Phillip Sandino, SVP of Utility Development at Tract: on Master Planning, Hyperscale Demand & Delivering Power Infrastructure for the Long Game | Season Ten, Episode One

Welcome to Season Ten of Conversations in Cleantech!

 

This season, we’re deconstructing digital infrastructure - one of the fastest-growing and most influential parts of the energy transition. From hyperscalers and AI demand to talent, capital, software and sustainability, we’ll explore how data infrastructure gets built, powered, financed, staffed and scaled.

 

In this inaugural episode, our hosts Jenny Gladman and Chloe England are joined by Phillip Sandino, Senior Vice President of Utility Development at Tract - a company building powered land platforms that bring large-scale data centre sites online faster and more responsibly.

 

With a career spanning field engineering, power systems, utilities, and data centre operations, Phillip brings a rare end-to-end perspective to today’s conversation. He’s been on both sides of the grid - delivering power and demanding it - and now plays a critical role in aligning stakeholders, infrastructure and capital to deliver gigawatt-scale developments.

Together, Jenny, Chloe and Phillip unpack how grid planning must evolve to meet hyperscale demand, why credibility is critical for project viability, and what power procurement really looks like behind the scenes. They explore what it means to build with foresight, how Tract works to de-risk and accelerate utility timelines, and why gigawatt-scale development requires new models of partnership.

It’s a conversation grounded in practical experience - and a timely look at what it truly takes to scale digital infrastructure responsibly, in a market that’s evolving faster than ever.

01:20 - Introduction to Phillip
02:49 - What first drew you to the power and digital infrastructure space?
06:45 - What did your time in utilities teach you that developers and operators still underestimate today?
09:27 - When did you realise data centres weren’t a short-term trend, but a permanent shift?
12:00 - What does Tract do, and what does “powered land” mean in practice?
15:15 - What are the advantages of a lean, tightly aligned team in such a fast-moving market?
17:20 - Why is it so hard right now for utilities and regulators to assess whether a project is real, and why does that matter so much?
20:09 - What does a gigawatt really mean from a utility perspective in terms of capital risk and system impact?
22:34 - In such a noisy market, what signals that a developer or project sponsor is truly credible?
25:00 - As AI-driven demand accelerates, what do you wish more people understood about what it really takes to scale responsibly?
26:45 - Looking ahead a few years, what needs to change first for the US power system to keep up with demand?

 

Connect with your hosts, Jenny Gladman and Chloe England, on LinkedIn.

Find your guest, Phillip Sandino, on LinkedIn.

Thanks for listening to Conversations in Cleantech brought to you by Brightsmith.

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