On this week's Industrial Talk we're onsite at Distributech 22 and talking to Ty Roberts, Vice President of Product Marketing at Itron, Inc. about “The community impact and education of changes in the utility market”. Get the answers to your “Utility” questions along with Ty'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 2023. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy!

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://www.itron.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

utilities, community, industrial, ty, conversation, deliver, absolutely, ratepayer, collaborate, broadly, services, digital transformation, expertise, electrification, nimble, industry, people, talking, scott, data

00:00

Industrial Talk is brought to you by Armis. Yes, you were 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. 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

00:54

Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott Mackenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professionals 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 hardhat grab your work boots, and let's All

01:12

right, welcome to industrial talk date three DistribuTECH, Dallas, Texas, and it is wrapping up we are the realm there's maybe 27 and a half people on the floor. And this floor is huge. And so we we just had a man, it's been a absolute blistering pace at this particular event. And you are joining industrial talk the number one industrial related podcast in the universe tie. It's backed up by data. So don't even come to me and say, Scott, that doesn't make sense. It's data. It's science. All right. And once again, you have joined the ever-expanding industrial ecosystem of problem solvers in the hot seat. We've got Ty Roberts, Itron as the company. We're going to be talking about community involvement. And I like them. That's a dead sexy conversation around let's get going. Ty Good morning, Scott. Hey, thank you for making time in your schedule. My pleasure. Yeah, listeners, it's around 530 In the morning time. This is because Ty's real busy and it's tough. He's,

02:16

he's anything for you. Anything.

02:18

Anything for me? Do you have any good conference? Do you think it was good?

02:21

I was fantastic. I think just being out if there had been 27 people, like you'd said, it would have been wonderful to have face. To see 10,000 people out was absolutely fantastic. Having conversations again,

02:35

face to face. Did you run into people that you only knew virtually?

02:41

Many? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. People who?

02:45

You're tall. There was one guy just said, Holy cow, man. Your gigantor?

02:52

No, it was amazing.

02:54

Yeah. And I think the conversations have been I have come to realize that there's good and bad with a pandemic, and Bad's obvious, the good is that I think that there are a lot more companies that are saying, We got to collaborate. And in the world of utilities, who will have whatever grid management or world of generation, whatever. That is so important to collaborate. One of the issues that I always I think I mentioned a couple of times on a number of conversations, is this. Utilities, the activities of utilities are pretty much unsung. It's, it's binary. You deliver power, you're okay, I'm not thinking about. But if you don't deliver power, and it's interrupted, and it's flickering, or whatever it is, I'm mad. It's like, Yes, I'm okay. I'm mad. But, but the masses, the communities don't understand. How do we how do we begin to broach that subject?

03:50

It's a fabulous question. I know lots of utilities are wrestling with it and lots of our customers included and in that so because you're absolutely right that they do a fantastic job at what they do. And you can think of the lights went out six months ago for five minutes it's it hardly ever happens. And and and it's an amazingly complex task to deliver gas electric and water. But that happens. It happens by seamlessly for us every day. I think where we've had a number of conversations with utilities on on, especially in the sort of the industrial IOT space is what utilities have a real expertise that is managing large complex systems to deliver services outside and broad the span their entire community or communities. And, and managing and maintaining that infrastructure is a real expertise that utilities have and I did a fireside chat a couple of days ago with Sam DuPont from Baltimore Gas and Electric talking about this very thing were being able to leverage that experience in the properties and utilities are trusted to do to do that. What other things can the utility provide to their community beyond just sort of their their core business and their core commodity of the day that they deliver. So we know that many of our customers are working within their communities to provide other services like, like smart lighting, like sensing, flood sensing was one that Sam talked about a fair bit. But other things that involve, you know, connected solutions and and bringing data back into a back office and processing and then sending that data somewhere else and integrating to other police forces and other arena first responders, other other parts of the answer the full community infrastructure, and this is something that utilities are good at it, that outreach of going out in the community and engaging with them or engaging with other other utilities that are in their service territory. So electric utility, collaborating with the water utility, for example, to say, Hey, I've got a smart metering network up already communications in place, it won't be that big of a deal to add your water meters to that same network, and we can perform the reading for you. We have a few utilities who are starting to really explore that opportunity. And I think the challenge that, that so many utilities have is is the, from a regulatory perspective, they have a little box and you guys got to do what you do you have assets that are paid for by by your constituents through a rate base. And and that's all you can use it for, I think there's starting to be some realization with different governments, regional governments and utility Commission's around the country that asking everybody to put in the same kind of infrastructure, even small utilities that just don't have the, you know, the capital or the expertise to do it. It's a real barrier to entry in a barrier to providing digital services to their citizens. So that tension is an interesting one. And we're seeing a lot more collaboration between utilities between these villages and communities. And we're seeing some easing of the sort of the regulatory concern and even beyond certain certain regulators saying, Yeah, actually, you guys should be collaborating, cooperating, we can't pay for everybody to put all this expensive stuff. And so let's reuse what we can.

