YouSaid · the spoken record

Jigar Shah

lines on the record: 62
first: 2023-10-06
most recent: 2023-10-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, it's an asset. Like, clean it up. Let's put it back into use. Like, they have a rail spur that goes to them. They're actually on the river. People want to use that so they can transport their goods. They're like, oh man, I thought that was just an eyesore in our town. And so that to me is super exciting, right? And then we're starting to get a ton of people who are saying maybe I don't have to go to a four-year college and maybe I can go to Texas State Technical College and do a two-year degree and make six-figure income, like actually becoming really good at my trade, right? And also the stuff. And that's bringing pride to people because for a long time, people were like, I like to work with my hands, right? That was like a euphemism for I wasn't like a book person. But like, we actually need a lot of people who want to work with their hands, right? And so I find that what's most exciting is not the announcements we're making here, but it's leading to a level of confidence in all these other parts of the economy where people are like,”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is a lot more coming, some of which is predictable. You got the hydrogen hubs announcement coming out later this year. You've got the GRIP funding for grid resilience coming out here pretty soon. And so some of it's predictable, some of it's not predictable because all the folks who've applied to my office are confidential. But I think that the part that is the most exciting to me is that you're starting just starting to get mayors and county commissioners and others going, wait a second, how do we make our town or our county attractive to the next announcement, right? And so like, you know, we have like, I think less than 1% vacancy rate right now in industrial properties. And so if you talk to brokers, they're like, we have no more properties left. I have like four applicants who are waiting.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they say, I don't know if that's going to work. I don't know. Like, I know it's been deployed like 40 times in China and 50 times in the Middle East and like in Europe, but I don't know if it's going to work here. We should do exactly the same thing we did in the 1970s. And so it'd be nice to figure out how to break that sort of knowledge gap so that we're doing stuff here again.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they have a sewer authority, an electric utility, and whatever it is, right? So when you ask them, like, hey, how do we lead in this area? They don't know, right? And so they go to the guy who runs the sewer authority or the water authority or the airport authority. And that person says, I want to do things exactly the same way as my grandfather did in the 1970s. And we should replace everything exactly the same way. I don't want to install new technology. I've already got people who are trained in the old technology, right? And so why do we do this stuff, right? And so we need to come back together and commit ourselves to actually taking U.S. technology and deploying it here, right? And the risk aversion is like leading to a lot of increased cost because doing things the same way as 1970s is crazy expensive. We have stuff that's 90% cheaper. But what happens is you go to the consultant who you pay.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh gosh, this is definitely going to get me in trouble. So maybe let me say it this way. I think in general, as I've said before, we have all the technologies we need to not only tackle this problem, but dominate not only the sector here, but then to export and dominate around the world. Like whether it's hydrogen or transmission or whatever it is, solar, wind, all these other things, we have all those technologies. And frankly, we invented them. Everyone's like, oh, China makes solar panels. We invented all that technology, right? Along with Martin Green at the University of New South Wales. And so those are the two places where it all came from, right? We were forced to license it to them because we weren't manufacturing it here. And so one of my big challenges is that as we learn to build again, what we did in the 1970s is basically divorce all politicians from knowledge in this area.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But think about it if you're running electric utility company, do you not have a predictable track record of how many transformers you install every year? Do you not have like an integrated resource plan that says over the next 10 years, I think we're going to buy this many transformers? Well, then why wouldn't you just make an order for like 10 years worth of transformers this week? You and like 10 of your closest friends. And then you build a transformer manufacturing facility in your community and then they feel confident because they've got orders for the next 10 years and you feel confident because you've got a local supply of transformers. Instead, I got a bunch of people going, jigger, we need to fix transformers. And I was like, you should give me an off-take agreement. I don't know. That seems like a lot of work. And I was like, but there's a formula to how this stuff happens. Like, it's not like one of those things where it's like, I wish I had an oversupply of the components that I want and I'm not willing to do anything to actually make that happen.