The POWER Podcast

Microgrids are localized power grids that can be disconnected from the traditional grid to operate autonomously. Because they are able to operate while the main grid is down, microgrids can strengthen resilience and help prevent grid disturbances. They also function as a reliable resource for faster system response and recovery. Microgrids enable the integration of more distributed energy resources, including renewable energy such as rooftop solar and batteries. Additionally, the use of local energy resources to serve local loads helps reduce energy losses in transmission and distribution, further increasing efficiency of the electric delivery system. Furthermore, microgrids provide vital service during emergencies and after severe storms. When power was knocked out in many parts of Texas during Winter Storm Uri in 2021, many of H.E.B.’s grocery stores were able to keep the lights on, and refrigerators and freezers operating, because they had invested in microgrids. “This may not seem like a big deal, but for the local communities where they may not have access to the basics, like food and water, having that store continue to operate and provide services for customers is huge in order to help them get through those kinds of events,” Paul Froutan, Chief Technology Officer with Enchanted Rock, said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. Enchanted Rock is a company that was founded in 2006. It calls itself “a leader in electrical resiliency-as-a-service, powering companies, critical infrastructure, and communities to ensure operational continuity during unexpected power outages from extreme weather, infrastructure failures, cyberattacks and other grid disruptions.” Enchanted Rock’s dual-purpose microgrids use natural gas and renewable natural gas (RNG) offsets to produce significantly lower carbon emissions and air pollutants than diesel generators. Additionally, the company’s end-to-end microgrid software platform, GraniteEcosystem, provides real-time 24/7/365 system monitoring and optimization, including forecasting of electricity market conditions, to ensure reliable power is delivered to customers. Microgrids can provide value even when there’s not an emergency. “In other situations that may not be as severe, offering the capability to remove loads off the grid essentially creates additional capacity for everyone,” Froutan said. “So, you can look at it in the sense that, if we can get big loads off the grid, that power can go and serve the rest of the users in the community that don’t have that capability.” Among the technology utilized in Enchanted Rock’s microgrids are solar panels, fuel cells, and batteries. But perhaps what adds the most reliability to the system is natural gas–fired generators. “We end up relying on the natural gas generator because they’re one of the few elements available on demand but you can run it indefinitely, effectively, even in situations where there are major events,” said Froutan. Notably, the use of RNG allows a microgrid to remain “green.” Froutan said RNG is “the most interesting thing not talked about” when people discuss a carbon-neutral future. “There is a very good option of renewable natural gas out there that is available today, and depending on the approach, you can actually get a negative carbon index on use of those fuels,” he said. “So, it’s a very appealing option … that is easy, makes sense, and can be implemented right away.”

It seems like industry insiders have been lamenting the aging power workforce for decades. Yet, there is still a large percentage of workers in the current workforce that are retirement eligible—some studies suggest the percentage is as high as 40%. Meanwhile, the energy transition has created a large number of new jobs building and operating solar and wind farms, enhancing infrastructure, and developing and deploying energy efficiency programs. What that means is there are a lot of open positions to be filled throughout the power industry. “Right now, we have active close to 500 postings for positions,” Sheila Rostiac, senior vice president for Human Resources, Chief Human Resources Officer, and Chief Diversity Officer with Public Service Enterprise Group Inc. (PSEG), said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. “Those jobs run the continuum of opportunities at our company from skilled craftworkers, laborers, customer service representatives, engineers, project managers, and certainly IT [information technology] and cyber experts,” she said. PSEG is a diversified energy company headquartered in Newark, New Jersey. Established in 1903, the company’s principal operating subsidiaries are: Public Service Electric and Gas Co. (PSE&G), PSEG Power, and PSEG Long Island. PSE&G is New Jersey’s largest provider of electric and natural gas service—serving 2.3 million electric customers and 1.9 million gas customers. PSEG Power is an energy supply company that integrates the operations of its nuclear generating assets with its fuel supply functions. PSEG Long Island operates the electric transmission and distribution system of the Long Island Power Authority, which includes about 1.1 million customers. PSEG has approximately 12,500 employees. The jobs PSEG has available are open for a number of reasons. “I had a turnover rate on retirements of about 3% last year, and so backfilling those skilled workers is part of our opening and our routine operation,” said Rostiac. “At the same time, on the growth standpoint, you know the industry is going through an incredible