DER Task Force (Hosts, Duncan Campbell & Colleen Metelitsa)

[00:00:03] In today's episode we speak with Colleen Metelitsa and Duncan Campbell with the DER Task Force podcast. The DER Task Force is a community of distributed energy resource enthusiasts. They organize a meetup every month with networking and a member presentation about

[00:00:20] something cool they've been working on or thinking about. With COVID, they brought these meetings online and record a podcast episode where they try to summarize the presentation and recreate the dialogue that transpired during the meetup.

[00:00:32] In this episode of Grid Connections we discuss everything from the COVID impacts on the grid to the blackouts in Texas and the future of microgrids. Thanks everyone who's listening today I'm joined by Colleen Metelitsa and Duncan Campbell both co-hosts of the DER Task Force a

[00:00:49] great podcast to discover and I think a lot of listeners would also be interested in. Pleasure to be spoke with both of you today. You too Chase. Yeah Chase really looking forward to this.

[00:01:00] Thanks could you share maybe a little bit about each of yourselves and what you do in the space and then we'll go into the formation of the podcast. Sounds good. So I currently work at Con Edison. I'm the EV program manager helping to build

[00:01:15] out charging infrastructure across New York City and Westchester. I will give the classic utility caveat that everything I say today is my own opinion and not that of my company. I've been in the clean energy and energy efficiency space across a variety of consulting

[00:01:33] nonprofits and research firms for the past decade so we're looking forward to this conversation. Yeah and yeah my name's Duncan. I work at a company called Scale Microgrid Solutions. We build microgrids for commercial and industrial facilities. What I do there is

[00:01:52] lead our project analysis team where we're figuring out what makes sense for a project, what battery, how much solar, what are the economics all that kind of analytical stuff. And yeah likewise I've been working in distributed energy for I think six or seven

[00:02:10] years now and it's kind of all I do. So yeah excited to be here and talk about it. Well great and I think the best way to kind of kick this off is obviously we are on a podcast

[00:02:22] right now and we're in this kind of post-meeting world where this is how a lot of people have to communicate and it is great to be speaking with both you both being on the East Coast at

[00:02:32] in New York but I think it's really great to hear how your podcast kind of started. So can you share with how it went from being kind of a real-world meetup event and now it's kind of

[00:02:43] evolved into this new format? Yeah sure happy to get into that. So yeah our podcast really is a community the podcast just has sort of ended up being a part of it. Before COVID it originated

[00:02:58] as what was called the New York City DER's Meetup and basically the idea there was right also known as DG Beers. Yeah DG Beers was actually the OG. The like 30 person Twitter DM that it

[00:03:12] originally was but yeah the idea was you know basically I found myself and I think Colleen and the other co-host who's not here at James we all found ourselves kind of like meeting up with

[00:03:25] random people who we like met on Twitter or LinkedIn to talk about this stuff you know always I think with a view toward like what's coming like what's evolving you know the sort of

[00:03:35] more interesting topics and I remember I once met up with this guy named Kyle and as we were sort of leaving the bar we were hanging out at he said you know like where can I find more of you?

[00:03:48] Like where's everybody else talking about this and that kind of was like the lightbulb moment we were like why don't we just all get together in a room. That would make more sense

[00:03:57] right and so we started the yeah the New York City DER's Meetup and we did that for I don't know a year-ish something like that. Wow it's been that long maybe like eight months

[00:04:10] then COVID happened and we kind of just snoozed on it for like a month or two not sure of what form it was going to take and then we sort of relaunched it in a few ways one we

[00:04:24] rebranded because we wanted to be sort of more like a sort of internet presence and less geographically specific since that just doesn't matter in this time so we rebranded as the DER Task Force DER standing for Distributed Energy Resources and we started making our Meetups

[00:04:43] virtual so once a month we get together usually on the first or second Wednesday of the month we bring in an expert somebody who's doing something cool whether they're in the community or

[00:04:56] external to it and we let them kind of talk about what they're doing maybe give a brief presentation and then we sort of open it up and the idea right is if we can bring really smart

[00:05:08] interesting people into these sort of private Zoom events we can give you know kind of really unique access to our community to these these sort of leading thinkers and recently too we're

[00:05:18] taking the the first you know 20 minutes or so as a chance to highlight some someone in the community and what they're doing so kind of like a you know like at a show there's the

[00:05:28] opener in the main event that's what we're trying to do but then also right we sort of realize not everybody can tune in at like 7 p.m. Eastern on a Wednesday so we started the podcast

[00:05:39] to try to you know take all that discourse that happened and kind of boil it down into something that folks can listen to whenever it works for them since then it's kind of evolved

[00:05:50] into other stuff too so we have a we have a slack that's pretty active and interesting there's I don't know 300 400 people in there sharing ideas like looking to hire people you know looking for

[00:06:04] somebody to collaborate on a project whatever it might be and then you know we've we've also started recording all these meetups and putting on them on YouTube so so people can kind of

[00:06:15] participate that way as well so yeah that's the the kind of genesis of the DER task force and and where we are today that's great to hear and I think the just organics of whatever it's starting

[00:06:27] with kind of just being with beers and then evolving into a much larger thing is a kind of a common thread I've known in a lot of similar communities and even with some of the