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so for a lot of the electrical contractors or a lot of the utility companies who are wanting transformers or a lot of these other folks,”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I don't know that I know for certain what the source of the bottleneck is, but I would say that in general, when you look at manufacturing companies, the dynamic with manufacturing is if you build it, they will come. So, like, I build a factory and you buy one piece. And then the next week you buy one piece, and then you're going to buy a piece. And then you're like, ah, I think I'm going to wait two weeks and I'm going to buy something, right? Like, I don't know. That's not like a reassuring model by which I want to stay ahead of the market. I like to stay slightly behind the market so that I can charge a higher price and, you know, et cetera, right? And so for those folks who want us to accelerate investments in the supply chain, they need to make a long-term order.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Public Service Commission to do this stuff. Well, now you've got like a critical mass of people that are saying we should do this. And then the question becomes, what do you need to go from this would be really awesome to do in our state to here's an order for the nuclear reactor? And so we wrote a liftoff report at the Loan Program's Office and the Department of Energy. It was led by Vanessa Chan at the Office of Technology Transitions and the Office of Plan Energy Demonstrations, which runs the advanced reactor deployment program.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Once a country chooses a nuclear power plant, let's say from Russia, they're tied to Russia for 80 years. You can imagine the National Security Complex with the United States would rather that country pick a US design and tie them to the United States for eight years. So there's a lot riding on figuring this out. So a couple things. One is that if you're a supply chain provider for nuclear, so you're making a forge or whatever it is, you can imagine ramping this whole thing up for one nuclear reactor is not your idea of awesome. So you're like, well, where are the 10 reactors going to come from? So after I do this one, where's the next one going to come from? So in some ways, when I say that Duke has put nuclear into their integrated resource plan and Dominion, you know, the governor has been talking about it. And then you've got the Tennessee Valley Authority where Jeff Laj has talked about putting four reactors at Clinch River. And then you've got the governor of Texas directing”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Case of the Gitachi BWRX300, right? Giataci is only a design firm. GE does not make any of it. All they do is design it, right? And then they'll probably take it through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. BWXT is the company that actually has been hired to make it, and they are in the nuclear submarine and nuclear navy business. And so they make a lot of parts for the military. And so they have some knowledge of how to do this, right? And so that's great. And so they're going to do parts of it. And then we have to now find an EPC contractor that wants to do this. Remember, the ones who worked on Vogel went bankrupt, right? So it's not for the faint of heart for them to decide to get into the nuclear energy industry. But we're, you know, like aspirational, ambitious folks, right? And think about it from a national security lens, right? I mean.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Energy, or you know, Duke or Dominion and say, Are you a nuclear power person? They're like, no, we own nuclear power plants, we own renewable energy power plants, we own coal plants, we own natural gas plants, right? And so you can imagine like they're not necessarily like the driving force behind new nuclear, right? So then you've got a bunch of other companies you've heard of, like Newscale, Oklo, Giatachi, Holtec, Terra Power, XEnergy, right? But they're also not the nuclear power industry. They're nuclear power designers. So that's like saying, I have an architect. And that architect designed a beautiful house. Yes, they've designed a beautiful nuclear power plant and it works. When I say it works, like they've spent a lot of money at a supercomputer and told me that it works, right? So it's not like they've actually built one of these things before. So now you've got that. So then the question becomes like, who is the industry, right? And so in the”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, one of the challenges with the nuclear power industry is that there's no nuclear power industry. So you have the nuclear energy institute, right? And they're made up of a bunch of utility companies that basically own nuclear power plants. But if you ask the CEO of like...”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's the fault of the nuclear energy industry to not say, look, modern finance works this way, right? Modern utility CEOs work this way. Modern public service commissions work this way. Let's create a product that actually works within the framework that we have in the United States of America. And they've now done that. So I think we now have a product that people can get excited about. And you saw the governor of Texas announce that he was directing the Public Service Commission to figure that out here. And you've seen announcements from Duke Energy and announcements from Dominion and announcements from the Tennessee Valley Authority. So you're starting to see utilities say this is actually a really interesting approach. And so we'll see if it works. But I think that there's an approach now that's fit for purpose.