transformation, and we—PSEG—are doing significant capital work across the state, upgrading our gas systems, upgrading and fostering resilience in our electric systems, and managing opportunities with our nuclear business. So, some of those jobs are providing new opportunities in growth of our business,” she said. Rostiac suggested interest in job openings has been good. “Our brand is well-known and our reputation as a great place to work really does afford us strong interest,” she said. However, there’s stiff competition for well-qualified candidates. “We are competing with hosts of other companies, both in the state and really across the nation, for some of those top skills that everybody is looking for—particularly in the technology areas of IT and cyber,” she said. PSEG has won a few awards to back up Rostiac’s claim that the company provides a great working environment. Earlier this year, PSEG was named one of America’s “Most JUST Companies,” an annual analysis from nonprofit JUST Capital ranking companies on issues that supposedly matter most to Americans when it comes to corporate leadership. PSEG ranked fourth overall out of 39 national utilities evaluated in the survey. PSEG ranked as the second-highest utility in employee work-life balance. And among all industries evaluated by JUST, PSEG ranked in the top 100 for workforce advancement. “It is an incredibly exciting time to come to work in the energy industry,” said Rostiac. “The range of career opportunities with life-changing wages and the ability to grow and be part of an industry that is essential, empowering the lives of the communities and businesses around, it’s certainly a high-calling purpose and I hope that future generations see themselves as wanting to be a part of that.”

If you’ve been in the power industry workforce for any significant length of time, you may have asked your supervisor at some point “Why am I doing this?” regarding a task that you were assigned, only to have them respond, “We’ve always done it this way.” That’s because the power industry has a reputation for being stuck in its ways of doing things. As long as a process is safe, reliable, and reasonably cost-effective, the feeling is often, “Why change?” But just because something works, doesn’t mean its efficient or the best practice. Sometimes you have to step back and consider, “Is there a better way?” And sometimes you have to spend money to make money. The old English saying goes, “Penny-wise and pound-foolish,” which is intended to keep people from being too careful with small amounts of money, while missing out on large windfalls. Implementing new technology typically requires an initial investment, which in many cases can seem substantial. For power companies, that often means justifying the expense to the purse-string holders. “If we think about the focus on operating expense [OpEx] versus capital, within the U.S. sector at least, looking at leveraging cloud or other SaaS [Software-as-a-Service] solutions that may come across as an unwelcome operating expense can definitely hinder the speed of adoption of some of these newer technologies,” Casey Werth, general manager for the Energy industry with IBM Technology, said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. “We work closely with a lot of our clients on how to address these and build out business cases that can show that even if you have an increase in OpEx, for instance, the downstream reduction of OpEx cost far outweighs the OpEx increase of the solution.” Werth offered an example based on IBM’s Vegetation Management solution, which he helped a transmission and distribution (T&D) customer implement. “Veg management is a massive operating expense on any T&D operator’s budget that can be optimized or improved upon to have a better outcome,” Werth said. IBM’s website touts Vegetation Management as an end-to-end solution that leverages artificial intelligence (AI), satellite images, Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), and more to regularly assess and monitor vegetation. It says the solution helps improve work prioritization and decision-making from planning all the way through work inspection and auditing. Werth said IBM has leveraged “advanced technology to better automate the identification of potential areas of risk due to foliage, and then helping better plan and then audit those veg processes to ensure the best outcome for our clients.” Texas-based Pedernales Electric Cooperative is reportedly a satisfied customer. It expects to reduce the number and severity of vegetation-related outages, improve safety and reliability, and cut overall vegetation management costs by having implemented the solution. Among other ways Werth said technology can improve operations is through “process mining.” The goal of process mining is to gain complete process transparency using data from a business’s own software systems, such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software. Process mining also aims to pinpoint inefficiencies and prioritize automation by impact and expected return on investment to drive continuous process improvements. It does that by triggering corrective actions or generating Robotic Process Automation (RPA) bots. “If we could identify four or five steps of a discrete process that could be either automated or removed, the potential OpEx savings, or just operational efficiency from that process on the other side, has really powerful impacts,” said Werth. “But, if you can’t run the tools to find those wins, then that win sort of stays hidden.”

