Microgrids and Climate Resilience: A Practical Path to Cleaner Energy

In this episode of the Climate Confident podcast, I’m joined by Angelo Campus, the CEO and co-founder of BoxPower, to explore the transformative potential of microgrids in building resilient and sustainable energy systems.

Angelo shares his journey from growing up at the edge of the grid in rural Northern California to founding a company that develops microgrids powered by solar, batteries, and backup generators. These systems are delivering power to underserved communities, disaster-stricken regions, and rural areas where traditional grid infrastructure is too costly or unreliable.

We delve into the surprising shift that brought BoxPower’s solutions back to the US, where ageing grid infrastructure and rising wildfire risks have utilities rethinking their approach to energy delivery. Angelo explains how microgrids can replace end-of-line infrastructure, reduce wildfire risks, and cut costs for utilities—all while increasing renewable energy use.

Key takeaways from the conversation include:

• The economic tipping point where microgrids become more cost-effective than traditional distribution systems.
• The role of microgrids in improving energy access for tribal communities and disaster relief efforts.
• Why current battery technologies, though promising, still require complementary solutions like backup generators in certain climates.
• How utility collaboration and regulatory reform are essential to scaling distributed energy solutions.

Angelo also provides a frank critique of clean tech investment trends, calling for more focus on infrastructure innovation over pure software solutions. His pragmatism about integrating existing technologies to combat climate change is refreshing.

Tune in to hear how microgrids could redefine our approach to energy in a rapidly warming world.

Links and Resources:

• Visit BoxPower for more on their microgrid solutions.
• Connect with Angelo on LinkedIn or follow BoxPower on social media.
• Don’t forget to follow this podcast and leave a review!

Let me know what you think of this episode—get in touch via LinkedIn or email at tomraftery@outlook.com.

Sign up to Climate Confident+ for deep dive analysis of the major climate and energy stories of the day.

Transcript

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Angelo: 0:03

The reason that we haven't stopped climate change is human behavior. It's resistance to change. It is cultural momentum. That is why we aren't stopping climate change today. It's because it is so much easier to just keep doing what we've always done.

Tom Raftery: 0:22

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the Climate Confident podcast, the number one podcast showcasing best practices in climate emission reductions and removals. And I'm your host, Tom Raftery. Don't forget to click follow on this podcast in your podcast app of choice to be sure you don't miss any episodes. Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode 204 of the climate confident podcast. My name is Tom Raftery and before we kick off today's show. I want to take a moment to express my sincere gratitude to all of this podcasts amazing supporters. Your support has been instrumental in keeping this podcast going, and I'm really grateful for each and every one of you. If you're not already a supporter, I'd like to encourage you to consider joining our community of like-minded individuals who are passionate about climate. Supporting the podcast is easy and affordable with options starting as low as just three euros or dollars a month, which is less than the cost of a cup of coffee and your support will make a huge difference in keeping this show going strong. To become a supporter you simply click on the support link in the show notes of this or any episode. Or visit tiny url.com/climate pod. Now. In today's episode. I'm talking to Angelo Campus. and we're talking about micro grids. And in upcoming episodes, I'm going to be talking to Ollie Birch who's CEO of Among Equals. We'll be talking about climate communications. Thom Norman CEO of Farm Kind. And we'll be talking about agriculture and emissions from agriculture. Annalisa Bracco who's a professor in Georgia tech. And Ryan Schermerhorn from Marshall Gerstein on Boren, LLP. And we'd be talking about. Climate patents and IP. But back to today's episode. And as I mentioned, I'm talking to Angelo. Angelo welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Angelo: 2:20

Yes, thank you, Tom. Pleasure to be here and thank you for having me. My name is Angelo Campus. I am calling in here from Northern California and I'm the CEO and co founder of BoxPower A micro grid developer and technology provider. Working to integrate micro grids into the US electrical grid.

Tom Raftery: 2:38

Okay. And Why? As in well, let's, let's go back even further. Let's, let's start Angelo with what made you decide to start setting up micro grids in the US electrical system? What, Why did you wake up one morning and say, I know, I think I'll start BoxPower and fix the American electrical system?

