Industrial Talk is onsite at DistribuTECH and talking to Miguel Morales, Commercial IoT Lead with Software AG and Ty Roberts, Vice President of Marketing with Itron, Inc. about “Grid Edge – How utilities will manager their distributed energy assets.“.  Here are some of the key takeaways from our conversation:

Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and a series on “Marketing Process Course” for Greater Success in 2024. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy!

MIGUEL MORALES' CONTACT INFORMATION:

Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/moralesamiguel/

Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/software-ag/

Company Website: https://www.softwareag.com/en_corporate.html

TY ROBERTS' CONTACT INFORMATION:

Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ty-roberts-13b5ab6/

Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/itroninc/

Company Website: https://na.itron.com/

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OTHER GREAT INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES:

NEOM: https://www.neom.com/en-us

Hexagon: https://hexagon.com/

Palo Alto Networks: https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/ot-security-tco

Palo Alto Networks Report HERE.

Fictiv: https://www.fictiv.com/

Hitachi Vantara: https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/home.html

Industrial Marketing Solutions:  https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-marketing/

Industrial Academy: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-academy/

Industrial Dojo: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial_dojo/

We the 15: https://www.wethe15.org/

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The post Miguel Morales | SoftwareAG and Ty Roberts | Itron appeared first on Industrial Talk.

On this week's Industrial Talk we're onsite at Distributech 22 and talking to Robert “Rob” Wilhite, Senior Vice President at Black and Veatch about “Distributed Energy – what is it and how will it benefit the energy consumer”.  Get the answers to your “Distributed Energy” questions along with Rob's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!

Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and a series on “Why You Need To Podcast” for Greater Success in 2022. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy!

ROBERT WILHITE'S CONTACT INFORMATION:

Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robwilhite/

Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/black-and-veatch/

Company Website: https://www.bv.com/

PODCAST VIDEO:

THE STRATEGIC REASON “WHY YOU NEED TO PODCAST”:

OTHER GREAT INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES:

NEOM:  https://www.neom.com/en-us

AI Dash: https://www.aidash.com/

Hitachi Vantara: https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/home.html

Industrial Marketing Solutions:  https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-marketing/

Industrial Academy: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-academy/

Industrial Dojo: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial_dojo/

We the 15: https://www.wethe15.org/

YOUR INDUSTRIAL DIGITAL TOOLBOX:

LifterLMS: Get One Month Free for $1 – https://lifterlms.com/

Active Campaign: Active Campaign Link

Social Jukebox: https://www.socialjukebox.com/

Industrial Academy (One Month Free Access And One Free License For Future Industrial Leader):

Business Beatitude the Book

Do you desire a more joy-filled, deeply-enduring sense of accomplishment and success? Live your business the way you want to live with the BUSINESS BEATITUDES…The Bridge connecting sacrifice to success. YOU NEED THE BUSINESS BEATITUDES!

TAP INTO YOUR INDUSTRIAL SOUL, RESERVE YOUR COPY NOW! BE BOLD. BE BRAVE. DARE GREATLY AND CHANGE THE WORLD. GET THE BUSINESS BEATITUDES!

Reserve My Copy and My 25% Discount

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

battery, utility, industrial, rob, power, people, collaborate, blockchain, energy, capacity, grid, solar, system, industry, innovation, compensation, real, called, building, big

00:00

Hey industrial Talk is brought to you by CAP logistics. You want to minimize downtime. Absolutely. increase reliability, you bet ensure operational profitability. Yes you do. That means you need 24/7 365 insights into your supply chain, look no further cap logistics, go to cap logistics.com Or just call them. They're great people 800-227-2471 Also, AiDash. AiDash is on a mission to create a greener, cleaner, safer planet from space. AiDash helps core industries become more resilient, efficient, and sustainable through the power of satellites and AI. Go out to AiDash.com Find out more. All right, Greetings, and welcome to industrial talk. Thank you very much for joining the number one industrial related podcast in the universe. And we were on site at distributech, Dallas, Texas, and we had the opportunity to talk to a gentleman by the name of Robert Wilhite, He is the Senior Vice President at Black and Veatch. And we are talking utilities, we are talking distributed energy. We are talking smart grids, we are talking everything that is associated with utilities. So let's get cracking.

01:35

Good conference. Oh, this is great. Isn't it great to get back to, you know, things to see things God, it's like I'm seeing people I haven't seen in three years. No, it's just have you know, handshakes. It's all hugs. Yeah, that's right. It's the one thing that the the virus has done is create a collaborative environment. Right. I want to collaborate. I don't want to do this alone. I need to work with people. Have you come in contact with people that you just met? Virtually? Yet? Yes. Isn't that just fun? And it's great, because they could be tall. They could be short. You don't look that way on a team meeting? No. Contact recoupling. Just man, you are a tall drink of water. Got it? That's not how you look on a, you know, on the team thing. Exactly. All right. For the listeners out there. Rob, give us a little background on who you are and why you're such an incredible, we'll get you your big wig. You're a senior vice president. I am your big your I don't know about the big part. But

02:33

wig. It means I've been around a while. Yes. In fact, this is my 37th year in the energy engine Street. It's mostly utilities, power gas, work a little bit on the water side as well. And this is the only industry I've ever known. I've never worked outside of utilities. And so I started my career working for a utility actually. FPL. So

02:58

Power and Light. Yeah. And enjoyed it immensely. Just wanted to leave South Florida and start something else. And I've been on the management consulting side of this industry for 26 years now.

03:10

You've seen a lot of changes I have, especially in the last five years, isn't that the velocity just sort of wild in the technology and innovation space. It's like, oh my gosh, I don't like keep up it's a tiger by the tail velocity is accelerating big time in these these use cases. It's like, hey, if I do use this, and with this, then I gotta create a new solution. It's a different use case. And then people like me, I can't keep up with it. Because I'm not as sharp as some people. Well, I mean, there's so many new entrants into this industry, there's a lot of new capital coming in a lot of innovation. Now we've got federal stimulus dollars that are gonna flow into the market and accelerate things even greater. So I, I'm excited for it. You know, it's probably going to be rapidly changing over the next five years. And at that point, I've got to decide is that is that the right time to turn it over to the next generation? Right, you're gonna you're gonna have a hard time because that's when it gets really fun. And I just think that I want to be younger and I want to be I mean, this is just fun stuff. incredible innovation and, and a real desire to collaborate. I just, I get a kick out of that. Normally, in the past pre pandemic, it was like, this is our secret sauce. But now it's like I got to work with people. So you're Are you speaking at this event? I am going to be talking about something called the grid edge.

04:34

And just FYI, you know, there's edge thin edge, distant edge.

04:40

In this now this is a new one grid edge, go for it grid edge. It's the combination of hardware software business models, to enable customers to participate with utilities as collaboration to your point earlier Scott, to be able to interconnect things like battery

05:00

is solar, and make all of this stuff automated, and decentralized and put a lot of intelligence at the edges of the grid to make all of this seamless and automatic.

05:13

Because there's a lot of capacity out there, there's the increase in batteries, whatever else, you get these distributed the sources.

05:22

So

05:24

one of the challenges that I see is, is how do you make that how do you make that happen? Give us a use case, it's like, okay, you, you have an Eevee, right? Yes, I do. And you plug it in. And you're just to plug it in, there's more that can be done there. Right? Today, it's simply just charges until it reaches the capacity that I've said on the app, and then it stops, it does nothing else. But you know, I, while I'm here with you in Dallas to go see, my car is back home in my garage and doing nothing. It's just sitting there. So if I had the opportunity, if my utility offered the right compensation, I would sell energy back to the utility if they needed it, especially during the peak times of the day when it's worth more to them.

06:12

But But that can also be not just at your house, it could be pretty much anywhere you go to work. Blog, exactly, boom, same sort of scenario. But that that's, that's a technology solution, that that is dynamic that does that technology cannot exist, it does exist already today, I think it's mostly just a software solution more than anything, it's, it's being able to have the the software in the car, the software on the utility side, in some type of hardware controller in the garage that takes care of this back and forth flow. And you can send it pricing signals. In other words, if the utility can communicate to a controller that is mounted in my garage, then they have the ability to send me warnings, I can hopefully pop it up on an app, make a conscious decision on whether I want to participate or not, you know, offer me more money, and I'll bid it even higher. So this is an interesting, you know, my my knowledge of the utility, because I've got a system operator, I've got generation, I've got transmission, I got distribution, I got the substations that all make it work, and then I comes down. And then when I flip the switch on, Oh, good. You're talking about a dynamic ability to be able from a systems operators perspective, supply demand, managing that and be able to communicate pricing, or, Hey, we need we need, we need your battery. And they're not just doing it with one battery, it's it's a batteries, this area, a network of batteries all could be disparate, and, you know, different owners of those batteries even. But if they can bring them together virtually as a utility and dispatch them, you know, in a big chunk, they can get some real benefits and compensation in the wholesale power markets.

08:00

See that? Again? The it's a software so yeah, it is because we exist today. Because you're saying, Hey, here's here's a system operator, and they have to have visibility and those that capacity, right have to just say, Yep, there's whatever capacity of that battery, and so on and so forth. And then there's a time on that. Right, right, because it's not just forever, right? There's going to have to be a point where that battery is discharged. And then there's got to be recharged. And then as a system operator, there's no way because I remember when when I went to the system operations in Southern California Edison at the time, that guy was just sitting there looking at supply and demand. It is moving that turbine and he's like is okay, here we go. And it's like manual. Oh, it's not your father's utility? No, it's changed the way. We've got two way power flows. We've got customer owned devices connected to the grid. We've got the threats of manmade and natural disasters. We've got cybersecurity concerns. That's all financially. I mean, all of this is coming into play. And that also, by the way, if the utility wants to collect data off that device out of my battery in the way I use it, then that's private data. Now you got to protect it. So you know, there's all kinds of growing concerns and barriers to really building the grid edge to scale. But these are resolvable, we can fix these. So with that said, What do you see? I mean,

09:34

this is not pie in the sky. Is it happening today? It's happening in small pilots and limited rollouts. And it you know, there are attempts to make this work effectively with the right business model. I think for the most part, we're still trying to figure out the business model. We have the hardware and software. I think that that part is already available to us today. But then how do you set this up as a business

10:00

As a utility that wants to compensate owners of these energy assets, that's something that has not scaled. Yeah, yet, there is a possibility it could start to take off soon, there's something called the FERC. Order 2222. Two By Four is affectionately called. And that's setting up the rules in the wholesale markets to aggregate just what we just described aggregate these assets, and to be able to make sure that compensation is fair to the owners of the assets, the energy assets. So here's the risk that I because the because I'm a consumer of power. I want that power to be there. Now, a lot of come on home, do flip the switch, there it is. I'm pretty simple when it comes to that.

10:44

I believe the risk is if we don't do it right, the first time, consumers will say, Get out of here. I don't want it. I don't want to forego my comfort

10:55

for this. So you guys gotta get this right. Oh, yeah, absolutely. You only get one or two chances. And I'm telling you right now, I would be the first one to jettison, if I look, we've got all this equipment, right. It's all here. It's all it's just equipment galore. And it's very sensitive. It wants good quality, power, and data. And it doesn't do well, when and that's just everybody. You look around. And it's everybody. Yeah, you don't get many bytes out there. So there's, that's the reliability aspect. Yeah. Now we got to talk about resiliency in the power system. Yeah. How quickly can recover after a major event? Whether it's a storm, or wildfires and droughts or whatever it may be, you know, how do we harden our system to withstand these threats to begin with, but also recover more rapidly after they occur?

11:45

You're hitting on all cylinders, because that's, if you've ever been in a hurricane, and your power's out for 10 days in the middle of the summer, it's not fun. Well, and it's not simple to fix it. You know, a lot of folks think that, well, let's just bury all the power lines, not to say from a hurricane. No, because you have equipment that comes out of the ground to join that underground cable together and operate it and switch it. That stuff gets flooded, and it's ruined. It doesn't work anymore. No, it

12:16

so there's no easy fix. There is a van and it has like your you got your fingers on the poles, but it's gonna happen as more and more vehicles or as more and more all of these different forms of generation get attached, that there's a potential there's capacity. Somebody will make. I'm looking forward and I think it's like neighborhoods having their own generation. Yes, absolutely. And what I really like and fired by is commercial customers today are, are making pledges when it comes to sustainability or decarbonisation of their supply chains. So they're taking matters into their own hands. They're, they're building on site generation, they're putting solar on their rooftops, they're putting batteries next to that solar, we have one client who's a nationwide financial institution with 1000s of branches. If we put solar on their roof, they want to attach a battery. And then they can measure how much solar PV energy they're generating right there on the spot. They run that through a blockchain based software.

13:18

I knew I'd get the blockchain word Yeah, I was just gonna say I'm gay. There's another conversation. And then once it goes through the blockchain, and they can calculate hourly renewable energy credits in real time. Yeah, I mean, nobody's doing this. This is this innovation is coming from the commercial customers directly. So he used to long ago, we had a solar plant out in a Daggett, California. And the challenge is always how do you how do you store that energy, they would use molten salt. So

13:50

like, you slap it up there, and then they would flash, you know, the water, turbine, all of that stuff that can adapt. But that's how, nowadays you got the battery, you got batteries, you've got a big focus now on long duration energy store. Yeah. So if you can get 12 hours plus, out of a battery, whatever form of chemistry is built up in that battery, the more that it's going to have greater value for you, especially going back to resilience. A commercial business that wants to stay in operation during a major event is going to want 12 hours plus battery duration. So that begs the question, I'm gonna sort of go off on a tangent real quick.

