Seven years ago, Heather Rock pulled into her parking space at Chevron's offices in California in a newly leased electric vehicle. At the time, Chevron's earnings were rebounding after a global drop in oil prices, and it was facing the first of many lawsuits from US municipalities for climate damages. Heather was there working in the climate space. Looking back, she says rolling up to Chevron in her new EV foreshadowed a future career change. But at the time, it just felt a little weird.

I remember. It felt a little uncomfortable in the parking lot, but it's the car I wanted. It was the technology I wanted in my manager. I was working on climate issues at the time, said, Heather, if you were at Coke, you would be drinking Pepsi.

If you were at Coke, you would be drinking Pepsi. It was a joke, but it left a big impression on Heather.

It wasn't this moment of I was trying to be contrarian. It was just where I saw the world going. I think it was that comment and just seeing with the Paris Agreement, seeing with all the technology advances, I really wanted to be where things were changing, and I wanted to be part of the change. As much as I really valued and learned so much at Chevron, I just wasn't excited to drill more oil and gas out of the ground. I really wanted to serve that carbon-neutral future. For me, that was the point where I knew I had to make a career switch.

When she decided to leave Chevron in 2018, Heather started looking at other large energy companies where she could make an impact. When she saw an opportunity at Pacific Gas and Electric, she jumped at it.

It was a no-brainer to me. Here's this opportunity, and here's a way to be on the cutting edge of things that were happening in terms of climate change. What I like about working in really big companies like Chevron and PG&E and others is that because of the size and the scope and the scale, if you can make change internally, you can really steer a ship in a different way.

Heather admits her timing wasn't the best. Pg&e was already facing billions of dollars in liability for the 2017 wildfire season and was about to declare bankruptcy. And then in 2018, the flaws in California's electric grid made even more national headlines.

Today, Cal fire announced PG&E is responsible for the state's deadliest and most destructive wildfire.

The cause of the campfire was utility-owned and operated equipment in the I came in contact with a receptive fuel bed or vegetation that caused the campfire.

Now, once I got there, things were challenging. I joined in end of 2018, and then things like the campfire happened. We've had numerous CEOs But I'm so grateful that I've stuck through it because we have a much clearer path towards where we're going.

Since then, Heather has had a few different roles, all of them focused on imagining and building a better grid.

We like to ask the question, what What would have to be true to achieve this outcome? What would have to be true to completely decarbonize or have a net zero energy system by 2040? That's why I've stuck around. It's because I feel like this is where we can make real progress on advancing the energy transition.

This is With Great Power, a show about the people building the future grid today. I'm Brad Langley. Some people say utilities are slow to change so they don't innovate enough. While it might not always seem like the most cutting-edge industry, there are lots of really smart people working really hard to make the grid cleaner, more reliable, and customer-centric. This week, I'm speaking with Heather Rock, Senior Director of Strategy at PG&E, about the ways she and her team are building climate resilience in the California's grid. We also discuss the utility's efforts to find innovative ways to address load growth while also meeting its decarbonization goals. Heather joined PG&E in 2018 as Director of Climate Resilience, a role focused on near-term adaptation and making the grid more rugged. I asked her whether tackling these longer-term existential issues drew her toward her current role in planning the strategy.

I love these big fundamental questions. That's what I think about before I go to sleep and what I wake up thinking about, how are we going to position this major utility? We serve 16 million Californians here. We're in the most progressive state when it comes to thinking about and setting ambitious goals. I think we have a real opportunity to, I'd say, not just be a leader, but really create followership. If we can solve some of these big picture questions and set a path that others can follow, that will be the biggest achievement that we can do.

But before diving into those questions, I wanted to learn more about what it was like to join PG&E at such a time of crisis.