Angelo: 3:00

I think I haven't had a typical sort of entrepreneurs journey. My resume is very short. I worked as a dishwasher supporting myself in high school. I worked as a theater audio technician in college and then I started BoxPower, my senior year of college So, I would call it a nonlinear trajectory when looked at that way. I did not come from an industry insider. I came from an academic background. But for me, the story started quite a bit earlier all the way back to my childhood 2 factors. 1, I grew up in a very rural area not off grid, but at the edge of the grid. Think 15 minutes down a rough dirt road, last house on the line, kind of location. Throughout my childhood power outages were a a frequent and very, influential and memorable experience because when our power went out, it wasn't for a couple of hours, it was for days or sometimes weeks. I think the longest that we ever actually had was about 11 days after a winter storm put multiple trees across a line and being at the end of the grid, we were the lowest priority to restore. So I have these very distinct memories from childhood of cooking on a wood stove, reading by candlelight you know, experiencing what it's like to go an extended duration without access to electricity. And that was, that was very influential for me. You know, the other significant factor for me is I was homeschooled, which means I just had a heck of a lot of time on my hands to read, experiment, pursue. And very early, I was fascinated with energy. I remember my mom bought me one of those little toy electrical sort of, I don't know if it was connector or some kit like that, but battery and electric motor and a little turbine and a little solar panel. And I remember the first thing I thought was, well, if I cook these together, can I make a perpetual motion machine? And I was determined there's gotta be a way. You've got the fan to the propeller to the battery. So I was just fascinated with energy and electricity. And then that got even accelerated when my father, who is a general building contractor had primarily been a residential contractor started a solar company with a friend of his in 2002, so very early California residential solar industry, early, early days. And so at that point I was in middle school, high school, and I spent my summers helping out building solar arrays building ground mounts there and that that accelerated that passion and that interest for energy. So, by the time I was a senior in high school, I, I did my senior project on a solar powered water distiller that I, that I designed, prototyped and built and just had a from a pretty early age a pretty focused interest in energy technology. So when I went to college, I had this unexpected and life changing opportunity to go to Princeton. They have a broke hippie quota. They take one of us every year. And I know that I met all the ones above and below and there was only one of us per year. I, I got a a full financial aid, full ride scholarship to Princeton. And the first thing I did, when I got there was searched through the faculty for any professor working on micro grids, power system, solar and battery, and I found that I found two professors that started a research lab on rapidly deployable micro grids for disaster relief. I joined that research group my freshman year. I stuck with it all, all four years of my undergrad. And by my senior year was determined that I wanted to start a company. And so I launched BoxPower my senior year, raised our, our very first funding from business plan and pitch competitions my senior year. And I went to work at BoxPower full time when I graduated.

Tom Raftery: 7:14

Amazing. Amazing. And what would you say has surprised you most in your journey to where you are today?

Angelo: 7:22

Yeah. I love, I love going back and looking at our very, very first pitch decks that we put together in This was fall 2015, spring 2016. The pitch at that point, the thesis that we'd come up with for BoxPower, at that point it was me and a couple other student peers who were helping me with the project, was a theory that in developing countries, where the electrical grid had not yet been built, that it would be cheaper to provide power to rural consumers with microgrid technology. And I guess I should pause here and define what a microgrid is. A microgrid is a independent or autonomous power system that can operate either independently, The term is often used as islanded, that's where it doesn't have any electrical connection to the macro grid. Or sometimes in parallel to the grid. So it's this idea of a system that can isolate itself and operate independently, or in some cases, synchronously with the grid.

Tom Raftery: 8:33

A bit like Texas.

