Episode 1.13 On Opportunities at the Consumer/Utility Edge with Dr. Julieta Giraldez

Power Flow

After a 10 year term at the National Renewable Energy Lab, Dr. Julieta Giraldez is working at the edge of technology and regulatory issues, at the edge of the utility, the energy policy, and the energy consumer. She is a facilitator of conversations that move clean energy projects forward.

We talk about a lot of edges in this episode: between research and implementation, between the public and private sectors, between complexity and opportunity, and between the data and decision making.

Quotables

"Where the technical meets the regulatory is a very exciting space, because it means we are advancing societal good."

“The way we used to plan before was an extremely simple set of assumptions. Now, just to even answer a question, you need to consider twelve other things times ten other scenarios to actually understand the impact of what you’re trying to look at. It’s a complex space now and that excites me.”

- All above quotes by Dr. Julieta Giraldez

“Complexity can feel scary or frustrating, but there’s also a ton of opportunity in complexity.”

“The way that we model things is still just a model. It can tell us important things about reality, but it’s never going to perfectly reflect reality.”

- Amy Simpkins

This week’s guest

A leader in the renewable energy sector, Julieta Giraldez is a Principal of Customer Solutions at Kevala, where she focuses on solving the challenges facing energy market participants interacting with the evolving electricity grid. Prior to joining Kevala, Dr. Giraldez worked for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) where she led Distributed Energy Resources (DER) grid integration related projects.

Most recently, she focused on understanding how customer-sited resources such as solar, electric vehicles, and battery storage, can best be leveraged and safely integrated into distribution systems. She brings a holistic view of grid integration related issues, acknowledging the importance of including multiple perspectives in the evaluation of new emerging technologies, from developers and customers to technology providers, regulators and utilities.

Dr. Giraldez holds a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from Colorado State University, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines and a B.S in Technical Mining and Energy Resources from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain.

Resources:

Connect with Julieta on LinkedIn.

Check out Kevala’s website.

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