Episode 1.12 On Interoperability and Breaking Down Stovepipes with Lori Wright

11/16/21 • 45 min

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Lori Wright is helping to solve tomorrow's problems today. She is a lawyer working in technology - often energy technology - and helping developers, designers, and innovators build systems that will stand the test of time.

She focuses on issues of cybersecurity and interoperability, topics that are often hard for implementers to stop and think about. Lori brings a long-game perspective on how the decisions we make today help or hinder the clean energy future, and we'd all do well to pay attention.
Also discussed in this episode: Episode 1.03 On the Future of Transactive Energy with Kay Aikin
Episode 1.06 On the Power of Holistic, Incremental Transformation with Liana Cassar(on Energy Policy)

Quotables

“Just because we can't solve it to the end doesn't mean we shouldn't start solving.”

“What's going to move solar into the future is market certainty.”

“Energy, like anything, is powered by data. Everything is going to be interoperable and we should just plan for that.”

“How do you predict the future? You look to the current and you look to the past.”

Lori Wright

This week’s guest
Lori Wright is a partner and chair of AGG’s Technology practice. She represents buyers and sellers of technology and helps clients navigate the legal, business, and practical issues that arise in the course of the development, commercialization, procurement, and deployment of technology.

Lori’s practice includes representing domestic and international clients in transactions involving software development and licensing, digital transformation and complex global technology, and business process outsourcing. She frequently negotiates an array of complex sourcing relationships, including strategic alliances, business process outsourcing (BPO), IT outsourcing (ITO), and other strategic sourcing and revenue sharing arrangements. Lori has extensive experience restructuring and renegotiating legacy or otherwise unfavorable transactions, as well as advising clients through the process of termination, resourcing, or insourcing.

Resources:

Connect with Lori on LinkedIn.

Check out AGG’s 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!

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

Thank you for listening. See you at the whiteboard!

Quotables

“Just because we can't solve it to the end doesn't mean we shouldn't start solving.”

“What's going to move solar into the future is market certainty.”

“Energy, like anything, is powered by data. Everything is going to be interoperable and we should just plan for that.”

“How do you predict the future? You look to the current and you look to the past.”

Lori Wright

Resources:

Connect with Lori on LinkedIn.

Check out AGG’s website.

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

Thank you for listening. See you at the whiteboard!

Previous Episode

Episode 1.11 On Microgrids and Prioritizing Resilience with Daniel Wiggins Jr.

After a historic flooding event in 2016, which left the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa without power and critical infrastructure, the tribe committed themselves to installing microgrids to ensure clean, resilient power on tribal lands. In May 2021, the tribe commissioned three building level microgrids, incorporating more than 520 kW of solar and over 1MWh of battery storage, the largest battery system to date in the state of Wisconsin. The project is named Ishkonige Nawadide, which means "it catches fire" in Anishinaabemowin.

Dan Wiggins is the visionary who led the team to implement these projects. He's been working for the tribe for over 10 years as a tribal energy manager and air quality technician, with expertise from utility scale infrastructure to residential energy efficiency, and now three tremendously successful microgrids.

It's been my great pleasure to work with Dan on his energy team to plan, design, and realize his vision for resilient tribal energy and energy sovereignty. This conversation is an extension of our professional partnership, and our friendship: fiery, passionate, fun, and very committed to doing projects when they are the right thing to do.

Referenced in this episode:

Episode 1.06 with Liana Cassar on Energy Policy
Episode 1.09 with Katherine Lucey on Air Quality

Quotables

"We all answer to somebody, whether it's leadership, whether it's our children, or whether it's the community we reside in. Really listening to all of those resources is the right thing to do."

"The way I approach renewable energy is that you have do first do it because it's the right thing to do. That has to be the #1 goal for any renewable energy project."

"Strategic planning is the fun part of project development. You get to take everybody's ideas, throw them in a blender, and hope something magic comes out."

This week’s guest

Daniel Wiggins Jr is a Bad River Tribal Member and the Mashkiiziibii (Bad River) Natural Resource Department’s Air Quality Technician (AQT). He has worked for the Tribe for nearly 10 years as the AQT and has had oversight of the Tribe’s Renewable Energy Activities since 2017.

He was recently tasked as Project Lead for the Ishkonige Nawadide Solar Microgrid Project, which installed over 500 kilowatts of solar and 1,000 kilowatt hours of batteries at three tribal facilities.

The Tribe’s energy projects are planned and executed on the Tribe’s ability to exercise energy sovereignty, and eventually reach the Tribe’s energy vision, “to empower and enable the community to move towards energy independence.”

Resources:

Connect with the Mashkiiziibii Natural Resource Departmen on Facebook.

Check out Bad River’s 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.

Thank you for listening. See you at the whiteboard!

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Next Episode

Episode 1.13 On Opportunities at the Consumer/Utility Edge with Dr. Julieta Giraldez

After a 10 year term at the National Renewable Energy Lab, Dr. Julieta Giraldez is working at the edge of technology and regulatory issues, at the edge of the utility, the energy policy, and the energy consumer. She is a facilitator of conversations that move clean energy projects forward.

We talk about a lot of edges in this episode: between research and implementation, between the public and private sectors, between complexity and opportunity, and between the data and decision making.

Quotables

"Where the technical meets the regulatory is a very exciting space, because it means we are advancing societal good."

“The way we used to plan before was an extremely simple set of assumptions. Now, just to even answer a question, you need to consider twelve other things times ten other scenarios to actually understand the impact of what you’re trying to look at. It’s a complex space now and that excites me.”

All above quotes by Dr. Julieta Giraldez

“Complexity can feel scary or frustrating, but there’s also a ton of opportunity in complexity.”

“The way that we model things is still just a model. It can tell us important things about reality, but it’s never going to perfectly reflect reality.”

Amy Simpkins

This week’s guest

A leader in the renewable energy sector, Julieta Giraldez is a Principal of Customer Solutions at Kevala, where she focuses on solving the challenges facing energy market participants interacting with the evolving electricity grid. Prior to joining Kevala, Dr. Giraldez worked for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) where she led Distributed Energy Resources (DER) grid integration related projects.

Most recently, she focused on understanding how customer-sited resources such as solar, electric vehicles, and battery storage, can best be leveraged and safely integrated into distribution systems. She brings a holistic view of grid integration related issues, acknowledging the importance of including multiple perspectives in the evaluation of new emerging technologies, from developers and customers to technology providers, regulators and utilities.

Dr. Giraldez holds a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from Colorado State University, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines and a B.S in Technical Mining and Energy Resources from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain.

Resources:

Connect with Julieta on LinkedIn.

Check out Kevala’s website.

If you enjoyed the conversation, please share. Leave us a positive review and subscribe to Power Flow on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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

Thank you for listening. See you at the whiteboard!