Angelo: 8:34

Yes, Texas is a huge microgrid. I guess one would argue that it's actually a small macrogrid, but Yes, micro grids come in all shapes and sizes. And the definition of micro is relative, I guess, you know, all zoomed out far enough is a micro grid, but relative to scale. And our, our thesis was that, building distribution infrastructure, building and maintaining distribution infrastructure for rural populations was very expensive. There's a question of population density, customers per mile of line, or rather consumption per mile of line. And our theory was simple, it's cheaper to put in micro grids for low population density areas than it is for high population density areas. Furthermore, we, are theory was that, you know, the entry point to this was critical customers like medical clinics, telecom facilities, you know, The the the 1st things that need power. And so when I started BoxPower, I thought that I was going to be working in the developing world, Sub Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia to some extent, South America, the regions that have large un electrified populations. And we have done a little bit of work in those spaces. To come back around, the biggest surprise was that we are doing exactly what we described in those original pitch decks. But we're doing it here in the US and we're doing it in areas where the electrical grid was already built. It was built 50, 60, 70 years ago. When labor was practically free relative to today, and environmental regulations weren't really a thing, you know, post war economy we were all about building infrastructure across rural America. Well, that infrastructure is now 70% of it is over 50 years old. 70% of it is past its expected life. And the cost of rebuilding, repairing, maintaining that distribution infrastructure is monumental. And so our work today is based in the, exact same thesis we had before. It is cheaper to build and operate microgrids in rural areas. But we're doing it replacing where the, grid was previously built, where we are coming in and either supporting or fully replacing portions of distribution infrastructure in rural areas, where the cost of either upgrading, maintaining, hardening is something we can talk about. The impacts of climate change and extreme disaster events necessitating a harder grid, more durable. We're building those micro grids here in the US. And so that's the biggest surprise to me is that we had the right thesis, but we did not see that thesis applying in the United States of America, where we have a 99.99% electrification rate and interconnection rate. That's the biggest surprise.

Tom Raftery: 11:57

Interesting. Interesting. And I'm assuming your micro grids are not powered by small coal fired thermal plants.

Angelo: 12:09

No, no, that would be a twist, wouldn't it? Micro coal generation, the future of coal power. No,

Tom Raftery: 12:15

clean coal power.

Angelo: 12:18

We are micro grids are primarily solar, battery, and inverter based. We do use backup generators. And that is something that makes us somewhat unique within the micro grid space. I'm absolutely an environmentalist. But I'm also a pragmatist. For significant portions of this country, getting to 100% renewable today with solar is cost prohibitive. Particularly as soon as you start going towards the northern half of the country where you have long, dark, wet winters. A 100% renewable micro grid is a not impossible, but a very challenging and very expensive task. And So from very early on, we took a pragmatist approach of what is the, highest renewable fraction that is economically practical. And so because of that, many of our micro grids, most of our micro grids have a backup generation element to it that is typically propane or natural gas which we see as the, the cleanest of the dirty fuels. And we design our system such that they maximise the renewables used. And often that is 75, 85, even 90% renewable over the course of a year. But there's a diminishing return. The way I typically describe it is to go from 90 to 95% renewable in a climate with a significant winter requires a doubling of a system size from a solar and a battery perspective. And then to go from 95 to 99 requires yet another doubling or even tripling of the system size. So you are, sizing for these extreme events, that one week out of the year that is just dark and rainy. Our approach to that is using backup generation during those periods. So we are a hybrid microgrid developer. We do not turn up our nose at the amazing utility and benefits that are fuel based combustion generation. But we seek to minimise it as much as possible.

Tom Raftery: 14:31

Okay, and who are your customers? Are you selling to utility companies? Are you selling to municipalities? Are you selling to, I don't know, small medical facilities like you mentioned that are at the end of a 15 minute drive or schools, hospitals, hotels, resorts, farms, all of the above?

Angelo: 15:23

I think we have done almost all of the above. I don't think we've done a hotel yet, but I think every other customer you just listed there. I think the best way to tell that's a little bit of a progressional story of, of how we evolved through the market. We started the company in 2016. Our first year and a half was spent in product development. And I'll describe our products here. What we came to market with was a fully containerised, rapidly deployable solar battery generator system. For those of you familiar with shipping containers the intermodal metal modular transport containers our first product was called the Solar Container, and it was a completely self-contained solar battery generator system. Prefabricated into a shipping container, all of the components shipped inside of the container. It could be delivered to a remote area set up without any specialised equipment and provide a off grid source of power anywhere. So that was our, that was our go to market product. And we still offer that product. We have expanded into a much wider repertoire of products beyond that, but that was our initial go to market. And right around the time that we were sort of finishing testing certifications of that product, Hurricane Maria happened. Devastating Puerto Rico's electrical grid. We were in the finishing stages of testing, you know, MVP 1.0 commercially viable product. And as soon as Hurricane Maria happened, we jumped into action, started looking for disaster relief organisations, local nonprofits, in some of the harder hit areas. We ended up connecting with a community center in outside of Humacao, Puerto Rico the community of Mariana. There's quite a few articles you can find online about the project and the community, an amazing story of a, one of the hardest hit communities in Puerto Rico coming together, grassroots organizing. A long history of a strong cultural arts organisation being sort of the like threads and the roots that brought this community together to take care of themselves because no help came from FEMA for over a month. Power was not restored by the grid for over a year to the community of Mariana. About three months after the hurricane, we came in with our rapidly deployable solar container. And so that was our first project. We delivered a rapidly deployable solar battery generator system to the school of Mariana. That became sort of a hub community kitchen school medical facility. You know, all of the critical resources a community needed. All the critical resources of a community coming together there. and we provided the power. That was our very 1st project and we've had a, a history over the years of supporting disaster relief organisations, hurricanes. We work with some large international disaster relief organisations to deliver these rapidly deployable systems into areas hit by disasters. A second market for us very quickly became tribal and indigenous power. I mentioned earlier that the US claims a, on the world bank website, they round up to a hundred percent. It's actually 99.99 something percent electrification. But, that 001 percent is overwhelmingly and disproportionately indigenous, tribal, and reservations in the US

Tom Raftery: 19:06

right.

Angelo: 19:08

A fairly horrifying statistic that I found was that 30% of residents of reservations across the US do not have access to electricity. In the Navajo nation alone recent census showed that at 18,000 households across the Navajo nation have never been served power. The Pine Ridge reservation a similarly large, I think eight to 10,000 households without access to grid power. And so, we quickly became involved with some of these tribal and indigenous communities and one of the second areas after Puerto Rico, where we began deploying projects, was in Alaska. Home to a significant indigenous population. And also home to some of the most remote communities in the US. There's 260 fully off grid communities in Alaska that have never been connected to the electrical grid that rely on 24 7 diesel generators for power and exorbitant costs of energy. And so we began working with tribal entities to bring power to either unelectrified or replacing generators in these. And we've done a number of projects in Alaska. We're working in the Navajo and Hopi. Territory there and this has been a major mission and passion for mine throughout BoxPower. I was an engineering major, but an anthropology minor in college, and so a focus on development, economic development the incredible importance of energy sovereignty. And so that has and continues to be a major part of what BoxPower does, is supporting tribal communities as they seek energy independence and energy autonomy. But that also introduced us to working with utilities. We worked with some of the tribal community utilities. And from there, that gave us both the experience and the perspective to start working with larger investor owned utilities. And so it was 2019 when we landed our first contract with Pacific Gas Electric here in California. They are the largest electric utility in the US serving the majority of the northern half of California central and northern California and also utility that has been in the news very frequently over the last few years and

Tom Raftery: 21:43

Not always for the right reasons. huh.

Angelo: 21:46

not. in a positive light. PG&E has had a wildfire problem, to put it very mildly. Several historic disasters like the Camp Fire that burned the town of Paradise, the Santa Rosa Fire burning suburbs of Santa Rosa. And, unfortunately, many of these super fires in California have been started by aging Electrical infrastructure, lack of vegetation management along distribution lines. You think we have these, bare wires running through rural areas carrying 12 to 50,000 volts of electricity. And in a hot, dry drought summer, a climate change induced drought summer, one branch touching one of those distribution lines. becomes a multi billion dollar tragedy very, very quickly. And so PG&E, to their credit, after a number of these incidents, enacted a massive grid hardening initiative. How can they reduce the risk of wildfires in their distribution infrastructure? And many of that is very traditional means. Better vegetation management clearing trees away from the lines, covered conductor, conductors that have a PVC coating over them that significantly reduces the chance of that. For even more extreme areas, undergrounding, putting the wires underground, and all of those are good solutions with their place where it makes sense, but none of those make sense for end of line customers, very remote communities, households like where I grew up in, 15 minutes down a dirt road. The cost of undergrounding is about 3 million dollars per mile in California. The cost of overhead conductor, about 1 million per mile. The cost of vegetation management can be 50,000 dollars per year per mile. None of those are economical for remote communities, end of line customers, or those low population density areas. And so to PG&E's credit, they pioneered the first utility to launch a remote grid program. We are their partner in that. We deployed their first several remote grids, And we essentially sit next to their distribution planning team, and they have these long lists of, okay, we're going to vegetation manage here, covered conductor here, undergrounding here, and we get to sit beside them and say, well, this is what it would cost to serve that with a microgrid. Is it more or less? This is what it would cost to serve it with a, solar plus battery system. And they're increasingly deploying micro grids as a alternative to undergrounding or covered conductor. And these micro grids either permanently replace the distribution line. There are many scenarios where they completely remove and eliminate that distribution line. And the customer or customers are served by fully off grid system. There's other applications where it makes more sense to just be able to de energise the line for the duration of wildfire season, and during those hot, dry months with high wind events, serve the customers with an off grid solution. And so, that idea of a investor owned utility deploying microgrids as a distribution asset, there is a there is generation solar produces energy, but the function is replacing a distribution asset is a radical new idea for utilities. It hadn't been done in the US prior to that. And now many other utilities are starting to look at this new set of tools that they have. It's not just wires and transformers and undergrounding. It's inverter and batteries and solar system and backup generation that they can use to harden their grid, make it more cost effective, make it more resilient. And so as we've grown as this concept has grown we're working with utilities across the US now across primarily the Western US primarily states impacted by wildfires where this risk is most urgent. And are helping utilities adapt to climate change, are helping utilities repair and replace the 70 year old distribution infrastructure that we can't economically maintain anymore. And so that has become another major customer vertical that we work in here at Boxpower.