Cynics might argue that it’s impossible to operate the power grid economically with 100% renewable energy on an hourly basis, but a model developed by Peninsula Clean Energy, a community choice aggregation agency that serves San Mateo County and the City of Los Banos, California, suggests it’s possible. To prove it, Peninsula Clean Energy intends to do it by 2025. “Our default product, which all of our customers receive at this time, is 50% renewable, 100% clean,” Jan Pepper, CEO of Peninsula Clean Energy, said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. “Our goal is to have the power that we deliver by 2025 be 100% renewable, and matched on a time-coincident, hour-by-hour basis.” Under current California regulations, renewable energy percentages are matched on an annual basis. “For example, if we have a 3,700 gigawatt-hour load, for us to be 50% renewable, which we are right now, we procure 1,850 gigawatt-hours per year of renewables and 1,850 gigawatt-hours of additional clean resources, which for us is large hydro, and that meets our needs on an annual basis,” Pepper explained. That basically means there are times when Peninsula Clean Energy is supplying more than 50% renewable power to its customers and times when it’s supplying less, but over the course of the year, everything averages out so the agency hits its 50% renewable energy target. However, by 2025, the agency expects to match its supply with its load every hour of every day. “In order to do that, we’ll be adding a lot of storage,” said Pepper. Peninsula Clean Energy’s modeling tool, which it calls MATCH (which stands for Matching Around-The-Clock Hourly energy), was built, tested, and used over the past two years. The goal was for the agency to determine the optimal 24/7 renewable energy portfolio. Leaders wanted to know how much it would cost, the level of emission reduction benefits that could be achieved, and the impacts it might have on the broader energy system. A team of workers, which included Planning and Analytics Manager Mehdi Shahriari, Power Resources and Compliance Manager Sara Maatta, and Greg Miller from the University of California, Davis, started with an open-source model called the “Switch Power System Planning Model” and modified it significantly to create MATCH. Using the model, the team outlined in a 44-page white paper how matching customer electricity demand with renewable energy supply 99% of the time achieves the ideal balance of being cost-competitive, reducing portfolio risk, and reducing emissions. “We find that a ‘sweet spot’ goal of providing 100% renewable energy on a 99% time-coincident basis results in only a 2% cost increase relative to our baseline, while achieving critical emission reductions and providing other benefits to the grid,” the team wrote in the report’s executive summary. “We were pleasantly surprised,” said Pepper. However, while achieving the last 1% is doable, it’s not quite as practical. “Our model also found there are diminishing returns in trying to match the last 1% of customer demand, with a 10% increase in portfolio cost needed to go from 99% time-coincident to 100% time-coincident,” the report says. “We’re excited about what the future holds and being able to show that we can do this in a cost-effective way, so that we can all have a much more sustainable and clean energy future,” Pepper concluded.