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so now you get to a place where it can be cost effective, folks can handle it, it's bite-sized, you can end at any time if you don't want to build the third one or the fourth one. And so you're starting to see a formula that people are getting excited about. Not only are people getting excited about, they're getting excited about U.S. designs, right? Because there's Korean designs and Russian designs and Chinese designs. And so, you know, our good friends in Canada chose a US design, the Gitachi, BWX300. So they're building four of them at Darlington, the folks at Cynthos in Poland also chose the design. There's a lot of lessons learned. We're following those lessons learned. So I could go on and on and on in an entire podcast about this, but I would say that in general, I don't think it's the fault of the environmental groups or the fault of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which everyone likes to blame, or the Simpsons.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe not. Exactly, right? And so now we have this thing called small modular reactors, which are neither small nor modular, but like, that's fine. But they basically cost two to four billion dollars, right? And two to four billion dollars, utilities know how to do two to four billion dollar projects, and they can find bonding for that and insurance for that. There's EPC contractors that have a balance sheet that's large enough to wrap a $2 to $4 billion project, et cetera. So we now have a size that we actually can handle. When you look at Vogel 3 and 4, Vogel 4 was 30% cheaper than Vogel 3, right? Because the same workforce was working in the same reactor and they did it better the second time around, which you can imagine. So the way that these small module reactors work is that you build four in one place. So you build 300 megawatt reactors, you build four of them in one place, and so you have 1,200 megawatts. The first one's probably going to come in closer to 4 billion. The second one's 30% cheaper, the third one's 20% cheaper, the fourth one and 7%.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, it's always someone else's fault. It's like nuclear power is just so damn complicated. It's so hard to build. This solar and wind stuff is so easy. Like we build complicated stuff all the time. We build like oil refineries. We build like By saying, look, you know, these 10 to 15 billion dollar nuclear plants, it's not something that utilities want to build, right? In fact, if you look at the last 40 or 50 years of utility bankruptcies, half of them were because of nuclear plants. So, you know, I can imagine like a CEO of a utility company is like, I don't know, I don't want to do a nuclear.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Came online, VOGA Unit 4 should come online at the end of the year early next year in Georgia. So I think that in general, the nuclear power fleet that we have now was largely built in the 1970s, right? Nuclear power is one of those things where the frustration that I have, and I was on the board of Greenpeace for six years, is that they don't actually try to do it better.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a lot of stuff going on. Let me try to unpack it for you. I think, so basically nuclear power really had its heyday sort of in the 60s and the 70s, right? That's when we built a lot of our nuclear power plants. In the 70s, it was already the case that nuclear power plants were becoming more and more expensive. You had the nuclear regulatory commission. You had a lot more regulation. And so you were already getting people less interested in doing nuclear power by the time you got to the late 70s. Then you had Three Mile Island, right? You can imagine like that sort of scared people. And so no one died. Everyone's fine. Nuclear is one of the safest technologies in the world. But it scared people. We basically didn't approve any new nuclear plants after that. We finished the Byron nuclear power plant, which I grew up next to in Illinois in 1984, and then we finished Watts Bar recently. And so we've had a couple of nuclear plants come online. Vogel Unit 3 just...”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Over those things. And we're also not saying that 100% of everything that America consumes, we consume a lot, is going to be made in the United States of America, right? And so I think the administration has gone to China, gone to other things, saying we're not decoupling. So it's really, but there's a lot of these high value innovations that we've invented out of the Department of Energy. And instead of licensing them to other countries, which is basically what we did for 40 years, we're saying why don't we tie it to the American workforce and make them here?”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think when you hear Elon Musk talk a lot about this at Tesla, they've sort of onshored almost everything that it takes to make a car, right? So they don't really import from 1,000 different suppliers. They do stuff here. And what they say is actually the folks who work on the line actually bring a lot of the best innovations to the table, right? They're like, oh, this could be done smarter. This could be done better, this could do stuff. So in general, I feel like we're having these false arguments because this is like something that, I don't know, it finds like certain tribes want one thing, certain tribes want something else. So it's a great fault line to create. But I think we all agree that you want workers who actually want to be there. You don't want turnover. You don't want 10% of your workforce leaving every month. And you want folks to believe that they can feed their families and support a community and all that stuff on that. So I don't think we're arguing.