Open Circuit

Latest Episodes:

Did China outsmart America after the oil shock? Aug 14, 2026

Show notes

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. Gutman wrote about the Chinese and American strategies on his substack, Arcs and Angles.

We look at how China cut crude oil imports and leaned on a decade of investment in electric vehicles, high-speed rail, and coal-to-liquids to defer demand. As China starts to come back into the market, the country is now operating at a position of strength.

We also discuss the U.S. model, which leaned on strategic oil reserves to moderate prices in a way that mirrors central banking. Gutman argues that this “central bank of molecules” model worked, but only for so long. And he worries about how it will get used in the future.

Finally, we ask how both of these approaches could get used again in other industries like critical minerals or equipment manufacturing.

Get your ticket to Latitude Media’s Flex Summit in Austin, Texas on October 14-15.

Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and special guest Nate Adams. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey, Sean Marquand, and Anne Bailey.

Open Circuit is brought to you by Building an Advanced Energy Ecosystem, where New Mexico's energy future is shaped. Join industry leaders, policy makers, researchers, and innovators at Building an Advanced Energy Ecosystem, September 14-16 in Albuquerque. Visit nmwomenlead.org/registration and use promo code CIRCUIT to save 10% on registration.

Open Circuit is brought to you by FischTank PR, an award-winning climate and energy tech, renewables, and sustainability-focused PR firm dedicated to elevating the work of both early-stage and established companies. Learn more about their PR approach and how they can support your company’s messaging by visiting fischtankpr.com.

Data centers have a Texas-sized energy problem Aug 07, 2026

Show notes

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, will states use their pauses to find creative ways to upgrade grids and deploy clean energy?

Then, the end of the corporate net-zero era. AI load growth is blowing up climate goals in real time and tech companies are scrambling to explain their emissions increases. Meanwhile, many of the biggest corporate players are walking away from their targets.

But could this actually be a good thing for corporate decarbonization? We’ll look at more effective ways for companies to accelerate clean solutions.

Get your ticket to Latitude Media’s Flex Summit in Austin, Texas on October 14-15.

Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and special guest Nate Adams. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey, Sean Marquand, and Anne Bailey.

A simple fix that could unlock the heat pump market Jul 31, 2026

Show notes

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 fuel heating for the next 15 to 20 years.

This week, we're joined by Nate Adams, known as the House Whisperer, to unpack the three-part series he wrote for Latitude Media on what's actually holding heat pump adoption back. Nate argues the fix isn't more rebates or bigger subsidies for homeowners. Rather, it's making it easier for upstream players to make and stock two-way ACs.

We dig into the emergency replacement trap, the importance of hybrid systems, how heat pumps got politically coded, and why leading with comfort — not climate — is the winning pitch. We also talk about Nate’s immersive, fully electrified Airbnbs.

Get your ticket to Latitude Media’s Flex Summit in Austin, Texas on October 14-15.

Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and special guest Nate Adams. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey, Sean Marquand, and Anne Bailey.

Critical Capital: Is this infrastructure's once-in-a-generation moment? Jul 24, 2026

Show notes

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 in assets under management. Jessica directs $40 billion in infrastructure investments and discusses how the collision of the energy transition, digitalization, and aging grid systems is creating an unprecedented investment landscape.

Jessica shares her unique journey from climate philanthropy at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to pioneering C-PACE financing. She also explains the financing structures needed to scale domestic manufacturing, why economic realities are beginning to override political gridlock, and why the biggest check on AI growth won't be capital, but could be energy and community pushback.

Subscribe to Critical Capital on Apple, Spotify, or any podcast platform.

The off-grid data center fantasy Jul 17, 2026

Show notes

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 behind-the-meter power at U.S. data centers by 2028, most of it gas turbines, reciprocating engines, and fuel cells.

This week, Tim Hade, SVP at Voltus, joins the show to interrogate that forecast. He thinks that timeline is a fantasy, and that the real story for the next three to five years is load flexibility driven by batteries.

We dig into the SemiAnalysis numbers, the disagreement over how much headroom the grid has, and whether declining marginal value for batteries undercuts the case for storage. We close with a new framework from Rhodium Group that scores how these choices help or hurt the energy transition.

Read Jigar’s ode to Lorenzo Kristov, mentioned in the show.

Get your ticket to Latitude Media’s Flex Summit in Austin, Texas on October 14-15.

Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and special guest Tim Hade. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey, Sean Marquand, and Anne Bailey.

Turning customer data into grid intelligence [partner content] Jul 14, 2026

Show notes

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 customers onto time-of-day rates, success depended on building trust, improving transparency, and helping customers understand exactly where their energy dollars were going.

Lou and Ted explain how appliance-level energy intelligence transformed that effort. What started as a way to explain electric bills evolved into a broader customer engagement platform supporting call center operations, targeted efficiency programs, EV adoption, demand-side management, and long-term grid planning.

Along the way, they discuss why the future of utility AI depends on building stronger relationships between utilities and their customers.

Learn more about how Bidgely works with utilities through its UtilityAI platform.

This is the second episode in our four-part series with Bidgely exploring how utilities are deploying purpose-built AI to solve their most pressing challenges. Tune in to the other episodes:

How APS dove headfirst into AI
Empowering utility customers with demand flexibility, with Oklahoma Gas & Electric

Plug-in solar meets the grid crisis Jul 10, 2026

Show notes

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 people living next to data centers wondered: how much diesel pollution would they breathe if all the backup generators kicked on at once.

This week, we'll look at two energy stories playing out in response: the top-down effort to manage grids stressed by data centers and extreme weather — including the biggest-ever virtual power plant getting built to take the pressure off.

We’ll also look at the bottom-up movement of Americans bolting solar panels to their balconies and backyards. The market for plug-in solar has surged in Pakistan and Germany. Will it add up to something meaningful in the U.S.? And could it play a role in virtual power plants?

Get your ticket to Latitude Media’s Flex Summit in Austin, Texas on October 14-15.

Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Caroline Golin. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey, Sean Marquand, and Anne Bailey. This episode was mixed by Matthew Filler.

The new reality for data centers: no easy answers Jul 02, 2026

Show notes

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, adding new risks.

In this episode, recorded live at our Transition-AI conference in April, we hear from two executives navigating all of it: Holly Adams, SVP of Energy at Beale Infrastructure, and Ian Black, SVP and Global Head of Energy at Digital Realty.

They cover the similarities between renewables and data centers, the changing definition of "powered land," the evolution of large load tariffs, how community opposition has grown, and the hard questions around bringing your own generation that utilities are betting developers won't solve.

Get your ticket to Latitude Media’s Flex Summit in Austin, Texas on October 14-15.

Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Caroline Golin. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey, Sean Marquand, and Anne Bailey. This episode was mixed by Matthew Filler.

How APS dove head-first into AI [partner content] Jun 30, 2026

Show notes

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 Bidgely to solve a highly practical customer-service problem: helping call-center agents explain why a customer’s bill had increased. By using appliance-level energy disaggregation, the utility moved beyond generic explanations to identify the likely drivers of higher usage.

But the project soon raised a bigger question. How could the same intelligence support a wider range of planning and operational solutions across the utility? Venkat and Karthik explain how APS began bringing Bidgely’s models closer to the utility’s own data environment, creating a foundation for broader experimentation and deployment.

They discuss data sovereignty, centralized AI governance, the difference between buying a point solution and building deeper capabilities, and why AI transformation is ultimately as much about data and operating models as it is about technology.

Learn more about how Bidgely works with utilities through its UtilityAI platform.

This is the first episode in our four-part series with Bidgely exploring how utilities are deploying purpose-built AI to solve their most pressing challenges. Tune in to the other episodes:

Turning customer data into grid intelligence, with PSEG Long Island
Empowering utility customers with demand flexibility, with Oklahoma Gas & Electric

Is commercial fusion finally near? Jun 26, 2026

Show notes

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 PJM. The company has a site in Virginia, customers in Google and Eni, and a timeline that could put power on the grid in the early 2030s. That’s roughly the same window as a conventional power plant built today.

The science is far from done, and fusion has burned optimists before. But for the first time, the conversation has shifted from "can this ever work" to "can this work on a timeline that matters for today's grid planning?"

This week, we interrogate that timeline with Rick Needham, chief commercial officer at Commonwealth Fusion Systems.

Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Caroline Golin. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey, Sean Marquand, and Anne Bailey.

Open Circuit is brought to you by FlexGen, a leader in integrated battery energy storage solutions and energy management software. FlexGen helps owners and operators gain greater visibility and control across complex energy systems to maximize performance. Learn more at www.flexgen.com.

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected