A system is a public utility if it is permissionless, rent-free, and does something useful.

The key to the value of DERs is that they make electricity demand more controllable. With energy generation and storage scattered throughout distribution grids, grid operators have a way to move energy around, both geographically and temporally, without firing up more power plants. They can absorb extra energy if there’s a dip in demand or produce ... See more

Just imagine: what could humanity do with 2-3x the amount of electricity on today’s grid (what Seba calls “SuperPower”)? How about 10x? 100x?

Autonomous electric ride-hail vehicles should benefit from much higher utilization rates than human-driven cars, not to mention lower labor and insurance costs. ARK estimates that, at scale, an autonomous electric taxi platform could price rides profitably at $0.25 per mile. As a result, autonomous rides could cost less than personal car transporta... See more

History is littered with examples of incumbent leaders who do not adapt to shifts in innovation from its competitors. Nokia’s failure to respond to Apple’s smart phone technology is an example.

Based on actual quotes and comments from VCs and folks in the industry. Hindsight is 20/20 but if you’re an entrepreneur getting a lot of nos, you’re in good company.

Second, there are use cases for "crypto". Most notably: money. Money that's not issued by a central government is a perfectly reasonable use case. Crypto is successful at being money. You may think decentralized money is bad or not useful to you in particular, but if you can't accept money as a use case, then that's a hint that this claim may be un... See more

Importantly, DER deployment is rapidly increasing – according to Wood Mackenzie’s second annual U.S. DER Outlook, we’re expected to reach 253 GW of DER capacity and demand flexibility potential by 2026. The sheer mass of behind-the-meter renewable energy coming online will fundamentally alter the nature of our electricity supply.

In order to build efficient, combustion-based generators, we needed to build them at economies of scale and extensive transmission and distribution networks to transport power along with them. Those wires are vulnerable to being knocked out by storms (or even squirrels), leading to blackouts, or supply shortages leading to cascading failure. That w... See more