NARUC’s Summer Summit took place in Austin this year and PUF held its always popular annual Soapbox luncheon during the conference. Thirteen speakers hopped on their soapboxes to say or sing whatever was on their minds.

The NARUC Summer Policy Summit was held in Austin amid much camaraderie and heat in Texas. While the Monday opening General Session looked back at the Northeast Blackout of 2003, ERCOT kept the electric grid humming along in a heat wave that kept temperatures above one hundred all week.

“Our vision has been to build a partnership and a technological system that allows us to break down the digital silos that exist between the automotive industry and the utility industry to address the potential pain points that experts told us would be coming.”

“Reactive is the only company that provides real-time measurement of grid stability. On the transmission system, that’s interpreted as inertia. Inertia is a measure of grid stability. As you add more renewables to the grid – some don’t like to admit this – grid stability goes down because inertia goes down.”

“I am a true believer in the potential of behavior-based changes in energy. That could be small things that people do, how they use their thermostats and adjust window shades, but it could also be big changes. It could be the EV adoption journey.”

“All that energy must be decarbonized as the world goes to zero. The transportation sector, the grid; we’re getting good at decarbonizing those, despite challenges. But industry is the hard to decarbonize sector. Why? Industrial heat.”

“It is important to get customers to adopt these technologies and then enroll in the programs that utilities want and need them to.”

PUF presents conversations with innovators, where high tech meets energy tech to allow resilient clean energy to be delivered to utility customers.

“The impact on our employees is evident. People are having conversations and are asking questions. I’ve had employees call me and say, ‘I want to understand this topic better.’”

“We looked at the number of HBCU graduates we have working at Southern Company and created a Southern Company HBCU Alumni Network to support inclusion efforts through engagement with our employees and our HBCUs.”