Oh, gosh. I mean, I'll admit, I had a couple of moments where I was like, Oh, my God, what did I do? I mean, I'm sure if you didn't, you would have to have your head in the scene at the time. I actually had a conversation with one of the executives that I had worked with in a prior role and asked him about it. And his advice to me was to stick it out, that if you can find some order in the chaos and you can just come up with good ideas on how to get things done, it will be helpful and it will get me places. And just generally be the It's the right thing to do. I stuck it out and I saw opportunity. Pgne was dealing with one of the first major climate risk hazards of wildfire, and it really opened up the conversation on how do we think about all the risks at the time? It wasn't just wildfire, it's also heatwaves, it's also sea-level rise. It opened up a place of possibility by the fact that everyone was so focused on the fact that the conditions under which PG&E was operating its infrastructure had just changed.

With wildfires and extreme heat and sea-level rises, how do you balance the need to protect infrastructure while you're dealing with those other situations?

I would think of it in two different ways. The first from the resilience angle is how do you operate maintain and invest in your infrastructure so that you are building infrastructure and putting assets in the ground, steel in the ground every day, that is not just designed for today's environment and environmental conditions, but it will be designed for the whole life of the asset. The other side is really the root of the problem, which is climate change itself and emissions itself. You need both sides. You need the adaptation and you need the mitigation. Right now, the mitigation side is what my team is really heavily focused on. Pg&e has an incredible vantage point as one of the few dual-fuel utilities in the country. We are actively thinking about How are we going to meet our 2040 net zero goal with a gas system? How are we going to continue to have a resilient, reliable, and affordable system that's also clean?

A couple of years ago, PG needed to address capacity constraints and voltage issues in Humboldt County, which is up in Northern California, for our listeners. For businesses in that area looking to connect new loads to the grid, this led to concerns about long wait times for service. What was the nature of those issues?

If you look back a little bit, even back to the, let's see, 2000, we had relatively flat load growth for, let's say, 20 years or so. Now, Now we have EVs. I think in California, we're 27% of all new car sales in 2023. There's a huge amount of excitement about the future of AI and data centers. And then to meet our decarbonization goals, we're going to need to have a pretty substantial amount of building electrification. And so there's a big question of, how do we meet our customer needs today while also building the infrastructure of the future? And that came to a head in early 2023 with Humble. We had a couple of community concerns about being able to hook up critical infrastructure, like a hospital. And we needed to find some innovative solutions to meet customer needs on the timeline that they need. One of the ideas was to address a voltage issue on a transmission line by installing Tesla Megapacks, which normally doing it the old way would have been a $90 million upgrade. But instead, they took a hard look and thought about things in a different, I'd say, in a breakthrough way.

Then they identified, Well, if we just install these batteries, then we're going to manage the voltage issue. A $90 million project quickly became a $10 million project. So amazing example of using technology and new ways of thinking to come up with projects that will get capacity needs served to our customers, but also at a lower cost, which is a win for everyone.

I assume with that lower cost came maybe accelerated timeline as well. So did this unique approach allow you to make these changes faster to get those problems addressed?

Yeah, the teams are working through piloting, right? So excited about the technology, have to make sure it aligns with our operations and their engineering specs. And so I know that they're in the process of really testing this, but yes, we are very excited that this is going to move up the timeline of connecting infrastructure that a Bolt needs.

A lot of times with unique or innovative approaches, you're going to run into some technical barriers. Were there any major ones that you all had to overcome?

I would say not just technical barriers. Sometimes it's people's mindsets. We have incredible folks and a lot of engineers, and they've done things and they've operated the system in a certain way for a long time. The grid, we're foremost concerned about reliability and maintaining a safe system. When you start inputting new technologies, there has to be a process of working with the folks who are operating the grid to make sure they understand it so that they feel comfortable with the technologies.

One last question on this battery technology. Is this a strategy you're using in other parts of your service area to address capacity constraints or for other applications?

What we realized we need to do is we need to do this again and again and scale it. We've actually set up a team with folks who worked on this project to Okay, how do we turn not just this combination of technology and planning for this project into motion, but how do we do this so that every engineering decision and every planning decision asks a different set of questions about how we're going to meet our energy needs, right? Because the Tesla mega packs were a great solution in this case. What we want is our engineers and our planners to now think, what is the realm of possibility here for rethinking how we plan and engineer and design the system.