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As I said before, the loan programs office requires Davis Bacon wages for construction. In general, that hasn't been a problem. In general, when you construct something, you want the folks who have the most training doing your construction, as you know firsthand. And so that really isn't something that we fight over. They're like, yeah, that makes sense. So we want the highest quality workforce so that, you know, when we build this building, it'll last for 30 years and it'll be done properly, right? So that isn't really a problem. There's no requirement for folks to go union for the operating jobs. And so we're not requiring that. That being said, we're saying to people that these are, particularly in the manufacturing space, again, which we haven't done really in 40 years, these are craftsmen, right? Like they're actually like, the more they work at that place, the better they get at that job and they become more productive and they provide a lot of insight.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you end up doing an RFP and you pick a non-union contractor, that's fine. They would still pull from this union hall or not or whatever. Like union workers do a lot of non-union contractor work, right? He's like, Jigger, I never understood that. They never taught me that at Harvard Business School. I don't know how any of this stuff works, right? And so he was appreciative. Like, you know, it wasn't like he was union, anti-union, like pro union. He was like, I'm probably not inclined to go union. But I do need workers that are trained to like actually start working on my job site as soon as I'm ready. And this is going to make it easier for me to meet my schedule and my cost. Yeah, I'll do that.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thousand jobs in that community, but had never had the chance to provide Selink any feedback about how they might recruit better, right? Now, that's not because Sellink's a bad company, right? Sellink's a startup company that probably almost went bankrupt like three times. And, you know, think they're lucky stars that they got the capital when they needed to to actually get to this point. And now they're building a factory. They're like the American dream. So I'm not surprised that the number one thing that he's working on is not figuring out his workforce issues, right?”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, you know, yesterday I was in Georgetown, Texas, one of our companies, Cell Link, right, is building their facility up there. They make these extraordinary wire harnesses for electric vehicles that are like 95% less weight, which is amazing. The thing is, and you would think wire harnesses are things that you can only make in low-wage countries around the world, but they have this innovative process, and so they can make it here in Georgetown, Texas. We ask them to put together a meeting, workforce. They have to hire about a thousand people. And so how are you going to do that? Where are you going to go, et cetera, et cetera? There were a lot of people who came and facilitated conversation. There's no mandate there. I wasn't suggesting that they had to hire, you know, a good mix of this group or that group or whatever it is. It's more like, let's have a conversation, right? It was very clear to me that most of the people in that room were so appreciative of selling creating.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No. So, in general, I'd say that we have statutory requirements, right? So for our office, you have to pay Davis Bacon wages for construction. You have to use this thing called the cargo preference act. But other than that, there are no other requirements of my office. And so we don't impose any other requirements onto our applicants. Now that being said, remember, we haven't done this in 40 years, right? It's not like the United States of America has been building manufacturing facilities, brand new manufacturing facilities for 40 years. We haven't.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so once you open that door, well, now you got to allow water heaters and thermostats and all sorts of other stuff that you have an app for on your phone to be able to do managed charging. And so the old paradigm was that Con Ed just upgraded the distribution circuit every time you found some cool new thing that you wanted to buy. And now we're saying, that's kind of getting expensive. You should actually do managed charging”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, like it, most people who have electric vehicles, they plug in their car when they come home from work or school or whatever, and they leave it plugged in for 13 hours, but it's only charging for three of those 13 hours. So people don't really care which three hours they're charging as long as it's charged by the time they wake up in the morning, right? And so people are like, oh, like we can actually accommodate a lot more electric vehicles if we do managed charging.