Batteries, Recruiting & Resiliency in the Electrical Grid with Donald Wright

Why don't, like, the freeze back in 2021 is one of those memories that's just burned into my brain because it was hard for me personally.

Harvey was bad, but I had it better than most.

The freeze, that wasn't.

So can you walk us through, you know, in the five years since, how has demand on, you know, for Texas Energy Utilities, but also the grid, how has that changed? What kind of opportunities, what kind of challenges have there been? And how are y'all involved in all that? Yeah.

Yeah, well, you know, load growth, it's in the news.

Everybody's talking about the data centers and that impact, but just population growth and expansion, new housing, new commercial businesses.

I mean, the load just gets bigger every year.

And the problem we had at the time of that ice storm was we didn't have quite the infrastructure in Texas, primarily transmission lines.

to move the load around to cover what was going on.

And this is not just a Texas thing.

This is across the U.S. Now, I'm not going to talk political parties, but I do love working in this industry because regardless of which of the two main political parties are in control, the focus on energy changes.

So one political party is all about, and I'll let you figure out which one, green energy.

So they want solar.

They want wind power.

and all of these type of energy sources.

The other is all about generation and infrastructure build-out.

So right now, we happen to be in an administration that's really into supporting growth.

And all of the utilities across the country are in massive growth mode right now.

So we're seeing a ton of not just substation, but a lot of transmission work that just wasn't in the pipeline before.

um i want to say we're sitting on like 30 billion dollar backlog on those on that type of work and that we're just one company but we do do the bulk of it like i said and we've had some massive projects we just finished one up that was connecting new mexico to arizona And it took us about three years to complete that project.

But now they can shift load.

Most people probably don't know this, but Phoenix has a nuclear power plant.

And at full capacity, the heat of the summer, they only use about 20% of their energy for Arizona.

So that other 80% is sitting there.

So California, I actually worked on a project where California connected over so they could shift some of that load when they need it.

Why don't, like, the freeze back in 2021 is one of those memories that's just burned into my brain because it was hard for me personally.

Harvey was bad, but I had it better than most.

The freeze, that wasn't.

So can you walk us through, you know, in the five years since, how has demand on, you know, for Texas Energy Utilities, but also the grid, how has that changed? What kind of opportunities, what kind of challenges have there been? And how are y'all involved in all that? Yeah.

Yeah, well, you know, load growth, it's in the news.

Everybody's talking about the data centers and that impact, but just population growth and expansion, new housing, new commercial businesses.

I mean, the load just gets bigger every year.

And the problem we had at the time of that ice storm was we didn't have quite the infrastructure in Texas, primarily transmission lines.

to move the load around to cover what was going on.

And this is not just a Texas thing.

This is across the U.S. Now, I'm not going to talk political parties, but I do love working in this industry because regardless of which of the two main political parties are in control, the focus on energy changes.

So one political party is all about, and I'll let you figure out which one, green energy.

So they want solar.

They want wind power.

and all of these type of energy sources.

The other is all about generation and infrastructure build-out.

So right now, we happen to be in an administration that's really into supporting growth.

And all of the utilities across the country are in massive growth mode right now.

So we're seeing a ton of not just substation, but a lot of transmission work that just wasn't in the pipeline before.

um i want to say we're sitting on like 30 billion dollar backlog on those on that type of work and that we're just one company but we do do the bulk of it like i said and we've had some massive projects we just finished one up that was connecting new mexico to arizona And it took us about three years to complete that project.

But now they can shift load.

Most people probably don't know this, but Phoenix has a nuclear power plant.

And at full capacity, the heat of the summer, they only use about 20% of their energy for Arizona.

So that other 80% is sitting there.

So California, I actually worked on a project where California connected over so they could shift some of that load when they need it.