14:28

Battery technology is getting better at it.

14:32

And cheaper, so that's good. trending in the right direction. What is the the expectation for battery life? For many of us? Yeah, that's that's the, that's the big question we get asked often, which is to lithium ion technology, for instance, is how, how much degradation per year will you see in the battery over a 10 year period for it 15 That's too far out. But just let's do

15:00

Just take a 10 year period for the life of that battery, we have to today understand how much degradation so that we can guarantee what capacity at battery can supply in year 10. And there's no easy way to do this. These are estimates we don't have enough of these batteries out there to truly know. We're alerting er, and it's just but the right people are in the right places, people like you and others and are making these decisions and looking at it, understanding the challenges that exist today, creating valuable use cases, on and on and on. So it makes complete sense. All right, we're gonna have to wrap it up, sadly, but we're gonna have to, how does somebody get a hold of you? I can be reached at Wilhite, rt@vv.com wi l h i t e r t. RT at BV BV com

15:57

look forward to comments and letters go. I'd love to hear some innovative ideas. That's just your I see you're not gonna retire because it's just gonna get better and better. It's faster and faster and more people are coming out with more solutions. It's pretty doggone cool. Oh, it's fun. It's awesome sauce. Thank you very much for being on industrial. Appreciate it very much. All right, listeners. We're gonna wrap it up on the other side. All Rob's contact information will be available at industrial talk. So don't worry, you'll have it. So just go out there. You'll find it you'll you will not be disappointed with Rob. He's pretty cool.

16:31

Awesome. That's where all the cool kids hang out. It is here on industrial talk. I haven't been called cool in a long time. Cool kid. Cool. All right listeners. We're gonna wrap it up on this site. So stay tuned we will be right back.

16:44

You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network

16:51

right once again, thank you very very much for joining industrial talk. If you want to hang out with cool kids like Rob Wilhite, then go out to industrial talk.com Be a part of the club, this ever expanding industrial ecosystem that really celebrates industry professionals like yourself. Thank you to Rob, thank you for the opportunity to talk to him and discuss what changes are happening within the utility world. It's monumental, it is mind blowing in my background utilities. Definitely mind blowing. Thank you very much, Rob, for being on industrial talk and sharing your insights with all the best listeners that industry has to offer right here on industrial talk. All right. You need to one educate. That's why industrial talk is here. That's why we highlight people like Rob you need to collaborate. That's why industrial talk is here. And that's why we highlight Rob because he wants to collaborate. Black and Veatch want to collaborate with you solving your problems? And definitely, definitely, you need to innovate. If you want to build a business that is resilient, you need to be in the game, and you need to innovate. That's why industrial talk is here. Because we want to educate, we want to collaborate and definitely we want to innovate. So go out to industrial talk. Talk to me. Meet yo right here. And we'll have I mean, we'll have a great conversation. All right. Be bold, be brave, daring, greatly hanging out with people like Rob and you're going to change the world. Let's have another great conversation shortly. So stay tuned.

The post Robert “Rob” Wilhite with Black & Veatch appeared first on Industrial Talk.

On this week's Industrial Talk we're onsite at Distributech 22 and talking to John Glassmire, Senior Advisor, Grid Edge Solutions at Hitachi Energy about “Ensuring a stable utility grid as we transition to a distributed energy world”.  Get the answers to your “Grid Reliability” questions along with John's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!

Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and a series on “Why You Need To Podcast” for Greater Success in 2022. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy!

JOHN GLASSMIRE'S CONTACT INFORMATION:

Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnglassmire/

Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hitachienergy/

Company Website: https://www.hitachienergy.com/

PODCAST VIDEO:

THE STRATEGIC REASON “WHY YOU NEED TO PODCAST”:

OTHER GREAT INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES:

NEOM:  https://www.neom.com/en-us

AI Dash: https://www.aidash.com/

Hitachi Vantara: https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/home.html

Industrial Marketing Solutions:  https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-marketing/

Industrial Academy: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-academy/

Industrial Dojo: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial_dojo/

We the 15: https://www.wethe15.org/

YOUR INDUSTRIAL DIGITAL TOOLBOX:

LifterLMS: Get One Month Free for $1 – https://lifterlms.com/

Active Campaign: Active Campaign Link

Social Jukebox: https://www.socialjukebox.com/

Industrial Academy (One Month Free Access And One Free License For Future Industrial Leader):

Business Beatitude the Book

Do you desire a more joy-filled, deeply-enduring sense of accomplishment and success? Live your business the way you want to live with the BUSINESS BEATITUDES…The Bridge connecting sacrifice to success. YOU NEED THE BUSINESS BEATITUDES!

TAP INTO YOUR INDUSTRIAL SOUL, RESERVE YOUR COPY NOW! BE BOLD. BE BRAVE. DARE GREATLY AND CHANGE THE WORLD. GET THE BUSINESS BEATITUDES!

Reserve My Copy and My 25% Discount

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

grid, talk, hitachi, john, energy, renewable, battery, talking, called, conversation, industrial, generator, happen, utilities, important, hydro, virtual, industry, solar, scott

00:00

Hey industrial Talk is brought to you by CAP logistics. You want to minimize downtime. Absolutely. increase reliability, you bet ensure operational profitability. Yes you do. That means you need 24/7 365 insights into your supply chain, look no further cap logistics, go to cap logistics.com Or just call them. They're great people 800-227-2471 also AiDash AiDash is on a mission to create a greener, cleaner, safer planet from space. AiDash helps core industries become more resilient, efficient, and sustainable through the power of satellites and AI. Go out to AiDash.com Find out more. Hey there and welcome to industrial talk. This is going to be a quick conversation. We were broadcasting on site, DistributeTech, Dallas, Texas this year, and we had the opportunity to talk to John Glassmire, he is this senior advisor, grid edge solutions, Hitachi Energy. And everybody at that conference was talking about how do we transition into this sort of renewable world, keeping the grid stable, keeping it reliable? How do we do that? And John glass Meyer and team Hitachi energy, definitely have their fingers on the polls. This is a quick conversation. So get out your paper and pencil, write it on down because this will impact you. If you're in the business of manufacturing, oil and gas, anything in industry. John and team Hitachi Energy are right there enjoy the conversation.

02:02

Done, it's about time. So here's the first thing that I noticed. You're much taller than you are in virtual. Just definitely. So when I tell you, he's tall.

02:12

Yeah, I see this. It's always like you finally meet that person. It's like, that's not the way I cast out all it?

02:17

No, I thought he was just gonna just roll in about 5′ 8″. But that's great. All right, quickly, the listeners, tell them who you are. Give us some background.

02:30

So it's First off, it's a pleasure to be back. It's cool. Ya know, I love talking with you, Scott,

02:36

the passion that is right here on the site.

02:39

So what am i I'm, I'm passionate. My passion is about grid edge solutions. And that may not mean something to everyone. I'll tell you what it is. Its battery energy storage systems. Its micro grids. It is decentralization, in short, the future of energy.

02:55

Well, there you go, man. That was a nice boat up. Done. Now, you mentioned it briefly, because he's, he's a busy man. So you got to wrap this one up quickly. But we're gonna make it worthwhile. So you mentioned something that was pretty much can't spell. So what what the, what's the next gen talk to us about that stuff.

03:15

So the next gen, I assume you're talking about battery energy storage systems, big batteries that connect to our grid, and will be the future heart and brains of our grid. So today, battery energy storage systems, they're getting really big, but they cannot fundamentally operate a grid, you try to use most of the battery energy storage systems out there. Today, what they're doing is they're looking to the grid, and they're adding things on top of it. They're strengthening it that way. But the next generation, which is this grid forming inverter, it's in the power electronics, that's the interface between the battery

03:52

and the grid. See, that was it it was grid forming inverter

03:55

grid, forming inverters. And it's not just any old grid forming inverters. If you've done any work in off grid or remote areas, grid forming inverters may mean something a little bit different. That means you can take your house and you can run it on solar. What we're talking about is the next generation where you layer in some advanced control and automation. And the the class of systems is called virtual synchronous machines. And Hitachi energy has an implementation of the virtual synchronous machine called virtual generator mode. And it is what will allow I never like to say there's the one key but it's a key piece of letting our grid operate on 100% renewables because that is a technical challenge.

04:37

And because you're smarter than I am, when we start talking about synchronous, right, there's that physical component that exists on the grid. That is 60 cycle. There's a physical component to that. Are you saying that with

04:52

the idea that's called a virtual synchronous machine, the synchronous machines that we're talking about? These are the big spinning machines that are At the heart, the pulse of our grid,

05:01

it's the force. It's that physical force that creates stable

05:06

being a gas turbine, a steam turbine, a hydro turbine, it's these things that spin, and they connect up to this generator, and they're through strategic sampling of around it, they're coming out with three phases. 60 hertz, yep. And powering our grid. Those if you're going to take advantage of the cheap and increasingly affordable energy from renewable sources, like wind and solar, you need the supplementary services that come from something like a virtual synchronous machine, you will need the batteries to take over that key role, you typically keeping the backbone of the grid alive. See, this

05:39

is interesting because I wanted to I'm that old school guy. And I remember when somebody was bringing on a generator there, they physically said, Okay, here it is, I'm physically bringing it on. And I'm synchronizing it, and it just didn't it locks in. So you're not getting all of that all problems. That is a key that that's been missing.

06:00

It is a key that's been missing. And it's still a challenge, because there's no financial incentives currently to do this. You know, there's, there's a whole regulatory evolution that needs to happen. A bunch of the utilities aren't quite sure. You know, a lot of the utilities, I've talked to some of my utility friends, and they say we know big spinning things. We know when we like them. Yeah. What this is, is it is it spinning? I say, well, it is spinning it just virtually

06:24

Yes. See, that's that's a, that's a heck of a hill to climb, because you're, you're right, it's so the real reluctance or resistance is going to happen. Let's put

06:36

it that way it's going to happen. You can't you can't hit anything above? Well, I always like to say Hydros cheating. But you look at most, Greg, we've either exploited all the hydro resource we have, or we don't have access to it. When you get there. And you're saying, Well, how are we going to meet some of these goals that we have, we have grids that are going to go 100% renewable by 2050. If and some of them are saying we're gonna go 3040 50% In the next 10 years, you are going to get to 100% operation meaning for even short periods of time, well, well before that. And it is coming and is coming quicker than we imagined

07:13

it now you bring it up. Another whole point is there's this velocity. So this pandemic, we're doing all this stuff, technology didn't slow down it, it just kept on merrily going on. Now we collaborate we do all we can do but but I'm telling you right now, you're right, there's a speed. And if you think you can drag your feet, you can't you need that solution, it's going to have

07:36

to happen. And it's not just speed, it's acceleration, that's, that's even better. You're looking at this and you look at the way these renewable, they're called renewable portfolio standards that are driving some of this, you look at the way they're rolling out, they're sort of saying we're gonna do a little bit now and then we're gonna start ramping up. And by the end, we're just gonna be, you know, in, like vertical in terms of our implementation. And so we need to get ready for this.

07:59

And again, in being the guy that wants to just flip on the light, and I don't want drama at the end of that light switch. Yeah, it has to happen. Because if you want that renewable, if you're pushing renewables, you've got to be able to figure that out.

08:12

And that's, that's the cheapest source of energy. That's, that's what we're saying when real cheap, solar really cheap. And if you're gonna unlock that, you need to have the grid ready to accept it. And, and, you know, the message I'd have is that the technology is there. we've piloted it, we've even done it under commercial instances. But there are regulatory hurdles. We got to get on board

08:36

Come on. Die little voice.

08:39

I'm not gonna blame the utilities or utilities by that it's something we've all got to get get on board with and make happen because it's

08:48

it's got it's got to happen because without it still is still a difficult difficult challenge. Alright. You're cool. John glass Meyer.

09:01

You can email me or call. You got my email. Yep. John dot glass Meyer at Hitachi. energy.com. All right.

09:08

Thank you, John, saying thank you for spending time in your busy schedule. Mr. Big thinker.

09:14

Always a pleasure talk. Always, always always.

09:17

Alright, listeners, we're gonna wrap it up on the other side. Thank you very much for joining the industrial talk. We will be right back. You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network. All right. Again, thank you very much for joining industrial talk, as you can tell, John brings the passion. This is a real important conversation. We're doing a series called the state of utilities in the state of utilities means where do we stand? Where are we going? Where we have challenges with distributed energy. What do we do with the grid? How do we ensure reliability? How do we know that when I come home, and I flip the switch the lights will come on my computer builders will work just right. That's what they're doing. That's why distributor tech is an important conference for you to attend. This will impact you if you're in manufacturing oil and gas industry as a whole must attend. Because we're just, we're just getting started here. And we have to succeed at it. So that's why this is an important conversation. So reach out to John. I'm out as the stack card. He has get engaged. And he's the he's passionate about helping you succeed. So get in contact with John and add Team hatachi. Energy Now, you're saying to yourself, Scott, how do I get involved? Well, you just go out to industrial talk. You reach out to hey, I want to get involved. I think it just says, contact me. And you'll contact me. And you'll contact the team. And we are putting together a series of live podcasts. state of utility state of manufacturing, of course, a state of oil and gas, I say manufacturing, yeah. And utilities. All of them are real important in how we are digitally transforming. How do they impact us operationally, what is the state of these industries and that's where we're starting. So go out to industrial talk. And you're asking, Hey, Scott, I want to get engaged. I want to be a part of these live podcast. Yeah, do it. Reach out. All right, let's crack it up. Be bold, be brave, dare greatly hang out with people like John glass Meyer, and you're gonna change the world. Thank you very much for what you do, because this is a celebration of industry. So thank you. Have a great day. And we're gonna have another great conversation shortly. So stay tuned.

