Host: James McWalter
Guest: Apoorv Bhargava | CEO & Co-Founder | Weave Grid
Category: ⚡ Renewable Energy
Podcast’s Essential Bites:
[0:16] “Weave Grid is working at the intersection of two of the most carbon intensive industries in the world: electricity and transportation. As we think about decarbonizing both of those spaces, one of the most important and most interesting things out there [that]'s happening is […] this S curve […] in the electricity space, where we're going from centralized fossil generation to more and more renewables. And we're hoping we can accelerate that as quickly as possible. And at the same time, we're seeing this S curve and this transition happening in the automotive world where we're going from internal combustion engine vehicles to electric vehicles. And I think the sort of genesis of the name, but also the sort of raison d'etre for this company is really that these two spaces are converging. At this moment, they are both becoming one integrated system. They're going from transportation and electricity to electrified transportation.”
[1:13] “What Weave Grid does is it tries to think about the systems level problems and the system solutions that we can develop to enable that acceleration of electrified transportation, to make sure that as more and more electric vehicles come onto the grid, the grid is ready to support them. And actually taking the really positive view, how can we leverage all these giant batteries on wheels in a way that can actually almost add to the resiliency, add to the value to the grid, and make the grid […] even stronger and more valuable for all.”
[1:51] “We've developed software that helps utilities. That's our core customer. […] And of course drivers who drive electric vehicles really […] benefit from better charging, and better understanding of charging. And then, of course, better management of that charging.”
[18:39] “Transportation is 31% of emissions. It's the largest form of emissions in the United States. Electricity is […] 29%. […] That's an amazing opportunity for utilities to both continue helping the decarbonisation pathway of their own fleets on the powerplant side, but also to actually enable the future of electrification and leverage this grid, this platform that has done everything from massively industrialized certain countries and provide really high quality power for all of us so that we can live these lives with computers and phones and all this other stuff and now electric cars.”
[23:15] “There's an intense debate going on as to whether monopoly utilities own and operate the default charging stations that are required across an entire service territory. So instead of having 15 different brands of chargers, […] can I just have one experience across my entire utility service territory? And if you talked to the federal government, they're talking about now creating a federal charging network […]. So, how do we simplify that? How do we make that easy? […] My argument is, it's probably the most efficient thing.”
[24:10] “I think the problem is that we all don't care about the same thing. I care about decarbonizing as quickly as possible. I don't care as much about the extension of monopoly power for somebody who's already regulated as a monopoly, because that's the whole point of regulation. It is to make sure that they don't make unfair profits and so forth.”
[32:31] “For the consumer, you have access to a wide variety of charging insights, understanding what you're doing behaviorally, understanding what you could be doing better. And then most importantly, just setting and forgetting. You don't want to have to think about your charging day to day. You just want to come home, plug in your car, and the charging will be taken care of. And that's what we enable for you as a consumer. Of course, while saving you money [and] whilst getting you the cleanest energy possible. […] We want to remove any cognitive burden that you feel as a consumer. […] The utility needs to understand the consumers’ needs and needs to play with what availability the consumer provides them, not the other way around.”
Rating: ⚡⚡⚡
🎙️ Full Episode: Apple | Spotify
🕰️ 44 min | 🗓️ 12/07/2021
✅ Time saved: 42 min