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, that's really expensive, right? So every time you buy something, whether it's a hairdryer or an espresso machine or whatever it is, they have to upgrade the service to make sure that if all of you turn it on at the same time or some reasonable amount of you turn it at the same time, then you can be accommodated, right? The other way for them to do that is to say there are some loads that you just don't care about, right? Like your water heater. You don't really care whether your water heater turns on right after you finish taking a shower or whether it turns on like six hours later when there's excess capacity in the grid. And a lot of rouletric co-ops have controlled those water heaters for 30 years. So it's not new technology. But if you flatten the load and you shift, like, you know, and the reason this is coming back in a big way right now is because of electric vehicles.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the 1970s, then you had this peak, right? So whenever you have a hot day, you have its peak. And so they built the transmission distribution grid to handle air conditioning. They built a bunch of natural gas peaker plants to be able to power that air conditioning. And so the peak to trough utilization has gone bigger, right? So now you're using 100 units of energy at the top and you're using like 25 units of energy at the bottom, right? And so what they have said to homeowners or condo owners or renters is you can do whatever you want with your demand and we will make sure that the lights work.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so let me start from first principles, and then I'll answer your question directly. So in 2000, the National Academy of Sciences said the most important machine in the whole world was the electric utility grid, right, of the 20th century, right? And so they got this award for the best engineering marvel of the 20th century, right? This engineering marvel has cost us over a trillion dollars to build, right, over time. And we use it 40% of the time. So if you're a private sector company, which some of these utilities are, and you have a machine that you built that cost a trillion dollars, and you only use it 40% of the time, you'd be like, usually we're trying to maximize the operational capacity utilization of this machine. We spent a trillion dollars on it. We should use it more, right? So the reason they don't use it more is when air conditioning came in.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“about the fact that we might have load growth again. Even when the Inflation Reduction Act passed, it's not clear to me that people really had internalized it. Today, no matter where I go, people are actually actively interested in learning about how they should do things differently within the utility sector in all three areas right so generation transmission distribution and what we call virtual power plants which is actually you know flexing demand The same level of dexterity that we currently only flex supply.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So when the Inflation Reduction Act first passed, we got this energy refurbishment sort of program. And I reached out to them all and they said, Jigger, we can raise money ourselves. We don't need to use your program. We're never going to use your program. Then I was able to recruit Leslie Rich, who's the most feared stock analyst on Wall Street for the electric utility industry from JPMorgan to come run the program. And suddenly I've got like $58 billion worth of loan applications in the loan program's office. So people really do matter. And so she's been able to convince them. She's like, well, you know, you kind of are at a soft rate cap. You can't keep raising rates 10% a year and continue to like have a social license in your state. Like you should actually figure out how to reduce rates for ratepayers. And so the arguments are like, you know, filtering through. People are having these conversations. I do think that for sure in 2019, people were not serious.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But you have all these competing interests of people who are like, but Jigger, I was going to spend $23 billion to upgrade the transmission grid. That was going to be rate-based for my shareholders. Why would I want the $3 billion? But you know what? All of that is evaporating away today because they're all just saying we can't keep up with load growth. So we'll do the $3 billion and we'll invest even more money because a lot of our stuff's 50 years old. So we kind of have to like replace it anyway. And so all of these traditional loggerheads that we've been at for 20 years is really going away because people know that we need both.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So PPL was on a podcast the other day, which is Pennsylvania Power and Light. And they were saying, you know, basically they had this thing where they had to solve it. So they put in dynamic load ratings. It was only like $900,000 to do it, but it saved $50 million of upgrades. And they were like, we make money to deploy dollars. Like this was a terrible decision for our shareholders. We did it because there was no other way for us to upgrade that line and we had a customer that really needed it. And so to upgrade the entire United States of America with great enhancing technologies to unlock 30% more transmission capacity would cost a total of $3 billion.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I was saying, we have all these entrepreneurs who invented all this stuff, and we didn't deploy it here. We let them go overseas to deploy it there.