The post John Glassmire with Hitachi Energy appeared first on Industrial Talk.

On this week's Industrial Talk, we're talking to Rafael Ozaki, Business Unit CEO, Grid Control/Digital Grid with Siemens  about “Grid Modernization that Supports Distributed Energy”.  Get the answers to your “Grid Modernization” questions along with Rafa's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!

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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

utility, grid, grid modernization, rafa, conversation, happening, siemens, energy, industrial, understand, assets, agile methodologies, scott, reliability, industry, transition, change, people, manufacturing, power

00:00

Industrial Talk is brought to you by Armis. Yes, you are in the digital transformation game. Yes, you need to find trusted companies, trusted individuals to help you along with that journey. The Armis platform delivers complete asset intelligence, you know what that means? insights into your connected assets, you're in the digital transformation game, you have to have that insights into what is connected, go to armis.com Find out more, you will not be disappointed. As well as NEOM that's N.E.O.M NEOM.com Simply put in the home it will be a destination a home for people who dream big meal dreams big and want to be part of building a new model for sustainable living, working and prospering. That's neilmed.com Go out there. Find out more. It's exciting. They are dreaming big@neal.com.

01:00

Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott Mackenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots.

01:18

And let's get all right. Once again, thank you very much for joining industrial talk. This is a platform, this industrial community as a platform we are industry because of you. We celebrate industry professionals all around the world because you deserve it. Because you're bold, you're brave, you dare greatly. you innovate, you solve problems, you're making people's lives better. And therefore you're making the world a better place. All right in the hot seat. We have Raphael Ozaki. He goes by Rafa, by the way he is the business unit CEO of United States grid, control America and Pacific, it's a lengthy title, but you go out to stack card on LinkedIn, you will not be disappointed. Let's get cracking. Yep. You will not find a nicer guy. He's a super nice guy. And we were at distributor deck. And we were supposed to connect that distributor deck but that just didn't pan out. He had a beetle and do some important stuff. But we were very fortunate to be able to do it over zoom. So we're pretty excited about that a couple of things. One, I've got some events coming up. And the events are, let me let me just sort of back this up. When I was going to school, I really wanted to, I wanted to learn calculus, I wanted to go right into calculus, I wanted to go directly there. But what I didn't do is I didn't do a good job at laying the foundation of understanding, you know, algebra. And so I got frustrated, I was very frustrated because I didn't understand calculus. So I had to make that Converse or make that decision, say, okay, Scott, bone up, go back, and really understand algebra really understand all of the things associated with math. And then therefore calculus was no problem. And we had a good time. And it was really enjoyable. Fast forward. And I find that we're in a similar situation, and maybe not companies that understand the utility market, but we're doing a state of utilities, state of oil and gas and state of manufacturing. I'm not going to say webinars, so I call them live podcasts. Because I believe that there's a lot of buzz, a lot of hype, a lot of information floating around out there. And I think that it's imperative to create some clarity, because I believe I get this quote from Stan, with RTI, a confused mind doesn't make a decision. And so I want everybody to be successful, I want the utilities to be successful, I want the power producers to be successful. I want the grid to be stable and successful. I want oil and gas and so on and so forth. And and to do that, and to get buy in to get people to understand, we have to lay that foundation of the state of utilities, what are we doing? What is it about? Why are we doing it? And answer those questions. So we're going to have a panel of great guests to be able to answer those questions. But it's going to be from the perspective of creating understanding and I just go right into calculus, not go right into, you know, the The DERS and all the stuff that's associated with that side of the utilities. So we're gonna go right into that. I'm going now put these on your calendars. This is sort of shifting gears now. But this on your calendars. I am going to be broadcasting from IMTS and that is in Chicago and I believe it is September 12 through the 17th if you're in the manufacturing world, you got to you got to hook me Yup, but because I would be more than happy to interview you, we're gonna be having a great location. At that event, it's massive, absolutely massive, if you're in the manufacturing world must attend an event, and also going to another event. And that would be, and I don't have it right in front of me, but I'll have it out there on industrial talk. And that's going to be in Houston. And it's the same thing. It's going to be around manufacturing. So those are two events that I highly recommend that you put on. And I'm going to be once again on site. Let's have a conversation. Let's have fun. Let's help people understand what is going on. All right. So go out. And let me let me just sort of look at his stack card right here.

05:42

Raphael, Ozaki is his last name, reach out to him. And we're talking about the grid modernization, me being an old utility linemen, and utility guy and negotiated power purchase agreements and all of the good stuff associated with that and did the regulatory stuff. This is an interesting conversation. And it's, it's got some challenges and it is if I put my utility hat on, I need trusted Sherpas to be able to help with this journey because it's, it's challenging, and and you'll get a sense that Robert knows what's going on and many at Siemens understand what is going on. So this is going to be a great conversation. So hang tight, take notes, and enjoy the conversation with Rafa. Rafael, welcome to industrial talk. Thank you very much for looping back, you were at detec You were going to go talk there but you got busy because it was really a good opportunity and good experience for for you, Siemens and the team Siemens, and now we're talking virtually because we can do that.

06:52

Through that's your one of the advantages of remote work, isn't it, Scott? So thanks for having me. Thanks for the opportunity to to talk here today. Yes, did that can mean you mentioned that was a great fair. We have I have personally seen our goose so busy in a while, right. And not only due to the No, but also due to the immense you know, attention that we got pitching, you know, Siemens with software, this time in the US was really a cool event. Tons of good discussions with partners with analysts with customers was was a great time was a great time. I hope you enjoy it as well. Oh,

07:31

I had a fabulous time and it it's right in my wheelhouse. So crotchety journeyman lineman myself i i was a kid in a candy store, the thing that was really spectacular on my side in my little you know, gray matter was how significantly different the utility the energy market has changed it is it is super dynamic, super fast changes that are coming in waves of tsunamis. And and I can only be thankful for companies like Siemens and and others that are navigating these waters because digital transformation is happening. And I think the masses, I realized I don't realize what's coming down the turnpike. That's before we get into that conversation about grid modernization. Let's set the tone. Give us a little background, Raphael about who you are and what you're all about.

08:33

Yeah, awesome. No do that Scott. So Raphael was like a gold by Rafa who knows me. So I have been in this industry for around 15 years, Scott and fireflies started my career down in Brazil, Latin America as a protection and control engineer fell in love about managing an organization was given the opportunity to had our energy and automation business unit down there. Move to headquarters. So Siemens being a German company, I was leaving in Germany for around four and a half years, and billing with the more strategic side of the house. And then was given the opportunity to come here to the US and lead our Siemens which software unit for the US and Mexico represent our metering business here in the US, and also had to work with control side of the business for the Americas and the Pacific regions. It has been quite a journey. I mean, I still call you've seen a lot of changes. Yeah, a lot of changes changes

09:34

like I it's, you know, my my thinking has always been very linear when it comes to utilities. It's like generation, transmission substation, and so on down to me consumer of power. That's it. And it was a one way journey linear but that's not the case nowadays. And when we start talking about grid modernization, yeah, as it's happening, you explained for the listeners, what is just one grid? What's it today? Where do you see it going?

10:13

Yeah, no, the points go out. And it's fascinating, right, we started the conversation mentioning how much change is happening right now. And the most basic change, I would say, is the change of the energy flow, of course, right? There's might be really well educated already, in how the generation Meeks is changing from big power plants flowing energy down the transmission lines, getting to US consumers, to a way more dynamic energy mix that now considers these buzzword called de RS distributed energy resources being those solar panels, wind farms, storage, utility, large scale, feeding energy, right dispatching energy distribution level off the grid, and imagine yourself now sitting on a grid operator role, trying to manage reliability and resilience with this flow now completely multi directional, right? It's not an easy task, Italian, and utilities are currently facing unprecedented change, you know, what, how they keep things going, right, as we used to see. But again, keeping reliability, resiliency, and quality of energy is the main point of consumption, right?

11:33

And utilities are driven by majority of them, and maybe some utility or differently, some co ops would be different but but really driven by the rate case, this is what our rate of return is, this is what we're supposed to do this is, and it's still, there still are governed by that relationship with states in the state entities of how to deliver power. And reliably, because everybody is driven by that. It's like, yeah, when I come into a room, I'm going to flip the switch, boom, I'm good to go. And that was those tenants of deliverable service are still there. But when we start talking about grid modernization, we're talking about putting a little pressure on those, you know, those tenants of service delivery? How do we do that? How do we how do we transition into this brave new world of grid modernization and ensure that me, Joe Sixpack flips on the switch and watching my TV? You know, sexually? Yeah,

12:40

yeah, that's a nice way to put it glad. And I would say it's not a one single stakeholder here that can make that change and make the difference, the ecosystem has to coordinate itself. And here, I'm talking about policymakers, regulators, vendors, utilities, in the end of the day, and then as consumers, right, being residential, or, you know, commercial, concerned, consumers in the end of the day is God, what is key here to make that transition happen? He's alignment, right. And understanding that we are after a purpose here, to really combat climate change, and the energy sector has to give its contribution, right? It's clear that it's not going to be overnight change, and everything will keep, you know, providing or delivering energy to you. So you can flip the switch and notice no change. That is the ultimate goal. But at the end of the day, it's a combined and collective effort and really gets down to defining the priorities on asset level, what has to be changed on a substation level on a power plant level. After that, I mean, of course, technology needs to advance in a way how you plan how you maintain your grid and how you operate your grid. And here is where we believe we can help utilities make the trick, you know, or do the trick. We ng seems good software, we offer consulting and a software suite that follows clear design principles are open, we are modular, we are flexible. We believe that we cannot do this change alone. So partnerships are completely in the trenches with us to really address several different use cases got everything now gets way more complex as we were alluding to. So you got to plan your enhancements in the grid way more in advance and way more precise than before, right? You've got to also operate in real time considering those effects in the different energy mix, populating a grid right and near real time, right. So connecting metering with the control room, it's another use case that we are a strong believer to, that can help utilities navigate this complexity. And at the end of the day, also how you engine year to grid, so how your coordinate settings to protect all the assets in the grid is another area of attention that will help deal with the view, you know, flow of energy to help utilities deliver the energy and quality and reliably to almost filmer. So, it's a lot going on

15:28

it is and first thing that comes to my mind is how I'm a utility, how do I prioritize? Where do I go? And you brought up a number of really incredible points. The thing that I always gravitate to, is that here's a system, the system has grown, but but the general design has not changed over 100 years, right? It's Yes, yep. And that is the existing asset base that exists today. Now, we're trying to take that, that design that model, and be able to, to modify it to accommodate a lot of these conversations and a lot of this technology, the the area that I can think of is money. I mean, utility, money, I've got to prioritize? Yes, I'm talking about it. And in my neighboring utility is in a different position that I am. And I you know, and do you how do we, it's going to happen, I just the baseline, it's happening, whether we like it or not. It's, it's I see the utilities are sort of the driver of the adoption. And that's speed, right? You can do some faster. So it's sort of this. So how do we how do we begin that journey? I just,

16:56

yeah, there is not a single recipe to be honest, Scott, and I think depends a lot on the specific utility environment, you know, so we looking at the US, but that trend actually happens worldwide, right? I mean, you have spots where the DRS potential for clean energy generation, it's heavier than others. And you see way more incentives going on also to build those assets. So when utility operating in that geography would be today already facing enormous challenges to keep reliability and dispatch from those clean energy assets, along with the existing traditional ones. So they're the challenge would be, how can I prioritize, you know, controllability overdose assets. So I can optimize and increase usage of clean resources versus you know, carbon was right. And that would be leading to an application or the software space called therms. Right distribution energy or distributed energy resources management system, that would be an immediate need for an utility residing that area. If you go in other deals, right, you may face weather inclement events happening, often enough for those consumers to lose power, you know, in outages that are difficult to predict. So they're the challenge would be how can I increase resilience, right, by designing my grid differently. So applying again, clean energy resources, but designing the grid over micro grids or mini grids. So even though I lose, you know, my main source of power, the community, the main critical assets in that region would be steel suppliers, you know, and given a certain range who operate by itself. So it depends a lot on the need. The reality is everyone is thinking about reaching that goal, you know, of contributing to the climate change impact, and the energy grid. It's a key, you know, backbone to really make the electrification happen. Right. So it really depends on like, he was glad.

19:15

Yeah, it is. It's got to be a case by case because I look at I Know, Southern California Edison is connected to and wherever connected to PGE, San Diego, there, everybody's sort of in, across outside of ERCOT. Everybody's connected in some way, shape, or form. And that dependency is is vital, and it's a part of delivering solutions. If I'm a utility that tends to be a little bit more aggressive in this transition. Do I come out of sync with with our utility that's just not there yet. That is there are some interesting dynamics that exist there.

19:57

Yeah, it's fascinating to see how that interconnection works and utilities are talking to each other. And they see more and more that happening is God. Fairs and conferences like deep Tech, we mentioned that in the beginning of the talk. It's, for instance, a platform, you know, for utilities to exchange. Right. What we are also doing is, since we have tremendous installed base or in utilities right now,

20:26

yeah, Siemens, right, my toe on a couple of Siemens.

