Field notes The Energy Transition for the Rest of Us

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DERs

17 notes · Catalyst 13 · Critical Capital 1 · Steel For Fuel 3

  1. Critical Capital · 15 Sep 2026 What it costs to make power cheap with Zach Dell, co-founder and CEO, Base Power If you treat home electricity as a commodity rather than a premium product, what actually sets its price, and what does a company have to do to drive that price down?
  2. Catalyst · 30 Jul 2026 Why C&I storage is finally taking off with Tim Hade, senior vice president, Voltus; previously co-founder and CEO, Brightfield Infrastructure Commercial and industrial storage, meaning batteries installed at a business’s own site, has never gone anywhere. Is that actually changing, and why would this time be different?
  3. Catalyst · 23 Jul 2026 The multi-billion dollar promise of vehicle-to-grid integration with Steve Letendre, senior advisor, Vehicle-Grid Integration Council; founder and editor, V2Gnews.com Bidirectional cars and chargers finally exist, so if the parked battery in the garage still does not show up on the grid, what is actually holding it back?
  4. Steel For Fuel · 6 Jul 2026 Data centers need the grid — so we have to make the grid better by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners If the grid cannot connect AI data centers fast enough, is building a power plant next to each one the way out?
  5. Catalyst · 25 Feb 2026 Volts crossover: Six big energy questions with David Roberts, host of the Volts podcast (co-hosted episode; both speakers pose and answer questions) What are the big open questions in energy and climate that we might actually get an answer to within the next five to ten years?
  6. Catalyst · 29 Jan 2026 The rise of permissionless DERs with James McGinniss, co-founder and CEO, David Energy What are “permissionless” distributed energy resources, and can batteries small enough to plug into a wall outlet ever add up to enough capacity to matter?
  7. Catalyst · 16 Oct 2025 Calibrating hype with Akshat Rathi with Akshat Rathi, senior reporter for climate, Bloomberg News, and host of the Zero podcast Which of the energy transition’s hot topics are overhyped, which are underhyped, and how would you tell the difference?
  8. Catalyst · 9 Oct 2025 How Base Power plans to use its fresh $1B with Zach Dell, co-founder and CEO, Base Power Base Power just raised a billion dollars to put large batteries on houses and sell the electricity. Can a fleet of residential batteries really land a megawatt on the grid more cheaply than a utility-scale project?
  9. Catalyst · 2 Oct 2025 The new wave of DERs with Dana Guernsey, co-founder and CEO, Voltus How did demand response get from emergency phone calls to an everyday grid resource, and what can it now do about load growth?
  10. Catalyst · 18 Sep 2025 Is now the time for DERs to scale? with Andy Lubershane, partner and head of research, Energy Impact Partners Distributed energy resources were hyped a decade ago and mostly did not happen. Is this time actually different?
  11. Steel For Fuel · 11 Sep 2025 Finally, the right time for Distributed Energy Resources by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Why did distributed energy resources underdeliver for a decade, and what has changed enough to make this time different?
  12. Catalyst · 10 Jul 2025 Tumult in residential solar with Julien Dumoulin-Smith, head of power, utilities and clean energy equity research, Jefferies The One Big Beautiful Bill phases out residential solar’s tax credits. What does that do to an industry that was already in serious trouble before it passed?
  13. Catalyst · 9 Jan 2025 Making DERs work for load growth with Pier LaFarge, co-founder and CEO, Sparkfund Load growth is being answered almost entirely with big centralized projects. Can distributed energy carry a real share of it, and how would a utility actually buy it?
  14. Steel For Fuel · 24 Sep 2024 A chicken in every pot, a battery in every garage? by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Is a battery becoming standard equipment on a home solar system?
  15. Catalyst · 8 Mar 2024 Will AI deliver the promise of a digital grid? with David Groarke, managing director, Indigo Advisory Group The last wave of smart grid investment did not deliver what it promised. Is the current wave of AI in the power sector any different?
  16. Catalyst · 30 Nov 2023 EV charging on both sides of the pond with Nick Woolley, co-founder and CEO, ev.energy Europe adopted electric vehicles earlier than the United States. Does that make it a window into America’s charging future, and what can each side learn from the other?
  17. Catalyst · 27 Oct 2023 The market for microgrids with Tim Hade, co-founder and chief development officer, Scale Microgrids The tailwinds behind microgrids have been building for years. Is the market actually inflecting, and if not, what is holding it back?