{"podcast":{"title":"Interchange Recharged","slug":"interchange-recharged-1117793","podcast_index_feed_id":1117793,"rss_url":"https://rss.art19.com/the-interchange","website_url":"https://www.woodmac.com/market-insights/types/podcasts/the-interchange/","image_url":"https://content.production.cdn.art19.com/images/b6/56/1c/53/b6561c53-206c-4247-a10b-24ba827509b0/c2860f4a864766abfde003250fb48d283b0bd02e55fd77f8d26e983ada7d82f5ccf8d280d42ff7eadf18b30e0ac0b9005c949c6efcc5f5c4f73f1d69c44a3e15.jpeg","author":"Wood Mackenzie","episode_count":354,"summary":"Clean tech, green finance and energy innovation are the three lanes on the road to a successful global energy transition. At the intersection of these lanes is a place where ideas on finance, technology and policy are shared and debated. That intersection is Interchange Recharged. Your host is Sylvia Leyva Martinez, principal analyst and research director at Wood Mackenzie. When Sylvia isn't tracking the technologies and markets driving the build-out of renewable power, she's speaking with visionaries, entrepreneurs, policy-makers and energy analysts to explore the newest developments in renewable technology, explain the ideas on global energy policy that could accelerate the energy transition, and identify new funding and financial models that could solve the biggest challenges we face on the way to net zero. Sylvia and her guests bring you data and forecasts on clean technology, climate science, and offer predictions on the build out of utility-scale projects and the future of green finance. What does the surge in data-centre demand mean for the grid, and who pays for it? What's happening in global EV adoption and development? What's the forecast for solar, one of the major succ…","last_synced_at":"2026-09-16T02:19:58.805362+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/interchange-recharged-1117793"},"episode":{"title":"Flexibility as a service: Can Octopus's acquisition of Uplight finally make US residential VPPs work?","slug":"flexibility-as-a-service-can-octopus-s-acquisition-of-uplight-finally-make-us-residential-vpps-work","published_at":"2026-04-07T11:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/interchange-recharged-1117793/flexibility-as-a-service-can-octopus-s-acquisition-of-uplight-finally-make-us-residential-vpps-work","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/interchange-recharged-1117793","url":"https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/rss.art19.com/episodes/bf512be6-a45b-496c-a78c-b9ce9d1748f7.mp3?rss_browser=BAhJIg90cmFuc2NyaWJyBjoGRVQ%3D--952c5701c84ad333c69d5faa668f8177091704f0","audio_url":"https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/rss.art19.com/episodes/bf512be6-a45b-496c-a78c-b9ce9d1748f7.mp3?rss_browser=BAhJIg90cmFuc2NyaWJyBjoGRVQ%3D--952c5701c84ad333c69d5faa668f8177091704f0","summary":"Millions of enrolled devices, 60 utilities, and the participation rate gap that's been embarrassing the US market for a decade.  US residential virtual power plants have been a promising idea that's consistently underdelivered — participation rates below 5%, fragmented apps, siloed programmes, and utilities that have simply never had to compete for a customer's attention. Meanwhile, Octopus Energy has built the world's largest residential VPP in the UK, with EV driver participation rates of 50 to 70%. The question has always been whether that model can travel to a market where most customers have no supplier choice at all.  Bridget van Dorsten speaks with Nick Chaset, CEO of Octopus Energy US, about the acquisition that represents Octopus's biggest bet on answering that question: a majority stake in Uplight alongside Schneider Electric, giving Octopus access to established relationships with more than 60 US utilities — including eight of the ten largest.  Nick argues the participation gap isn't really a cultural problem or a technology problem. It's a regulatory design problem. US flexibility programmes have been built device by device, forcing consumers to juggle multiple apps and enrolments — and in some cases prohibiting them from combining assets across programmes. Octopus's answer is one app, a 30-second sign-up, and a value proposition framed entirely around what consumers actually care about: lower bills. Can that translate through a utility partnership channel rather than a direct retail relationship? The conversation also tackles the data centre dimension. Nick makes the case that residential flexibility isn't a separate story from the large load interconnection challenge — it's part of the solution. If utilities can statistically guarantee load…","meta_description":"Millions of enrolled devices, 60 utilities, and the participation rate gap that's been embarrassing the US market for a decade. US residential virtu…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":2714,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/interchange-recharged-1117793/episodes/flexibility-as-a-service-can-octopus-s-acquisition-of-uplight-finally-make-us-residential-vpps-work/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/interchange-recharged-1117793/flexibility-as-a-service-can-octopus-s-acquisition-of-uplight-finally-make-us-residential-vpps-work.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}