Volts

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.volts.wtf

Volts published seven conversations in September, which is a lot for anyone to listen to. We’ve rounded up the highlights into less than an hour. Enjoy!

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

Heat pump water heaters use a fraction of the energy of conventional electric resistance heaters — which use more electricity in a year than an EV — but they're only 2 percent of the market, mainly because they tend to cost more, be slow and loud, and require a plumber and an electrician. Reservoir is a Boston company trying to fix all that, with a smarter, quieter machine and its own plumbers. I talk with CEO Luke Winston-Almanzar about how it works, what it costs, and its potential role in demand response programs.
Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction
03:06 – Why water heaters
06:34 – How gas, resistance, and heat pump water heaters work
09:33 – Size and slow recovery: predictive heating and party mode
15:31 – Installation and vertical integration
22:19 – Cutting electric resistance backup
20:31 – What Reservoir builds and what it sources
23:41 – Tankless gas, virtual capacity, and the booster heater
27:11 – Recirculation, freeze protection, leak detection, and Legionella
32:03 – What it costs and what it saves
36:01 – Placement: small rooms, basements, and cold climates
42:37 – Noise and durability
48:19 – Demand response and virtual power plants
53:22 – A. O. Smith’s CO2 split system and Reservoir’s moat
55:54 – Policy headwinds after the IRA
59:29 – What’s next for Reservoir

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

Home batteries like the Tesla Powerwall are nice, but what about people who can’t afford them, or renters who aren’t allowed to install them, or people who just don’t want the hassle of dealing with a permit and an electrician? A company called Pila is selling small (1.6 kWh) batteries that simply plug into a normal electrical socket. They can serve as backup for a refrigerator or other appliance in the event of a blackout, but they can also “mesh” with one another to form a network, pair with rooftop solar, or participate in VPP programs. CEO Cole Ashman explains the value proposition.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
02:26 Lessons from Powerwall and Span
05:33 What Pila is and how it works
07:14 How long a fridge runs on one battery
09:28 Fire risk, LFP chemistry, and New York City
16:02 Why the price went up, and cost per kilowatt hour
19:55 Who is actually buying Pila
23:00 Financing models and free batteries
27:04 Do the bill savings add up?
32:05 Why utilities want small batteries in VPPs
36:58 Pilots with Holy Cross Energy and Brooklyn SolarWorks
41:09 Solar pairing and the Pila mesh network
47:14 Camping batteries and built-in storage
54:19 Utilities and visibility at the grid edge
55:58 Bidirectional outlets and the next five years
1:00:10 Clean energy as invisible infrastructure

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.volts.wtf

Back in 2011, I wrote that fossil fuel interests had a much better media game than clean energy. My example was Frank Maisano, a media relations guy for coal utilities and the natural gas industry. Thirty years on, he’s still at it — still writing his newsletter, still connecting reporters to sources, still better at it than anyone on the clean side (sigh). So I’m finally talking to him about it: clean energy trade groups nobody in Washington fears, Trump’s daft efforts to kill renewables, the PAC picking off dirty-energy Republicans, permitting and data center fights, and the climate denial shop he worked for in the ‘90s. Spoiler: he regrets nothing.
Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction
03:46 – What a DC media strategist actually does
09:50 – Republicans, Trump, and a narrow House majority
15:29 – Why tax cuts beat energy in the OBBBA fight
18:54 – Competing with China on AI without the electric stack
21:15 – Paying $4 billion to hand back offshore wind leases
28:07 – Red-state wind and the orders keeping coal plants open
32:52 – Clean energy trade groups and the building trades
38:41 – Gas as a bridge, and what longer term means
44:55 – Whether a half-gas trade group can serve clean energy
48:43 – A coherent clean vision against an incoherent coalition
51:14 – Do the green groups still scare anyone
55:18 – Permitting reform and the Whitehouse-Capito path
59:46 – Data centers, animal spirits, and the midterms
1:06:48 – The revenge PAC, and whether it is working
1:12:31 – Congress, the courts, and what Democrats could do
1:18:53 – COP, climate change, and the client he would turn down

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

Verrus is building data centers designed to address every objection the public has raised: they use batteries instead of diesel generators, which makes them grid assets that help hold down power prices; they use closed-loop cooling, which uses a tiny fraction of the water; their equipment is quieter; and as a bonus, they squeeze more servers into the same grid connection. Yet both of Verrus’s proposed sites, in Michigan and Oregon, are mired in fierce local opposition. In this episode, CEO Nelson Abramson walks through the engineering — and the politics that the engineering hasn’t quite solved.
Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction
02:43 – Three decades in data centers
05:05 – What a Verrus data center looks like
07:39 – The medium voltage power plane
12:13 – UPS batteries vs. the big LFP battery
17:27 – Priority aware capping and provisioned utility capacity
22:31 – Why not buy the pieces off the shelf?
25:42 – Duration: what happens when four hours runs out
34:28 – Diesel backup and what customers ask for
37:15 – How flexible is compute, really?
42:37 – Noise, fans, and the sound studies
48:42 – Water use and the 12 million gallon question
52:19 – Industrial land and by-right zoning
56:07 – Public opposition, recall petitions, and community benefits
1:00:07 – Oregon, Salem, and the moratorium
1:03:56 – Ride-through, NERC, and losing the moat
1:07:11 – What V2 looks like