Catalyst with Shayle Kann

[This episode is a re-run from October 2025. Look out for a new episode of Catalyst on Thursday, April 23.]

Yesterday, Base Power announced a ⁠$1 billion series C⁠, giving the residential battery company an eye-popping $4 billion post-money valuation. Base manufactures, installs, owns, and operates residential batteries — a vertical integration strategy that CEO ⁠Zach Dell⁠ says is the “magic” to beating utility-scale batteries on CapEx. The company also acts as an electricity retailer and sells generation capacity.

So how does Base’s business model work? And what will it do with its new fundraise? 

In this episode, Shayle talks to Zach about Base’s business model, the vertical integration strategy, and the challenges ahead. They cover topics like:

The customer value proposition: how customers pay for backup power and Base uses the batteries for grid services

Bases’s “gentailer” business model in ERCOT, earning revenue from monthly customer fees, retail electricity sales, and battery arbitrage

The regulated market approach, where Base sells capacity directly to utilities

Base’s vertical integration strategy: from ground-mounted designs to decoupled installation processes

Challenges like managing a fixed workforce amid fluctuating demand and the declining price volatility in ERCOT

Resources:

⁠New York Times⁠: Base Power, a Battery-Focused Power Company, Raises $1 Billion

⁠Open Circuit⁠: Is this moment for distributed energy different?  

⁠Catalyst⁠: Is now the time for DERs to scale? 

Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Daniel Woldorff. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. 

Catalyst is brought to you by FischTank PR, an award-winning climate and energy tech, renewables, and sustainability-focused PR firm dedicated to elevating the work of both early-stage and established companies. Learn more about their PR approach and how they can support your company’s messaging by visiting ⁠fischtankpr.com⁠.

Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub helps utilities build next-generation virtual power plants that unlock reliable flexibility at every level of the grid. See how EnergyHub helps unlock the power of flexibility at scale, and deliver more value through cross-DER dispatch with their leading Edge DERMS platform, by visiting ⁠energyhub.com⁠.

As the buildout of data centers accelerates on a dramatic trajectory,its strain on the electric grid has increased in turn; forecasts suggest they could consume up to 17% of all US power by 2030. To avoid higher rates and slower AI growth, the industry has embraced a promising solution: data center flexibility.

In this episode, Shayle speaks with Varun Sivaram, the CEO of Emerald AI. Coming on the heels of a $25 million investment round led by Energy Impact Partners, Varun returns to the show to provide an update on the "wickedly complicated" challenge of aligning utilities, cloud providers, and the grid. 

Shayle and Varun explore topics like:

Tapping into the 100+ gigawatts of unused grid capacity

Why the "Watt-Bit spread" is shifting to make power flexibility profitable

The differences between training and inference flexibility, including Google’s new "flex" and "priority" tiers

The "mini dispatch curve" for data centers created by batteries, gas turbines and fuel cells

Emerald’s plans to collaborate with NVIDIA and other partners on the world’s first 100-megawatt, truly power-flexible AI factory

Resources


Catalyst: The mechanics of data center flexibility


Catalyst: The potential for flexible data centers


Latitude Media: How the world’s first flexible AI factory will work in tandem with the grid


Latitude Media: Nvidia and Oracle tapped this startup to flex a Phoenix data center


Latitude Media: A reality check on flexible data centers


Latitude Media: Can VPPs unlock grid capacity for data centers? 

Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Max Savage Levenson. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.

Catalyst is brought to you by FischTank PR, an award-winning climate and energy tech, renewables, and sustainability-focused PR firm dedicated to elevating the work of both early-stage and established companies. Learn more about their PR approach and how they can support your company’s messaging by visiting fischtankpr.com.

Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub helps utilities build next-generation virtual power plants that unlock reliable flexibility at every level of the grid. See how EnergyHub helps unlock the power of flexibility at scale, and deliver more value through cross-DER dispatch with their leading Edge DERMS platform, by visiting energyhub.com.

