Episode 83: Mary Ann Piette

Mary Ann Piette is the Interim Associate Lab Director of the Energy Technologies Area at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She manages a research enterprise of 700 staff and affiliates working across R&D programs to accelerate decarbonization through demand-side energy efficiency and grid integration to hydrogen technologies, energy storage, and renewable energy systems. 

Mary Ann wrote a chapter for a new book, Women in Renewable Energy by Katherine T. Wang and Jill S. Tietjen (Springer, 2023), about using building loads dynamically for low-carbon energy systems. “When we change our electricity system to be based on wind and solar, we need to integrate with demand side systems,” she says. “Grid-scale storage is important, but flexible demand can be much more cost effective. We need to understand and utilize the feedback between design and operations if we are are going to accelerate progress.”