Hydropower projects frequently face resistance from environmental groups for a variety of reasons. One of the more common objections to hydro is the high turbine-induced mortality of fish. However, Natel Energy, an Alameda, California–based hydro turbine developer and independent power producer, has shown that improving hydro turbine designs could be the ultimate answer to the problem. It has developed the Restoration Hydro Turbine (RHT), a compact hydroelectric turbine that couples high performance with safe through-turbine fish passage. “Our thesis was that if we can make it safe for fish to move through hydropower facilities in a straightforward and easy way, then we can support reimagining hydropower overall, in a bit more of a distributed approach, but one where these projects actually also help to maintain passage and river connectivity,” Gia Schneider, co-founder and CEO of Natel Energy, said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. “Core to making that vision possible is a fish-safe turbine.” The RHT is optimized for low head (from 2 meters to 20 meters) and doesn’t require fine fish screens. The design’s thick, slanted blades transport fish away from the leading edge into wide inter-blade regions and downstream to the outlet. The progressive slant of the blades from hub to tip also minimizes the likelihood of severe strike and eliminates the risk of entrapment between moving and stationary parts. Schneider understands the challenges presented by multiple projects in a watershed or river. “If you’re in a watershed where you, say, have 10 projects down a river, then that means you need to be greater than 99% safe through each individual passage—each individual turbine—in order to achieve [an acceptable] population survival dynamic,” Schneider said. “And so, core for us is we want to achieve greater than 99% safe passage. We’ve kind of set that as an overall target. [It] doesn’t need to be quite that strict if you have fewer projects on a river, but it’s a good rule-of-thumb metric to aim for. And, then, we also want to be highly efficient, so up to 94% efficient from a power generation perspective.” The results achieved during intense testing have been phenomenal. In a recently released, peer-reviewed paper, the findings from an eel passage study were documented. “We’ve been able to actually show 100% passage of eel through our turbines, and with some pretty extreme conditions,” Schneider said. “We’re talking eel that are basically as long as the diameter of the turbine that they are going through—so fairly large eel relative to the size of the turbine—and where that turbine is spinning at 600, 700 rpm.” Schneider said it’s really important to get that kind of data, because it helps substantiate the design with real results, showing it’s truly possible to design for high fish passage and high energy production at the same time. Natel has conducted several other studies, some with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), with similarly impressive results. Earlier this year, a Natel/PNNL test of 186 large rainbow trout—measuring up to 500 millimeters (19.7 inches) in length—found no meaningful difference between the fish passed through Natel’s 1.9-meter-diameter (roughly 6 feet) turbine and a control group, indicating that the RHT allows safe passage of some of the largest fish ever successfully passed through a compact hydro turbine. Earlier tests of smaller rainbow trout passed through Natel’s turbine demonstrated 100% survival.

Economic development can be a challenge for leaders in rural communities. Often, it’s hard to attract businesses to rural areas because the local workforce may not have the skills or numbers to meet companies’ needs. But opportunities that haven’t been widely available in the past exist today for rural communities due to the energy transition that is sweeping the nation. “The potential for rural communities is really enormous,” L. Michelle Moore, CEO of Groundswell (a nonprofit that builds community power by connecting solar and energy efficiency with economic development, affordability, and quality of life) and author of the book Rural Renaissance: Revitalizing America’s Hometowns through Clean Power, said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. For example, Moore explained that nearly $10 billion is available to rural electric cooperative utilities through the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to build clean energy projects. She also noted how rural communities can benefit from electric vehicle (EV) tax credits, and from credits designed to encourage installation of EV chargers in rural areas. There are also great incentives for energy efficiency improvements, such as for adding insulation to homes or installing more efficient heating and cooling systems. “The opportunities for rural America are really, really myriad,” Moore said. “And, you know what, you can’t offshore construction jobs. So, implementing both energy efficiency [improvements]—whether it’s insulation in the attic or the air conditioning system—those are all activities that are going to keep local people at work.” Moore is a strong supporter of rural electric cooperatives and believes they have a large role to play in economic development in rural communities. “So many people don’t know or have never experienced the tremendous power and potential of rural electric cooperatives,” she said. “The people who buy their electricity from rural electric cooperative utilities actually own the utility, and they also participate directly in its governance. The boards of rural electric cooperative utilities are meant to be democratically elected by co-op members. So, it’s really energy democracy in practice when co-ops are working at their best,” explained Moore. “There are more than 900 of them around the country, and they serve more than half of America’s landmass. And they serve tens of millions of customers as well. So, they really could be the heroes of local clean energy futures.” When asked where rural communities can get the biggest bang for their buck, Moore responded, “As unsexy as it can sound, energy efficiency is a really important place to start, and that is because rural energy burdens are so high. You know, a lot of rural housing just needs repairs, maintenance, and upgrades, much of which can be paid for with energy efficiency over time.” But Moore said there are other ways rural communities can benefit from the energy transition. “The second thing that I would really encourage rural communities to look at is solar and energy storage, which is going to help to increase the resilience of your community,” she said. “Today, those technologies are much more available, and the Inflation Reduction Act has all kinds of grant funding and tax credits and rebates that help to pay for them and help to get them out into communities, including rural towns that may not have the dollars in their pocket today to be able to invest in the technology that they need without some additional support coming in from other places.”