20:34

I mean, just to give you some facts, glad to need, we have more than 1300 control centers around the globe operating with our SCADA platform, right? We have more than 70% of the power being supplied today running in being planned, right with the software suite that we develop and deliver. So we considered ourselves a key element of the industry overall. And as one of the key elements of our success and longevity has been our user group meetings, you know, in those user group meetings, we have customers across the board, invited to participate and give their opinion on our roadmap development, give us intense feedback, right and non future feedback to, to incorporate on our strategy in our vision. And it's again, also a forum for them to have those conversations and also evaluate how the OT and it landscapes should now enable this conversation in between ISOs and between territories, between jurisdictions, you know, to make sure that the reliability, it's not concentrated in one geography, but it really benefits the whole industry, right? So it's one

21:57

of my passions. I love the passion to collaborate. I, I think that that that is a recipe at least foundationally for success. And we have to succeed at this at the rate of things and the array of things that are changing so dramatically. That's, that's, that's key you got you got to be sort of, I understand their secret sauce is in any company. But for the most part, I think there has to be this open book approach to collectively solve the challenges and and a bright future. Don't get me wrong. See how bright that's an electric. Future? Hey, here's a question I have for you. And it's the adoption of EVs. Right? Yep, they're happening. And it's happening at a pretty dramatic pace. And yet, the reality is, is I'm taking that, Evie, plugging it into the grid. That's great. I'm Holan. Let's say I'm charging. Yeah, there's a rate. And here's this sort of semi static grid. That doesn't change much. And yet, here's this rate of demand, being driven by these EVs. How do you how do we even address that?

23:14

Yeah, it's really a tough one, Scott, because the trend is coming. Right? Again, we are here seen another, you know, complex load in generation acid being attached to the distribution level of the grid. Yeah. In the area, that was not been, I would say, Ed fans to know in terms of enhancements in digitalization, as well as visibility, that merge and not long ago. So everything starts with preparing and coordinating that avalanche of, you know, new loads that will come up really tightly together between the administration of those charging points with whoever is providing energy, right. And it's, it's not an easy answer, again, we may not see as one recipe of success. But one thing I can tell you, I mean, whenever we see, you know, the point of consumption and delivery, talking to each other, and coordinating that, to plan in advance how much load we're talking about, and which points by which time you expect peak loads to be charged, you know, and at which power level the success is reached, you know, so you can prepare, the utility will be way more advanced, you know, and prepare themselves for that additional load. And whoever is managing that charging point will also benefit by having, you know, a clean installation and staging so the end users will benefit as well in the end of the chain, you know, so it requires also it's got if I may add on that not only Physical investments to enhance the grid and copper and wires, but also require what we're strong believers. He incredible advanced, you know, software landscape to manage that complexity, that it's not there yet, right? I used to talk to many, you know, VPs of transmission distribution and utilities here in the US and we are often in touch. And from one specifically, I heard that that she would reach reliability, energy delivery, you first need to think about two other abilities. You know, the first one is visibility, that leads you to controllability. And with controllability, you can ensure reliability. So those are the three abilities you

25:46

define. I got the controllability, what's the visible visibility? What is that ability?

25:53

Right? What's going on needs the ferry for you two sides, controllability level, right? Not for you you have controllability of to a certain degree, then you can, you know, take actions in advance to ensure reliability in the energy delivery. Right. Yeah.

26:12

It was interesting. Back when I was climbing towers, there were always conversations about re conducting, right? Yeah, bundle, whatever is necessary, because the demand is increasing. We can push more through whatever it might be. Those those realities of the grid rarely happened because there are so many hurdles to do that right. Yeah, they're just and now we're now we're just it's a whole nother whole nother equation out there that requires Yep, probably some increase capacity on certain transmit, but then maybe not over. Whatever the distribution, here's some old so what are we and the whole, you know, the conversation is so dynamic, it begs the question to with all of that you guys, you know, you gather around the water cooler, you talk about this, you understand the use cases that are being bantered back and forth. But then there's this education component that exists or culture within these utilities. And yeah, that has to be addressed. Because they have to. Yeah,

27:27

absolutely. I mean, it's one of the main points actually squat that we have been discussing in I triple E. So I see it in the Executive Advisory Board of I triple E, along with other fellows, you know, for all from the industry. And we have been discussing a chapter there on workforce management, especially on this huge set of our teams, right being on the vendor side, or on the utility side, how can we ensure that people are comfortable, you know, with the challenge it first so we can collectively get together and prioritize as we were discussing? What has to be done next? First, second, and third, you know, and and it's a reality, it's not a change, again, that will happen overnight. I think the awareness is now getting to a level that it's increasing action, you know, to, from the universities to, you know, trainings on company and utility level to ensure you know, refreshment is, is there and that ecosystem starts operating with the same direction, you know, it's going to be it's going to be still some time until we get there. But we are also facing Scott a lot of transition to Agile methodologies to develop innovation and to deploy innovation. To accelerate that change, you know, so we used to talk about very, you know, long cycles to stage a simple SCADA, you know, your ability to control from a control room, a very small territory, right. Now, you are talking about, you know, a way faster pace to deploy technologies like that, using Agile methodology. So, I am a big fan of it, the big believer that these will also help with the workforce skill

29:30

set the sea and organizations like I Tripoli, they're even going through and we need, we need standards, right? We just, it's just a reality. We need standards, we, we need that sort of governing type of structure that is around this journey. And even organizations like I Tripoli and others. They're going through a cultural change because they're realizing we normally did it this way and you brought it up from an agile perspective. This is the way we normally do everything. Hang on. It's, it's pretty pragmatic. Yeah. You know, you're, you're inserting agile methodologies and it's like, even they are going through some interesting challenge. Yes,

30:14

it is. It's true. It's true. It's glad everyone is being affected by the pace of change. And I think everyone is now acknowledging that the base from before is not acceptable anymore. Right. And again, I think what motivates people in the end is the purpose right? It's like the purpose of the broom is not the broom it's a clean floor. Right? And we are all here not delivering suffer. You're here thinking about what the impact of the you know digitalized component in these energy transition can help us combat climate change for instance, right. Yeah, in many other purposes. So it's yeah, it's it's

30:55

don't see it ending anytime soon. I'm telling you right now. Because people like you and others are, are coming up with new use case applications. Hey, check this out. We've got this technology with this technology. Now. We create a new use case. Let's run with that one. And it's it's good and bad all at once. We're gonna have to wrap it up my friend. How do people get a hold of Rafi Rafi or Rafa? Rafa, Rafa, Hey, I gotta wrap up. I need to get a hold of you.

31:24

Well, I mean, seen as good softer. Yeah, so it represents the good stuff they're getting to us, Maxie cool, man. You can reach out to me via email, for instance. rafael.ozaki@siemens.com. And, of course, it means we have a whole team here in the US that will be supporting whoever would like to understand more evolve how we can contribute to the energy transition. So that would be the way the best way to reach out to your knees. But gosh, I like it.

31:57

I really love this conversation Rafa. All right. Rafa’s. His name Siemens is the company grid modernization. Everything in between was the topic. Excellent job. I enjoyed this immensely. It's like a nice warm cup of coffee in the morning. Yeah, you see, there it is. Right there. Alright listeners if you're not, we're going to have all the conference contact information for Rafa at industrial talk.com. So do not go away. We will be right back.

32:28

You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.

32:37

All right, thank you very much for joining. Once again, industrial talk this platform remember it is dedicated to you industrial professionals all around the world. We have to be able to educate, collaborate, and of course, innovate. And that's what Rafa and Team Siemens bring to the table. They are they they want to educate, they want to collaborate, and definitely, they are innovating. And we need that going forward. If you have a passion for a resilient business, you're going to have to find trusted individuals that help you with that journey. We do not have all of the answers. But we're going to sure make industrial talk a platform, an ecosystem, an ever expanding ecosystem of industrial problem solvers and individuals that truly want to help. So that's what industrial talk is all about. All right, be bold, be brave, daring greatly. Thank you again for joining, hanging out with people like Rafa and you're going to change the world. We're going to have another great conversation shortly. So stay tuned.

The post Rafael “Rafa” Ozaki with Siemens appeared first on Industrial Talk.

In this week's Industrial Talk Podcast we're talking to Michael Bates, General Manager, Energy with Intel, Corporation and Phillip Carey, Energy Consulting Expert about “The Electric Utility Digital Transformation Journey”. Get the answers to your “Utility Digital Transformation” questions along with Michael and Phillip's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!

Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and a series on “Why You Need To Podcast” for Greater Success in 2020. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy!

MICHAEL BATES' CONTACT INFORMATION:

Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikebates35/

Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/intel-corporation/

Company Website: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/homepage.html

PHILLIP CAREY'S CONTACT INFORMATION:

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SUMMARY KEYWORDS

utility, phil, Intel Corporation, grid, people, power, talking, system, world, energy, companies, consumer, stranded assets, customers, relay, generation, happen, industrial, industry, Southern California Edison

00:04

Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott MacKenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat,

00:19

grab your work boots,

00:21

and let's get All right.

00:21

Welcome to the industrial talk podcast absolute, again, honor that you have joined this podcast, this platform that celebrates industry heroes such as yourself, it is a no legacy thinking zone, do not even come to me and say I've got some legacy thinking. Because everybody within industry is bold, brave, daring, greatly innovative, solving problems, and changing lives and changing the world as we speak. Thank you very much for what you do. You're making my life better. And that's really very special. All right, we've got to on this particular podcast, we have a gentleman by the name of Michael Bates, General Manager, energy at Intel Corporation, mad skills. We have another gentleman by the name of Philip Carey, he's a consultant has his own consulting firm, had many, many years within Southern California Edison, and we're talking about the utility digital transformation. It's an important topic, and it must be discussed, let's get cracking. All right, we have a it's a bit long, because they have a lot to say, it's an important topic, a couple of things that you can do. One, you can listen to part of it, come back, listen to it again, because it's important. And two, or two or both, that doesn't really matter with me. You can go out to industrial talk.com, use the player, speed it up, boom, you're good to go. But these two individuals are absolutely exceptional, sees what has to take place within the utility space. And it is really for me being an industrial guy. And being a utility guy. I really geeked out on it, because it was exceptionally a great conversation. So I hope you enjoy it. All right, let's take care of some business real quick. I want you to get your calendar out. And this is the IoT solutions World Congress in conjunction with the industrial internet Consortium. This is an event taking place October 5 through the seventh 2021 in there talking about IoT AI, edge. You name it digital twin. I like this one quantum computing. How about that there is no stopping the future. It's absolutely spectacular. All right, put it down October 5 through the seventh, it's in beautiful downtown Barcelona, Spain, let's get our lives back in gear. That's what I want. I want I want ever this next normal to include travel. That's what I like. And boy, the people of Spain, this organization IoT solutions, World Congress organization, as well as the industrial internet consortium put on a fabulous, fabulous show. Been there a couple of times, broadcasted live from there, enjoyed every minute of it. Next one, put it on your calendar. This is in Cleveland, Ohio, Cleveland, Ohio, this is November 9 through the 11th. It's the manufacturing and technology show. And if you've never been to Cleveland, put that on your bucket list because it is a beautiful place with great people. And this event will not disappoint whatsoever. That's the manufacturing and technology show November 9, through the 11th. Put that on your calendar. A must attend event Oh, I will be broadcasting from there too. And connecting with all of the incredible individuals that are just innovative, that are bold, are brave. They're daring greatly. And you know what they don't do? They don't have any legacy thinking, boom, love it. Alright, let's get on with the interview. So this one of the the topics in one of the things that I was always sort of wrestling with, specifically to the utility space, is the fact that how does utility given all of this the renewable stuff that's taking place with all of the real innovative stuff that's being put onto the grid? How do they manage and how will they manage going forward, and it is a digital transformation, compensation and digital transformation solution. And these two individuals, Michael Bates, and Philip carry, bring the dog gun insights and wisdom. So enjoy the conversation. Welcome, and I appreciate you guys wanted to talk a little bit about the electric utility digital transformation journey, and it's a journey. Welcome, guys. How you guys doing?

04:49

Doing well? Thank you.

04:51

Alright,

04:52

got it. You know, you got to do it. Nobody knows you. So you got to just say Hey, Mike, give us a little background on who you are because they haven't gotten out to your LinkedIn stat card right

05:02

now. Okay, well, I haven't seen it either. But I'm glad to know that it looks good. And thanks for letting me go first. You bet us and thanks for inviting me enjoying conversation today. Cool, have a little background with Phil so we can share some of our common experiences. But my role at Intel is to look for opportunities to apply our technology and convene our ecosystem of partners to address big industry challenges in our energy verticals. Our energy in our case includes oil and gas power utilities, the new energy service companies that are getting into the renewable energy services, for example, the EB charging area as well, as well as digital oilfield smart AG, and water. So we look across different areas of energy and where they impacted the grid is there

05:55

like that smart AG, I had an opportunity to, I can't remember it was in Oklahoma someplace. And the the innovation that's being applied to AG, it's impressive. I just think it's cool. Everything's cool.

06:12

Let's talk about it. If you want, there's a couple of interesting projects going on in here. We might have

06:15

to just sort of dovetail and just go off on a tangent, Phil. Thank you.

