Episode #7
S5E8: Microgrid Maven Elisa Wood discusses state of play for consumer-empowering electricity options
Elisa Wood, founder and editor of the newsletter Energy Changemakers, has covered the evolution of consumer-empowering technologies such as microgrids, demand response, rooftop solar and battery storage and vehicle-to-grid for more than a dozen years. There is perhaps no one more qualified to discuss these emerging consumer-empowering electricity options and the forces working against their adoption. In a wide-ranging discussion, Wood notes the headwinds facing these technologies but is overall optimistic about the future. The traditional regulatory framework for monopoly utilities, a vestige of the 19th century, rewards utilities for building big projects that provide shareholders big returns under the rate-regulated model, leaving these corporations with little financial incentive to invest in these smaller-scale technologies. Nevertheless, while there's little near-term prospect of changing the regulatory paradigm, Wood is optimistic that technology will ultimately drive change. "I think that the champion is technology," Wood says. "You have commercial/industrial customers putting in microgrids, even though it's not a real hot year for them. It's going to come back, and you've got virtual power plants, you know, coming to the fore. Community solar coming to the fore. All these things are competing with utilities. So the competition came. I think it just came through new technology, and I think that's only going to grow. Those technologies aren't going away." Another driver is rising electricity costs, which have become an election-year issue. "I think we're on the verge of something big," she says. "It's a tough time because the Trump administration, you know, has gotten rid of incentives and whatnot and kind of created a lot of tumult for the industry . . . but I feel like the consumer impetus is there and the technology is there waiting for it. So I'm actually pretty bullish right now." Wood sees all of these multiplying technologies "eating away" at the hold giant utilities have on the system, noting increasing consumer interest and municipalities investing in these technologies, which is creating a bottom-up approach to changing the utility system, more so than regulatory reforms. Regulatory reform is "really hard because (utilities) have the lobbyists," she says. "They have all the money to go in there to the regulatory agencies and influence them. And who can possibly compete with that? Who's out there that can compete with that? There's really no other entity, right? So regulation has to be changed from another direction. And I really believe it's going to be from more the consumer choosing something else and forcing the utility to change, or basically taking away their customer base, you know, so that they have to change. I think it's going to come from that direction." Support the show