The Duquesne Light Co. (DLC) may not be among the best-known electric power companies in the U.S., but for its customers in Allegheny and Beaver counties in southwestern Pennsylvania, the company has been a steady presence in the community for more than a century. “We are a Pittsburgh-based utility company. We’ve been in operation for over 140 years, serving the Pittsburgh area,” Kevin Walker, CEO of DLC, said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. “We are very entwined with our community, doing a lot of community service and corporate giving. And since we’re a small but mighty utility, we know, live, and work with all of our customers. I see many customers in the supermarket and in the barber shop and those kinds of places. And so, I love to feel that we are really making an impact for the people we know and serve.” Pittsburgh was the site of the Global Clean Energy Action Forum (GCEAF) in late September. Delegates from around the world gathered at the event hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy and Carnegie Mellon University. It was the first time the GCEAF was held in the U.S. The three-day event featured high-level plenary sessions and topical roundtables with energy and science ministers, CEOs, and other experts and leaders (Figure 1). There were also various side events, technology demonstrations, and other activities throughout the week. Walker was a member of the host committee. “We’re still riding the high off of that event. It was so exciting to have people from across the globe, here in Pittsburgh, really, to showcase the evolution and continuing evolution of Pittsburgh,” Walker said. “It was a great knowledge share both ways. We learned things from around the globe, as well as sharing our wisdom with folks around the globe.” Walker said innovation and creativity are in Pittsburgh’s DNA, as is a willingness to collaborate. “I think that’s our secret sauce here as a region—we really collaborate well and there’s a low-to-no barrier to the folks helping each other,” he said. Walker felt the collaborative spirit extended to attendees from across the globe during the event and has continued even after the conference ended. DLC has collaborated with other power companies, too. In late July, for example, the company announced that Commonwealth Edison (ComEd), an Exelon Corporation unit, and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) had joined the first phase of DLC’s public crowdsourcing innovation challenge, called “Monitoring Electrical Cable Challenge: The Future of Underground Inspection.” The challenge was devoted to creating a more reliable and safer underground electric network in the Pittsburgh region. With a total prize of $750,000, the challenge was shared with entrepreneurs, researchers, scientists, students, and more, and it drew submissions from around the world. ComEd and PG&E are collaborating with DLC in two areas: guiding the challenge finalists on solution testing and evaluating the phase-one results. The winning solution is expected to strengthen the underground electrical grid and improve worker and public safety in DLC’s service territory, with the potential for further implementation in ComEd’s and PG&E’s networks. Yet, if you look at DLC’s website, the first thing listed under its “About Us” heading is “Community,” and Walker seems well-focused on that aspect. “We just really have this giving spirit and we want to be an important partner for our community,” he said. Part of that includes charitable giving, while addressing social and economic inequities, workforce development, and sustainable communities also play a role. DLC has also made efforts to improve supplier diversity and work with more local suppliers. “Oftentimes, we have national and even international diverse suppliers. That is good, but it doesn’t put money back into our community. So, we’re happy and proud with the advancements we’ve made there,” Walker said.