06:21

Yeah, so my my backgrounds a little different. I was formerly at Southern California Edison for 22 years, in it the entire time, but started out in IT operations. And then at one point, found myself in a architecture group, and then transferred into a group called it smart grid engineering, where we were an IT group that was embedded with the OT group in transmission and distribution, the advanced technologies group. That's where I learned a whole lot about the business. And while I was there, develop this common substation platform. And I retired at the end of 2019. And now I'm off on my own as a consultant. And I've done some work with Intel and with Dell Technologies. And here I am.

07:22

It's funny. I think the internet says when you retire, you become a consultant. I think so. There's nothing else you can do it. It says,

07:31

Why the internet and my wife keeps saying I thought you were tired? Well,

07:37

you don't want to get out of game now. Just kidding.

07:40

No, you're right. You're right on the money on that one there. Because this time is very, very exciting. Very interesting. And I don't have the answers. But people like you, Mike and Phil, are in the game. And you're you're talking about this. And so we're focusing in on utilities. And typically, utilities tend to be sort of legacy thinking, this is why we're here, this is the end and it hasn't really changed for a long time, whatever that long time. might give us a little sort of, no, no, no, I'm gonna take it to Phil, because he was with Southern California Edison, not to say that you're not that important or my, you'll get your guide, okay. It's just sort of give us a little sort of that utility thinking, not today, but in the past sort of that utility thought process.

08:33

So the, you know, the current utility networks were designed, you know, we're using 100 year old technology, essentially, it was designed to generate electricity, and to deliver it to customers. And the utilities job was to get that electricity in one direction from the generator to the customer, and to balance load with generation. And as long as load and generation stayed balance, and electricity was flowing through the system, everybody was happy.

09:10

It's true.

09:13

Such a simple explanation, but it's like when I come into a room and I flip that switch me consumer or me, manufacturer or me, whatever that power be, but better to be delivered at the right cycles, rival to all of the stuff it has to write. And and that's the way utilities have been developed. It's just that's how that's what it is. And rightly so. But what's changing Mike?

09:46

Well, one thing is changing is, you know, the model is changing. And, you know, to Phil's point that utilities, the past and still current were built around reliability, keep the lights on so the talent They acquired the training they gave the policy and regulation to support that model, it's all been ingrained for, like you said, since the really much the inception of electric delivery, one way flow of power from centralized generation coal plants, nuclear plants, then through step down to consumption at the far edge, that's been the model and the bill, then the technology has been in place to support that model of keep the lights on at all costs. And I think Phil might agreed he's much more into the technology side than I am, but it feels like a siloed stack of solutions have been built around this grid reliability model. And now, the grid, the delivery model is really turning upside down. It's not it's changing from that one might flow from Central generation to to a flow from hundreds and 1000s of millions of points of generation on the opposite side of the grid, the other side of the substation, so it wasn't built to take on that two way flow equipment, maintenance costs go up because equipment wasn't designed for it, there's lost opportunity cost, because you're not connecting these new loads in a way under the kind of common substation platform to fill required. So it's a major shift of focus from the the generation side, down to the consumer side, consumer own asset side. And now you're asking a company that's been built to keep the lights on to now become a customer focused company. Look, you know, if the opportunity in the future is around services, you got to remake and re engineer a company to make that pivot. And it's hard for some companies to make that pivot, especially in the utility space.

11:49

Yeah, and, and you know, an example of that. And it's not this, not the utility industry, but IBM used to be the biggest hardware manufacturer in the world. And today, there are software and services company, they hardly make any hardware. So this is where the utilities need to go. And they need to look at how their business model is changing. And accommodate that.

12:14

Yeah, if you don't mind, God, I was just gonna add to that, I think the other thing I've heard the other comparison, I've heard Phil, and I think all of us on the call around to remember the telecommunications restructuring where the companies like the southwest and Bill's of the world who built all that infrastructure to enable what we see today, were not the companies that really profited from it, it was Facebook, Google, Amazon, they use all that infrastructure that was built and created services around it. And the infrastructure providers haven't even caught up since then, I think that's one of the inflection points we're at today is who's going to own that piece going forward.

12:51

So in a sort of simplified in my head, is that utilities were built in a way where I generate power, I transmit that power, I stick it into a distribution substation, and I just keep on bringing it down, bringing it down to the consumer level today, and that's fine. That's right, I see that flow. But today is like, okay, we have some that flow that go that way, right. But then on the other side of that, that transformer or that bus is is also generation that's happening on that side. So what so now we're saying it's got to flow the other way, and it's got to flow into this magical system. And it's not supposed to suppose just happen. It's like everything just sort of lines up. But that's not the case. That's not the case at all. So So there's a couple of things that I see taking place. First off, and I think it was you, Mike? Yeah, it was probably you. The toothpaste is out of the tooth, the toothpaste is out of the tube, it's out. So so we're heading down this road, it's happening, whether we like it or not, it's happening. So as a utility, let's say I have my utility hat on, I've got to do something about it. What problems is this new sort of dynamic grid had a causing on my system, Phil.

14:21

So one of the large problems is load doesn't necessarily match the generation system specifically out on some of the feeder circuits. So to combat this utility, really needs the capability to be able to reconfigure the feeder circuits to better match the load. Another issue is in the past, if I had a fault on one of those distribution circuits, I could tell by measuring the power flow through the relay And when it got out of specification, I knew there was something wrong, the system knew there's something wrong. And that relay would send a trip signal to the to the circuit breaker. Well, now that I have generation on both sides of that relay, how do I detect the fault? point? Yeah. So that's where some of this digital controls come in, so that we can measure and, you know, know how to deal with two way flow of energy now.

15:33

So here's the funny and here's a, here's a story from my past. So when I was with Southern California Edison, I knew, you know, I'd go into that relay room, I have that smell, and distribution voltage, I can always see, I could always see the lights, right, the lights, they'll, they'll dim. And I'll say, okay, that's what they'll dim. Okay, that's too. And I know that the, the testing the relays physically test the line. So if it, if there's a there's an, an interruption, they'll Test, test, test, and then lockout three times that was like the, the policy at a time, right. And my dad, as a former lineman, when he would watch the lights. And as a kid, I'm going to hex you're probably right, and you'll see it one, and it'll count two, and then he has three. And then right off the bat, he get a call. But but that that's old time thinking that's that's old way now with like you just said, Phil, you've got generation on both sides. How does that that physical, a really know what's going on? Mike? What other problems are utilities dealing with? In this particular? Whatever we call it? I don't even know. Is there a term that we can call this particular world that we live in from utilities perspective?

17:05

The general term, I've heard his energy transition, but that that includes a lot of different things. But that's the term I'm just gonna run with that one.

17:12

Yeah. All right.

17:15

So other other problems that they face. And again, this some of this is not some of this is technology, although I would argue the technology exists to do the kind of things that Phil and I are talking about. It just needs, there needs to be investment in alignment, mostly through right policy and regulation that allows for the type of investments. And I think we're getting there. I think there's other other market drivers. So you asked the question before, Arianna asked it. You were saying that, that this was an evolution. And you and I talked about this before I was at a neighbor's a distributech dinner or something? And someone asked the question, this was two years ago, or maybe three years ago. It's like everybody in the room that thinks that this is an evolution, raise your hand. And literally three quarters or more of the room raised their hand, no, this is an evolution. And it was mostly utilities, the understanding that this was an evolving process, it was under their control or to kind of evolve it as they drive it. But I think what's changed now and then the rest of the 10% maybe said revolution, I think if you did the same poll today, it might be the opposite. Because I think there's market drivers outside of the utilities control that really is forcing the change. One is a focus around sustainability, and impacts of climate change. That cannot be ignored by the utility. So mandates by states companies company's, again, in areas where particularly in areas where there's been energy resiliency issues like in Texas, around the storm in California around the wildflower wild fires, where companies are looking for alternative sources to roll their own energy systems. So as more and more of those, if that pain point keeps bringing more and more companies and customers to roll their own energy, that's less, that's more of a problem on the other side of the grid that Phil's talking about. So corporate sustainability driving a lot. And I also think we're gonna start hearing more how financial markets are looking at carbon based. So companies with high carbon footprint carbon based assets, which will move companies again away from that one way flow of centralized power, which is dirtier, in general, to more decentralized power on the edge again, exasperating the problem. And then finally, EBS. You know, you One could argue we're at the inflection point now. But if you follow this industry at all the companies that have declared the end of combustion engines, the policy regular the support, from, you know, Europe and US around the administration, so think those market drivers and again, I started going so long here, but those market drivers are really pushing them in ways that are forcing them into this This type of a platform that Phil's talking about to be able to enable more services and and become a player in this new opportunity. So

20:09

great. No, you know what, it's a little bit more than that, because it's the regulators as well. Yeah, you look at California's remote, renewable portfolio standard, going to 100% renewables, I think it's by 2050. And Washington state where I am at now, just in the last week or so, passed a carbon tax resolution in the house. So, you know, those kinds of standards are coming here. They're coming everywhere. So,

20:42

okay, so

20:43

let me just you brought up a lot of good points there. Mike one, I think you're absolutely right. 11 illusion versus revolution. And I think we're at that point, I think we're at that revolution, I just think that there's too many things taking place in the market today. I think the drivers of sustainability, climate change, market, ie V's and the regulator, those are challenging conversations to have one of the things that and I'll throw this out real quick, because it just popped into my head. If If carbon based assets are going to be, you know, viewed poorly, how do you even how do you even structure a financial value proposition around a traditional generate? I think it's just going to by virtue of that, nobody's going to be able to wrap it with any type of capital. That'd be tough going forward, because you still have embedded assets that are still having some sort of rate of return

21:41

and still am being amortized. Right. Yeah. So

21:45

utilities don't like stranded assets. Yeah.

21:49

Geez, Phil, I haven't heard that one in a long time stranded assets. I forgot about that one. Okay, listeners, I have a utility background and stranded assets was a word that was battered stranded assets get shut the front door. Okay. So, so now we've we've painted the picture. And there's a lot of dynamics, it's very fluid out there. And before industrial talk, we've had number of conversations that evolve revolve around the term industry for Dotto, we've talked about the edge, the cloud, this that everything around with that. But what component that was really missing was, was that utility, how does the utility fit? I get it in the manufacturing world? I get it. I get it in the oil and gas, I see it I see what they can do. Utilities because of their short of the way they look and who what they are. This is a this is a difficult question. Now with that said, what has to change? Phil? What has to change in their mindset? Because they're not going away? Without being song without being dragged? But it's happening? What has to change?

22:59

Yeah. And you know what? The technology of this is the easy part. Right? Michael mentioned, some of that technology is already around, it's usable. New technology is coming on board all the time. The problem is more with people than it is with technology. A lot of utilities don't even realize yet that they need this digital transformation. It hasn't quite hit them yet. I've been in conversations with many utilities. And you know, some of them are working on it. Some of them say now, we're not. We're not even thinking of that yet. But they need to be. There's a couple of forces at play here. First of all, if I'm a utility operator, you know, I have to meet my safety and safety numbers. Otherwise, my regulators will be really upset with me and could have some financial penalties. So if I operated my grid, and it was stable last week, and this is the way I did it, that's the way I want to keep doing it because it's a known commodity. And, you know, nobody can fault me for doing something new that didn't quite work out.

24:25

It's true. Um,

24:27

another issue is what I'm hearing now called the silver tsunami.

24:32

Yeah, I've heard that too. And it's not just is it utility? What they they've been talking about the silver tsunami for years and years and years. You know what they do? They retire, they retire, you fill and then they bring you in as a consultant.

24:48

That's what they do.

24:49

That's the

24:52

first time I've heard it.

24:53

Yeah. So I guess what I'm saying there is that many of the workers on the OT side of the house. So the transmission and distribution in the case of utilities are people that have been at that utility for 20 3040 years. And change is a hard thing. Yeah, you try to move one of these guys cheese, and they're gonna let you know that they want their cheese where it is. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Um, so the people, part of this is the hard part, getting people to accept the new technology, and also learn how to use it.

25:35

So it's silver tsunami, is that massive retirement that people like Phil, were referring to, they've been there for 30 4020 whatever years, right? And then all of a sudden, hey, I can retire. And then all that knowledge, all that intellect event, utility stuff just goes right out the door, and onto the lake. Where the end and and what do you do as a utility? And I remember I was working with another utility in Arizona, and and they were having the same thing and these planners, so you can you can walk into the planning department, and you can say, Yep, retirement, retirement, retirement retirement. And, and they know where all of the switches are, they know where all of the funny, funky things that are out on their system that they got to be aware of, and they just let the crew know, right out, whatever all of the stuff that's out there, gone, gone. And, to this day, we still don't have a real solution of saying, okay, we'll let you go. But we've got to go inside your head and pull out that information. And maybe until can get to that probe and just stick it on an endo system

26:42

now neuro link, thinking about it. So interesting stuff out there. A quick side story on that. I live in Texas, I think I told you that. And we had this winter storm that shut everything down. And I remember, I'm not going to mention the city, but one of the city water systems went down because it couldn't get the emergency backup system back up. Because the owner's manual was lost and all the knowledge about how to turn it on and connect it. So it sat there for two days until someone anyway it's kind of a symptom of the way you're just talking about it. So somebody just raised up their hand.

27:15

Hey, Scott, remember how to do it. So Scott raises his hand, he goes, Hey, can you turn on this water? Certainly can but

27:23

bring him back as a consultant. Last year,

27:27

that's right.