07:12

So it's interesting, because many industries are going through this digital transformation, it just is one of the most challenging I you know, I've talked to manufacturers, I've talked to oil and gas, and it's sort of a different conversation. But utilities is just, it's a challenge in it. And you're dealing with a lot of legacy thinking like this is how we've operated this system for 90 years. And we have this and this and this. And now there's this pressure to to with renewables, and it's been going on, but it's still was consistent with, alright, your generator, get it on the transmission line, it was still very linear in that case. Now we're talking distributive. And again, if we want to succeed, from my perspective, we want to succeed with this journey for the shuttle, we have to be very pragmatic. We have to communicate, we have to do all of that. Because if the community if the businesses are saying, I can't do business here, I can't I can't live here because the my power goes out. I get it, but it says it's summertime, I can't do it. Right. So but but it's, but the reality is it's going to happen. Right?

08:23

Absolutely. And I think I think the wave that everyone I think sees and feels, how big it is, and when it's gonna hit as the, I think is the thing that not everyone was quite realized yet, but what electrification with electric vehicles, you know, with with the commitments that that that communities and regional governments are making to, to carbon reduction and electrification, we see, of course, all the automakers are electrifying their portfolios and their fleets. That is going to require a massive amount of engaged community engagement. Because homes, just the amount of new of new demand that's going to go on to onto electric network is enormous. We cannot build enough generation in anything like the time or ever, frankly, to serve all of that load. If so, how it gets managed is going to have to be absolutely key to the success of putting in charging stations and all the places that they have to get put in so that will absolutely have to be driven by conversations between the utility and and businesses and government etc.

09:26

My ears bleeding. I'm telling you, there's so many pieces and parts and pointy ends and rounded it it is but it's exciting. The challenge I see. I'm one of many don't get me wrong here. Challenges are the it's like I'm a utility. I'm not I'm not the utility next door to me, I have a different journey. And that utility has a different journey and that and we're on a different path and and what's priority to me is not a priority you and then there's no real quote standardization. shown right? With all of this stuff. And, uh, somebody's going to have to, and and because utilities tend to be very pragmatic, you know, nobody, nobody wants to, I'll go first I'll go first. But then there are utilities that do that, and then they're gonna blaze that path. But then again, it's it's, it's an IT, how do we inform the community because it's just sort of an interesting, and I'll be, I'll be blunt, I never listened to anything that comes from my utility. It's just like, Hey, who are you? Okay, great. Right? How do we do that? How do we how do we do that?

10:40

Well, I think there has to be concerted effort by utilities, and many of them are doing this on on community engagement as a strategy and as an as an expertise that they build and staff and, and develop a plan around because it's that that engagement with electrification? Absolutely, but also with the opportunity to provide additional services. It's very real, and it's tangible. And, and, and they do have an expertise that can be that can be leveraged so. But going into the community, I think not being seen as the as the sort of the big bully, and here's our way and you are ratepayer, right. But understanding the problems the community is having, how can we solve this for you, and here's some options that we have. But that's, again, Sam from from eg need describes it really well is that you have to come in with 80% of the solution, but not 100%. Because you have to have room to tweak and adjust it because communities have different needs. And, and and you have to be collaborative, but you also can't come in with a blank slate and say, Alright, where do we begin?

11:48

Yeah. There will be a massive flatlining. But what I what I do see, and I think that it's going to take time, but But you know, the old way of thinking is that I deliver power, I do it reliably, do it safe. And that's my role and responsibility. There it is. But now, I think the the community as a whole is becoming more comfortable with sort of cafeteria type of approach to business and everything so so I'm able to sort of say, well, I don't want that. But I can, I can do that. And then that's cool. But I only want 50 That's what this whole digital thing. It gives me options that, but that's an education. It's like, hey, here it is, you can do this, this and this. Pretty cool. Right? beforehand. You couldn't do it? That's and that's the digital conversation. Yeah,

12:40

that's right. When I think and I think where utilities are looking to get to is, there's there's a ton of opportunity out there, there's a ton of challenges that you can solve with cool sensors, and data and providing early warning for lots of things. And there's lots of little business models that need to be tested. Are they going to scale, then are they gonna be broadly needed? And broadly deployable? I don't know. So I think the challenge now is when the opportunity is, let's test let's be quick and nimble and test. What are the services that people need? And and and are they broadly required? Because like, what, what, what utilities we really good at is, if it's, again, if it's a broad need managing big, large solution base, doing that reliably. That's exactly what they do is the bread and butter. So the little nice things and customization. That's not what utilities do. But if they can find here, the x number of things that are broadly applicable, let's focus on how

13:33

can can you in this digital transformation, be confident that maybe the price could go down? Or is that sort of one of those, hey, if you do this, this is your sort of price, but whatever it might be, but I think that that's a pretty good thing. If we can do that.

13:53

Yeah, for sure. What I think that that's, especially in terms of, I mean, so much of what utilities focus on and do and so much of their investments go to producing their own, you know, operational expenses, which is what you know, that's the stuff that we all have to pay for, as ratepayers. So that is always, always top of mind for them. So

14:12

that whole conversation around the regulatory environment, the rate case, that has to change that has, and when you said nimble, I'm thinking to myself, nope, I never said utility, right, nimble in the same sentence. It says, but it has to happen. And then when you start talking about the regulators, they have to rethink That's right. They have to figure out whatever that needs to be. That's right. Those are tough. It is tough, and I the tough, tough stuff. A lot of people get a hold of your

14:45

tie. They can reach me on my email at TYT dot Roberts at Itron.com.