Tom Raftery: 26:35

Interesting. And if I am in one of those areas where the distribution assets have been replaced by a microgrid, if there's a problem with my power system, do I still call PG&E or how is that managed?

Angelo: 26:54

That's the beauty of it is that nothing changes for the customer. You pay the same rate as everyone else in the utility district. The utility is responsible for the long term ownership and maintenance of the system. Functionally, they subcontract that to us and we, we maintain and operate these micro grids for them. But the long term responsibility is the utility's. And so, for the customer, there's no change. You don't have to come up with the upfront capital of deploying your own solar and battery system. The utility is the financier of the system, they provide it, they own it, they provide the service, and it saves them in cases, millions of dollars relative to the distribution infrastructure. And those costs, those costs are all costs to get passed back to the rate payers. And so it's a significant saving opportunity for utilities that in a time where electricity rates, particularly here in California, have been increasing 10, even 20% per year. Any opportunity to reduce those distribution costs is a major savings opportunity for utilities.

Tom Raftery: 28:04

Right. Okay. So when the utilities are making that decision, whether to go underground or vegetation manage or whatever it is versus the micro grid, I got to think the trends we've seen over the last decade or more for the pricing of solar and storage in particular, you're not dealing with wind, but wind as well, even those price shifts have to be working in your direction or. You know, for your benefit also for the benefit of PG&E and their customers. So are you seeing more and more that you're becoming price competitive and therefore winning more of those are they contracts, projects, whatever it is?

Angelo: 28:46

Absolutely. I don't think I can share any graphics here. So I'll hand, this is the cost of distribution spending. It's been going up and up. It is, if you look at nationally for all utilities or just across the West coast or just in California, the cost of maintaining the distribution system is increasing every year. And it's not because the distribution system is getting bigger. It's because what I talked about at the beginning, It's falling apart. The vast majority of it was built 50 to 70 years ago and has not been replaced. And so those those bills that back debt of deferred maintenance is all coming home right now. And so the cost of maintaining that distribution infrastructure is going up and up and up. It's a larger and larger proportion of a utilities annual budget and a rate payers monthly bill. People think that they're paying for the generation of electricity. Generation of electricity is actually a very small portion of the cost that you are paying for. Maintenance of the distribution and transmission system is a significantly larger cost for rate payers. And then on the other side, we have the cost of solar, and batteries. I'll start with solar. Solar, we saw a exponential, we call it a hockey stick decline over the last 20 years, going from solar panels costing $20 per watt in, late 90s, early 2000s down to today, we're buying solar panels at 20 to 30 cents per watt. So, 100x decrease in cost. Battery technology. I'd say we're five years into that 20 year cost reduction curve. We've seen lithium batteries come down from over $1,000 per kilowatt hour five years ago to two to 300 per kilowatt hour today. And they're not done dropping because the, the main drivers there, the industry is still relatively early. Electric vehicles are driving down the cost of battery storage and benefiting and we all know the adoption curve. We're still in the very early stages of electric vehicle manufacturing adoption. So I think we will see again, orders of magnitude decrease in the cost of battery storage over the next 5 and 10 years. And so you paint those two graphs against each other and we're right around here. I'd say it's in the last three years that it became economically viable. At sort of the extreme edge sites, the the last mile customer, the end of a dirt road. But as the distribution costs go up, and the solar and battery costs come down, the sections of the grid where it makes more and more sense to power with distributed generation with micro grids is going to grow and the portions of the country where it makes sense to rebuild distribution lines and serve with traditional infrastructure is going to get smaller and smaller. So I think we are, we are truly seeing the tip of the iceberg right now for this technology.

