Open Circuit

50:28

Clean energy loves the permitting bill. Green groups...

Open Circuit ·

2026/10/06

It’s really hard to build infrastructure in America. And it’s particularly hard for clean energy, which is overwhelmingly stalled by outdated and onerous permitting.But we have never been able to get to the root of the problem. And that’s why a new bipartisan federal permitting bill is such a big deal. The bill sets hard deadlines for environmental reviews, limits lawsuits, and makes it harder for a president to block permitting processes. It also gives federal regulators new authority to approve

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69:26

Utilities and Big Tech lost trust. What will earn it...

Open Circuit ·

2026/09/29

Across America, people are screaming “no” — no to data centers, and no to the energy projects that serve them. So what gets people to a “yes”? Perhaps an enthusiastic yes?Every utility and tech company is scrambling to answer that question. And so far, they haven’t been able to find one. Our guest this week, Sparkfund CEO Pier LaFarge, has thought a lot about this problem. And he’s trying to prove that you can get local buy-in through better energy development models. First, we’ll talk about the

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52:17

Trump’s coal crusade is failing

Open Circuit ·

2026/09/22

The biggest story in Washington is President Trump's rejection of AI safety regulation. But the White House is waging an equally consequential regulatory battle against carbon regulations.This month, the EPA finally rolled back the Biden-era carbon rule for power plants, arguing that the agency does not have the authority to regulate heat-trapping gases. It's setting the stage to block any future administration from writing new rules. At the same time, the Trump Administration is forcing old coal

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27:24

The hidden power systems behind AI [partner content]

Open Circuit ·

2026/09/18

Data centers are known for their hulking exteriors, rows of blinking servers, and massive cooling equipment. But there’s an entire ecosystem no one gets to see: the electrical architecture that sits between the power source and the GPUs.And as data centers integrate more battery storage, there’s little consensus on what that electrical architecture should look like. Batteries used to have one job inside a data center: keep servers on until backup generators kicked on. But today, they're being

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56:44

Power is caught in AI’s doom loop

Open Circuit ·

2026/09/15

We are in the middle of a radical political and economic realignment, with electricity infrastructure at the center of it. And this summer, the plot thickened.Power sector reforms are coming in fast and furious, across states, regional markets, and federal regulators. Local resistance reached new heights around the country. And data centers are scrambling politics as we near the midterm elections. Meanwhile, AI models are breaking containment in alarming ways. The leaders of AI labs are openly

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21:24

Empowering utility customers with demand flexibility...

Open Circuit ·

2026/09/11

As data centers, factories, and electrification push growth to unprecedented heights, customers are looking for greater control over their energy use. But the traditional one-size-fits-all approach falls short for customers wanting to know which energy choices will benefit them most, and how those choices will impact their bills.In this third episode of Bidgely’s four-part series, Stephen Lacey talks with Kirby Brinlee, director of customer experience at Oklahoma Gas & Electric, and Abhay Gupta,

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29:42

Electricity bills are on the ballot

Open Circuit ·

2026/09/08

Electricity prices have become a central storyline in upcoming U.S. elections. All over the country, Americans are finding it harder to pay their bills, and they’re getting increasingly cynical about utilities and data centers. While governors are caught in the middle of this voter anger, there’s a group of key decisionmakers that are often missed: the 200 regulators that oversee tens of billions of dollars in utility spending. In this episode, Charles Hua, the founder and executive director of

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55:10

The breakout moment for VPPs [partner content]

Open Circuit ·

2026/08/28

Virtual power plants are having a moment. Suddenly, this once-niche solution for the power sector is breaking into mainstream discourse.The convergence of sudden load growth, aging infrastructure, extreme weather, and electricity inflation is turning distributed resources into must-deploy assets. At the state level, VPPs are becoming a go-to tool for making electricity more affordable. They’re championed as one of the only solutions that can open up enough capacity to support load growth over the

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49:37

Green Blueprint: Form's storage manufacturing...

Open Circuit ·

2026/08/21

We're on vacation through the end of August, so this week we’re featuring an episode of The Green Blueprint.Lithium-ion batteries have revolutionized energy storage. But inexpensive, multi-day storage will still be critical for backing renewables and decarbonizing the grid. Form Energy is tackling that challenge with a new class of iron-air batteries. By oxidizing and reducing iron, Form is creating low-cost, multi-day storage that competes directly with natural gas peaker plants. Mateo

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22:48

AI needs a different kind of power plant [partner...

Open Circuit ·

2026/08/19

Arbor Energy is betting that smaller, modular turbines can solve problems the conventional generation model was never designed for.Arbor Energy was founded with an unusual idea: take technologies from rocket engines and use them to make carbon-negative power plants. Today, the market has radically changed. Demand for turbines is exploding, the supply chain is jammed, and data centers need power on rapid timelines. Suddenly, Arbor’s 3D-printed turbine is a potential answer to the power

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58:07

Did China outsmart America after the oil shock?

