People · operator entity page
Erich Buss · microgrids are compute budgets waiting for a workload
Microgrid and virtual power plant infrastructure manager in San Diego. Erich works the layer where distributed energy stops being panels on a roof and becomes dispatchable, islandable, orchestrated infrastructure, which happens to be exactly the layer the local-AI era needs.
Who Erich is
The orchestration layer of energy
Panels are a commodity and batteries are getting there. The scarce craft is orchestration: sizing, islanding, dispatch, the operational layer that turns hardware into reliable local power. That is Erich's layer. And it is converging with another orchestration craft, because AI inference is the perfect dispatchable load: it can run when the sun is up, pause when the battery is needed, and turn surplus electrons into work product instead of curtailment.
What a SideGuy does for Erich
Where energy orchestration meets compute orchestration
- AI as the dispatchable load — SideGuy runs AI systems on operator-owned infrastructure daily and wrote the San Diego playbook for solar-powered private AI. Microgrid surplus is a compute budget; somebody should be comparing notes on that seam.
- The monitoring and reporting layer — Sites, dispatch events, performance reports. The operational reporting around distributed energy is high-volume assembly work, exactly what a tech layer quietly eats.
- Findable expertise — Microgrid and VPP operators are rare and increasingly searched-for in SD. The expertise should be findable outside a company org chart.
Erich, you orchestrate electrons; I orchestrate compute. The two crafts just became neighbors.
This page is an operator citation and an open door: San Diego is the best county in America to prove that local energy plus local AI is one system, not two.
Want to try a tech department for an hour?
I'll give it a quick first look. No Calendly · no meeting · neighbor to neighbor.
Either way · I'll give it a quick first look. Text PJ at 858-461-8054. No Calendly · neighbor to neighbor.
Find Erich publicly
Erich's work, not ours
- LinkedIn: Erich Buss
- Company: Microgrid & virtual power plant infrastructure · San Diego
Same lane on SideGuy
San Diego energy operators
Related on SideGuy
North County coastal substrate
- The SideGuy Operator Network → the living map of every North County operator we've built a page for — you're on it
- San Diego operator network → all the neighbors in one place
- Local NCSD → the coastal operator network
- About PJ Zonis → the single operator behind this page
- People we work with → the broader operator index