14:52

That was a great conversation. Thank you. I like that. I I don't know what to do. It's way above my paygrade not yours. is our square in the middle of it, you better have that pay grade. I'm just that plucky sidekick All right listeners, you're gonna have all the contact information for Ty out on industrial talk.com industrial talk.com. So if you're not reach out to this gent, because and I try. I mean, they're really doing some great stuff out there. And I think it's it you guys are unsung heroes. How about that? The unsung heroes of utilities. All right, thank you once again for joining the industrial talk. We will wrap it up on the other side. So stay tuned, we will be right back.

15:37

You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.

15:42

That was Ty Roberts Itron is the company Thank you very much for joining industrial talk and for your support, go out to Ty robbers. It's all out into industrial talk.com. His stead card, his LinkedIn stack card is right there. You just go out to industrial dock, you find di you click on it, boom, you're in a stat card, and you're reaching out to him because you need to if you're in the energy business, yeah, you need to reach out to Ty if you're in the utility business. Yes, if you're in the whatever business, I think he's a great guy to connect with because he gets it. Yep. That was a great conversation over there. That was DistribuTECH 22. DistribuTECH is right around the corner 23. We're going to have some more great conversations from this particular event, and much, much more. All right, go out to industrial talk. You're saying to yourself, Scott, how do I get engaged? I'll teach you go out to industrial talk. And I said, Hey, Scott, how do I connect with you? It's easy to just go out, you can go to my LinkedIn stat guard out there, and you can reach out to me either way. We need to tell your story. If you're an industry, you absolutely tell your story. And if you're making it, you're solving problems, and you can help people solve problems, companies, manufacturers, you name it. We need to talk to you. And we'll just feature you out on industrial talk, the number one industrial related podcast in the universe, backed up by data. All right. Thank you once again for joining. Thank you for your support. Be bold, be brave, daring greatly. I say it all the time because you are hanging out with people like Ty and you're gonna change the world, which you are. So thank you very much. We're going to have another great conversation shortly. So stay tuned.

The post Ty Roberts with Itron appeared first on Industrial Talk.

On this week's Industrial Talk we're onsite at Distributech 22 and talking to Wayne Dias, US Head of Grid Simulation Software and Ming Ho, Director of UX Design and Innovation at Siemens about “Improving the User Experience with Grid Simulation Software”.  Get the answers to your “Grid Simulation” questions along with both Ming's and Wayne'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!

MING HO'S CONTACT INFORMATION:

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

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

Company Website: https://www.siemens.com/global/en.html

WAYNE DIAS' CONTACT INFORMATION:

Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wayne-dias-bsc-mba-143bb52a/

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

cloud, wayne, utility, industrial, happening, grid, siemens, scenarios, simulation, data, simulate, software, system, ers, ming, silicon valley, renewable resource, talking, conversation, innovation

00:00

Industrial Talk is brought to you by Armis. Yes, you were 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. 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. Hi, guys, once again, thank you very much for joining industrial talk. We were on site at DistribuTECH. You might have heard the other great conversations we were having there. You know, you just got to come and learn with me. I'm, I'm just a sponge, and I get to learn from all of these incredible leaders. Speaking of which, we've got Minho, and Wayne Diaz, Siemens as a company. We're talking about cloud, we're talking about user experience. And I'm telling you right now you need to be engaged. You need to collaborate and you need to educate like, like me. Yeah. Industrial talk platform for education and highlighting industry leaders like me and Wayne, we are industry. It's the human side. So let's get cracking with the conversation.

01:50

Here's a cool, thank you for being flexible. Yeah, let's do this. You guys having a good conference?

01:59

Really good. Lots of good foot traffic. It's busy. So yeah. So far.

02:06

Is this the first conference guys getting went back to sort of face to face?

02:10

Yeah. Second conference? Yeah.

02:13

Was it was it stunning to see those virtual friends that you created, and then all of a sudden see him in person?

02:18

Yeah, they completely look different, too.

02:21

I used to wear a wig. So when everybody says, anyway, all right. For the listeners out there, we've got a little set, meaning give us a little background on who you are.

02:33

Had user experience and strategic innovations with air gap Well, or products within Siemens. It sounds like a strange combination. But what we believe in is to put user experience and customers users at the center of all of our students innovations going forward?

02:52

Does that sound stupid to me? I'm all about the experience. I'm telling you. Yeah. Big time.

02:59

And one of those is new offering this year, which is energetic he MDM SAS. So

03:06

we'll talk about that big gun. Yeah, we'll talk about All right, Ryan, your next background. Wayne, Wayne, hey, work with me. I'm a professional here on this podcast, not just kidding.

03:19

Okay, so Wayne Dias, I run the grid simulation software business here in the US. When I say grid simulation, anything that and everything that goes on in production or online on the grid needs to be simulated needs. We run a lot of what if scenarios, so our software suite at Siemens provides that infrastructure that support to basically prior to integrating anything onto the power grid, we get to simulate it, and then it finally goes into operations.

