How exciting that your daughter Sarah is considering jobs in the environment, and thinking about prospects in the dynamic energy industry. Her interest in microgrids is spot on in today’s work place. The power sector is changing rapidly… innovations like microgrids and virtual power plants, changing to ever-more distributed energy resources.

As you know, this has been my focus for some years… for my 40+ year career. The power sector dynamic and full of opportunities for bright young professionals! So I welcome the opportunity to download a bit with you and to share some perspectives that may be useful to her.

These comments are based on a presentation that I recently gave to engineering students at Oregon State University. That presentation caused me to think about the exciting changes that have taken place, and the big changes that are still on the cusp of upsetting the apple cart, so to speak.

In this opus – and I apologize in advance for not making it a heck of a lot more brief – I swim through my career journey and then shift to our company EcoMotion. I dig into sustainable development and the carbon imbalance, before digging deeper into the power sector.

Then I shift to what I call, “ultimate disruption,” major structural changes in a once stodgy industry, in terms of both disruptive systems and technologies. A few far-out and transformative concepts such as vehicle-to-grid integration are presented, as is a potential future absent of power lines, even beaming power down from space!

Click here to read the full paper.