Open Circuit ·

2026/08/14

After Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz, everyone thought prices would hit historic highs. But they didn't. Why?The answer is less about market resiliency, and more about two major government interventions. The U.S. intervened using a central banking model, and China intervened with a top-down government approach. James Gutman, head of research at Abaxx Technologies, joins us this week to discuss how these two interventions influenced global oil flows, and why China emerged as a clear winner

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65:52

Data centers have a Texas-sized energy problem

Open Circuit ·

2026/08/07

The showdown over data centers is taking a new turn. This week, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced a data center pause in order to audit how they’ll impact water supplies and the power grid. This comes weeks after New York issued a moratorium.Not long ago, Governor Abbott was declaring Texas the center of the AI boom. But with his re-election bid under threat, he’s now responding to the radical shift in anti-data center sentiment. So what will this mean for other states? And more importantly,

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48:35

A simple fix that could unlock the heat pump market

Open Circuit ·

2026/07/31

It's been almost a decade since the “Electrify Everything” movement kicked off. And guess what? We aren't electrifying everything.We're seeing strong growth in electric vehicles, heat pumps, and induction cooktops. But we're still trapped inside a system that makes the electric choice harder to make. And nowhere is that more obvious than with heat pumps. Every eight seconds in the US, an HVAC contractor installs an air conditioner that has only one mode: cooling. That one decision locks in fossil

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31:10

Critical Capital: Is this infrastructure's...

Open Circuit ·

2026/07/24

This week, we’re presenting an episode of Critical Capital, a new podcast from Crux and Latitude Studios.We are entering a period of infrastructure development unlike anything we’ve seen in the last century. The infrastructure economy is witnessing a generational redesign and a fundamental reshaping of the physical fabric on which society is built. In this episode, Alfred Johnson is joined by Jessica Bailey, Global Head of Infrastructure at Nuveen, an institutional giant with over $1.4 trillion

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71:00

The off-grid data center fantasy

Open Circuit ·

2026/07/17

A major fault line runs through the data center debate: how many will actually go off-grid? There’s a lot of enthusiasm in Silicon Valley for breaking free from the grid. But even the companies pushing hardest for off-grid projects now admit they want a grid connection eventually. So how much behind-the-meter power will actually get built in the next few years? And what fills it? SemiAnalysis, the influential chip and infrastructure research firm, recently projected over 40 gigawatts of

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23:17

Turning customer data into grid intelligence [partner...

Open Circuit ·

2026/07/14

Utilities across the country are increasingly turning to time-of-day rates as electricity demand grows and delivery costs rise. But a harder challenge is giving customers the tools to save money under those new rates. In this second episode of a four-part series with Bidgely, Stephen Lacey talks with Lou DeBrino, Vice President of Customer Operations at PSEG Long Island, and Ted Nielsen, Chief Product Officer at Bidgely. As PSEG Long Island prepared to transition more than 900,000 residential

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61:02

Plug-in solar meets the grid crisis

Open Circuit ·

2026/07/10

America turned 250 years old last week. While local leaders were busy organizing parades, re-enactments, and flyovers, grid operators and emergency officials were dealing with something else entirely: a heat dome settled over the eastern U.S. Nearly 200 million people were under extreme heat warnings, the national parade in Washington was canceled, and PJM, the largest U.S. grid operator, hit a new all-time demand record. The Energy Department issued emergency orders to keep the lights on. And

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34:11

The new reality for data centers: no easy answers

Open Circuit ·

2026/07/02

For 20 years, the blueprint for data centers was simple: find some land, get in line for power, and trust that the utility could deliver. Data centers and power infrastructure got built on separate tracks because the grid had room to spare. That model is gone. Today, with long lead times for equipment, multi-year interconnection queues, and the pressure to bring your own generation, it all has to be sequenced together. And on top of it all, public opinion has radically shifted against data centers,

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20:34

How APS dove head-first into AI [partner content]

Open Circuit ·

2026/06/30

AI is about far more than chatbots and copilots. For utilities, the bigger opportunity may be in applying purpose-built models to the operational data from smart meters, customer systems, weather, outages, and grid equipment. In this first episode of a four-part series with Bidgely, Stephen Lacey talks with Venkata Nimmala, Director of Digital Transformation and Enterprise Architecture at Arizona Public Service, and Karthik Moorthy, Chief Growth Officer at Bidgely. APS initially partnered with

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59:03

Is commercial fusion finally near?

Open Circuit ·

2026/06/26

For a half century, fusion has been a scientific story playing out in national labs, government research budgets, and peer-reviewed journals. Every so often, a bold claim captures the public's attention, and then leads to disappointment when people realize that limitless energy from the stars is very hard to produce on Earth. But now fusion is evolving into a commercial story. This spring, Commonwealth Fusion Systems became the first fusion company to file a generation interconnection request with

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