03:50

I gotta pull on that thread, when we start talking to simulation is simulations. It sounds like data, right? It sounds like the collection of data, it sounds like historical information to be able to try to simulate future events and all of that stuff. How does? How does your platform take into consideration the historical events to simulate future?

04:14

Absolutely. So when I say when I say simulation, I'm talking more grid planning. So I'm looking at various different scenarios, scenarios that were traditionally just looking at. How do I expand the power system? How do I integrate more generation onto the system? How do I integrate distributed generation renewable right, in other words onto the system? And prior to that coming online? How do I really run various different what if scenarios to see whether or not that's going to help the system? Is it going to hurt the system? Do I need reinforcements on the system?

04:51

Do it let's say you have a scenario as simulation that for renewable whatever, you know, external generates ation. And if it is deemed to, you know, hurt the system does the does the utility have the option to say, hey, we'd love to permit it, but you can't, because we don't have the resources to be able to, you know, fortify this, you know, wherever we're at, does that happen?

05:17

It does happen. But then we also complemented with additional technology and what we call non wired alternatives, alternatives, which is not just reinforcing the transmission lines, the power lines or transformers, it's more like, maybe I can alleviate that issue with a renewable resource. Battery, maybe. So those are some of the things simulation tools help simulate and plan for

05:45

Yeah, you're not going to shut them down. Yeah. Go over here. Our simulation says you go over here. So maybe talk about, let's say this cloud offering give us a little reason why, why that's important to utilities. But Cloud

06:00

offering there's different types, but specifically the software as a service. One of our really good customers Silicon Valley Power, they came to us. Hola. Hola. What power company? Silicon Valley Power. SVP,

06:15

I have never heard that one. Really? Yeah. Isn't that PG and E? No way. It's a different.

06:24

It's, it's a separate utility.

06:27

Worked in Southern California. And I know PG&E. I have never heard that one.

06:32

No, this is Northern California. Completely different animal. Yeah. Center Silicon Valley. So we're talking about Santa Clara, California, over 50 data centers they produce or they manage 1% of the power consumption within California. Huge, yet a very, very small real estate area, real small area. So some biggest data centers of the world, Intel, Nvidia, and all of those high tech data center. They're all coming in using Silicon Valley Power. So So why does it want to go to software as a service? Well, number one is software service allows us to be able to upgrade them and provide them with new features. So it's evergreen, it allows them to Yes, on the upgrade all that complexity,

07:36

it's seamless, it's invisible. That's what's I like it.

07:39

Yeah, yeah. And the second part of it is, they're fairly small. So they want to have their staff really focus on the core business. And they don't want to have to deal with all the IP issues, security and disaster recovery. And the list goes on and on. If you think about it, you have to own the hardware. Yeah, manage the hardware. Yeah, everything that happens, technical monitoring, performance monitoring, and the list again, goes on and on. So as a software service just makes a lot of sense for them. And thirdly, there is a financial benefit to it, because it's a subscription service. So it scales as you as you go up. And you don't have to have all that capex, although those licensing charges right up front, you can essentially amortize that and you have more predictability in terms of spending your expenditures.

08:41

So what's when do we say, the SAS? What services are in the cloud that you're providing this utility?

08:52

So in this particular case, is meter data management? Aha, so is smart meters. Yeah, so you have your advanced metering infrastructure. So now those guys are also going to cloud. And so we're sort of also arriving partway, because if you think about it, you have all your meters across all this geographical area, they're coming in through a communication network. And so they're already coming one way or the other through some communication infrastructure, which is almost in the cloud. Now, traditionally, those go on premise and then go through the meter data management system. We're just offering perhaps a more efficient path, and being able to bring all that data in, but also to be able to smooth that, that whole experience.

09:41

So these are services that are not you don't have you're not latency

09:48

dependent. Correct. That's not That's not real time. Yeah,

09:52

you don't need to whatever edge or whatever you want to do it that requires some type of That's right. But why again, now you have you have a bigger challenge, because here's, here's what I see. I see that your simulation, there's a lot of external generation coming on. There's a lot of distributed solutions out there. And and I, quite frankly, being an old, crusty utility guy, um, pretty much around the centralization of power and then the transmission and then that's it, and this whole dynamic grid is a bit can you run those simulations? I mean, it's happening. Right. And, and utilities? I would imagine

10:35

need it. Absolutely. So, you know, as the grids are getting smarter, right, more and more DRS coming online, they're also

10:42

getting more complicated. D ers gonna for the listeners? What does that say

10:45

distributed energy resources.

10:47

Thank you very much.

10:48

So as more and more distributed energy resources are coming online, the power system is getting more complicated, given it is getting smarter, but it's getting a lot more complicated and

11:00

you're you're underselling that. It's super complicated. It's your your, your soft pedaling, and quite frankly,

11:06

you know, but it's a start, right. But as what we're seeing as Siemens over the next five years, we're looking at 60% of that external renewable resources being implemented onto the system. The planners traditionally would run scenarios, will be snapshot scenarios basically looking at the peak load off peak load generation at a certain peak. But today, with all these D ers coming, there's a lot of volatility, right, this volatility due to that we might need additional scenarios, we might need to run more extensive snow,

11:43

my you know, that's the case, we because, you know, the market just continues to push the envelope and we're gonna we're gonna have a grand old time.

