Jason Cunningham with Power Grid Components

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

00:00

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

00:21

again. Welcome to industrial talk. Thank you very much for joining the number one industrial related podcast in the universe that celebrates you industry professionals all around the world. You're bold, brave, you dare greatly, you innovate, you collaborate, you solve problems each and every day, you are making the world a better place. We truly appreciate what you do. You are the heroes in this story. Thank you very, very much, and thank you for your continued support. We are broadcasting from distribute tech. It is in Dallas, Texas, and if you are in the world of one, utilities, two, distribution, three, transmission, four, substations, five, equipment and others you should be here. We're brought to you also by Siemens, smart infrastructure and grid software. Go out to siemens.com siemens.com Make a note of that. Great people, great company, great solutions, siemens.com, in the hot seat. In the hot seat. Jason Cunningham, company called PGC. They have the URL, so don't worry about it, just go@pgc.com which is pretty doggone cool. He's in the hot seat. Let's get cracking.

01:41

Hi, Jason, how are you doing? Good? How are you today?

01:43

No complaints. I get to talk to people like you. That's pretty cool, right?

01:49

Of course, one of the best conferences in the industry too.

01:53

It is pretty cool. How long you been coming to this actually, it's my first year Shut the front door. Yeah. I was talking to somebody that's been coming to it for 20 years, 25 years, and I said, Man, you must see some massive changes, like, like, massive changes.

02:11

It's pretty big. I'm just walking in here. It's pretty impressive. Just, have you have been, have been tootling around? Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. That's a lot

02:19

to see. That's cool. That's cool. Yeah, that's pretty neat. You

02:21

can't take it all into two days either. So no,

02:23

you certainly can't. I've been stuck in the salt mine, Jason, I haven't been able to get out. I've been wanting coffee there before we get into the conversation about PGC and little show and tell that you got there. Give us a little background on who you are.

02:40

My name is Jason Cunningham. I've been in the industry for about 19 years selling high voltage circuit breakers, circuit switchers in the past, and recently came on board with power grid components about two months ago to help them with integrating some products into the US.

02:58

You mean, this is the product that you have there is not us based.

03:04

Well, we are. We've been selling the US. Just haven't focused a lot of marketing and efforts into the US. We we cover the globe with this product from visit Max.

03:15

Well, it begs the question. It begs the question, what is it? What? Oh, I got back up. Don't, don't, don't go there. Don't go there. PGC. Talk to us about PGC. What's that company

03:28

03:53

primarily, power, right? Yes, sir, it's power. Whoa, that was sorry about that. That was my foot. All right, take us through what that that device does, because it's pretty cool.

04:08

Yeah, so this is the syncrotec MDX. What it does can be applied to any switch gear component. Let's call it a circuit breaker, a recloser circuit switcher or agnostic and what it does is it's used to when you're switching into transformer, it mitigates the in rush current. So a lot of the applications that we see and customers have come to us stating that when I when I switch on my transformer, I get voltage sags or drops. So power quality is, is.

04:46

So the problem is, of course, power quality so when, when I pop in a transformer, you're saying that there's a there's a voltage drop, yep, nobody likes that.

04:58

05:19

a bar suck. It's a bar sucker,

05:21

yep. So it drops, yeah. And so this device will control the switching on that, and depending on the application, we can get it to basically zero. 0% No. Worst case, 2% sag. Sometimes we've seen cases where they're above 20% sag.

05:40

No kidding, yeah. So how difficult is it to to install? I mean, it, it's, it's a fan. How long has it been out there? About 10 years. No kidding,

05:52

yes. Yeah, the company visit Max. We, we acquired them in October of last year. Yeah, it's a good fit with some of our other products that we're developing. So it made sense. And they've had this one out for, I'm sorry, 10 years, but they've been in business almost 50 years doing this. So there's some other people out there in the world that build switchgear and try to develop products like this. And they're switch game manufacturers, excuse me, switch gear manufacture, yeah, not into this type of component. So this is all they do. This is all they've ever done, right? This is probably all they'll ever do, right? You know, because they're the experts at this,

06:33

how quickly can I have that thing installed? I mean, how difficult is it to, you know, make sure that

06:43

how quick? So we can do, typically, work with the manufacturer of the switch gear. We can remote in and get some timing shots of their equipment and set the unit before we ship it. So then we'll ship the device, they install it, and then we would come to site and just dial it in slightly, and it's ready to go.

