Howdy, I’m Brady.
I spend my days running a 100+ megawatt Virtual Power Plant, aggregating nearly 20,000 home batteries into a single dispatchable grid resource. Nights and weekends, I’m reading, building side projects, and thinking out loud about energy, product, and AI.
This newsletter is where those threads come together.
What you’ll find here
This publication has two running series. You can follow all of them or just the ones that match what you’re here for.
Negawatt
is where I write about the energy transition. Virtual power plants, grid policy, distributed energy, climate tech startups, and systems reshaping how we generate and use power. The name comes from the concept of a negawatt, energy saved is energy produced. I’ve been working in this space since 2015, across smart thermostats, electric vehicle managed charging, utility-scale batteries, and residential storage. These pieces are written for curious readers, not just industry insiders. If you want to understand what’s really happening to the electric grid and why it matters for your bill and the climate, this is for you.
(If energy is your primary reason for being here, you can also find the full Negawatt archive at negawatt.energy or the Negawatt section of this substack.)
Building
is where I think through product management — the craft, the career, and the judgment calls that don’t show up in job descriptions. I’ve built products and led teams at Entergy, NRG, General Motors, Fluence Energy, and GoodLeap, across everything from incubating new consumer businesses to scaling distributed energy platforms to enabling recurring revenue from $10B+ in financed projects. These pieces are honest about what works and what doesn’t.
I may also include shorter, more frequent, less formal dispatches. Including AI tools I’m tinkering with. Books I’m processing. Observations from the field that don’t fit anywhere else.
Who I am
I’m a Staff Product Manager at GoodLeap, where I lead product strategy for the VPP business and the build out of our Distributed Energy Management platform. I hold an MSc in Innovation and Entrepreneurship from HEC Paris and a BS in Economics from Texas A&M. I’m a CELI Fellow, a marathoner, and devourer of books.
I write because the energy transition is the most consequential infrastructure story of our lifetime, and most of the coverage either talks over people’s heads or undersells the complexity. I’m trying to close that gap — and along the way, share what I’ve learned about building products and navigating a career at the edge of where technology meets the physical world.
You can find more about me at bradymanning.com
How to follow along
Subscribe and you’ll get everything. If you only want one series, you can manage your preferences after subscribing. Substack lets you turn individual series on or off without unsubscribing.
I’m glad you’re here!