11:51

You're right, Scott, we definitely need to run additional scenarios, which we're not, not your traditional scenarios, right. So one of the examples I'll use is time series profile analysis. What is the grid doing at 8am? What is the grid doing a nine, what's on a 10? Now, before we would look at, okay, so my load Southern California for an example is happening at 4pm. But with D ers, that 4pm might not be valid, right? I might need to consider 12 o'clock as a as a problematic time. So what we're trying to drive additional studies, but these additional studies cannot be done on existing infrastructure. I cannot run those studies on my existing hardware on my existing laptop because I will burn it. It folks are talking to us saying our engineers, our planners need new hardware has an impact to OpEx. Right. So that's why our tool pssc transmission planning tool is now in the cloud. You know, it is a tool used all across the US. It's nothing new to the existing transmission planners, operations planners, long term planners, it's basically giving them the avenue to now take their analyses, analyses that may have taken three weeks to complete can now be done in three hours, leveraging the cloud, that's

13:16

pretty doggone cool. That's cool. But in a related use case, coming from the other side, from the distribution side, as you're doing some of those simulations, it's really important to be able to use real meter data as opposed to load profiles that are just copied over. Because then you can now really localize what's happening at the distribution grid and be able to do optimize planning. So yeah, again, with Wayne and his group, you know, we're getting together and trying to solve those problems.

13:49

I'm telling you, it's way above my paygrade. Guy, good, good job, it's going to only get more and more challenging, with a lot of changes that are taking place. One of the areas that we don't talk enough about, or discuss, for one reason or another. I know one reason, nobody wants to talk about it, but we're going to talk about it. And that is this is critical infrastructure stuff. This is impacting a lot of how do you secure? How do you ensure the security of let's say, these systems? Right,

14:23

great. Great question, man. If you don't mind, I'll take that. Sure. And then we'll hear he just stole it from you. So basically, as far as security that is, Scott, one of the things that we get asked all the time.

14:37

Yeah, but nobody wants to talk about it. Right. You know, it's like we're talking about it. Nobody wants to say, you know, I'm having a problem with my security and I had a breach coming up at night. Nobody's saying that. There's a saying, hey, I need to talk security. You are having problems. No, I'm not having a problem. No

14:51

critical infrastructure. Right. So how I've, how I look at it is do you have an online banking account? Yep, right? That's already in the cloud, your buddies in the cloud your financial snapshots in the cloud as an individual, right. But let's take it a step further. at Siemens, we're not just a great software company, we're also supporting and have a team of cloud experts, a cloud infrastructure team that is certified to run a certified with various cloud compliance agencies, I'll name a couple, ISO 27 001 is one of them. FedRAMP is another one, so and etc. And we're working with our regional reliability coordinators should drive that security for the right, I'll share a very, very good example. For me, I come from the grid planning the offline data side of the house. But we do have a customer or two that actually have their online operational data in Siemens is cloud infrastructure. So we provide the one stop shop for this utility that basically has all of their operational data in the cloud. So if operational data is in the cloud, Siemens is handling the cloud, we are cloud compliant, our whole team of cloud experts are there, you know, taking in operational offline data is just a no brainer.

16:16

But the reality is, it was just sort of lay it out there. Yeah. The I believe the cloud is fine. I don't Okay, because I got smart people like you. And I think that if utilities and other companies and not just utilities, although we're at the show, I think it's it has to happen. I think it's just when you when you have a tsunami of data, and you got all this stuff to analyze, you got to do that. It's insecure, right? me it is?

16:46

Well, it's gonna happen,

16:48

when it's gonna happen, you might as well figure out how to participate.

16:52

So it really boils down to if you're doing it yourself, can you catch up, right? All sorts of patches, all sorts of, you know, all this different software that's happening, right. And so from utilities perspective, you can either have your own set of experts, and many of them do, yeah, but ultimately, you have all these enterprise systems. And they're all using different patch levels, with all sorts of different components and things of this nature. And so that's why software is a service built on top of a good infrastructure, well architected, that's one side of it. And as Wayne's talked about, from a standards perspective, from a process perspective, being world class and being working with agencies around the world, and just being on top of everything, yeah, that's really a

17:45

part of it. Yeah. Come on. You guys are living a dream. I mean, it's cool stuff I got out of the utility business. And then now I'm regretted it. That's the way so if I was a professional, and I said, My gosh, Ming and Wayne are talking my talk, I want to cheer up with them. How do they get ahold of you Ming?

18:08

Ming got home@siemens.com. And he went

18:11

weaned DSDS with an s@siemens.com.

