With Great Power

In 2019, when Julia Hoos moved to Houston for a role with Boston Consulting Group, she had no interest in the energy industry. For one thing, it was — and largely remains — a boy’s club. For another, energy just didn’t excite her.

But as she started learning about the energy transition, Julia became curious. Before long, she was crunching numbers for an oil and gas client looking to understand how California’s zero-emissions vehicle mandate would impact demand for its fuel products. Then, in 2022, Julia joined power market analytics firm Aurora Energy Research, where she focuses on the eastern U.S. and the PJM power market.

This week on With Great Power, Julia talks to Brad Langley about the pressures that PJM is facing, and its reform efforts. They also discuss how demand flexibility could support more data centers without adding new generation, and how utilities are using large load tariffs to manage costs and grid reliability.

Credits: Hosted by Brad Langley. Produced by Mary Catherine O’Connor. Edited by Anne Bailey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. The GridX production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and Brad Langley.

Growing up in Silicon Valley, Varun Sivaram didn’t look to Elon Musk or Sergey Brin to learn about success stories. He looked to his dad, a material scientist who immigrated from India. 

But Varun’s own dreams of pursuing a career in technology took a circuitous path. His physics lab at Oxford discovered a promising new solar material, but when he emerged from graduate school in 2012, it was no time to launch a renewables startup. After a successful early career pursuing his other love, foreign relations, he pivoted to tech. In 2024, Varun founded Emerald AI, which helps data centers adjust their workloads to use energy more efficiently.

This week on With Great Power, Varun explains why he thinks AI can help save the grid. Varun and Brad talk about the demonstration pilots Emerald AI has completed and Varun’s vision for a massive AI factory the company is helping to build, in Virginia.

Credits: Hosted by Brad Langley. Produced by Mary Catherine O’Connor. Edited by Anne Bailey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. The GridX production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and Brad Langley.

From his early days as a paper boy and eagle scout to his time as a naval officer decades later, Casey Kirkpatrick has always believed in service. Today, after more than 25 years with the energy giant National Grid, he’s still serving.  

Casey directs National Grid’s strategic engineering team, where he focuses on an emerging threat that most of its east coast ratepayers don’t think much about: wildfires. To get ahead of that growing risk, National Grid has partnered with Rhizome, a company that helps utilities understand their wildfire vulnerabilities.

This week on With Great Power, Casey tells Brad what National Grid has learned from its work with other utilities and with Rhizome — including a few surprises. They also explore how wildfire preparedness fits into National Grid's broader climate resilience planning, and why the threat looks somewhat different across the utility's UK operations.

Credits: Hosted by Brad Langley. Produced by Mary Catherine O’Connor. Edited by Anne Bailey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. The GridX production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and Brad Langley.

Most kids don’t think much about how buildings are powered or how much energy they waste. But growing up in an old, inefficient apartment building in New York, Ben Brown did. 
From an early age he knew he wanted to work on climate solutions and energy efficiency. That interest led him to Google, where he worked on Nest Renew, which allowed Nest thermostat users to adjust their energy usage to times when electricity is cleaner or cheaper. In 2024, Nest Renew merged with the demand response platform OhmConnect to form a new venture, Renew Home. In November, Renew Home released a study showing that small shifts in five million of its smart thermostats across the U.S. can provide utilities with four gigawatts of energy capacity.
This week on With Great Power, Ben Brown dives into how Renew Home conducted its study, what it says about the bigger potential for shifting capacity nationwide, and why he says thermostats are just the beginning when it comes to connecting utilities with available energy capacity inside homes. 
Credits: Hosted by Brad Langley. Produced by Mary Catherine O’Connor. Edited by Anne Bailey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. The GridX production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and Brad Langley.

Nikki Bruno learned early in her career that debates over climate change – and how to respond – are seldom black and white. Progress comes from honest discourse and collaboration.
At Eversource, where she leads the utility's thermal solutions and operational services, Nikki manages a geothermal project that has brought together environmental activists, the utility’s gas infrastructure team, ratepayers, and government leaders in Framingham, Mass. The result is the first utility-led geothermal network in the country, which came online in 2024.
This week on With Great Power, Nikki Bruno describes how the gas and electric utility Eversource uses geothermal energy to power 140 homes and businesses. She talks about challenges and successes of the project, how Eversource is now expanding it with Energy Department funding, and how the utility is measuring success.
Credits: Hosted by Brad Langley. Produced by Mary Catherine O’Connor. Edited by Anne Bailey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. The GridX production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and Brad Langley.