Volts

By: David Roberts
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  • Summary

  • Volts is a podcast about leaving fossil fuels behind. I've been reporting on and explaining clean-energy topics for almost 20 years, and I love talking to politicians, analysts, innovators, and activists about the latest progress in the world's most important fight. (Volts is entirely subscriber-supported. Sign up!)

    www.volts.wtf
    David Roberts
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Episodes
  • How the Biden investments are changing America

    How the Biden investments are changing America
    Sep 18 2024

    In this episode, we explore the Biden administration's ambitious industrial investment strategy with Heather Boushey, a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisors and chief economist for his Invest in America Cabinet.



    This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe
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    1 hr and 2 mins
  • A tool that enables solar-first home electrification

    A tool that enables solar-first home electrification
    Sep 13 2024
    California homeowners face a complex puzzle in decarbonizing their homes: electrification without rooftop solar could increase bills due to expensive electricity, while installing solar first risks oversizing or underutilizing the system. Balto Energy, a startup founded by James Quazi, uses AI to analyze utility bills and recommend the most cost-effective clean energy strategy. In this episode, we discuss Balto's tool, its potential to empower contractors, and what California's situation reveals about the future of clean energy policy nationwide.(PDF transcript)(Active transcript)Text transcript:David RobertsHello everyone. This is Volts for September 13, 2024, "A tool that enables solar first home electrification." I'm your host, David Roberts. Californians who want to decarbonize their homes face something of a conundrum. If they electrify their cars and appliances without getting rooftop solar, they could end up paying higher overall bills thanks to California's notoriously expensive electricity and cheap natural gas. If they install rooftop solar before electrifying their cars and appliances, they could either undersize the system for their eventual needs or oversize it and over-produce and export solar power to the California grid. Thanks to California's recent NEM 3.0 decision on rooftop solar compensation, utilities pay much less for that exported rooftop solar power than they used to.The most economical strategy for most homeowners is likely to be some mix of electrification, batteries, and rooftop solar. The more a California homeowner stores and consumes their own cheap rooftop solar power, the more value they get out of that solar and the lower their total bills. It is a complex calculation, though, that most homeowners are in no position to make. That's where the startup Balto Energy comes in. Founder James Quazi, a longtime energy modeler and entrepreneur, has built a tool that can use a home's utility bills to create a model of its consumption patterns, predict what they will be as appliances are electrified, and recommend the maximally economical approach.It's part of a larger effort to help contractors and solar companies navigate a post-net-metering world. I'm excited to talk to Quazi about why his tool is needed and how it works, how it will empower contractors, and what California's present says about the future of clean energy policy in the rest of the country.With no further ado, James Quazi, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.James QuaziThank you for having me. That was a great intro.David RobertsThanks. So, you know, I sort of went over it a little quickly in the intro there. But let's talk a little bit about this conundrum for Californians who are trying to decarbonize. So, just by background — I don't even know if everyone's been following the California rooftop solar wars, I kind of assume everybody has — but just by way of background, California recently basically issued a new policy on rooftop solar, and the long and short of it is that they're going to compensate homeowners much less. It used to be that basically you could get paid the retail rate for your excess solar, and now they're just going to pay much, much less than that.On the surface, this really damages the economical case for solar for homeowners, they'll get compensated much less. This has resulted in a huge blow to the solar industry in California. There are solar companies shutting down, jobs being lost, etcetera, etcetera. So, talk a little bit about the conundrum and how you think about solving it.James QuaziYeah, so about a year ago, the net energy metering policy in California changed from NEM 2.0 to NEM 3.0, now called Net Billing Tariff. The difference is, as you mentioned, that now customers get paid on a schedule. Each hour per year is a different rate. But generally, you can think of it as between like $0.05 and $0.08 for exported energy, while imported energy for me in San Diego is between $0.38 and $0.52 an hour. So it degrades the value proposition for residential solar for a homeowner. For contractors, it's also proven really difficult. So in the past, it was really easy to have rule of thumb sizing or heuristics, or if you took annual energy over the last twelve months and you designed a system that produced around that same amount of energy, it was generally going to be a good value proposition for the homeowner.But now, what you need to understand is, like, how much of that solar production is actually coincident with the load on the house, because the export of energy is devalued.David RobertsRight. So, the economics now have shifted to make it so that, I mean, maybe this was true already, but more true now that the ideal thing for Californians with rooftop solar to do is to consume as much of the generated power as conceivably possible.James QuaziThat's absolutely correct. So, if you can think of it as, and I'm sure your listeners are familiar with the terminology, like LCOE....
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    51 mins
  • This new organization wants to remake PUCs for the energy transition

    This new organization wants to remake PUCs for the energy transition
    Sep 11 2024

    Public utility commissions (PUCs) wield enormous influence in the US energy transition — they regulate the monopolistic utilities at the heart of America's electricity system but face little public scrutiny. Now, energy analyst Charles Hua is launching PowerLines, a nonprofit that aims to pull PUCs into the spotlight. In this episode, we discuss the problems with PUCs, opportunities for reform, and the coalition the group aims to organize.



    This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe
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    1 hr and 14 mins
Political Science
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Highly recommended

This is the energy podcast I can't do without. I listen to half a dozen, and others are good, but VOLTS is excellent.

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