Tom Raftery: 32:02

Nice. And in the battery space, it's not just the price of the batteries that's falling, but the energy density has tripled in the last 10 years and the efficiency of solar panels has gone up, although not nearly as much. So do you see a time where the need for the excess generator that you are deploying with your micro grids might go away?

Angelo: 32:28

Yes, though not with lithium battery storage. I do agree that lithium battery storage will continue to decrease in cost and it will become increasingly viable for larger and larger swaths of the country to adopt 100% renewable systems. I talked before, the farther you go north, the longer and darker your winter is. Alaska will never be able to have year round 100% renewable generation from solar. There simply isn't enough hours of sunlight in many parts of the country and also I'll include Canada and North America and the world to consistently produce enough solar and battery generation every day. And battery technology lithium in particular is really good at four hours, even now eight hours. And I think we'll get to a point where 24 hours of backup is truly viable via battery, but I don't see a point where lithium battery storage will enable seven days of backup. And it's because of a coupling of power and energy density. Lithium batteries are good at dumping a ton of power really quickly. Acceleration. We talked about a C rate of discharge. But there's some other technologies that are really, really good at long duration storage. Interestingly I consider hydrogen a long duration storage technology. People often talk about hydrogen as a generation source. It's not. It takes energy to produce hydrogen. Much of the hydrogen in the US is currently captured from the natural gas industry. To get towards a green hydrogen it's perfectly viable to create hydrogen using excess solar power during the summer. So you're converting solar power to hydrogen. You can then store that hydrogen in huge tanks for the winter and then re convert it to electricity through a fuel cell. So I consider hydrogen a long duration energy storage. There's other technologies metal air batteries are a new technology allowing very long duration storage. They don't have the acceleration of lithium batteries. They don't have the ability to dump all of their energy in 2 hours the way that lithium does, but they're really good at storing energy for 80 hours. There's other battery storage technologies similar to that zinc air, iron air. Oxidation redox ox redox batteries which they often call liquid batteries that are currently in the scientific proof of concept or pilot stage. Five years from now, I think we're going to have alternatives to lithium that are much better for long duration storage, where the idea of seasonal storage becomes viable. And then we'll see the replacement of fossil fuels entirely. In the meantime. most of the country can get to a 80 plus percent renewable with the technology available today. That last 20% is going to be the hard part, but I'm very optimistic that the technology is coming to accomplish that.

Tom Raftery: 35:45

Nice, nice. Angelo, you mentioned that you have a background in anthropology as well as engineering. That kind of feels like a bit of a setup to a great superhero origin story. If, if BoxPower were a character in a Marvel or Star Wars film, who would it be and why?