18:15

All right, you're saying you're so Scott, I want to do, I didn't get that email address. It's going to all be out on industrial talk.com you so you need to connect with these jets. They know what they're doing. They're going to make your life. They are trusted professionals in this world. That is the limit. That's alright, once again, we're broadcasting from distributech 22. Dallas is the place you can hear the buzz going on in the background solutions. And problem solving happening today. Put this on your bucket list big time. Thank you very much for joining industrial talk. We are going to wrap it up on the other side. Do not go away. We will be right back. You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network. All right, that was me and Wayne's excellent industrial adventurer incredible conversation, absolutely connect with them reach out, you got to know more about what's happening within the utility market. There are two jets that are prime for connecting with so do so I'll have all the contact, LinkedIn contact information out on industrial talk. Now, I've been talking a lot about the speed at which this technology and innovation is going. The only way that you can keep up with it is of course you got to constantly just pursue education. And you got to connect with people like me and Wayne to get the latest get that trusted information about what is happening in the market and how you and your company can take advantage of all of the wonderful innovation that is taking place out there. It is a must come go to industrial talk. Learn with me. I'm not the sharpest. tool in the shed. But boy, I'll tell you, I get access and talk to the best industrial leaders from around the world. Join me we are industry. follow that hashtag out there. Never miss a doggone episode or conversation or whatever. But that is important. Educate, collaborate, and innovate are key to your success. All right. Again, we're gonna have another great conversation from distribute tech. You can count on that. So be bold, be brave, dare greatly hang out with me and Wayne, and you're going to change the world. Thank you very much for joining industrial talk. So stay tuned for the next conversation.

The post Ming Ho and Wayne Dias with Siemens 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

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

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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!

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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 Scott Reese, CEO of GE Digital about “Expediting the Energy Transition by Leveraging Powerful Software”.  Get the answers to your “Energy Transition” questions along with Scott'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!

SCOTT REESE'S CONTACT INFORMATION:

Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottreese1/

Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ge-digital/

Company Website: https://www.ge.com/digital/

PODCAST VIDEO:

THE STRATEGIC REASON “WHY YOU NEED TO PODCAST”:

OTHER GREAT INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES:

NEOM:  https://www.neom.com/en-us

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

ge, problems, cloud, utilities, scott, industrial, software, asset, computable, world, transition, grid, manufacturing, event, people, power, talking, broadcasting, happen, solution

SPEAKERS

Scott MacKenzie

00:00

Industrial Talk is brought to you by Armis. Yes, you were 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 the insights into what is connected, go to armis.com Find out more, you will not be disappointed. 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. Thank you very much for joining industrial talk on this episode, we are broadcasting from distribute tech 22. And it was just an incredible event highlighting some of the great leaders in the utility space, and really pushing the envelope on what is taking place and transforming the utility business. We're speaking with Scott Reese. He is the CEO of GE Digital. And I'm telling you, he brings the truth bombs. But before we get into that conversation, I want you to put a couple of events on your calendar, the first one, and I'm broadcasting there. The first one is IMTS, this is in Chicago, it is September 12. Through the 17th, which it looks at, if you're in the manufacturing space. Yeah, that's where you want to go a lot of great is a huge, huge, so we will be broadcasting their industrial talk. So if if you're going, you know, reach out to me, let's get something scheduled for on site. The other events that I'm going to is this is the American manufacturing strategy Summit. This is October 11, through the 12. This is in Houston. And again, this is going to be a great event. If you're in manufacturing. Yep, check it out. And don't be afraid I'll be there too. And, and if you're thinking about being in the Houston area, yes. Look me up. And the last one that I have on your calendar, this would be the European manufacturing strategy Summit. This is, again, going to be a great one. This is in Berlin, and the date is November 7 through the ninth. So put those on your calendars. All right, let's get with the conversation with Scott Reese. Enjoy the conversation.

02:41

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 good on your hardhat grab your work boots. And let's get

02:58

right once again, welcome to industrial talk the number one industrial related podcast in the universe. Scott, That's data that's just pure data that backs that up, just FYI. Don't Don't don't start chirping and saying, Hey, that's impossible. It's got no it's not. It's not. And we celebrate industry professionals all around the world. Because you're bold, you are brave, you dare greatly. you innovate. You solve problems, you're making my life better, and you're making the world a better place to live. Thank you very much for what you do. And it is an ever expanding industrial ecosystem that is just including a lot of problems. So I was like Scott right next to me. Problem solvers. Yes, it is industrial talk. All right, we're broadcasting prop distributech 22, Dallas, Texas is the location. It is a great place. A lot of wonderful vendors happen in here. But we're going to be talking to Scott, he's in the hot seat. Energy Transition. From the software perspective. GE is the company. Let's get cracking. Yeah, that's Jusco. I'm worn out. It's all about you. Just start talking

03:57

at Great. Get the chance to connect with a fellow Scott world's biggest problems. That's right, what we're doing to make things better.

04:03

You're gonna notice listeners right off the bat that we're both really good looking. I love your hair. We go to the same barber house, Ted. Got that. So anyway, give the listeners just give us a little background little 411 on who you

04:18

are. Sure, Scott Reese, kind of a software nerd that spent a lot of time in manufacturing. So a lot of passion for all things manufacturing. But over the last decade or so really spent my time moving all things manufacturing to the cloud, and realizing you know, the power of the cloud and what it can do to tackle some of the big problems. And you're now at GE looking forward to doing that same thing around the energy transition.

