Power Flow

In this episode, Power Flow host Amy Simpkins shares her vision for the podcast and the importance of collaboration in innovation.

Featuring conversations with energy experts, Power Flow showcases all things energy: the new energy economy, the all-electric future, sustainability, resilience, and equity.

Learn how microgrid project development is similar to spacecraft acquisition. Also: sustainability, community resilience, the new energy economy, all-electric future, and moving from centralized to distributed architectures.

Amy’s objective is to start conversations that dream a new dream in the context of collaboration, understanding that no one person has all the answers to the energy crises that are facing our world right now. Using the power of collaboration to save the planet together, we can tap many people’s zones of genius and learn about the exciting solutions all around us.

Quotables

“The way that we innovate, the way we move forward is not just diversity for the sake of diversity, but it’s a diversity of conversation and experience, bringing the vast experience and knowledge and inspiration from all different kinds of people together. Those are the keys to changing the world.”

“I believe that the most potent form of innovation is collaborative, where you get multiple minds to the whiteboard to solve problems together. We need to have conversations with people who don’t think like us.”

This Week’s Guest

Amy Simpkins is Co-Founder, Host, and Chief Architect of the Power Flow Podcast. She is the author of Spiral: A Catalyst for Innovation and Expansion and is known as a speaker and thought leader in innovation.

Amy is CEO of the renewable energy startup muGrid Analytics, who solves problems at the edge of energy technology and economics using math and modeling. She is dedicated to creating a sustainable energy future for the planet, one project at a time.

Previously, Amy designed, integrated, and operated spacecraft at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company. During her tenure as an aspiring Spacecraft Systems Architect, she contributed to programs such as Juno, Stardust-NExT, Orion, and Space Radar, and worked in dynamic idea incubation groups for advanced aerospace innovation.

Amy holds an SB in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and an MS in Astronautical Engineering from the University of Southern California. She is a messy chef, a world traveler, a taekwondo green belt, a homeschooling mom of three, and a tough cookie in the Colorado backcountry.

Connect with Amy on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Follow Power Flow on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Tik Tok.

Follow muGrid Analytics on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, and check out their website.

If you enjoyed the conversation, please share with other innovators. Leave us a positive review and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. See you at the whiteboard!

Jennifer Gray Thompson is a lifelong resident of Sonoma Valley in Northern California. She attended Santa Rosa Junior College and graduated from Dominican University in 2001 with degrees in English and History. After teaching high school for 10 years, Jennifer went on to earn a master’s degree in Public Administration from University of Southern California’s Price School of Public Policy. Post graduate school, Jennifer worked for the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors.
She is the CEO of After the Fire, an initiative of 501c3 nonprofit Rebuild NorthBay Foundation (RNBF), which was founded after the devastating fires in the North Bay of San Francisco in October 2017. RNBF is an organization dedicated to helping the region rebuild better, greener, safer, and faster. In summer of 2021, RNBF created After the Fire USA in response to the prevalence of massive megafires in response to climate change and wildland imbalances. Our tagline remains “Recover. Rebuild. Reimagine.”
Jennifer is nationally recognized as a leader in the space of wildfire and has presented at several national conferences on the issue by invitation of the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation, HAC, Fannie Mae, Brownsfield, Smart Cities, FEMA, and many more. She is cofounder of CANVAS, an association of professional leaders in disaster working together to “listen locally, act regionally, reform nationally.”
Jennifer is the creator and host of the How to Disaster podcast, which highlights proven and effective leaders with great ideas in the space of disaster. She is on the board of directors of La Luz Center, a nonprofit serving primarily the Latino community in Sonoma Valley.
Jennifer interviewed Amy Simpkins on How to Disaster on Enhancing Equity and Sustainability back in September of 2021.

