure growth. Anna Demeo explains why the fast-moving world of hyperscalers (Google, Meta, Microsoft) is colliding with the cautious, regulated utility industry, and what innovative solutions might bridge this gap.

2025

An Energy Economist on the Abundance Agenda…Right now, the term “energy abundance” seems to be everywhere. It springs from Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s book Abundance, which argues that we have too many rules and procedures bogging down the construction of clean energy, housing, and other needed infrastructure. While the book has created debate in both the power industry and political arenas, this episode moves away from the politics of abundance to focus on the economics of abundance. Host Elisa Wood sits down with energy economist Mariko Geronimo Aydin to explore how the abundance agenda fits into an industry where markets traditionally make money via scarcity, not abundance.

How to Make It Easier for American Families to Go Solar
Rooftop solar is far more affordable in other countries than it is in the United States, and the gap has little to do with technology. In this conversation, Elisa talks with Nick Josefowitz, Chief Executive of Permit Power, about why American families pay so much more for rooftop solar and how outdated permitting, utility requirements and fragmented local rules create unnecessary barriers.

Data Centers: Bring Your Own Capacity Instead of Building Power Plants Adam Scarsella, vice president of digital infrastructure sales at Voltus, describes a new approach to accelerating data center interconnection: Bring Your Own Capacity

The Coolest Stuff Happening on the Electric Grid
Energy Changemakers host Elisa Wood joins Jennifer Zajac on Clean Energy Shorts to talk about the most exciting innovations reshaping the electric grid.

Why Energy Companies Struggle To Tell Their Story

Jay Hodgkins, freelance energy writer and editor, and Scott Smith, president and chief podcasting officer at Penbury Consulting.

What It Takes to Curb Data Center Energy Use

Mike Slevin, business unit manager at Fluke, an international company that tests, measures, and monitors facilities, including data centers and power plants.

Is Utility Corruption Impeding Energy Innovation?

Dick Munson, veteran clean-energy advocate and author of Power Corrupts: Cleaning Up America’s Biggest Industry

How to Speed Microgrid Development for Data Centers

Jim Mozell, senior director of strategic partnerships at Siemens Energy, and Juan Colina, data center and IT segment leader at Eaton

What It Really Takes to Make a Customer-Centric Electricity System

Bruce Nordman, Retired Research Scientist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Less Waste, More Productivity: An Economist’s Take on Our Energy Dilemma

International energy economist, Skip Laitner

Is Small Town America Ready for Climate Migration?

Hillary Brown, author of Revitalize Resettle: How Main Street USA Can Offer New Beginnings for America’s Climate Displaced

Maximizing the Value of Your Molecule: An Interview with Mark Feasel

Mark Feasel, founder & principal consultant, VisRete