Oct 5, 2026 · 30 min · 10 segments
Tell us what you think of the show! Grid resilience isn’t a new concept, but the way utilities achieve it is changing dramatically. Traditionally…
Well, and it goes into that concept of how resiliency is evolving and how storage is evolving.
What it meant to utilize those tools a few years ago is different to today.
You know, that concept of how all of these things are evolving was really the baseline of the piece that you recently wrote for Power Magazine, Why Operations Matter as Much as Infrastructure.
And the piece was just really striking to me in terms of the perspective that you outlined when it comes to how efforts about infrastructure making the grid stronger and more resilient is it's necessary, but those established efforts, the way we've thought about it isn't, isn't always enough.
You know, can you, can you talk a little bit about how you've seen the industry's baseline definition of what resiliency means evolve and change even back to the, to the founding of switch source to where it is today and where it's going?
Yeah, I would say we, we have seen, you know, utilities embrace a lot of the legacy tools that, you know, we're always at their fingertips, things about hardening poles, undergrounding wherever possible.
We've seen utilities embracing more and more system-wide software packages, DERNs, ADMS, that can enable better Flizzr operation, so better system restoration, and also point them to where they need to do mitigation first to have the biggest impacts on their system.
So I think a lot of the sort of software pieces are there, and then a lot of the traditional hardware pieces, there's kind of this question and intention here of, you know, from a cost benefit analysis, you know, are we trying to, um, you know, coming back to that fable about like either the Oak tree or the read, you know, do you want something that's flexible or do you want to build, you know, something that's incredibly, incredibly strong and there's a balancing act there.
You know, what we think we're seeing more recently in the last 18 months, 24 months is that undergrounding everything is, is really, really expensive.
And a lot of this is dependent on soil conditions and processes internal to different utilities.
But there's still more value to be had by adding tools to the toolkit, make the grid more flexible, make it easier to reconfigure the grid, in addition to some of those investments and part of the infrastructure.
Well, that affordability piece is just so important because whenever people ask me, what's happening in the space? What are people talking about? Affordability is front and center.
Like that has been, I think when you mentioned what, the past 18 months, I know I wrote a piece about it in mid 2025.
And like, that's why some of those infrastructure investments, like they're costly.
And when ratepayers or when some of the more mainstream media grabs those those billions of dollars investment like that's what makes the headlines and it's just sometimes it gets lost of like the the value that that's creating because it's that that short-term cost that that that does make an impact on on how affordability is is being positioned and the reality of it as well
And I still think that there's some misunderstanding of where cost centers are on the grid.
It feels like a lot of folks have been thinking about AI and the impact that it's having on generation and transmission and saying, OK, these are absolutely the cost centers for us.
And if you look at specific energy markets where there's a capacity demand issue, absolutely.
Um, you know, I think the other side of the coin there is if you look at the actual infrastructure, the delivery mechanism, distribution is always where the, you know, the majority of, of capital goes, that ends up going down to distribution and you can kind of cut it any way you want.
Well, and it goes into that concept of how resiliency is evolving and how storage is evolving.
What it meant to utilize those tools a few years ago is different to today.
You know, that concept of how all of these things are evolving was really the baseline of the piece that you recently wrote for Power Magazine, Why Operations Matter as Much as Infrastructure.
And the piece was just really striking to me in terms of the perspective that you outlined when it comes to how efforts about infrastructure making the grid stronger and more resilient is it's necessary, but those established efforts, the way we've thought about it isn't, isn't always enough.
You know, can you, can you talk a little bit about how you've seen the industry's baseline definition of what resiliency means evolve and change even back to the, to the founding of switch source to where it is today and where it's going?
Yeah, I would say we, we have seen, you know, utilities embrace a lot of the legacy tools that, you know, we're always at their fingertips, things about hardening poles, undergrounding wherever possible.
We've seen utilities embracing more and more system-wide software packages, DERNs, ADMS, that can enable better Flizzr operation, so better system restoration, and also point them to where they need to do mitigation first to have the biggest impacts on their system.
So I think a lot of the sort of software pieces are there, and then a lot of the traditional hardware pieces, there's kind of this question and intention here of, you know, from a cost benefit analysis, you know, are we trying to, um, you know, coming back to that fable about like either the Oak tree or the read, you know, do you want something that's flexible or do you want to build, you know, something that's incredibly, incredibly strong and there's a balancing act there.
You know, what we think we're seeing more recently in the last 18 months, 24 months is that undergrounding everything is, is really, really expensive.
And a lot of this is dependent on soil conditions and processes internal to different utilities.
But there's still more value to be had by adding tools to the toolkit, make the grid more flexible, make it easier to reconfigure the grid, in addition to some of those investments and part of the infrastructure.
Well, that affordability piece is just so important because whenever people ask me, what's happening in the space? What are people talking about? Affordability is front and center.
Like that has been, I think when you mentioned what, the past 18 months, I know I wrote a piece about it in mid 2025.
And like, that's why some of those infrastructure investments, like they're costly.
And when ratepayers or when some of the more mainstream media grabs those those billions of dollars investment like that's what makes the headlines and it's just sometimes it gets lost of like the the value that that's creating because it's that that short-term cost that that that does make an impact on on how affordability is is being positioned and the reality of it as well
And I still think that there's some misunderstanding of where cost centers are on the grid.
It feels like a lot of folks have been thinking about AI and the impact that it's having on generation and transmission and saying, OK, these are absolutely the cost centers for us.
And if you look at specific energy markets where there's a capacity demand issue, absolutely.
Um, you know, I think the other side of the coin there is if you look at the actual infrastructure, the delivery mechanism, distribution is always where the, you know, the majority of, of capital goes, that ends up going down to distribution and you can kind of cut it any way you want.
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