04:43

See, that's interesting with about the cloud that there was the cloud is powerful. The cloud allows businesses to do a lot of things that that we weren't able to do not that long ago. And then all of a sudden Cloud was there. And it's like, all right. I remember having to figure out what the cloud was. And somebody said, Well, yeah, just put it in the cloud. The heck are you talking about? And then he, of course, he realized what it is. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about cloud. Let's talk about what GE is doing. And let's talk about how the, how we're talking about energy transition, the need for technology, the need for software, where does G stand on all that?

05:24

Because if you think about, you know, what the cloud does does, in general, it gives us the ability to compute things that previously, we just didn't have a way to compute. So many of the problems that we're facing in the world are computable problems. So we want to bring the power of the cloud to the point of the problem. And with the energy transition, so many things that we need to tackle, these are computable problems, we just need to apply the software to the problem, and make the humans tackling those problems a lot more capable.

05:51

Yeah, see, we've, I know that the technology is always the technology. And again, you got smart people like you, there's always that human component. And you're always talking to utilities that have that commitment to serve, reliable, you know, cost effective, safe wise. And so they're gonna always drive this sort of transition into this. But you find in any interest, or well, when you work with the utilities, sort of like a way, way home? Hey, I don't know if it's security, you have any of those conversations,

06:23

no question. And there are a lot of regulatory elements that we advantage with utilities. And you know, the shift to the cloud won't happen overnight. What we want to do is make sure that we are painting the picture and making sure everybody sees what a better future looks like. Because we're convinced around the energy transition in particular, that the next 10 years, the work that we do, there is going to have a multi generational impact. So we just want to make sure that we're doing the hard work that we know is going to have that multi generational impact and leave a legacy that we can all be proud of.

06:56

What does that look like when we start talking about? I mean, I see. Honestly, Scott, I'm glad you're in that it that is way above my paygrade. I'm sort of that old school guy that has that sort of linear thermal, you know, model in mind generator, transmission, substations, and it's just real linear, down to that pole top transformer and my light goes on. How do we, how do we do this effectively without causing any issues? Because I mean, we're talking about, hey, that guy's got a solar panel, I want to I don't want to wheel it into the grid, and then that might play. It just I don't know how you do.

07:36

It's tricky. Electrons historically, float in one direction. And you know, now that you and I have solar panels, windmills are showing up everywhere. You know, it's no longer a united directional flow of electrons. So utilities are having to figure out how do we bring these things on safely, without destabilizing our grid? And, you know, those are the challenges that we want to help with. Because if we don't tackle those things, a lot of that renewables are going to get resisted. Oh, yeah, they will. And we're never going to move the needle. Right. So cleaner energy is obviously the answer. But we have to be planful and intentional about how we bring those onto the grid, so that we don't need to stabilize things. How

08:20

do you deal with, you know, the typical, the stability of the grid is always driven by real physical assets. GE turbots, man, they're, they're physical, and they're in sync, and they, you know, there's a physical quality to it. How do we address these other generation sources like solar panels? And how do we how do we address that to ensure you know, the grid stability?

08:46

So again, it all comes back to software, we don't believe there's any way that the energy transition happens without software. You know, one of our most recent acquisitions is a company called Opus One, which brings the ability to have visibility and ultimately manage these renewable assets and bringing those into our ADMS solution where people are managing the historical grid, and making those renewables that natural part of the ecosystem is not only important, but we think software is the way that that happens. And that's been our big focus to ge.

09:21

Because the reality is if you don't have that solution, that software one of the challenges that we dealt with, long ago when I was negotiating power purchase agreements, was that the system operator said I'm depending on you, I'm depending on you. And so it was a different conversation. Like you said, your you know, your 15 Meg's I want 15 Meg's, because I'm depending on yours today, that's not the case. It has to be solved by software. Yes. So other way of getting around

09:52

Yeah. And this is, you know, the terminology I use is, you know, these are computable problems. But unless we build the software, we have the AI in place, we don't know what to compute, right? And there's deterministic computable problems and there's non deterministic computable problems. And, you know, the one of the things that I build out in a prior role previous to GE is something we've got general generative design, where you framed the problem, and then literally, the cloud will compute every solution to that problem could be millions, and brings back to you based on what you care about, here's the one solution to the problem. That is literally the most optimal solution, not just one that simply works. A lot of those same dynamics, a lot of those same patterns around computability, applied to helping us accelerate the energy transition

10:42

along the same lines is that we know that I'm a consumer, you're a consumer, and we don't want to go without power, we need it. Right. All right, we got equipment. Everything's with power. One of the things that I see as critical to it, and I think you spoke briefly, is that asset management asset prediction, how do you take these disconnected and I can't see disconnect, that's a sort of these other generation sources to ensure that they're reliable, that they're available, and that you and I, you know, are just sort of numb to the fact that the power works, yeah, they have to be reliable, they have to apply.