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was no need for it, right? I see. But now everyone is like, oh my God, we got to grow again? That's a lot, right? But the beauty is we actually have solutions to all of it. Like the crazy thing is like on the grid, right? There are all these things called grid enhancing technologies. I'll give you an example. Like the grid basically is operated by Slide Roll. And so people say this thing basically has 3000 megawatts of capacity, right? That's actually not true, right? What's true is that the capacity changes based on the temperature outside, right? So there's less capacity when it's like 102 degrees outside, way more capacity when it's 45 degrees, right? So you can put in dynamic load ratings, right? Guess who does that? Everybody but the United States, right? And so we invented it. So the UK has fully deployed it. Belgium's fully deployed it. All these other Brazil, India. Everyone's doing this stuff except for us.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How we actually check to make sure that things that we really care about are checked, right? We don't want to just gloss over things and just say, whatever, we should just lower our standards. We're just saying that we might be applying the standards in an incorrect way for certain projects, right? Because certain projects really don't have the level of toxicity within air pollution issues or local impacts or other things. And certain projects maintain those things, right? Like green chemical plants or some of these other things. And so we just need to be more appropriate in the way in which we implement those rules, right? So that's one piece of it. The other piece of it is, you know, we need to do things differently. For a long time, for 20 years, we have not had load growth in this country. So we basically sell the same number of terawatt hours today that we did in 2003.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“like we sort of need to build, right? And so now the question really becomes, how do we build and how do we do it in a way that's equitable, that makes sure that we're paying people a fair wage and all these other things. What we're looking at doing is figuring out”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's how it is, right? So that's why we care about this stuff. Like, we're not doing it because we're trying to just make everything more complicated. We're doing this because Americans believe that using more electricity makes their life better, right? Whether it's like storing photos that they probably should delete, but they're going to keep them around anyway, right? And then paying like Apple, another $1.99 a month, right? That's why we care about this stuff, right? So now the question becomes like, If we all care about this enough, right? If we all want this enough, what are we willing to do to accelerate it? So you've got permitting, you've got the National Environmental Protection Act, and so people talk about NEPA and all this other stuff. And so do we want to make this stuff easier, right? And you've got Bill McKibben, who wrote a big article about saying it's time to build. I mean, this is the guy who led the movement to like kill the Excel pipeline, right? And so even he's saying,”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So let me answer that question from the other side. But I will answer it. I think that in general, the question is why does any of this stuff matter? We actually interconnect all this soar and wind or new nuclear plants or a geothermal facility. We want to relicense 37 gigawatts of hydro dams that are like from 1910. Why do we even care? It's because everybody wants to use ChatGBT, right? ChatGBT is 10,000 megawatts of compute power by itself. Now you add like Google and all this other stuff and then people want electric cars. They like it. You know, like my son yells at the car in front of me because he's like, they have a tailpipe. My daughter.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is the ideal situation, and that's what Texas does, and you get a lot more movement. I mean, even Texas is clogged up just because there's so many applications, but they're the fastest. But places like the northeast or the Mid-Atlantic states or the Midwest states, I mean, people are actually waiting like four to five years to get permission to interconnect because in those states, they largely say, well, we want to know that there's actually a piece of transmission that's available for you. So we're waiting for this coal plant to cease operations at the natural gas plant before we allocate that transmission for you because we don't want to do this curtailment thing. And so as a result, we have 1,200 megawatts of like roughly generation in this country. We have the same amount, 1,200 gigawatts, waiting in queues for permission to be added to the grid right now.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They sort of say you should just interconnect. And if there's too much on the grid at any one time, we're going to tell you to curtail. So we're going to tell you to shut off. And, you know, you can imagine you're not making any money when you shut off, right? And so, but Texas is like, that's your problem. And then separately, they actually calculate really well what the loss to ratepayers are for that congestion. So if there's not enough transmission capacity, then the coal plant that's next to somebody's house has to turn on and be used more. That's more expensive. They say, oh, if there was enough transmission capacity, then that would have been cheaper and better, right? And then that's what they justify paying encore, which does a lot of the transmission distribution, to be able to build new transmission. They're like, well, the congestion charges were so large that we should build new transmission to make sure people have lower bills. So that”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So basically, what happens is that someone says, I've got a fantastic piece of land, I think I can put wind power on it or solar power on it. Mostly it's solar these days. There's a lot less wind in that transmission queue. And they say, great. I'd like to apply to be able to use that transmission line. Now, there's many different regions of the country, and each one of them does it differently. Texas is arguably the best region for this. And so what they do is they check to make sure it'll be safe. So when you connect it to the grid, it won't actually make the grid like unstable. And then take something down. So they'll check that. But then they don't actually check necessarily that there's capacity for you.