In 2025, the clean energy market navigated a mix of shifting tariffs, evolving FEOC compliance rules, and uncertainty around tax policy. On the surface, it looked like a year defined by instability.

And yet, capital continued to move.

Total capital expenditures across the clean economy reached roughly $120 billion, with total financing activity exceeding $200 billion across the full stack of project capital. The transferable tax credit market scaled to about $42 billion, growing rapidly in just a few years.

So why are the underlying dynamics so strong?

In this episode, recorded live as part of a Frontier Forum, Stephen Lacey speaks with Alfred Johnson, CEO of Crux, and Katie Bays, Managing Director and Head of Research at Crux, about what actually happened beneath the surface of the market.

They discuss how developers and investors navigated uncertainty, how financing structures evolved to provide more flexibility, and why underlying demand continued to pull capital into the sector.

Read the full Crux market intelligence report. And watch the full video of the Frontier Forum here, which features even more depth on tax credit pricing, safe harbor strategies, evolving deal structures.

Even as momentum grows for U.S. nuclear, the fuel supply chain is often overlooked. This dynamic is shifting as the industry wakes up to critical choke points and a heavy reliance on countries like Russia for enrichment. As America aims to reduce geopolitical dependency in energy, fixing these domestic gaps has become a strategic priority.

In this episode — a companion to a separate episode of Catalyst focused on nuclear waste — Shayle Kann speaks with Scott Nolan, the CEO of General Matter. The company is focused on enrichment, one of the most acute risk areas in the supply chain. Shayle and Scott also discuss the big-picture state of nuclear fuel, from mining to advanced reactor requirements.

The two cover topics like:

The five-step nuclear fuel supply chain

America’s continued reliance on Russian enrichment:

The history of enrichment decline in the US

The "chicken or egg" problem for advanced reactors

Distinctions between LEU and HALEU fuel

Enrichment’s toll-service business model

The strategic importance of General Matter’s enrichment facility in Paducah, Kentucky


Catalyst: The state and future of nuclear waste


Catalyst: The path to market for new nuclear reactors


Catalyst: The US nuclear groundswell


Open Circuit: Inside Meta’s massive nuclear push


Open Circuit: Fear and loathing at the Department of Energy


Latitude Media: What TerraPower’s big milestone says about future nuclear projects


Latitude Media: Commonwealth Fusion Systems launches digital twin with Nvidia and Siemens

Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Max Savage Levenson. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.

Catalyst is brought to you by FischTank PR, an award-winning climate and energy tech, renewables, and sustainability-focused PR firm dedicated to elevating the work of both early-stage and established companies. Learn more about their PR approach and how they can support your company’s messaging by visiting fischtankpr.com.

Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub helps utilities build next-generation virtual power plants that unlock reliable flexibility at every level of the grid. See how EnergyHub helps unlock the power of flexibility at scale, and deliver more value through cross-DER dispatch with their leading Edge DERMS platform, by visiting energyhub.com.

Battery markets have a pattern: They boom, capital floods in, prices collapse, and then the cycle starts again.

So as storage becomes more important than ever, how do we maximize revenue and deliver needed flexibility?

In this episode, Stephen Lacey speaks with Sean McEvoy, chief product officer and head of commercial at GridBeyond North America, about how that cycle is playing out across global power markets — and what happens when batteries stop being scarce.

As markets saturate, the source of value begins to shift. It’s no longer just about building assets. It’s about how precisely you can forecast, optimize, and trade them.

GridBeyond sits between energy assets and energy markets, using AI to coordinate everything from industrial loads to battery fleets. It is increasingly bringing that model to data centers.

These facilities are driving a surge in electricity demand, but they also introduce a new tension. The grid increasingly needs flexible loads, but data centers are built for reliability, not interruption. 

The result is a wave of new approaches, from behind-the-meter batteries to “bring your own capacity” strategies that pair infrastructure with grid support.

Learn more about how GridBeyond develops AI software that helps businesses unlock flexibility in their energy systems.