A live podcast recorded at the Great Transformation in Bend, Oregon
It fascinates me that homeowners and businesses are investing in distributed energy for their own reasons and collectively—and maybe inadvertently—also rewiring how the entire electric system evolves.
Cameron Brooks of Think Microgrid, Greg Castle of Schneider Electric, and Michael Grenier of Elexity delved into this phenomenon with me at the Great Transformation conference in July 8, 2026, where we recorded this podcast live. I also learned about “Frankenstein microgrids.” Yep, the term was new to me too.
In this episode you’ll hear:
• Why 114 GW of behind-the-meter data center power — France and the UK combined — is being planned in the next five years
• How a payback period dropping from seven years to three flips customer decisions from “no” to “yes”
• What a “Frankenstein microgrid” is, and why the software and controls layer is now the hard part
• How New Jersey and the Google–Voltus deal use distributed batteries to unlock grid capacity faster
• Why the panel frames utility economics — not technology — as the airway that has to be opened first
Guests
Cameron Brooks — Executive Director, Think Microgrid
Cameron Brooks leads Think Microgrid, a coalition that serves as a unified policy and regulatory voice for the U.S. microgrid industry. Founded in 2021 in partnership with Microgrid Knowledge, the organization advocates for microgrids in legislative and regulatory proceedings at the state and federal level. Brooks is also president of E9 Insight, a research firm focused on the U.S. utility industry and its evolving policy landscape, and has held leadership roles across clean-energy companies and non-profits. In this conversation he argues that the shift to on-site resources is less a “transformation” than an “expansion” into places the grid never reached — and that upside-down utility economics are the first thing that has to change.
Greg Castle — Commercial Leader, North American Power & Grid, Schneider Electric
Greg Castle leads the commercial side of Schneider Electric’s North American power and grid segment, working directly on large-scale data center power projects. He brings the on-the-ground view: gigawatt-scale builds that now reach five to ten gigawatts, treated increasingly like privatized utilities and managed with grid-scale ADMS/DERMS control layers. Castle is the source of the episode’s standout term — the “Frankenstein microgrid,” pieced together from whatever generation developers could buy during the supply-chain scramble.
Mike Grenier — President, Elexity
Mike Grenier is president of Elexity (formerly Extensible Energy), a Bend, Oregon–based company whose software optimizes energy assets — storage, solar, HVAC, and EV charging — in commercial buildings. Talking daily with commercial building owners, Grenier offers the customer-economics lens: the predictable “magic point” where a payback period crossing from seven to three years unlocks mass adoption, and why clear price signals from utilities could accelerate everything.