Looking ahead and looking at a bigger scale, PG&E is expecting to grow its load by 70% over the next 20 years, which is a significant amount of load growth. I mean, it's a game changer to borrow a cliché term. I'm curious, what role will technologies play in meeting that demand, whether it's storage, DERs, vehicle-to-grid, or other approaches?

We are going to need a mix of technologies. Most of them already exist today. The issue is just scaling and cost. We're going to need distributed energy resources. We're going to need large-scale utility solar. But I think we have a pretty good idea of the path to get to where we need to be. The issue is just how do we scale it? How do we do it, and how do we do it equally importantly, in a way that's affordable for our customers in a way that brings them along? Because there is going to be a lot of change in store, and we want to make this something that we bring our customers along, and it's a joyful, seamless experience for them.

Now, the California ISO is an innovative market, especially when it comes to clean energy regulation. Can you talk about California ISOs, how it strategy impacts PG needs, maybe describe your interactions with folks there?

Cal ISO is in an interesting position because they are looking at all the projections for energy load from electrification of buildings, transportation rate, and they are putting out extremely ambitious goals out for the sheer number of, frankly, gigawatts that we're going to have to build over the next 10 years. It's breathtaking just how much we're going to have to build in terms of transmission. I think what is challenging is, especially when we're thinking about affordability and we're thinking about integrating new technologies like distributed energy resources, is how do you test and enable these new technologies and things like VPPs in a way that preserve the fundamental need to have a reliable system, while also bringing on innovative things that we haven't really deployed at scale before. I think there is going to be a give and take in a testing, but we are going to be changing the grid. The challenge is, how do we get from today's standard planning process to a more innovative one?

It seems like utilities like PGNE and SoCal Edison to the and others, and California in general, really lead the way in a lot of this. Is there something unique about California or the utilities there that make, I'll say us because I live in the state as well, such leaders in the transition?

I mean, I'm a California girl, so I'm going to give you a biased answer. I don't know. I will say to some of my counterparts credits that we have great discussions with other utilities across the country, too. We've talked to National Gray, we've talked to Con Edison, we've talked to Duke. We're all We're all looking at these big problems, and especially for some of the dual-fuel utilities, really thinking about what can we learn from each other in the energy transition. But we are so privileged to have Silicon Valley, right? In the heart of California. I applaud our state for setting really ambitious goals. I also know that we have to do this in a way that brings customers along, because one of the things I worry about that right now, when we think about the energy transition, so much of that is financed through customer utility bills. I don't think that's sustainable. I think we need to have a broader conversation about how do we pay for the energy transition. I think we'll get there, but I think we have a lot of work to do.

Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up because obviously, electricity rates and high bills are a big area of concern for PGNE customers right now, not just PGNE, but across the country. So as you think about in your role with respect to road mapping, any early insights on how PGNE can support an equitable, affordable, and reliable energy transition for everybody?

One of the things that we concluded when we did our own Pathway to 2040 is that we feel that Electrification of, I'd say, almost everything is really the lowest societal cost way to net zero. Look at just at the efficiency of appliance, right? An EV uses, I think, 25% of the energy of an equivalent internal combustion engine. Same for heat pumps. And so as we look into that energy future and you think about that customer share of wallet, that customer that is fully electrified driving an EV is actually going to be in a much better place in that scenario than the customer that doesn't transition. What we need to do is to recognize that not all customers have that upfront capital investment, that cash, to make those capital investments, to purchase a new EV or to purchase electric appliances. That is where we need to have the discussion more broadly about equity issues in order to have an organized transition that really helps those communities along.

