According to Project Drawdown, electricity production accounts for 25% of heat-trapping emissions globally. To reduce that impact, Drawdown recommends enhancing efficiency, shifting production, and improving the system.
It is not the viability of sustainable energy, but, “the speed of transformation [that] is the issue at hand.”
Nowhere is the challenge of transformation more profound than in the power grid. A patchwork of systems and infrastructure built over the past 100 years, the grid was designed to carry electricity from massive power plants to well-defined geographic regions. The plants–owned by the grid operators themselves–produce a controllable and consistent amount of power mostly by burning fossil fuels.
Over the next few decades, the size and number of energy suppliers will grow exponentially. They’ll vary from wind farms with thousands of turbines, to factories and universities that can produce more energy than they consume, to neighborhoods aggregating electricity from their solar panels. The power they produce will vary by time of day, weather, and their own needs. Demand will also become less predictable as consumers supplement their power use with solar or wind generators, batteries, and other innovations.
And yet, all of us will still rely on the ability to use, store, and share power through a networked grid.
A grid that needs to become more resilient even as it becomes more interdependent. A grid powered by macro and micro scale sustainable sources.
For our national security. For our economic growth. For our quality of life. For the quality of life of future generations.
Stride helps companies work toward improving systems. Together with a Distribution Utility in the Northeast, Stride is building custom software to support compliance with Federal Energy Regulatory (FERC) Order No. 2222. This regulation is meant to “help usher in the electric grid of the future.” It will allow small to midsize energy producers to sell electricity at competitive prices into the electricity markets managed by regional operators.
The Utility hired Stride to turn a leadership strategy of transformation into action. Our teams learn quickly. We build bridges across organizations.
We deliver valuable outcomes with high quality. At this Utility, we are collaborating with business units, IT, and governance groups on changes they need in both human and software systems.
We are building custom software that workers can use today and that can evolve as the volume of data and complexity of their decisions grows. All to increase access, foster competition, improve quality of service, and reduce carbon impact.
At Stride, our hope is to make a positive impact in our communities and on our planet through the software we build and the people we help. I’m really proud of our teams and grateful to support their accomplishments as we work in collaboration with our clients toward a better world.
Ken Judy