Angelo: 36:06

Well, I've never watched a Marvel movie. There's a, there's a surprising secret, so I couldn't answer that. Well, my favorite character from Star Wars is C 3PO. and I think that maybe captures a little bit of the. technical capability, but trying to understand how humans really work. What drove me to start studying anthropology was the realisation, so my, my academic career, I worked in micro grids the whole time, but I actually switched around majors six times during that. I spent time in the climatology department, the electrical engineering department, the civil engineering department, and the geotechnical engineering department. Part of what drove me to bounce around like that was the, the frustration or the realisation that we have all the technology to stop climate change today. People talk about needing some breakthrough small modular nuclear reactors. It's not true. We have the technology today to dramatically reduce, maybe not eliminate, but dramatically reduce to pre 1980 levels our climate emissions. With the solar panels we have today with the batteries we have today with the wind turbines with the energy efficiency improvements, which I think is the most overlooked. You can't generate your way out of climate change. We need to reduce energy consumption, more efficient buildings, more efficient materials manufacturing and all of that exists. The reason that we haven't stopped climate change is human behavior. It's resistance to change. It is cultural momentum. That is why we aren't stopping climate change today. It's because it is so much easier to just keep doing what we've always done. Change isn't accomplished by a breakthrough technology. Change is accomplished by adoption of technology. And that was where I originally thought when I started, I was like, Oh, we need to develop new technologies and realised, no, we need to implement the technologies we already have. We need to facilitate change. We need to change minds. We need to help the institutions, the organisations that be, we need to help them change. Or in other cases, we need to force them to change. And that is what drove me to anthropology was the question of why? Why don't some people still believe in climate change? Why is that still a controversial topic? And even among those who do believe in climate change? Why? Why haven't we eliminated fossil fuel vehicles? Why haven't we eliminated single use plastic packaging? Like there's all these obvious solutions. And and the answer is because people don't like change. People are slow to change. And so it was that contradiction that drove me to ask the question of why are people like that? Why? Why is change so hard? Why do we have this resistance to it? And I haven't answered. I haven't solved it. But I think that perspective for me that at the end of the day, technology will only get us so far. It is people and it is behavior that will be the actual barrier is what fascinated me about anthropology and what drove me there and I think has been very influential in my thinking of how we work as a company, the work we do, all the way down to the reason of why we work with utilities. You know, believe it or not, we get a lot of criticism for working with utilities. Utilities have historically been sort of, the enemy of distributed generation of micro grids of renewables. And I would say it's for a couple of, reasons. There may be some selfish element there of you know, utilities have enjoyed being a monopoly on power generation and power services for 100 years And distributed generation and solar is a direct threat to that monopoly, or at least is perceived as one. There's also just a risk aversion. Utilities are like governments that they just move slowly. They're huge bureaucratic machines. They have not, for the most part, embraced renewables and micro grids and DERs with open arms. And because of that, there's been a lot of hostility between the solar industry, the battery industry, utilities, and us versus them. I immediately saw utilities are utilities are an irreplaceable fact of our electrical grid. They're here. They own wires, interconnecting almost every home business in the country. They have an immense amount of value. We can't just change around them. We can't leave them behind. You know, whether we like it or not, utilities are too big to fail. They're too valuable to fail. It's why PG&E has been bailed out five times in the last eight years out of bankruptcy is we need them. And I believe that the renewable industry and the microgrid industry, we need to bring utilities along. We cannot just innovate and change past them. We can't leave them behind and solve the problems. If they're still digging their heels and saying, no centralised generation and transmission is the only way. They will be a barrier until until we open their minds to the new tools, the new models, the new generation sources that are available to us. And I think that sort of pragmatism came from my, my background in anthropology, along with my engineering. We have to live and work within the circumstances, and the environment, and the world and the players that we have to accomplish change. As much as I would like to just start from scratch and build, build a new electrical grid of distributed micro grids that is not going to get us out of the way of catastrophic climate change. We need every player together at the table working together to do that.

Tom Raftery: 42:31

Okay, and where do you see the microgrid space going in the next 5, 10 years?

