Show notes
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/subscribeAmerican homes are filling up with batteries, EVs, and smart thermostats that could be coordinated to make the grid cheaper and more reliable — but almost none of them are. To understand why, it helps to watch what happens when the company best in the world at this tries to do it here. In Britain, Octopus Energy has built a giant virtual power plant out of its customers' devices. In the US, it has spent six years running into walls. Now it’s bought Uplight, which runs customer programs for 85 utilities. I talked with Nick Chaset, who runs both, about what's in the way and whether distributed energy can ever scale with US utilities … the way they are.Chapters:00:00 – Introduction02:02 – Octopus’s past year and the Uplight investment05:18 – What makes the UK market work for Octopus11:12 – Texas: fast growth, flattened volatility14:57 – Will flexibility put itself out of business?19:16 – Why Octopus stays out of Pennsylvania and New York22:17 – Does residential retail competition have a future?24:41 – Why utility programs trail Octopus on participation32:17 – The demand stack and what planners can count on39:11 – Kraken, Uplight and the overlap46:04 – Consumer protection and the aggregator model51:17 – Data centers and the social license to operate55:11 – Do we need dynamic pricing?58:30 – Five years out
