The Data Behind Texas Reliability with Max Kanter

Behind the scenes, every few minutes, the ERCOT system generates tens of thousands of price signals, outage updates, and operational reports that demonstrate and drive the cost and availability of electricity. Most of that data is public. But how can Texans access it? This week, Joshua Rhodes talks with Max Kanter, chief executive officer of GridStatus, about the gap between public data and practical visibility and application, and why that matters in Texas. In this episode, they discuss: * Why public grid data is harder to use than it would seem. * What real-time pricing signals reveal about system stress. * How outage and congestion data shape ERCOT debates. There are more than 70,000 pricing nodes across U.S. energy markets, updating every five minutes. ERCOT alone produces enormous volumes of operational data.Those signals often spotlight stresses on the system before they show up in prices and control rooms. As Texas adds new industrial loads and faces continued risks from extreme weather, more policymakers, analysts, and large customers want to know what’s coming. They’re looking for distress signals. On this week’s episode, Josh and Max tell you where to find them – and what to do with them. Timestamps * 00:06 – Welcome, Max Kanter intro * 02:00 – Computer science, AI shifts * 03:32 – What is GridStatus? * 04:36 – What users see first * 05:31 – Who uses GridStatus today * 06:56 – Tiers, hobbyists, accessibility * 07:52 – AI tools, new builders * 09:47 – Why a business existed * 12:49 – Early demand validated product * 14:18 – From carbon to markets * 16:44 – Data scale, nodal pricing map * 32:20 – Flip script, Rhodes on public role Resources Guest & Company• Max Kanter - LinkedIn • Grid Status - LinkedIn Company & Industry News• The power grid is hard to understand. This startup is trying to help. • Why We Invested in Grid Status Related Podcasts by TEAP• The New Rules Behind ERCOT Prices with Andrew Reimers • Who Pays for Texas Grid Growth? - Roundtable Discussion• Texas’ Load Growth Challenges – And Opportunities, with Arushi Sharma Frank Energy Capital Podcast is produced by ClarityForge Studios. Transcript Joshua Rhodes (00:05.778) everyone, and welcome to the Energy Capital podcast. I am really excited to have Max Cantor, CEO of GridStatus on today to just talk about data, all the data that are coming off the grid and everything like that. If you’re steeped in grids, you’ve probably heard of GridStatus, you’ve probably seen at least a screenshot of dashboards and things like that floating around social media. But one of the things I wanted to bring to this podcast was to kind of dig a little bit deeper into some of the more technical side of things. And I promised all Joshua Rhodes (00:35.278) I’d be listeners that I wouldn’t completely bore you to tears with data, but we are going to talk about it a little bit because it is so important. So we have Max Cantor on. has a bachelor’s and a master’s of computer science from MIT. And I don’t usually name check theses, but this one actually caught my eye. So his master’s thesis was the data science machine emulating human intelligence in data science endeavors, which sounds like a harbinger of basically AI. We’ll get back to that here in a bit. Joshua Rhodes (01:05.294) He started off as CEO and co-founder of Feature Labs, which was acquired by Alteryx in 2019. At that point, was the VP of Engineering at Alteryx for the next couple of years before going back to MIT as a visiting scholar in the Data to AI lab, where at that time when he was at MIT, launched Grid Status in August of 2022. And the tagline, or at least the one that’s on his socials is, the future of the electric grid runs on data and AI. Grid Status provides Joshua Rhodes (01:34.562) data and insights for the understanding, investing and operating of the electrical grid. And our goal is to be the most trusted source for whatever is happening on the grid. Max Kanner, welcome to the Energy Capital Podcast. Max Kanter (01:47.522) Thank you, Joshua. Happy to be here. Joshua Rhodes (01:49.452) Yeah, I should probably say full disclosure, I’m actually a client as well. So I have a subscription to GridStatus. So thank you for making it so easy to get all of these data. Max Kanter (01:58.456) Yeah, that was the goal from the very beginning. Joshua Rhodes (02:00.46) Yeah, no, I think it’s worked out quite a bit. It’s much easier. I wanted to actually immediately kind of go off script. Your bachelor’s and master’s are in computer science. Do you have a feel for what computer science means today, kind of in this age of AI? How has it changed since you were there? Max Kanter (02:16.312) Computer science as an academic field is younger than many, right? So things like biology or physics, right? Computer science, I’d have to double check, but I think it’s probably a phrase that has only formally been studied for less than a hundred years. And so it’s come a long way in just that time from something minor to one of the hottest topics. One of the things I think is so interesting though about AI in particular though is Max Kanter (02:42.87) A lot of the earliest computer scientists, their goal from the very beginning was to create an artificial intelligence. That’s actually how they thought about computers, know, replicate the stuff that humans were doing. And so in some sense, the goals actually haven’t changed at all, right? I think over the decades, think the biggest thing that’s different is, really the size of the compute that’s being undertaken to actually accomplish it. And, know, one of the things, you know, thinking back to when I first started doing say academic computer science is so much. Max Kanter (03:12.45) of the forefront of the field was happening within universities. think nowadays when you think of, well, where’s the frontier AI research happening, know, oftentimes it’s thought of outside of universities. And I think that’s one of the biggest changes I’ve seen. And why is that? There might be many reasons, but think one of them is just the size of the compute and the cost of doing that. Joshua Rhodes (03:31.916) Yeah, that’s big implications of particularly like size of the compute. I mean for the electricity grid, right? Because you got to get a bunch of electricity to that. I apologize for throwing you a curveball right off. Yeah, totally. So, I’ve introduced grid status a bit. With someone who’s outside of energy, I think a lot of folks who listen to this podcast are kind of in energy. But if someone’s outside of energy, ask you what you do. Like how do you describe, you know, grid status? Max Kanter (03:41.998) that makes it more interesting. Max Kanter (03:56.514) Yeah. I would say grid status is the homepage for the electric grid. I think a lot of people, when they think about the grid, well, first they don’t actually think about it that much. You you plug something into an outlet, you get power, right? But behind the scenes, it’s actually the world’s most complex machine. And even though it’s this big machine, it’s not like you have one person operating it or one person putting power into it or one person regulating it. It’s actually very complex with a lot of different stakeholders. Max Kanter (04:24.82) And so, yeah, the role of grid status is to be, you if you have a question about the grid or you want to have an understanding about what’s going on, we want to be the first place people go. And so, yeah, we’re the homepage of the electric grid. Joshua Rhodes (04:36.27) That’s cool. Grid status started out as doing mostly data, Mostly hosting data and having data. Now there’s a lot more dashboards and other types of things. Can you just talk through a little bit, of like, if someone goes to the homepage of the electric grids, you say like, what are they going to find? Max Kanter (04:52.748) Yeah, I’d say that’s kind of the core product and technical question we’re trying to answer or solve, I should say. Right. And what are you going to find is, you know, the answer really is like, whatever … This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.texasenergyandpower.com/subscribe