Bitcoin mining is the process used to generate new coins and verify new transactions. The process involves vast, decentralized networks of computers around the world that verify and secure blockchains, the virtual ledgers that document cryptocurrency transactions. In return for contributing their computing power, miners are rewarded with new coins. The process ultimately requires a lot of energy to perform, which is where power companies come in. “Bitcoin mining can help the energy sector,” Andrew Webber, founder and CEO of Digital Power Optimization (DPO), said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. “Instead of just selling power to third-party Bitcoin miners, we suggest, that, in many circumstances, energy companies themselves are actually far better positioned to build their own Bitcoin mines and undertake this strategy and this activity for their own purposes in a vertically integrated way, where again, the energy company owns the Bitcoin mine. And by operating a Bitcoin mine, in conjunction with an energy asset, in an intelligent and thoughtful way, you can really optimize your generation assets in a way that you couldn’t really have done without a tool like Bitcoin mining to help you.” Webber said the idea came to him while reading a story in the newspaper. “I was reading [a Los Angeles Times] article about the state of California paying the state of Arizona $20 per megawatt-hour to get rid of all of its power. And I said, ‘What is going on? That seems absolutely crazy to me. I'll take all of it. You know? I'll set up a Bitcoin mine there, and just, any power you don’t want, just send it to me, I’ll take it for free,’ ” he said. Webber explained how Bitcoin mining can help power companies alleviate issues. “This is a mechanism that can go almost anywhere and soak up this excess available power where it’s produced, and then apply that value elsewhere across the globe in a way that actually solves these problems,” said Webber. “So, it’s quite an interesting tool for the energy sector once they get their heads around how this will help.” Bitcoin mining provides flexibility, too. If power is needed suddenly for customers, the power company can respond by simply shutting down the mining operation. “You can just turn it off, and so, it makes a really good tool to respond to sharp jumps in demand or transmission difficulties,” Webber said. “It’s sort of energy management infrastructure. And when you start thinking about an energy company building these things, it’s not really Bitcoin mining, you’re managing your energy assets in a different way, using a different system.” Setting up a Bitcoin mining operation is fairly simple. Webber said a 1-MW system fits in what looks like a standard shipping container—essentially, a 40-foot by 8-1/2-foot big metal box. Inside are racks, wiring, all the networking equipment, a filtration system, cooling fans, and 300 to 325 very specialized computers. The container is connected to a transformer supplied by 240-V or 277-V power, and mining can begin on whatever schedule works best for the power company including 24/7/365. In the end, however, Bitcoin mining is just one tool in a power management toolbox. It can be used in combination with other solutions, including battery storage and green hydrogen production. “All of these are things that need to be incorporated and thought about, not individually, but frankly, in concert with one another,” said Webber. “Right now, I think the energy sector has close to zero understanding that this is available to them, and that’s what we’re hoping to change. And I think it’ll be probably commonplace over the next decade or two.”

Aero-derivative gas turbines are widely used in the power industry. As the name implies, aero-derivative gas turbines evolved from innovations to proven technologies used in airplane jet engines. These gas turbines provide anywhere from 30 MW to 140 MW of efficient, reliable power, and deliver operational savings to energy providers worldwide. According to Harsh Shah, vice president of sales and business development with Mitsubishi Power Aero, there are four key areas where aero-derivative gas turbines are used. “The first is what we would call a traditional peaking application,” he said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. This is important when demand exceeds supply during certain periods of the day. “You basically want an asset that can cover the extra demand,” he said. Another application is what Shah called “reverse peaking.” This is when supply decreases quickly for some reason, such as cloud cover affecting solar output, a rapid decrease in wind generation, or some other supply disruption. “If supply drops below the demand, you can have solution like aero-derivatives to cover that in very, very, very short time,” said Shah. Shah said emergency and fast-track applications also provide regular opportunities for aero-derivatives. These can arise from weather-related events or other unforeseen activities. Sometimes, problems result from inadequate planning, or other political and social motivations that require quick deployment of power systems, which aero-derivatives are ideally suited to accommodate. “Last, but certainly not least, is distributed power and grid independent operations,” Shah said. Things