27:28

I have a number in mind. And it's on my napkin right here. And I'll sled across the table. And you let me know. But it's it's the truth. It is such and that whole Texas thing. That whole Texas and and for some of the listeners out there, they had a real winter storm in Texas. Now Texas is a unique system all to its own. It's called ERCOT. Right? Did I get that? Right? And so it's sort of this little unique utility Island in this all other, you know, utility type of grid. And they were they were they were challenged.

28:04

So you really highlighted the problem statement that we're talking about. The biggest, biggest feedback on during that time was there were areas in the archived grid where the downtown areas were totally lit up buildings were running full blast, even though no one could get to that building. Everyone was at home, while you know, nearby neighborhoods were having rolling blackouts, or in some cases, you know, days long blackouts. And the response was, well, we couldn't turn those switches off because they're on circuits where critical facilities are but that is not true. That gets to Phil's point. That technology exists today to do scalpel like precision, like control of those loads to turn those places that are in demand that aren't needed to areas that are without it again, it does. I think it takes a willingness. And I think a different approach to policy as well. And also willingness to invest to put that technology in place to do the things like that. Again, it's just it's not a, it just doesn't feel like rocket science to me. Yeah. But

29:09

here's, here's the thing that I have a customer and I don't want it in my backyard. Sure. I'm all about sustainability. But I'm all about having that nice, you know, turn on that light whip into my computer, have that nice clean power, just sort of making sure that things don't, you know, fry. So is this new, brave new world? Something that is really consumer centric, or is it something that it's going to cause me Yanks

29:44

either one comfort film.

29:48

I don't know that it's so much consumer centric, you know, back in my SC days. You know, we did the AMI, the automated metering infrastructure project, and we put Smart Meters out everywhere. And we made, you know, 15 minute meter reads and hourly reads available to the customers. And guess what? Most of them didn't care. They wanted their bill at the end of the month, they wanted the power to be on when they went and flip the light switch. But most of them really didn't care to go and look and see what their energy usage was at three o'clock in the morning on Wednesday. So I'm not sure that it's so much consumer driven, as it is sustainability and regulator driven.

30:37

That's interesting. You got it. Yeah, I was like,

30:40

Yeah, I would. I mean, I would counter that, I think there is an opportunity. And again, I think utilities have a great place to be the provider of these services, to engage customers. In a way I call it almost the democratization of energy. So that that power produced end or not consumed, in partnership with utility allows the consumer or some people call these prosumers producers and consumers of energy to participate in a market in the same way other load nodes can participate in a market. And I think that will facilitate more, or one, it's going to facilitate resiliency into the grid, because the grid is if we can optimize and orchestrate those many, many different loads. But I know it's yet to be proven. And I agree with Phil on the energy management data. I didn't think that was very sticky, either. And some of the projects I've seen, but I do think if there is a way to, to make it really easy for consumers to participate in an energy exchange, you'll drive higher adoption of these technologies.

31:49

has to be super easy,

31:52

breezy. And I still like it the most part, the average consumer wants their energy clean, green and cheap.

32:01

Which is right would be difficult, right? Yeah. It's like, got it clean, green and cheap. But the Something's got to give in that particular. So we've we've, we've created this reality the utility grid is there's a lot of mechanics going on out there. There's a lot of embedded assets, there's a lot of just old stuff out there, too. It's like, there's old stuff out there. And and some of its buried and some of its in these, you know, the relay sheds, and there's all these assets out there. How do we then begin to transition? Taking that reality taking the resistance of utilities to a certain extent, some are a little bit more willing than others in nacionales? It's a it's definitely a cavalcade of feelings. Where do we start? Does the technology exist to be able to transition to this night? This this whatever this digital age that we want to go to? Phil?

33:04

For the most part, yes, some of the advanced stuff, not yet. But we're really close to it. And like I said before, I think the technology is the easy part. So yeah, here's a little anecdote from me. You know, back when I started working in the smart grid engineering group, we were working on a on a large project. And my job was to assist the OT guys, in doing some of the computer control. I was the infrastructure guy. And I saw the way that some of these things were were happening. And being an it being a data center architect for as long as I was. You know, we had been doing things for years and years and years that were pretty reliable. And I went to one of the engineers, and I said, why are you doing it this way? We can. I mean, there's this system, and we can, you know, make these changes, and it will make your life a whole lot easier. And he didn't want to hear it. That's not the way we do it. So pretty.

34:14

Pretty common. Unfortunately,

34:16

I had a unique capability in that I had essentially my own lab there. And I had access to their labs as well. And I decided that, you know, I've tried to explain how I think this technology can work. They're not getting it. So I need to build it and show them. This is how it works. This is what it can do. So I did that in the lab and showed them and over time and it did take time I started getting questions about the technology. Well can it do this? Can't do that. What happens if we try this? Come on Phil, that that's,

34:56

that's a, that's a long tail type of solution. I've just got to say There we go. Okay, I'll show you. I'll create it. And then and then when you do create it, it's like, well, I'm interested in this little point here when you got this whole solution, right? And it's like, Hey, you got a kid. It's like, man,

35:16

but it was good because they thought of things that I didn't think of. Okay, right, because I was an IT guy. Right? So they would come to me, Well, can I can? Can it do XYZ? I'm like, Yeah, I think I can make it do that. So that led me to more innovation, innovation. And, and frankly, that technology, the common substation platform, basically a compute system virtualized that's built on industrial hardware that can sit out in a substation and operate, that allows the engineers to think about ways to do things that they could not do in the past. And it you know, it frees up, you know, out of the box thinking, and I hate that term out of the box, but I'll go ahead and use

36:08

it back back to those cliches, right? You just got to roll with it, because I don't know, I don't know of any other, it's just got to roll with it. Go ahead, Mike.

36:15

I was just gonna say it also unlocks innovation and in giving the utility, the ability to securely federate that data out to the developer world to look for opportunities to provide new services to customers, because there's data there, once you consolidate under the platform that Phil was just talking about, unlocks all kinds of key, some that utility is going to see right away and, and develop on their own, but many others, if they can figure out a way to federate it out. Many others will come from the from, from the from the app development world,

36:49

I gotta interrupt real quick a federated out, what do you mean by that?

36:53

So I mean, so federated, like in channels, so data sent autonomously for certain purposes and for specific up for specific applications. federated out, so in a secure way. So that, and again, I'm getting an error, or I'm touching errors I'm not that comfortable with. Okay, I

37:15

just didn't understand. It sounds good.

37:17

Oh, it's sharing the data in a way to to certain audiences that I think that value, and it's really secure exchange, does

37:24

that feel? Yeah, cuz if you look at it today, meter data is over here. And voltage measurement data is over here. And outage data is over here. And in most cases, that data never meets. But if you could combine that data into something useful, and then run some analytics against it, a good example is that most utilities inventory of assets is dismal at best.

37:55

And they're done that absolutely understand exactly what you're saying. I know that was there.

38:01

Yeah. And I think, for the most part, if you look at the field, utility does not really know what transformer My house is connected to. Yeah, they may, but they may not. They know it's one of these in this area, because the houses in this area. So there was a program that I saw, where the utility was able to take the voltage measurement data from the smart meters and run analytics against it, and determine which group of houses were connected to the same transformer. That's just a small example of when.

38:48

Yeah, and that's good for, that's good for customers, right? That's good. If I'm out in the field, and I got a power outage, right? And if I had that data, I would know that that Transformers feeding this neighborhood or this group of houses. And it allows me to think a little bit different. I can switch over here, do this, like it changes my look at the grid. If I'm out in the field and say, switch there, do this. Oh, that's, that's okay. We got it.

39:15

That's fine. For the most part, smart meter data is transforming the way that repairs are handled. Right? Because the old way is, first of all, the utility didn't really know that there was an outage until somebody called and said My power's out. And then when that somebody called and said the power's out. They would send a patrolman out to go and follow the lines and see if they can find where the problem is. Yeah, we're now you get outage reports from smart meters if your utility has smart meters, and they can pretty much pinpoint where the trouble is.

39:51

Yeah. I like that one. One other interesting project that's related. I've been part of is an idea to deploy, I'll call it autonomous mobile batteries. So batteries charged up and outside of the community in areas where solar can be. So this would be in an area. This has been particularly in in a very dense city environment where you can't put a lot of solar. And so if you would put the solar farms be on the outskirts of town, and mobile batteries would be there charging and discharging out into the network where the power is needed. I mean, it would be large size batteries, it could even be smaller size, where they're dual purpose could be even transportation. So picking people so it's a mobile battery first and then. But that type of technology that Phil's talking about, would be able to map out that autonomously move those energy resources around in a way that makes it look like baseload, which is what we're trying to replace. You don't until you make it look like baseload and act like baseload. Yeah, be hard to get to those mandates.

40:59

But that's, that's part of the problem, though, with the way that people think about change, right? Lots of utilities have automation, automation to where a operator pushes a button, and XYZ happens. You start talking about autonomous operation that scares the heck out of people. Because right now, just about every operation that happens on the grid is initiated by a human, human in the loop. So you know, the outage management system, the energy management system, it comes up with a solution, and then waits for the operator to say, execute and go.

41:41

Yeah, it is still down to that switch. Yeah. You're spot on now. And it's Yeah, but but okay. I'm bullish on the future. I'm bullish on the ability for smart people to deal or to address these opportunities, these challenges within, and I believe, I believe, from a consumer perspective, either we will be unaware, which is good. That's not aware. My path. Okay, I'll give you an analogy. So this is what happened. It's those micro interruptions that when I was alignment, would drive customers crazy, like a blip. And the reason for that normally, before an analog clock, no big deal, don't they don't care. It's still three o'clock. But when we came to the digital clocks, and you have that little interruption, then everything in the house or blink clock, high voltage power outage, and and that's when everybody said, Well, I don't like this, what's going on with my power? So if we can make it to the point where people are, they don't see it. Right, then I think we're good. But but I think we can answer these questions. Mike, where do you see it sort of going? I mean, what do you put on your future hat? Let's, let's say what if dream? What do you think it's going?

43:07

Pay? Well?

43:08

Yeah, so first of all, it starts with something you asked earlier, which is what do we need to do? And then I think one of these things? Well, the domino, despite the market drivers we talked about, I still think there's a lack of education to consumer level on some of these challenges. So I think I'd say one of the big things we need to invest more on is consumer education. And when I say consumer, I'm talking about every type of consumer, not just residential, multifamily, but also corporations and commercial industrial on, on what this smarter grid to use a term that's over us can deliver in terms of benefits. past that, I think the future will look like a lot of what the lot of what the content delivery world looks like today, the Netflix streaming world where when they first started delivering content, they recognized it, you know, coming from a central server was not going to not cut the deal. I think now as we expand in the ways we've talked about, I think a tiered compute network is going to be what the future looks like where the right amount of compute sits at the right part of the transaction. And there's a platform layer, like what Phil's talking about. I think that orchestrates that. Who wins that role. I think it's still up for grabs. I think the utilities are still in the lead position, in my view, because one, the position they have today, is still pretty sticky through policy and regulation. I also think their brand is still valuable in this area around the new services that create, but also recognize the new market entrants that are coming into this space. There's super ambitious, so companies like shell and some of the big oil and gas companies gas and oil. Yeah, so that's so Who wins that platform play, I think is who the future winners are that. But I do think it's a big platform play that orchestrates this, this new energy system we're about to fill. What do

45:11

you think the future looks like?

45:14

The future is definitely digital. Gone are the days where the grid is stable because of inertia. Meaning that Yeah, most generation is done by a big spinning mass. And that mass wants to keep rolling on when something happens. We're going all inverter base now with wind and solar, which really needs some fast controls, to stabilize the voltage and, you know, keep things up. I think utilities, a lot of them have realized that they need to get there. Some are just beginning the journey. Some are still saying that's not gonna happen. But

46:00

yeah.

46:03

Okay, go right ahead and think that, yeah, so um, it's, you know, it's coming. And we need to educate everybody. The operator,

46:19

yeah. But here's the funny thing. And being in the, in the education, there's one, there's always going to be that percentage, and it's a high percentage, I really don't care. I just, I'm not going to listen, I don't care. I've got to dig this ditch out here. And I'm going to be doing that. But what's interesting, if we truly desire, a sustainable, nimble, you know, a system, the digital solution is the only way that we're going to get there. The physical solution that we have today does not allow for any of that, really, it sort of here, yeah, we'll let you have this little area here, whatever. But to truly transform and create something that is sustainable. It's a digital, it's a digital innovation type of conversation. You won't get there. And I guarantee you, they'll lose that battle.

47:14

And furthermore, Scott, it's a digital control at the edge. Yeah.

47:19

Oh, there you go.

47:20

Some some of these operations that are going to have to happen quickly. Yeah, there's not enough time to send those digital signals back to a central location, have it processed, and then a command sent out to do something. It's interesting.

47:34

Yeah, there's a Functional Safety component to that, too, that you mentioned, Phil, when powers come in the other direction. And there's an outage, you got to know if you're a lineman, what this what this, so the system has to automatically adjust for the safety components of this new system as well, immediately,

47:50

well, and then there's another big one is when you start decentralizing the system, and run these systems over networks, you need to pay a lot, a lot of attention to cybersecurity. That's,

48:07

that's a whole nother conversation you're spot on on that one.

48:10

It is and, and you can, in my opinion, triple the amount of compute power that you need to get this work done, when you lay out lay over the cybersecurity components on top of and so the, you know, the computers that they use today, these families, pretty gutless computers that can get the job done today. They're not going to get the job done when you lay cyber security over the top of it. Yeah. So

48:41

it's doable? are we are we you know, I mean, I'm talking to to the best in the business. Is it doable? Are we gonna get there? Whatever their looks like?