Angelo: 42:37

I can see it going two ways or rather I can see it going in many ways, depending on the the innovation and pace with which regulatories and utilities change. There is a Utopic version, where utilities and regulatory agencies embrace micro grids, embrace micro grid technologies, create incentive structures and tariff structures that both incentivise distributed generation and micro grids. While also equitably compensating the utilities for the critical service that they provide from a distribution perspective as well as utilities deploying battery storage. I think there's a critical role of utilities and particularly bringing micro grid, solar and battery technologies to low income areas acting as a financier, a cost equaliser to make sure that everyone benefits from these technologies. Not just successful corporations, not just wealthy residences. The utilities role needs to be the great equaliser that ensures that reliability stays relatively consistent across the distribution. And you don't have a inequality of reliability along socioeconomic lines between those who can afford their own micro grid and those who can't. And so I do believe there is a positive outcome where utilities adopt modern technology, behind the meter generation and are compensated in such a way that there is still a viable utility business model, but it doesn't look the same as it is today. It is not a purely centralised generation transmission and distribution model. It is not a radial single direction. I'd say mesh. It's a web. It's bi directional, It's flexible. That's the utopic vision. The dystopic vision is utilities don't adopt. They don't embrace this technology. They don't allow it. They don't advocate for these equitable rate and tariff structures that both allow micro grids behind the meter generation, provide it to low income communities. Instead, they dig in their heels and they resist. No, no, no. Change is scary. We don't want change. Change is hard. Think of all the technical specifications that we would have to rewrite to allow this. That will take years. Like that's the kind of obstacles we have. There's something called the utility death spiral. It's been well publicised. It's not my term. And it's what happens when utility rates start going up and up and up. And. Behind the meter generation technologies start getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. And you start getting something called grid defection. We saw that massively in Puerto Rico after hurricane Maria, There wasn't a grid for a year. And so tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans built off grid solar and battery systems in their homes. Well, when the grid was repaired, they said, where have you been for the last year? We don't need you. now A utility's electricity costs are their total electrical sales divided by their total cost. And that's how they set their rates for the next year. Now, two things can cause those rates to go up. The costs on the bottom, the denominator going up, more distribution spending more costly to maintain a grid, But the other thing that can make that rate go up is the, the top section, the sales going down, they have to spread those costs across all of their customers. And if their number of customers go down, their rates go up. If their electricity sales go down, their rates go up under the current structure. What you get is a negative feedback loop there. You have fewer and fewer customers buying less and less energy, more and more expensive to serve the remaining customers, and you have an out of control spiral of electricity rates. That is a scary future for electric utilities. That is one that will question and threaten the viability of electric utilities. And so, I'm optimistic. I think that enough utilities understand and see the need for change the need to adopt new technology. And I'm very encouraged by the number of utilities spinning up grid innovation. Performance based incentive structures with an open mind to this, but there really isn't an option. The alternative is the utility death spiral. And I think that that is something that every utility executive should be thinking about. What are they doing today to maintain relevance in a world where distributed behind the meter generation becomes accessible to more and more consumers?

Tom Raftery: 47:36

Left field question, Angelo. If you could have any person or character alive or dead, fictional or real as a spokesperson for micro grids, who would it be and why?

Angelo: 47:52

Yeah, that's a good question. My answer is not just for micro grids, but for infrastructure investment, for climate change, for the magnitude of the challenge that we face today. I'm a big believer and we need a new deal. We need a green new deal for America. We need Franklin Roosevelt. We need a civilian conservation corps committed to modernising our grid combating climate change, and enacting conservation measures. That was what got the US out of the Great Depression. I really hope we can enact it before we go into the second Great Climate Change Induced World Depression.

Tom Raftery: 48:37

Angelo, we're coming towards the end of the podcast now. Is there any question I haven't asked that you wish I had, or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of?

Angelo: 48:48

I have a message for clean tech investors. I have a, message for the immense venture capital, private equity, growth equity funds that have carbon reduction mandates. My message there is that the Silicon Valley model doesn't work for clean tech. We're eight years in we've grown, we've had immense success, we're profitable, and yet the number of investors that we talked to who believe that software alone can solve climate change and that traditional unicorn Silicon Valley growth models apply to climate change, to clean tech and to carbon reduction. If investors want to get serious about ESG goals, carbon reduction and clean tech. They need to change their frame of reference for what makes a successful business. At the end of the day, combating climate change is going to take massive infrastructure investment. And infrastructure involves construction. We need construction innovation. We need business model innovation. We need just successful businesses out there making an impact, putting solar panels in the ground. And if VCs remain focused on finding software unicorns that promise that they can solve climate change with a software as a service business model, we're going to be very hard pressed to launch the businesses that we need to combat climate change. So my message is clean tech investors. Take a look at what this country really needs and is your investment thesis aligned with that?

Tom Raftery: 50:34

Angelo, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Angelo: 50:42

Absolutely. You can find a wealth of information about BoxPower on our website, which is www. boxpower. io. And I encourage all of you to find us on social media. We're on all the typical platforms. I personally am very active on LinkedIn. We'd love to connect. We'd love to talk and encourage you to follow us if you're interested in micro grids, the energy transition and the efforts needed to combat climate change.

Tom Raftery: 51:10

Fantastic. Great. Angelo. That's been fascinating. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Angelo: 51:15

It's my pleasure. Thank you, Tom.

Tom Raftery: 51:19

Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about the Climate Confident podcast, feel free to drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com or message me on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you like the show, please don't forget to click follow on it in your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. Catch you all next time.