Quotables

“Every single community can recover at the same rate as another community if they are offered the right tools and capacity and funding and support.” - Jennifer Gray Thompson

“Energy is also an ecosystem.” – Jennifer Gray Thompson

"What is good for the ecology is good for the economy." – Jennifer Gray Thompson

“The renewal of faith in humanity is really common in disaster places.” – Jennifer Gray Thompson

“The American culture is very good in a crisis and is very good at stepping in with heroics in a crisis. But what we’re bad at culturally is taking responsibility for our neighbors and our communities prior to the crisis.” – Amy Simpkins

“Disaster is a great leveler and a great teacher.” – Jennifer Gray Thompson

“There is a way forward and I believe clean energy is at the center of that.” – Jennifer Gray Thompson

If you enjoyed the conversation, please share the episode with other innovators. Leave us a positive review and subscribe to Power Flow on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And hey, we’re new, so you can even apply to be a sponsor or a guest.

You can follow Power Flow Podcast on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Tik Tok.

Thank you for listening. See you at the whiteboard!

Melanie Santiago-Mosier is an award-winning energy expert and thought leader, implementing a vision for diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in and through clean energy.
She is the Deputy Director for Clean Energy Group & Clean Energy States Alliance, sister nonprofits who provide technical expertise and independent analysis in support of communities and government leaders working for an equitable clean energy transition. Melanie ensures the organizations pursue their highest strategic goals while embedding principles of equity into all areas of work.
Before joining CEG & CESA, she was the Managing Director for Access & Equity for Vote Solar, where she managed Vote Solar’s work to build equitable partnerships with frontline communities; oversaw collaboration with those communities to design and advocate for programs that open up solar’s opportunities and benefits; and supported the organization’s internal work to grow as an organization that welcomes and supports people from all races, genders, backgrounds, and identities.
She has advanced clean energy policy for over a decade, including leading the government affairs efforts for organizations such as the Maryland Public Service Commission and Washington Gas Energy Services, after serving as counsel and policy analyst for the MD General Assembly. She also served as a regional policy director for SunEdison.
In 2015, Melanie was named one of Maryland’s “Leading Women” by The Daily Record, MD’s premier business and legal news publication. In 2019, she was awarded a WRISE Honor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion by Women in Renewable Industries and Sustainable Energy. In 2020, she was named one of “MD’s Top 100 Women” by The Daily Record. Melanie is an attorney licensed to practice law in Maryland. She holds her JD from the University of MD School of Law and her BA from St. John’s College. She serves on a number of volunteer boards and is a volunteer mentor for law students.
Quotables

“We’re all rowing in the same boat. We’re going in the same direction. It’s all about how do we best build out the clean energy system of the future and help different people get there.”
– Melanie Santiago-Mosier

“We are rebuilding the way that we do energy in this country, in the world. We are also simultaneously rebuilding the way we do work and the way we do business and doing that from a more equitable perspective, from a more justice-oriented perspective.”
– Amy Simpkins

“Centering communities doesn’t mean coming and giving handouts to communities. Centering communities means being in a listening posture first and foremost.”
– Melanie Santiago-Mosier

“Environmental racism is a real thing.”
– Melanie Santiago-Mosier

Resources
Melanie recommends that you check out Vote Solar to find out how you can get involved in creating inclusive and expansive renewable energy policies.

Check out the Initiative for Energy Justice for more information on important energy equity and energy justice principles. And you'll also want to spend some time with the Jemez Principles, which according to Melanie are "foundational for climate justice work!"

Also mentioned: Emergent Strategy by adrienne marie brown

Thank you for listening. See you at the whiteboard!

In this episode, we get nerdy about batteries and how battery technology has the power to drive the energy transition.

Energy storage is a crucial piece of the clean energy future. It mitigates the intermittency of nondispatchable renewable generation like solar or wind and allows us to shift energy to when it is truly needed while also providing grid stability.