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the transmission grid is generally at much higher voltages, and they're transporting power long distances from where, you know, like the panhandle of Texas, where they have a lot of wind down here to populated centers, right? The distribution grid is what's in your neighborhood and is basically having to manage making sure that you have power for your 400 amp service. Because if you plug in 15 electric cars at the same time, then the distribution grid has to either be able to handle it or be able to throttle the amps to each home so that the distribution grid doesn't get overloaded.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let me back it up for a second and then explain to you where the friction points are and then maybe we can talk about how we solve it. So in general, you've got three major pieces here, right? You've got generation of electricity. You've got the transportation of that electricity to your home or business or whatever it is, the transmission distribution grid. And then you've got the load itself, right? And so you've got a lot of load growth from new manufacturing facilities being announced because of the inflation reduction act. You've got electric vehicles being added to the grid at record numbers. You've got heat pumps, all these other things, right? So the main thing that I think you're asking about is the transmission grid. So you've got a whole bunch of people who...”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think about the level of innovation happening in Texas right now, it is at an all time high. And, you know, I think that part of it is because Texas needs that level of innovation, right? I mean, their natural gas fleet didn't perform as well as they wanted it to during Yuri and then some of the other issues. So they've recognized that they need to diversify where the electricity comes from, which is why they're building so much solar and wind, but also they've decided to put two new semiconductor plants here in Texas. They have all this growth. All these companies are deciding that Texas is where they want to build stuff. If you fly into DFW airport, there's all these roads and you're like, where the house is? They're coming in the next 18 months. There's so much load growth here. So now the question really becomes like how do we build the grid of the future? And they're figuring that out here in Texas. It's pretty exciting.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're delivering all three. I mean, look at Texas, right? Texas is the ground zero here, right? You're talking about the state that is installed more wind power and more solar power over the last five years than any other place in the entire country. I think it's number one in the country in wind and number two in the country in solar and will be number one in the country in solar in like 18 months. It's also number one in the country on an ongoing basis in installing battery storage, right? I mean, it's also the one that's actually like piloting these virtual power plants where there were Tesla electric customers this last summer who had like negative $600 bills because they were selling power from their power walls into the marketplace at $5 a kilowatt hour when market prices dictated it. And so they were helping their neighbors, right? And so that is not allowed in California. That is allowed here.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Clearly. And they will fully admit that there is no chance that they would have gotten the MLS off the ground without our loan. And so what's it worth to dominate these industries into the future, not just electric vehicles, which happened in the first iteration there, but in the future, right? When you look at methane pyrolysis, what they do is they take natural gas, they split it into hydrogen and carbon. Carbon black is something you need to make tires. Even electric vehicles use tires. And so we need to use that, right? And so right now the largest exporter of carbon black in the world is Russia, right? If this works, which I'm pretty sure it will, we will be the largest exporter of carbon black in the world, right? And that's a really important market for us to dominate, right? So the question really is like, you know, yes, there's, you know, being good with taxpayer money, but the other piece is actually reaching real...”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so from that perspective, that's $4 billion that the Congress gave us to quote unquote lose that we didn't lose and that we return back to the taxpayer. But, I mean, the other way I think about it, right? So that's strictly answering your question. But the other way I think about it is it is clearly the case that Tesla is the best electric vehicle company in the world.”
2023-10-06 · Odd Lots · Jigar Shah on the Pathway to Clean, Cheap, and Abundant Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source