Still looking for a scary costume for this Halloween? Here's a terrifying idea: Dress up like an "attack vector" or an "advanced persistent threat."

This week's topic of conversation is a combination disaster movie and cat-and-mouse political thriller -- encompassing extreme weather, hacking and political espionage.

We're talking security threats to the electric grid with Dr. Paul Stockton, an international security expert based in Washington, DC.

Paul is the managing director for Sonecon, where he advises utilities and other operators of critical infrastructure on a wide range of security threats. Before that, he was Assistant Secretary of Homeland Defense and America’s Security Affairs, where he directed the agency’s response to Superstorm Sandy and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. 

In this interview, Dr. Stockton describes the many different vulnerabilities along the electric grid. How are they evolving? What can we learn from them?

The Interchange

You Should Fear a Cyber Attack on the Grid

Tesla built the world's biggest lithium-ion battery ahead of schedule. It's an important milestone for the technology, and Tesla itself. 

But is it coming at a cost to smaller players in the industry?

This week on The Interchange, we'll talk about how Tesla's battery supply constraints are hitting downstream installers and developers. We'll bring GTM Staff Writer Julian Spector on the show to discuss his recent reporting on Tesla's delivery delays.

Then, we'll cover some of Spector's other big stories this year: how storage is suddenly challenging natural gas peaker plants around the world; and why New York is struggling to put a cohesive energy storage framework in place.  

This podcast is sponsored by Schneider Electric. Now, you can reap the benefits of a microgrid with no upfront capital through the new microgrid-as-a-service business model from Schneider Electric.

Tesla's Giant Battery: The Pros and Cons

Something feels different. In the last two years, there’s been a material shift in the way renewable energy and other distributed resources are discussed.

For so long, believers of wind, solar, batteries and microgrids have focused on targeted government support. But direct subsidies and mandates are diminishing in importance.

One example: utility-scale solar in the U.S., which was once almost exclusively driven by state mandates and tax credits, is now mostly being driven by economics. And tax credits are on a path to being phased out.

We now have a proven class of resources that can perform the same function as traditional power plants -- often at a lower economic and environmental cost. And these resources are hitting the grid at an accelerating pace.

Now that people are waking up to this reality, the conversation is shifting toward markets.

How do you put rules in place that fairly value the responsiveness, resiliency and environmental performance of distributed resources like aggregated batteries, real-time energy efficiency and commercial microgrids? And how do you manage the surge of wind and solar so they don’t crush wholesale markets by flooding them with cheap power at the wrong time?

That’s the framework we’re operating in today. It's uniting groups across the political spectrum that favor of open markets and oppose the Trump Administration's agenda to prop up coal.

This week, we'll talk with two experts who are focused intensely on the evolution of markets: Lenae Shirley, the senior director of technology innovation and market adoption at the Environmental Defense Fund; and Devin Hartman, a senior fellow with the R Street Institute.

How much should we read into this alignment?

The Conservative and Progressive View on the Future of Electricity Markets

The Interchange is a weekly podcast on the global energy transformation, hosted by Stephen Lacey and Shayle Kann. Each week, the duo provide deep insights into technology, markets, projects, company financials, mergers and acquisitions, policy changes, and market data.

Guests include GTM Research analysts as well as experts from across the industry. The show is a must-listen those trying to go beyond the headlines and understand how the business of energy and cleantech is changing.

The Interchange: Energy Conversations From GTM

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