Lithium-based batteries are currently the front-running energy storage candidate due to their wide use in personal electronics over the past 25 years, their high energy density, and high cycle lifetimes. But lithium-based batteries are not without challenges - from accessibility of materials to fire hazards during operation to a lack of recyclability, there are plenty of opportunities to challenge lithium's dominance as a battery chemistry.
Eloisa de Castro and her company, Enerpoly, are looking to do just that with humble zinc-manganese -- the same type of chemistry as your standard alkaline battery. They are looking to make this workhorse both rechargeable and scalable so they can beat lithium in material availability, manufacturability, safety, recyclability, and yes, affordability.

Quotables:

“The innovation that needs to happen in the energy industry is around the integration of technology more than around the technology itself.”
-Eloisa de Castro and Amy Simpkins

“One of the challenges around trying to find solutions in the energy industry is that we, as humans, have this common desire to simplify problems or solutions into a single metric that we have to reference.

But, when you're solving an integrated engineering problem, there are a lot of different factors that you can play with. So you have to choose the ones that are the most important to you.”

-Eloisa de Castro

This Week’s Guest

Eloisa de Castro is CEO of Enerpoly, the Swedish zinc-ion battery technology company that is generating buzz in Europe's energy industry and has been selected as one of 2021's Top 5 Battery Tech Challengers by the Energy Tech Summit.

Eloisa comes with a wealth of experience in technology leadership, having spent over 10 years in engineering and operations in the energy and aerospace industries. Prior to Enerpoly, she served as Director of Market Operations and Program Management at Modern Energy. Eloisa earned her bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and her MBA from INSEAD in France.
Resources:

Connect with Eloisa de Castro on LinkedIn.

Follow Enerpoly on LinkedIn and check out their website.

If you enjoyed the conversation, please share the episode with other innovators. Leave us a positive review and subscribe to Power Flow on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Check out our awesome merch! And hey, we’re new, so you can even apply to be a sponsor or a guest.

You can follow Power Flow Podcast on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Tik Tok.

Thank you for listening. See you at the whiteboard!

Here on Power Flow we do a lot of thinking about the future of energy. For Ahlmahz Negash, PhD, it's what she does every day for the City of Tacoma in her job as a long range resource planner. She's helping the city not only plan for clean sources of energy (which they already have in spades) but also plan for electrification - enabling vehicles, buildings, and industrial processes to move to those clean sources of energy.

As a futurist, Ahlmahz is passionate about designing for agility and adaptability and counting on the fact that we'll have new knowledge available in the future and should expect our solutions to evolve along with that knowledge.
Ahlmahz is also a self-proclaimed "heart and mind" person and encourages us all to leverage the power of compassion to motivate us to create impact and build a better world.

Note: We discuss Episode 1.10 with Janette Freeman on the need to make personal change to find more impactful work.

Quotables

"We don't have any shortage of technology or economists, but what we could use a whole lot of are people committed to humanity, who want to see a future for everybody and not just themselves.”

“Can costs become a constraint and not just the objective all the time?"

"There is no greater compassion than worrying about the people that are going to be here that you'll never meet."

"We're sitting on this stockpile of clean energy. The best way we can move the city forward in its climate action plans is to electrify."

“It’s critical that we get a lot more input from the folks that are actually being impacted by the decisions that the utility makes.”

All above quotes by Ahlmahz Negash

This week’s guest

Ahlmahz Negash is currently a Senior Power Analyst at Tacoma Power in the Long-Term Resource Planning and Analysis group. Her role encompasses a wide range of activities including, leading cross functional teams, resource modeling, evaluating policy impacts, and developing innovative demand-side solutions.

Prior to joining Tacoma Power, Ahlmahz was a research fellow at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway. She received her BS and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington in 2010 and 2015, respectively.

If you enjoyed the conversation, please share the episode with other innovators. Leave us a positive review and subscribe to Power Flow on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Check out our awesome merch!

You can follow Power Flow Podcast on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Tik Tok.

Thank you for listening. See you at the whiteboard!