like crypto-mining operations or hydraulic fracturing require significant power, and aero-derivative units can quickly fill the role and offer the mobility to change locations, if situations change. As mentioned, aero-derivatives fill an important role in support of renewables, and that is likely to increase as more renewable energy resources are added to the grid. “Renewables growth and its impact on grid dynamics is, I believe, one of the key challenges that the power sector faces as it aims to decarbonize over the next 20 or 30 years,” Shah said. Power producers worldwide strive to supply reliable power to all customers 100% of the time. That requires dispatchable assets that can provide power as needed, which intermittent renewable resources are not capable of without energy storage or immense overbuild. “On-demand, aero-derivative power, we believe, is an ideal way to bridge this capacity and reliability gap effectively, and more importantly, very affordably,” said Shah. “Such peaker plants would offer, in our view, a clearest path to complementing the rise in renewables while still maintaining grid stability and reliability.” Aero-derivative gas turbines are very effective because of their inherent fast-start and flexible design. “The units are designed for five-minute starts from a complete cold condition,” Shah explained. Mobile units are highway compatible and can provide emergency power in nine days or less upon arrival. With modular designs, quick-disconnect cables, factory assembled modules, and pre-fabricated field piping, aero-derivative gas turbines are designed to minimize setup time and promptly begin generating the precise power needed for almost any situation.

Countries throughout the world have set carbon emission reduction targets in an effort to limit the effects of climate change. Many are striving to achieve net zero in coming decades. Yet, governments also want to maintain, or even improve, living standards for their citizens, which means keeping power affordable and reliable. This poses some potentially conflicting priorities. “I think one of the most important topics we’re dealing with right now is how fast can we decarbonize the power generation and the electricity generation in the societies around us,” Karim Amin, executive board member with Siemens Energy, said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. “But on the other hand side, we also see the importance of security of supply. I mean, the world needs reliable electricity. It’s very important not only for the economic development, but for the very same life that we have.” Amin acknowledged that adding more renewable energy is important. “There is no doubt that we need more and more and faster deployment of renewables,” he said. “Important, of course, is to realize and understand that renewables also have challenges.” Amin suggested energy storage will play a big role in future power systems, as will gas turbines. “We are transiting from, as I said, fossil-based into renewable, but we need to resolve the issue of intermittence and storage,” he said. “There are a few technological solutions that could also help to bring the CO2 footprint of the gas turbines down by almost two-thirds through hydrogen co-firing or through carbon capture technologies. So, there are ways that the world is looking at right now and really implementing to use the gas turbines in the time where the storage capacity in terms of maturity of technology is not yet there.” Coal-fired power plants are a significant source of CO2 emissions worldwide. A couple of years ago, Siemens Energy chose to stop participating in new coal power projects. However, the company still provides service to the existing coal fleet. “Actually, the service helps existing units that are running in any case to be upgraded, and to bring their CO2 level down. So, we actually contribute in this regard,” said Amin. Siemens Energy invests a lot, about €1 billion every year, in research and development (R&D). “A big part of that—more than 20% of that, and it’s increasing year on year—is really going into new technologies that would help accelerate the energy transition,” Amin said. Still, there is a delicate balance that must be maintained, which is to put as much effort as possible into renewables while still finding a way to keep the system “reliable, stable, and affordable.” At the same time, Siemens Energy is putting its money where its mouth is, so to speak. The company has committed to using only electricity supplied by renewable energy resources by 2023. It has also committed to becoming climate neutral in its own operations by 2030, which includes reducing absolute scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 46% by 2030, compared to 2019. Amin said that climate change is “the biggest challenge” that we have right now, and one that must be dealt with. “The problem is sophisticated. It’s not as simple as putting renewables and pulling the plug on gas, for example, because in the end of the day, you need to keep the day to day life running—critical infrastructure running—and renewable does not solve this issue on its own. It’s a solution that needs to happen, taking a number of elements into consideration and working as fast as possible through this transition process,” he said.