Welcome to EPRI Current – your go-to source for the latest in energy innovation, research, and insights.
Your host, Samantha Gilman, meets with EPRI experts and industry leaders to unpack the energy sector’s most pressing challenges and promising opportunities. Through timely and thought-provoking conversations, the podcast explores critical themes including advanced energy technologies, grid reliability and flexibility, climate adaptation and resilience, the transformative role of artificial intelligence, the evolving economics and policies shaping energy systems, and more.
Whether you're an energy professional, policymaker, or curious listener, the EPRI Current brings you expert perspectives that highlight how innovation and collaboration are powering a more resilient and reliable energy future.
Tune in and be part of the journey as we shape the future of energy—together.
Latest Episodes
Micro Data Centers and the Evolution of AI Infrastructure
Host: Samantha Gilman
Guests: Ben Sooter, EPRI
In this episode of the EPRI Current, host Samantha Gilman speaks with EPRI’s Director of Agentic AI and Micro Data Centers, Ben Sooter, about the growing role of distributed inference, also known as micro data centers, in the evolving AI landscape. While large, centralized data centers dominate current discussions, Sooter explains why the next wave of compute demand will shift closer to end users to support faster, latency-sensitive applications.
The conversation highlights how this distributed approach could reshape grid planning, including opportunities to leverage available capacity at distribution substations and the need to better understand emerging load profiles. Sooter also discusses EPRI’s collaborative pilot efforts with NVIDIA, Prologis, and InfraPartners to explore siting, deployment, and scalability. As AI adoption accelerates, this episode examines how utilities can prepare for and help enable the next phase of digital infrastructure.
Beyond the Benchmark: Evaluating AI for Real World Use
Host: Samantha Gilman
Guests: Jaime Sevilla, Epoch AI; Apurba Sakti, EPRI.
How should organizations interpret AI benchmarks – and where do they fall short when moving from pilots to real world deployment?
In this episode of EPRI Current, host Samantha Gilman is joined by Jaime Sevilla, Director of Epoch AI, and Apurba Sakti, EPRI Principal Technical Leader for AI, for a deep dive into AI benchmarking and responsible adoption. The conversation explores why strong benchmark scores don’t always translate into operational readiness, the limitations of generic leaderboards, and why domain and workflow-specific evaluations are critical – especially in high-consequence sectors like energy. The discussion highlights how organizations can move beyond demonstrations toward continuous, evidence based evaluation to ensure AI systems are reliable, transparent, and fit for real world use.
The Power of GETs: Unlocking Hidden Grid Capacity
Host: Samantha Gilman
Guests: Anna Lafoyiannis, EPRI; Katie Siegner, RMI.
Grid Enhancing Technologies (GETs) are gaining momentum as a practical way to maximize the efficiency and capacity of existing transmission lines. Designed to improve how the grid is monitored, managed, and operated, GETs are increasingly seen as a practical solution to growing demand, congestion, and reliability challenges.
In this episode of EPRI Current, host Samantha Gilman is joined by EPRI’s Lafoyiannis and RMI’s Katie Siegner to explore how GETs are moving from pilot projects to broader deployment. The guests discuss technologies such as dynamic line ratings and advanced conductors, share insights from real world testing underway at EPRI’s labs, and examine evolving regulatory and policy drivers. From collaborative efforts like EPRI’s Grid Enhancing Technologies for a Smart Energy Transition (GET SET) initiative to emerging market signals and lessons from early adopters, the episode offers a grounded look at what it takes to scale GETs – and what utilities should consider next.
To learn more about EPRI’s GET SET Initiative, visit: https://transmission.epri.com/getset.