07:04

That's fascinating. So you, you you have, so you go to the manufacturers of the switch gear, you place that device in the switch gear, yep,

07:19

and we'd work on the timing, because each each piece of which is different, right? Each manufacturer has a different, you know, speed of

07:26

so you're agnostic to the soup. I mean,

07:29

07:35

07:43

voltage? No, that's about all. I mean, that's pretty much the highest that's probably in the globe right now. So, no kidding, yeah.

07:50

So wow, where do we see it going? I mean, what would put your future hat on?

07:54

Well, there's, I mean, it's, it's hard to say, but there's a there's another device as well. So this one can can switch a three pole gang operated piece of equipment. And we also have a, it's big brother, called the Super tech plus. And it can do independent, independent pole operation. So it depends on the application, but it's also agnostic. But you know, as the industry grows, we need to maximize the power quality within the system. You right? So we've got all these farms coming online. You've got data centers. A lot of utilities are stretched to find more power, so

08:36

the whole data center equation, talk about power quality, you need to dial that bad boy, sure, sure they they don't

08:46

like it. That's right. You can damage their equipment. Nobody likes it. No, no. They're actually very nervous, right? There's a high level of not liking that. Everybody wants their their cloud based software saved, you know, pictures, you name it, right? So their, their quality is very important.

09:07

So how do you now, is there data that you're pulling off of this? Is there something else that you can outside of the power quality and the solution of that, that device? Is there anything else that that in this world of digitalization, I'm pulling data off of this and insights into certain things.

09:28

09:56

in that data. What? What am I looking at? Just. The operations, or is there some more information, or insights can I gain from that? Well, you're looking at sine

10:05

waves, yeah, 60 Hertz. We also take into account temperature, to account for the different temperature, so when it gets colder, that that piece of equipment might operate a little slower. So we can build that into the unit as well, once we get that curve from the manufacturer.

10:21

So I would suspect that if there's unusual amount of switching going on in that piece of that asset, there might be some other information that I can glean from it. Maybe there's something going on that is beyond just just a normal operations, right?

10:39

You could see if that that breakers or switch gear is operating slow, if it is, might have some mechanical failure.

10:46

Yes, yeah, that's that's real important. Gosh darn it. I love it. I love it. Jason, how to somebody get a hold of you there? They're interested in that device, and they're saying we need more that. I hear power quality is important. What would be the best way to get a hold of you

11:03

can find me on LinkedIn to Jason Cunningham at Power Grid components.

11:07

Power Grid components, PGC, there it is.

11:12

Great. I love it. Thanks for having

11:14

me. Thanks for being have All right, we're going to wrap it up on the other side. We're going to have all the contact information for Jason out on industrial talk. So fear not. We're broadcasting from distribute tech, Dallas, Texas. We're brought to you by Siemens, smart infrastructure, grid software. Go out to siemens.com find out more. Reach out to them. They've got great people, great company, great solutions, siemens.com we're going to wrap it up on the other side. Stay tuned. We will be right back.

11:43

You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.

11:53

How about that for a crack in conversation? Right, right to the point speed. We didn't, we didn't belabor the point that was at distribute tech, great event. You need to put that it's, it's happening now. It is. It's amazing. And Team power grid components with Jason Cunningham leading the way, lot happening. It is a really frothy market. Y'all, you got to educate, you gotta educate, you gotta collaborate. You gotta innovate all the time, and especially in the world of distribution, transmission and all of that stuff. It's happening, and you gotta be a part of it. All the contact information for Jason will be out on industrial talk as you know that all right, industrial talk is here for you. I say it all the time. You want to get on the show, contact me. Go out to industrial talk.com. Click contact me right now. All right, be bold, be brave. Dare greatly. Hang out with Jason. Change the world. We're going to have another great conversation coming shortly. So stay tuned. You.