11:21

And this is where you know, so in the last decade or so, in building out those generative capabilities, one of the roles I had to play was making sure that our cloud works. Because same thing, if you don't have four or five nines in your cloud, nobody's going to use it. One of the things that you do to make that happen is you monitor normal activities, and you know what normal looks like. And then you're constantly monitoring and looking for abnormal patterns. And so that's just well understood science in the cloud. The same applies around asset management, right. And this is where IoT can really bring value to the equation. So with some of our solutions, like APM, we're able to monitor what normal looks like, look for abnormal patterns, and flag them to whoever it is, and then user or an operator and let them tackle that problem in a plant boy, instead of waiting for it to be a big problem that inconveniences everyone. I was just in Atlanta at our monitoring and diagnostics center there, where we monitor over 3000 power generation units all around the world at three countries. And that's a place where as soon as something abnormal starts to happen, we know first, and we're able to call the customer and say, Hey, I don't know exactly what's going on. But you might want to take a look at that. And they're able to go out and check it out of

12:42

there, you're with that ability to have insights into the health of that asset. You can press the time, you don't want catastrophic, you don't want it. You want to be able to proactively apply the maintenance that is necessary for that asset. For minimal impact, you got it. We have to play that game, we have to be in that game. And that's all

13:07

about collecting the data it is and not just having the data but being able to translate data into insights that are actionable.

13:14

Yeah, that's the game. That's and that's that AI ML type of component because we have limitations. We do. We need that ability to have those platforms in place to say, that's fine, that's fine. That's fine. Well, there's visa data and do it quickly. And then be able to notify you that that's something's going on, you got to see there's no other way of looking at it. Because we do you think and of course, you're gonna say yes, this is sort of a leading question, but thanks for giving me the answer. That's right. All right. Do you think it's gonna be okay for us?

13:52

Look, it's it's all about, you know, taking action quickly. And that's the reason I came out of the job that I had for nearly two decades, and came to GE Digital because I believe in the energy transition, but we're out of time. We have to get after it. We have to get serious and we have to take advantage of the assets that we have with the cloud in particular and bring it to

14:15

C and G brings that trust your CI doc on it good. The majority of all the turbans on the turban Decker G the generator G you know, they're out there. So you have this wealth of knowledge. And from a utilities perspective, right? Utilities culture is not known for being the leader in this innovation journey. They're gonna wait till something is truly high. That's okay. It works. Okay, I'm gonna that's what GE comes into play. You know, you can point to it's like, right there. There it is. That gives that comfort, that trust where

14:49

you want those utilities to kind of play that role, right? Because you said it yourself. When I flipped the switch. I want the light to come on. The reason that happens more times than not is because the role of the utilities play out Our job is to help de risk the future for those utilities pointedly, you know, for you. So that's why we're investing ahead and software to really figure these things out and make it safe for the utilities to put in play that way they're able to save the planet while keeping your lights on.

15:19

That's pretty cool, huh? You're cool. You like to jump.

15:23

I'm a nerd. I just like nerdiness. To me, big problem.

15:26

It's like this. This is the digital coffee table. Industrial digital coffee table right here. Because I know that I can continue. Because I What's interesting, I don't even know some of the questions asked, all I know, is that it's happening. We, we've got to do it. We've got to have that collaborative type of play with with all the parties to come up with a solution that is somewhat so certain, invisible to the end user. They don't know what's going on. It just happens magically sort of like that cloud, SAS all of that stuff, it just sort of it just gets better. And they don't even know it.

16:04

It's happening but like it's not happening fast enough. And that's why if you go over and look at our booth, you know, we use the word accelerate accelerate the energy transition, because we believe it's not happening fast enough. And we're out of time you know, let's beat let's be clear like the time is now and again. That's why I'm excited to be here. It's easy to get people rallied around a mission. A time based mission right? We're not just doing work we're not coming here to do work. We're coming here to make the world a better place and to have it be here for multiple generations after us.

16:37

Your your cool all all Scots are cool. You can use it on all Scots are handsome, and all Scots are cool. And all Scots are just great people. How do people get a hold of this great skier to hear? Yeah. Terrified air? Yeah. It's backed by data. It's science. How do they get a hold of us get? They get a hold of you, not me. They know how to get a hold

17:05

of ge.com/digital. Check us out. And let's save the world together.

17:12

Hey, If this doesn't work out, you got a great career in podcasting. Thank you for being on. Thanks for having me, Scott. All right, listeners. We're gonna wrap it up on the other side. Thank you very much for joining industrial talk. We are broadcasting from distributech 22. Dallas is the town. Boy, it is a great event. It's good to have people together and shaking hands and seeing things and solving problems. All right. Stay tuned, we will be right back.

17:37

You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.

17:46

That was a great conversation. Thank you, Scott Reese, CEO, GE Digital for being on industrial talk. And at the distributech 22 event. Sorry about the noise in the background is just we were all right on the floor, making things happen. All right. Remember, we've got a couple of things that we're rolling out one, we're doing a series on one, the state of utilities, I think that there's a necessity to be able to bring people together, paint that cogent picture. So we're going to be putting that live podcast together. The other thing of those three events, and we're talking about IMTS. We're talking about the manufacturing manufacturing strategy Summit. And that's both Europe and the United States. Put those on your calendar. I'm gonna be there. Please look me up. If you want to get on the podcast, and if you want to be interviewed at those at those events, all right. Be bold, be brave, dare greatly reach out to Scott. And I'm telling you, you're going to change the world. Thank you very much for joining industrial talk. We're going to have another great conversation shortly. So stay tuned.

The post Scott Reese, CEO with GE Digital 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.

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