Energy Future: Powering Tomorrow’s Cleaner World

GM’s Big EV Incentives, Military Geothermal Plans & AI’s Energy Shakeup!

• Peter Kelly-Detwiler • Episode 33

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The energy transition is accelerating across multiple fronts, as demonstrated by a flurry of recent announcements from major players. General Motors has partnered with Pacific Gas & Electric for a groundbreaking vehicle-to-everything pilot offering customers up to $4,500 in incentives when using compatible EVs like the Chevrolet Silverado and Cadillac Lyric. While pilots generate buzz, what matters more is whether GM and PG&E will share results that help other utilities replicate successful strategies.

Military installations aren't being left behind, with the US Air Force and Department of Defense teaming up with GE Vernova and Sage Geosystems to explore utility-scale geothermal for renewable microgrids at bases nationwide. This effort parallels innovations in the residential sector, where BASE is working with Texas utility Bandera Electric Cooperative to deploy residential batteries through a zero-upfront-cost subscription model that benefits both homeowners and the grid.

The cybersecurity battlefield remains tense, as revealed in a Dragos case study detailing how Chinese Volt Typhoon hackers penetrated a US utility for nine months before detection. While utilities maintain stronger protections than many sectors, the sophistication of threats targeting critical infrastructure continues to grow, requiring constant vigilance from grid operators.

Perhaps most intriguing is Baidu's announcement of new AI models claiming to match GPT-4.5 performance at just 1% of the cost. As data centers drive unprecedented electricity demand — with one utility reporting applications for 40,000 megawatts — the energy efficiency of AI systems takes on strategic importance. While Baidu hasn't disclosed specific energy metrics, their technical approaches suggest significant efficiency gains that could reshape both computing and electricity consumption patterns in this rapidly evolving field.

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Speaker 1:

I've got your energy stories for this, the third week of March 2025, and in the first one, gemini Motors has teamed up with Pacific Gas and Electric in its residential vehicle-to-everything pilot, with eligible customers receiving up to $4,500 in incentives for GM Energy home products like the GM Energy V2H Bundle or Home System. Additional incentives are available for customers who participate in planned backup power events. Designated EVs include the 2024 Chevrolet Silverado, equinox Blazer, gmc Sierra and Cadillac Lyric EV, with the 2025 model years to be added soon. I hope the two entities, gm and PG&E, can provide results of the program so utility planners and grid operators can see what works and what doesn't. Pilots intrigue, but results and replication create lasting change. Well, the US Air Force and Department of Defense have designated a team including GE Vrnova, sage Geosystems, the Energy and Geoscience Institute and the University of Utah to explore avenues for deployment of utility-scale geothermal for future renewable and hydrogen energy microgrids at military bases. This is part of a broader effort to accelerate procurement and deployment of mission-critical technologies. Sage Geosystems will provide its geothermal technology, while GE Vrnova will offer capabilities related to power conversion, energy storage and microgrids. Distributed energy storage company BASE will work with Texas Bandera Electric Cooperative in its residential battery program that offers homeowners battery backup systems. Bandera is planning on a network of distributed energy storage systems that it can use to provide grid services, increase resilience and provide economic value to its members. Bandera's battery storage subscription program will have BASE providing members with batteries for a monthly subscription fee and no upfront cost. The utility will then operate these distributed batteries through a real-time management and optimization platform. Base is known for its buy-home get-backup power joint program with national homebuilder Lenar.

Speaker 1:

Cybersecurity company Dragos released a case study recently outlining a cyber attack from Chinese Volt Typhoon hackers. Onal Utility Littleton Electric, light and Water Department. The utility was able to identify and eliminate the threat, but it highlights yet again the security challenges faced by utilities in safeguarding their operational technology. The hackers apparently infiltrated the utility about nine months prior to being exposed. This cyber battlefield is constantly changing. In its 2025 annual review, dragos identified nine so-called advanced persistent threat actors, with an increased focus on the interface between interconnected IT and operating technology, such as SCADA. The good news Utilities are better protected than many other industrial sectors, but the spy versus spy game continues every day and hypervigilance in the utility sector is a must.

Speaker 1:

And for our last story of the day, chinese tech giant Baidu just came out with its newest AI models, named Ernie X1 and Ernie 4.5. Where do these names come from and how does BERT feel about being scorned? The company claims these new models can compete with OpenAI and DeepSeek in terms of performance and cost, with Ernie 1x at about half the price of DeepSeek. Baidu claims its multimodal foundational model, ernie 4.5, quote, outperforms GPT 4.5 in multiple benchmarks, while priced at just 1% of GPT 4.5, unquote. To put some clarity around the terms here, the large language models you frequently hear about are specifically set up to process and generate data based on text, so they're good at text generation, translation and the like. Gpt 4.0 does that Multi-model foundational models go the next step, building in capabilities to deal with other sources of data, such as images, audio and video. Thus they can facilitate more complex and various types of applications. So why does this all matter to us in the energy space? Well, here you have a US industry hell-bent at throwing chips and money at the challenge of training AI models, where Dominion, for example, just announced applications of up to 40,000 megawatts of data centers. Then others come in, some Chinese open source models like DeepSeek and Baidu's Ernie, and they suggest there may be a better and more cost-effective way to get this done.

Speaker 1:

What about the energy piece, though? Well, I asked Perplexity AI to search for information concerning Ernie's energy intensity, and it told me there's nothing publicly available. But quote several technologies powering Baidu's Ernie 4.5 contribute to its operational efficiency, which likely correlates with lower energy consumption. Thought that was the case. And then it follows on and says things like dynamic attention masking that's a strange term for masking irrelevant parts of the data sets so the focus is on what matters, plus cutting redundant processing and boosting efficiencies.

Speaker 1:

Or how about this one heterogeneous, multimodal mix of experts? That's another way of saying yeah, different parts of the model are specialized to look at different types of data, like audio images or text. Other approaches were mentioned as well, but I think you get the point. So does perplexity, summarizing as follows quote these innovations collectively enable Ernie 4.5 to outperform competitors like GPT 4.5 at 1% of the cost, which strongly suggests energy efficiency gains. However, explicit energy consumption metrics remain undisclosed in the provided sources. That's one worth watching, because it has enormous implications for data consumption, with all of these training models out there right now. Well, thanks for watching this week and we'll see you again soon.