48:52

I think we are.

48:53

Yeah, I think a lot of it's being done. There's demonstrations of this. Again, it's not at scale yet. But yeah, I totally agree with Phil. It's not a technology problem to solve. Technology exist, to assemble the platform to deliver the services that we just described. It's your it's the people for sure. It's also the momentum behind the incumbent legacy system. There's so much investment in it all the way up and down. That it's hard. It's like moving a tuber aircraft carrier with a tugboat. It's just really hard to move it I think that's fucking about that

49:32

now, but it's gonna happen. It is and we're gonna have to wrap this conversation up. We've been going for about 45 minutes however, Mike, how does somebody get ahold of you?

49:43

Michael dot e dot Bates at Intel coms best.

49:46

Excellent. Phil.

49:49

Phil at Carey consulting. services.com is your last

49:54

no you I like your last name is it? Do you know the guy Hey, here's my resume. You two were excellent. This is this is just scratching the surface and I, and I can see additional conversations taking place as a result of this conversation. Because I mean, we haven't even talked about the regulatory component. We haven't talked about any other. I don't even have the answers. And and I like the fact that it does, it just gets down to people. And then once people make, make that decision, saying, Yeah, it's gonna happen, then things do happen. But you're right. Technologies technology. Just is,

50:36

yeah, you know, and and You're so right. When we were working on some of this new technology, we went out to one of the locations where the engineering groups were gentlemen, from the networking group, and myself, we went out to discuss IP addressing schemas with one of the substation engineers. And first of all, we started out with him, not trusting us, because we were from it. But by the end of the conversation, by the end of the conversation, he was ready to throw us out of his office physically. But a year later, he was one of our champions. Yeah. When he finally realized that this was coming, and that there was no way he was stopping it.

51:33

is a cool,

51:34

jump on board, baby are jumping the pool, the water's fine. It's all nice and cool and refreshing. I'm gonna have to do it. Alright. Thank you very much. Okay, listeners, thank you very much for joining the electric utility digital transformation journey. It's a mouthful, but it is what's taking place today. Oh, I forgot to ask you. It's global. we're not the only ones that have to deal with all of this is global maybe. And he says some extent or another, but it's a global challenge that I believe that technology can solve, but it gets up it goes right back to the people. All right. Thank you guys.

52:12

Have a good one.

52:16

You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.

52:24

All right. Big old shout out to Michael Bates, as well as Philip Carey. Both are just top notch professionals in the world of digital transformation for utilities. They're solving big problems. look them up, get out there. You'll have all the information out on industrial talk.com. Again, I want you to make sure that you put this on your calendar is the IoT solution, wrote Congress, as well as with industrial internet Consortium. great people, great organization, great event, that's October 5, through the seventh and beautiful Barcelona and the next one that we want to make sure that you put on your calendar is the manufacturing and technology show. And that is in Cleveland, Ohio, November 9 through the 11th 2021 put the Cleveland trip on your bucket list. You will not be disappointed for great food, great people call for you. Alright, people be bright, daring greatly. That's what industry is all about. Hang out with more bold, brave, Daring Greatly people and he will change the world no legacy thinking here. Ask the question. Why not? What if Enjoy your day.

The post Michael Bates with Intel and Phillip Carey are Talking About Utility Digital Transformation appeared first on Industrial Talk.

In this week's Industrial Talk Podcast we're talking to Mathew Sachs, SVP at CPower Energy Management about “Distributed Energy that Creates a Flexible and Resilient Power Asset Market”. Get the answers to your “Distributed Energy” questions along with Mathew's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!

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Company Website: https://cpowerenergymanagement.com/

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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

grid, utilities, people, distributed, Mathew, business, big, demand, generation, customers, energy, technology, industrial, devices, build, innovation, renewables, power, supply, bit

00:04

Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott MacKenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's go. All right, that is right. You're saying to yourself, Scott, what? Where am I? You're on the industrial talk podcast. This is a platform that celebrates you. You're an industry hero. You are

00:33

bold, you are brave, you dare greatly. you innovate like nobody's business. you're solving problems, right? And you're changing people's lives, and you're changing the world, each and every day. That, my friends, is why we celebrate you each and every day on this particular podcast. All right. In the old, industrial talk, hotseat, we've got a gentleman by the name of Mathew Sachs, right, please make a note of that. He's got a lot long title, SVP strategies and business development. The company is called C power energy management. We're going to be talking about distributed energy and much, much more, let's get a racket.

01:21

All right, a favorite food of mine, chips and salsa. I was just sort of chewing on some chips and salsa. And you're saying to yourself, Scott, Hey, your body is a temple. Now when it comes to chips and salsa. Oh, my gosh, that is absolutely delicious. Alright.

01:38

Let's talk about some events that are coming up that you have got to must put on your calendar. The first one is the digital summit. And that digital summit is brought to you by those incredible folks at IoT solutions World Congress. It is the 11th and 12th of May. And it you know what that does. It's featuring real professionals solving real problems, and leveraging innovation and technology to make that happen. Now you can use that, put it on a bumper sticker, I have no problem with that. But the real kicker is that, you know my backgrounds, utilities. So we've got, we've got a side event. So you go over there and you say, Alright, let's see what's what's happening. So you scroll on down side of it. And at 9am. Central Standard Time, we've got the Well, I'm leading a panel of great people, electric utilities, digital transformation journey. So how do you take all this wonderful digital transformation innovation stuff and apply it to that grid, apply it to Universal utilities, and beyond? So that when you walk into a room, you flip a light? It works? Yeah. Yeah. That's what we're all about. And the panel to click on in there. It's pretty cool. So it features a gentleman by the name of Phil carry. He is a consultant with mad skills, former employee of Southern California Edison, and he was leading the way. And the other gentlemen, Michael Bates. He's the GM energy with Intel. And we're talking once again, this electric utility, digital transformation journey, go again, go out to IoT solutions. World Congress, that's their URL, find the digital summit, sign up and learn something about how these leaders are moving forward with incredible solutions. All right, that the other event that I'm going to be at, I'm going to actually be in Cleveland for this particular event. It's the manufacturing and technology show. And it is, it's it's far off. So you've got a lot of time to plan for this bad boy, November 9 through the 11th. And then they have a virtual event, December 7, and eighth, this year. And again, you know, we were starting to sort of build on it. But I'm going to be broadcasting live from that particular venue. And highlighting once again, incredible people who are

04:19

well, leaders, innovators, trailblazers, second to none, making our lives better. Yeah.

04:29

manufacturing and technology show and the URL is m f, g, t, ch show.com. Now have it out on industrial talk, you'll be able to see it, you'll be able to find it. There's no excuse for you not going. That's it. That's That's all I want to say about that. Now. Now, let's get on with this particular interview.

04:49

As you all know, I geek out on this utility stuff. I don't know what the future holds, but it's exciting. There's some cool stuff happening and people like Mathews

05:00

And others are just coming up with incredible solutions that are pushing the boundaries of utilities and, and But once again, utilities want that stable

05:12

that that stable power. And they and they've got to work with a number of entities. It's a challenging time, and incredible opportunity for brilliant people like Mathew, brilliant people like Phil brilliant people like Michael to be able to just shine and really solve problems. Alright, distributed energy is really the top topics. But once again, we we cover pretty much everything. So enjoy the interview. Mathew, welcome to the industrial talk podcast. I'm excited for this conversation listeners. We're going to be talking a lot about I don't know, man, a lot of future thinking a lot of future compensation, we're going to be talking about distributed energy

05:56

outside of the fact that it's hard to say quickly, but distributed energy. How are you doing, Mathew? I'm doing good. Scott. Thanks for having me. I appreciate you taking the time out today to talk man. It's cool. It's cool. All right. For the listeners out there. Give us a little you know, background Luke 411 on who Mathew is. Yeah, sure I I've been in and around the energy space, or what I would call the new energy space for the last 15 years and they see new energy, they typically mean things like solar storage, things like that. And really building and investing in new companies. Today I lead strategy and business development for c power and really all that business mumbo jumbo In short, I'm helping find new ways to leverage our expertise and capabilities to grow and help evolve the grid we live in.

06:45

should mention you know, my previous experience spans from utilities to private equity and building some some solar companies up from the ground.

06:55

Man street cred, if you go out to his stat card out on LinkedIn, type in Mathew with one t don't come to me and say I can't find it because you're spelling it with two T's, one t s, a CA, CH s, pronounced as sack So go out there, you'll see a stack card it is impressive. c power.

07:16

What is that? It? Does that mean? Anything CPower? Or is it just the name?

07:21

See, power is just a name. We were built up over time through a bunch of mergers and acquisitions. Some of them started with a C. So I assumed this is all before my time here. But I assume that's where the C monitor came from. But, uh, but I still think it rings. Well, it does. It does. Now let me ask you this. Let's talk a little bit about distributed energy. Now. I've had a number of conversations with other utilities and other energy professionals. And one of the real challenges, of course, is how do you manage? How do you create that, that nimble that resilient that

07:57

to incentivize generation that is renewable on to a grid into a community and maintain that stability of that system? So with that, distributed energy, give us a little definition of that? Yeah, well, distributed energy is well, maybe going backwards. And second day, we traditional energy is generally done in a centralized form, or it's in big power plants that are typically far away from the demand. And then they're transported through big transmission lines into distribution lines into your home in your business.

08:32

Distributed energies where you move these generation, or other DVRs distributed energy resources into that distribution grid, often what we would call behind the meter or into your home or business and that's where things like rooftop solar or storage come in mind. And, and it is a challenge what you mentioned, I think there's a lot of challenging kind of orchestrating all these little devices to kind of played the symphony, if we could stick with that musical analogy for a while but, but it's a challenge that CPower and others try to help help keep up with, you know, in the end, there's one thing that has to happen in supply has to match demand on the grid, or the lights go out and no one's very happy. Yeah, don't don't do that. You know, everybody's in for renewables. And it's in rightly so it's all good. And, and whatever that portfolio mix looks like. But if, if my power it starts to flicker, and then I go to my digital clock on my microwave, and it's blinking at me,

09:33

no good, happy. Yeah.

09:36

So let's talk a little bit about where this is going. Why is this important? Where are we? I mean, it just seems like

09:43

seems like there's a lot of traction that has happened. A lot of things that are taking place.

09:49

Why is this important?

09:52

Yeah, I think there's there's a ton of reasons why it's important. One and maybe at the top. Both businesses and homes are adopt

10:00

During these DVRs distributed energy resources on their own, for all sorts of reasons, some because they want to be greener or cleaner, some because they want more backup, some because it offers better economic incentives for them

10:14

in terms of Bill savings, or what we do with CPower to help balance the grid with this, but, but they're already using them, if you have these things being deployed in mass already, why not use them to help balance the grid instead of going out and deploying, say, another Central Station power plant, that might be a lot dirtier, but but even

10:38

maybe more important, it only operates for a few hours a year when the demand is highest. So the idea is to leverage these assets to kind of well have the terminal become very familiar with over the last year, flatten the curve and flatten that demand curve in this case, and alleviate that generation. Let me ask you this, that the challenge I see is that you brought up this sort of centralized generation, long ago, it was relatively easy to match supply demand, because you had these centralized assets, big centralized generation assets, the design was to be able to ensure the customer, the end user, the manufacturer, the customers at one end, receive consistent, reliable power. Now, with a distributed energy model, you take that centralized, and they play a less and less role, but you're trying to create a baseload type of scenario for all of these disconnected or

11:42

these smaller generations. How do you do that?

11:46

Yeah, well, I think that's a great point. Many, many of these DDR zz that are out there are not meant to be baseload. There are some that are like a CHP type of plant. But for the most part, they're meant to, from a grid perspective, they're meant to alleviate the peak.

12:04

So things like storage, energy storage in your home or in your business, they're not for the grid, they'll never be a baseload acid, what they could do is when you have your hottest day of the summer, and everyone's using your AC and the grid at peak demand, instead of building the next new generator, he just didn't start discharging your batteries, these batteries in your home, which looks like to the grid, less demand. You know, an analogy

12:35

I kind of use sometimes is July 4, right by me, July 4 has a lot of traffic. If you said let's get rid of all July for traffic, we had to do that, which is the case with the grid, it has to state ballots. We said let's get rid of all this traffic on July 4, there's a couple of ways you could go about this, you could build a bigger highway, right? Very Kintu transmission generation, you could go let's say I'm going to take this three lane highway and make it a 15 lane highway, and you're never going to have any traffic on July 4, the problem is you're going to eat into all this land, it's going to be a little dirtier. Most of all, it's going to be empty for most of the year. So what we kind of do at sea power is and what you could do with distributed energies is kind of akin to that in the sense that you see, let's not build a 50 lane highway, that doesn't make a lot of sense. Let's pay people to leave a little earlier on July 4, maybe leave a little later or maybe not leave at all.

13:29

But that way, you don't need that big highway yet you still get rid of the traffic. Hopefully that made a little sense.

13:37

All on it. Absolutely. There's there's a way of being able to manage

13:42

and correct me if I'm wrong, Mathew, that demand side, there's there's things that can be done on the demand side of that, that equation, like there, there's probably assets or buildings or whatever it might be out there that can be controlled and managed in a way that benefits benefits the demand of that profile. Is there a way of being able to take sort of that

14:09

these these distributed energy blocks and aggregate them in such a way to create maybe a larger aggregation? Is there some way to be able to do that? Yeah, so the absolutely first you're definitely right. It's not just batteries here we're talking about buildings could be batteries in themselves, they take the fact you could cool them off earlier and kind of akin to leaving earlier in my traffic example. But um, but yes, I mean, what CPower really specializes is I would say aggregate and go one step further and optimize those assets. We stand between CNI customers, like large, big box players, heavy industry,

14:52

universities, hospitals, and pretty much all types of large CNI customers when I say CNI, I mean commercial and industrial. Yeah.