We talked a little about customer awareness on the path to electrification. There's obviously various rebates and tax credits available through state and federal programs. There's a lot of opportunities for rate payers to electrify, but determining the best path forward, whether motivated by climate or by cost, It can be a complicated process. Any details on how utilities can be effective in supporting customers on their home electrification journey?

Yeah, we need to make it as seamless and joyful and efficient as possible. I'll be the first to admit, we have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work going on to improve our information that we provide our customers. We have some really cool R&D ideas going on right now One of them is to think about, well, how could we reimagine, for example, a Socket of the Future, where you don't need that panel upgrade for your home, where you don't need to trench and spend a lot of money to be able to fully electrify your home? How much energy really needs to go through your panel? Because sometimes people make the assumption you're probably not going to charge your EV, run your heat pump, run every appliance in your home at the same time. Obviously, we tend to design for that, which is often what triggers a lot of the upgrades. We are thinking a lot about how do you incentivize through time of use rates or technology, how people use and when they use electricity. I think this is where, for example, our CEO talks a lot about the future of EVs as battery storage.

We have thousands of megawatts just out on the road every day. How do we channel it so that this is another energy source for the grid, and we incentivize charging at the right time, we could decharge at the right time, and use our grid in a more efficient way?

I'd love to dig in on that word joyful. You mentioned it a couple of times. When you think about making it a joyful experience, what does that look like? Because I think energy brings joy, but people don't necessarily equate those two things together all the time. There's an expectation the lights come on, the gasto fires up, what have you. So when you think of bringing joy to this experience, talk to me about what you mean by that.

Well, we have a stand here at PG&E, and it is enjoyable to work with and for PG&E. So this applies to all of our co to our workers, it applies to our partners that we work with, and it applies to our customers and communities, right? We want this experience of engaging with us, of working with us on the energy transition or just connecting your home to be an experience that brings you joy. We don't want to be the source of your frustration.

So PG&E is obviously doing a lot of innovative work to hit these aggressive clean energy goals. Are there any other approaches that you're taking to come up with these ideas and support of delivering our clean energy future?

Yes. Just last year, our R&D team took our company strategy, and then they broke down all the different issues in the strategy into about 70 problem statements, which they then published in an R&D report mid last year. We had a pitch fest. We had about 600 organizations apply to be part of the pitch fest. We invited 60 to come, and it was almost like a shark take type experience to vet these ideas. We now have 20 of these R&D ideas now working to solve various challenges within our strategy to really leverage up and coming technologies to address some of the biggest strategic issues we're facing today.

Very good. We call this show With Great Power, which is a nod to the power industry. It's also a famous Spider-Man quote, With great power comes great responsibility. What superpower do you bring to the energy transition?

I guess I bring a love of connecting dots and seeing how all the different puzzle pieces are fitting together, and maybe great curiosity. I love learning about all the new things that are happening, and largely because it enables me to see more clearly the path to get to the future that we're all creating. I guess that's my superpower.

Love it. Well, Heather, thank you so much for taking your time and coming on the show. I really enjoy talking Likewise.

Thanks, Brad. Pleasure speaking with you today.

Heather Rock is Senior Director of Strategy at Pacific Gas & Electric. With Great Power is produced by Gridex in partnership with Latitude Studios. Delivering on the clean energy future is complex. Gridex exists to simplify the journey. Gridex is the enterprise rate platform that modern utilities rely on to usher in our clean energy future. We design and implement emerging rate structures, and we increase consumer investment in clean energy. Strategy, all while managing the complex billing needs of a distributed grid. Our production team includes Aaron Hardik and Mary Katherine O'Connor, and Bayly is our senior editor. Stephen Lacy is our executive editor. The original theme song is from Sean Marquan, and Roy Campanella mixed the show. The production team here at GridX includes Jenny Barber, Samantha McCabe, and me, Brad Langley. If this show is providing value for you, and we really hope it is, please help us spread the word. You can rate and review us at Apple and Spotify, or you can share a link with a friend, colleague, or the energy nerd in your life. As always, thanks for listening. I'm Brad Langley.