15:00

In the grid, and what we the products that we offer to the grid is really aggregations of this. So it no longer looks like a small, little one stop shop for for the the grid and now looks big. In fact, you know, across the country, we have about 4.2 gigawatts under management, which is the size of several very large power plants. So 4.2 gigs?

15:28

It is

15:30

it's bigger than a meg megawatt. Yes, it's considerably bigger than a megawatt. But yeah, absolutely. And so now you now you're able to take that

15:40

and aggregate it. And from the perspective of, let's say, managing the grid, you can control that in such a way that and like I said, I'm just sort of spitballing here,

15:53

you can control it in such a way that will benefit that grid in a positive way to match supply and demand some, and because it's distributed, maybe some part of that capacity doesn't need to be activated and southern, you have that capability of doing that. Yeah, that that's exactly what we do. And it's it's often what we would call capacity, or power, which is measured in megawatts, it also goes into things like ancillary services, like the frequency, when you have plugged in, everything's at 60 hertz, or your computer doesn't work, right. Sometimes these can be used to do things like that, as well. So it supports that too, as well, because it's

16:34

what was this, somebody was saying something about

16:38

the, the generation of the past, would ensure the quality of the cycles and the voltage and everything that you want. But the demand today is so important, because we're dealing with such, our technology is sensitive, that doesn't do well, when it's like 59 and a half doesn't like that, because everything is designed. So you. So you're able to do that, be able to aggregate that and be able to

17:08

relatively easy.

17:10

I don't know if it's easy. And you know, it's something to keep in mind that you have to do this with not interrupting our customers core business. So if you have something like a battery, or micro grid, that's easy, because it's a device that just dispatches and the only thing you'd see is a green light versus a red light, so to speak. But other customers could drop load on only the hottest, hottest day, they'll, you know, maybe move their temperature up or prequal. Their their store.

17:39

And those customers aren't going to be working for a frequency program that happens many more times a day. But so I think, you know, it's first you have to really understand what each facility's kind of potential is. Sometimes you call it the wattage potential.

17:57

And, but then you have to figure out the, you know, the right software to kind of orchestrate that back to the grid. And then you still have to win these grid programs. Some are open programs where you can bid like an auction. Some are highly negotiated bilateral types of deals, man, that's a dynamic system. That's dynamic. That's a lot of decisions going on. Do you guys work closely with the utilities? Yeah, we have a business that really focuses on winning those utility deals, and even utilities themselves. Some are more open programs where you can bid in, and others are, we like to say are close, but you have to bid to win that program.

18:37

Like an RFP type of supplier, yeah, we, we work very closely with them. And what we find they often value is the insight we have into our customers and what they could do that that's where, because you can imagine if we're in Region, let's say on the Northeast, and then we have a similar set of customers on the, the Northwest, we understand how much load and how dependable and how accurate because from a utilities perspective, dependability is everything you might get there, sometimes that doesn't count for them, you got to get there all the times because it will go back to the first thing you're not happy if you walk into your oven light flickering.

19:18

And that's a lot of pressure on you guys, because because utilities, they've been around for a long time. They use a lot of that, that technology, the way they operate, their system has been around for a long time since the beginning of power. And they've they've just the system has evolved into what it is today. However, they can always go back to Okay, now this is not working, our customers being impacted. We're going to pull back and we're going to do whatever is necessary. So pressure on you guys. It's definitely some pressure. We got to get it right you know you're in the energy business you there's not a lot of room to get it wrong and there's there's there's big problems. If you do

20:00

But it's also a growing problem for utilities and grid operators alike in the sense that we talked a little bit about renewables earlier. And we have these low cost renewables that are clean and generally great getting deployed in mass right now. But you know, if there's a downside of this, that they're different than the traditional generation, they're intermittent. In other words, when the sun goes behind the cloud, solar panels produce less than electricity. So now you have this growing need of where they used to have this, what we would call firm production, now you have this intermittent production. And we could go back to that kind of highway example, we could build this redundant generation system to pick up or we could have demand react a little bit more to supply, which, which, obviously, we're big fans of here.

20:47

That's a, that's a digitization that's an innovative solution to that, because you're talking old school thinking, and I remember going to the system operator, or whatever they call it at that time, many years ago, where the guy would just sit there, it's still very manual, I see my demand going up, I could sit there and turn my generation, I can meet it. And then if there's a huge peak, then I just turn on a turban, a, you know, g turban and start popping and getting that demand or the getting that supply up to meet the demand. But here, I mean, it's it's, it's a lot of little things. That's, that's a dynamic system. And and I don't know, and correct me if I'm wrong, Mathew,

21:32

it has to be done through technology. I don't think the human the human side could manage it that way.

21:39

Yeah, it depends on how big and small your pixels are. Like when when our industry started, it was about summer peaks and eliminate summer and you'd have some very big loads. And it used to be done with phone calls, hey, call up XYZ company, tell them to drop their load and go through to the curtailment plant. And we still do a bit of that. But but for the most part, it's gravitating all the way to much more automated to the case where a fair amount of our portfolios now will machine to machine people don't get involved. But you're spot on Scott.

22:11

What are the what are the roadblocks? I mean, it's going to happen, let's put it is happening now. It's going to be more and more. There's a lot of other dynamic challenges existing within the utility space beyond what you guys are doing, but it's all very dynamic. What what are the roadblocks, what are we talking about here? Yeah, it's a fair point. And maybe I should preface everything saying is I don't ever envision us moving to a fully distributed system that there will be central station generation and there will always be a need for that. But Roblox for us is part regulatory. We have regulators for utilities, and yes, those so called DSO or ISOs, ISOs. Yeah, ISO independent system operators. Yep. They, they're there. Their job isn't to experiment with new technologies, right, which To be frank, they're Their job is to ensure reliability the grid and ensure that the right economics and the fair economics so that they're not really incentivized to push new rules out in front of the technology. So I kind of sometimes liken that to a capacitor, you have everything getting shoved in there built up, then it just unload. So we just had one unloading fork, which is a the

23:28

federal regulator transmission. Yeah, exactly. But they came out with only going for 2222. But it basically says that, so ISOs, and artios need to

23:41

need to reward or compensate distributed energy devices in the same way that the central jet is.

23:50

See, I'm going to push back a little bit, here's the deal. I'm an ISO, or I RT or whatever, my I get paid, or I'll get penalized. I'm okay, over here. If I deliver my power in the right way. If I don't, I get penalized. So I'm not. And yet yet there seems to be a disconnect between the incentives to try to incentivize businesses to more to that distributive, renewable, whatever might be over here. And yet, these over here are saying, nah, ha, no, I tried that one time I got penalized and everybody hates me because of that, and customers are coming at you. So there's a real disconnect that happens there. I think that's a fair point and you know it which he need to get it right to start with like, you can't be this is forget about your oven in my life. This is people's hospital, their oxygen, other things that are alive that you know, there's these things need to work and there's critical, critical loads out there that have to work no matter what more than five nine accuracy. But you know, it has been proven

25:00

to work overtime and but this is kind of the this is this kind of the issue. You know, we were talking about challenges when do when is it the right time for that capacitor to load? And how far did these technologies have to develop? And how far can you develop them without kind of mass deploying them and you know, I think where the rubber kind of meets the road here is another kind of important thing to consider is economics. And you know, people can pay up to kazoo for their electricity either is probably the, one of the quicker ways to create unhappiness is to

25:36

have basic necessities are increased the cost of basic necessities, which I think electricity is so I think it's here. And you know, the funny thing is, is all this one of the big reasons that you see DRS being deployed, we talked about it just really briefly, is resiliency. We've seen our grids fail us over the last year, California, Texas, and you would, what does that do that drives more people to go out and get types of backups, batteries? backup, Jen, just Oh, yeah, Jen said, micro grids. And that's

26:08

as those are deployed, you're just increasing the opportunity to be able to use those for for other reasons at a low cost, because now you're not trying to incentivize their deployment, you're purely tap into something that's already there. Okay, so let's put your future hat on real quick. Where do you see it going? What, what do you think is going to happen in the future? Yeah, that's, um, well, kenaz, let's quickly refresher where we came from. It was really a supply driven network is what we've been talking about. In other words, if I flip my light switch on here in New York, somewhere, regeneration clicking on to supply the electron. So oversimplified example, granted, but it is still a real, it's a real time commodity, both both open. And that that's where we come in from. And now we're going to as you're seeing these distributed assets being called on to supply things more and more, and that's been growing it and that's bringing us to what I would call a two way or bi directional grid.

27:08

And we're seeing that happening more and more. And I think that's kind of where the beginning stages of that right now. And as we do this, we, companies like us are investing in what we call optimization technologies to improve this greater and greater, but we're also getting more and more data, and you're also getting more and more decentralized devices out there. So where does this all wind up? I don't know. But sometimes I like to think it will be like the Internet, and gravitate to what I would call an omni directional network. So in the internet, we all consume information, we read emails, webpages, we all produce information. So more emails, for sure, send me an email, you should see more, you should see some of the emails I get, I wonder how people consume or produce such large information. But and then they also store information, whether in the cloud or locally, right? And then if I send it, if I send it, if I sent you an email, today's got it in my route through Kansas, and tomorrow, it might route through Milwaukee. But the network's always, always adjusting. So as we have more and more of these nodes and these distributed devices out there, and better and better logic, does our electric grid eventually become omni directional like that? And it's interesting. Yeah. So far away? Well, no, you're the SVP of strategy and business development. That means you, you have this conversation quite a bit. Yeah, that's cool. Get paid to dream sometimes. And that's the best part of my job. But I'm telling you right now, it is it's important. You know, you're constantly educating, you're constantly collaborating and innovating. That's, that's what makes this time really interesting. From my perspective. I don't know what switch clicked. But all of a sudden, everything is possible. Everybody's saying, why not? Well, I'm gonna do it. And then the technology is sort of there to be able to do it. And it's just an interesting time. And I wish I was younger, because I think that

29:04

I don't know the future's bright. From that perspective. I think so too. And in, you know, in fairness, the grid hasn't changed much since salmon soul and gave 100. And something years ago, God founded it. So we're, we're overdue for somebody innovation here. We've changed how we do everything else there. But it's a super exciting time. And mostly because I think we can make a difference with what we do make make people's lives better.

29:30

And hopefully more affordable.

29:32

ASCII, and you will, it'll happen or it stops cold in a sense. It doesn't continue to move forward. It doesn't. If you don't have the right things in place to make it and to facilitate this new innovation, then, yeah, it's it's tough to keep on you know, doing that. But I think you guys are there and you understand what the drivers are. And as a consumer, I just want flip on my lights. It's on doesn't fluctuate. I'm happy.

30:00

As a clam, that's the simple reality that I'm I live under. That's right. You know, one of my mentors once told me a good analogy are those with solar but he's,

30:11

he said, Mathew, people don't go solar to save money. And he said, you know, they'll, they'll go solar to be green, they'll go to be tech forward or go to,

30:20

they'll go for many other reasons for some resilient power on their house. However, you need to save the money. Because if you don't save the money, they'll be embarrassed when they tell their friends. And that's, that's so wisely. Not sooner. No, that's true. And but none of these solutions work if they're not economic. Yeah, you're you're spot on. Alright, how do people get ahold of you? They might have said, Gosh, darn it, that Mathew with one T is amazing. I want to get a hold of them.

30:48

Well, I guess the best way hit me up on LinkedIn. Or I tried my best to get in touch with folks or I'd read out my email here, but it's it's quite long. So you might do better on LinkedIn. But don't forget the one T. That's exactly right. Ma t h e. W SACH. S is his last name. sax is how you spell it. Yeah, reach out. Let me see. Apparently there are other Mathew sacks out there.

31:18

I'll be the one with C power with a comic. Like, put a little comment in there and see power. You're good. All right. Hey, you were wonderful. I'm telling you, man, futures in good hands with people like you and see. See power and others. I like it.

31:33

I had a good time, Scott. This is great. Yeah, cool stuff. All right, listeners, we're gonna wrap it up on the other side. So if you're not, we're going to be able to provide once again, how to get ahold of Mathew, the wonderful people at C bar. And, you know, thank you for joining. You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.

31:58

All right, thank you very much. Mathew sacks. Thank you very much. Please know, it's only one T and Mathew and saxes, sh ch s, look at his stat cart reach out there on LinkedIn, you will not and I'm telling you, you will not be disappointed. Reminder, again, remind,

32:19

put this on your calendar may 11. Through the 12th Digital summit brought to you those by those incredible people at IoT solutions, World Congress, they're passionate about really

32:30

leveraging innovation and technology to solve problems. And everybody that's in that particular business summit, powerhouses, I'm just saying. And then the other one, of course, it's the manufacturing and technical show. Technology show, November 9 through the 11th 2021. Make a note. It's all out there, industrial talk.com. All right. Once again, hanging out with people who are bold, brave and daring greatly, and you're going to change the world, like all of these people that are at these conferences.

33:00

Thank you. Thank you for joining and supporting the industrial talk. We're gonna have a great conversation.

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