[00:06:36] groups I'd joined when I was in the Bay Area down San Francisco and also living in Portland for a long time so it's not an unheard of background story but I think where you guys are really approaching

[00:06:50] it from into the topics you cover have been really great because it is succinct entertaining but also pretty informational that with a lot of people coming to space sometimes you don't always kind

[00:07:04] of get to scratch to like you kind of talk very when you're talking with other people in space it's usually kind of high level whereas what I really enjoyed about the podcast is it is it gets

[00:07:14] into some pretty deep topics and they're amusing conversations but you really start to peel back the DER onion if you will with yeah this oh yeah yeah I know I was just gonna say like I

[00:07:26] appreciate you saying that I think what's funny is I think when we first started we're like this is going to be for people who like are new to the industry and we just can't keep away from getting

[00:07:35] wonky on things what uh among that like what are some of the things that kind of surprised you or stood out that maybe you weren't expecting with uh kind of like with the addition of the slack

[00:07:48] group or what these conversations have led to yeah super interesting question I mean I think with the slack group and and the moving digitally one of the really cool things that the community did was come together to provide comments on a rate proceeding in Connecticut

[00:08:06] um so actually there was you know something on like storage and micro grids and a whole bunch of different topics and we decided to you know sort of get people together and co-write these comments and the community getting wonky with it yeah you know I mean

[00:08:22] this is what the community really is focused on right is like bringing really smart people in a room who can talk about things I've learned so much around other areas of the industry that I

[00:08:32] don't work in um from having access to these people but yeah it's I mean it started off because it was fun and we're doing it because it's still fun and I think to your point uh you know when I've been

[00:08:43] out to the west coast and I like go to you know parties back when parties were a thing I feel like half the people you meet just happen to work energy that doesn't happen as much in New York

[00:08:52] I think when we started it too it was like it is hard to find energy people in New York um and now that we're you know global community it's different but well and that's great to hear

[00:09:03] and that that is kind of interesting how it started with a small area and it's just expanded I mean that's how I came across it was actually talking to some other people who uh were on the

[00:09:12] west coast and they had mentioned they had recently came across and then now I'm talking with you um obviously one thing I just throw in there about that uh that regulatory comment

[00:09:24] we put together is like what I think is kind of interesting about it is you know we're not of course we're not a we're not a corporation with a stake in in that process and nor are we

[00:09:36] sponsored by any corporation so it's it's really this kind of like open source democratic thing that happened and it was pretty cool like for like three weeks like twice a week uh subgroup

[00:09:48] got on a zoom and just like argued until we came up with what we felt was like a good comment for how this storage program should work in Connecticut um and then generally I don't

[00:09:58] it's great to hear I'd also continue out like the other cool outcome of having to transition you know post-covid was uh just like the breadth of geographical participation we get now is awesome so like we did this little fundraiser where we sold these sweatshirts that say microgrids are

[00:10:17] dope on them and we sold a bunch in the US but like we also sold sent one to like the northernmost tip of Canada we sent one to South Africa like it's it's it's been pretty cool

[00:10:31] to like get people from all over the place involved and it turns out like you kind of learn a lot by having like different there's there's like different DER challenges all over the place there's there's

[00:10:42] this one guy who always joins who's in a pretty rural area of Canada and so for him like microgrids are about like energy access and reliability um there's this guy I mentioned in South Africa

[00:10:54] who joins and like for him it's about like we have a kind of corrupt utility that's like pure coal right and then for us in New York it's like a wholly different thing which is like no like

[00:11:06] things are pretty good here and we're just like trying to tweak around the edges and do cool stuff so it's I don't know that has been really really awesome to have it not be a New York

[00:11:13] centric group um and I think it'll be interesting if post-covid ever happens uh how we you know get the benefits of you know in person hangs like get beers back uh but uh also you know keep

[00:11:28] keep this like really cool thing that's come out of this which is just like a ton of different perspectives I think that's a great point because there's there's two things to have unpacked

[00:11:37] there one is what you said near the end there about a DER is kind of different to everyone and I think for myself who's kind of grew up traditionally more rural area but then

[00:11:47] lived in the big city and then kind of back in more rural sports town uh or kind of outdoor sports town it means a whole different thing out here where it's kind of like grid stability

[00:11:58] and just having that freedom to kind of just not have to worry about it and so I would love to kind of hear what you kind of touched upon a little bit but hear what what that kind of means

[00:12:09] for both of you and New York how you approach DRs and what you're really trying to look for and kind of get out of this evolution in the space totally so I think you know I'll come at it from

[00:12:26] from I think like the grid optimization perspective I think there's also a really big resilience component but I'll maybe leave that for Duncan that's really his wheelhouse but for I mean for me I think where you are is right it is going to be super dependent

[00:12:46] and what we have in in New York City for example is a lot of congestion of like getting clean power from upstate to downstate um and so one solution is building more transmission which is definitely on

[00:13:00] the table and it's probably warranted and needed but I think other solutions is you know how do you better um place DRs within a constrained grid in order to have relief um where you need it

[00:13:14] and when you need it and how could you offset um you know peakers there's some really interesting projects happening um with an existing peaker plant and that's trying to convert to storage in New York

[00:13:25] City and so for me it's like can you reduce local pollution through DRs can you better optimize the grid so you don't have to build as much new transmission lines in to a system and then

[00:13:38] from my perspective too like if you then if those DRs are including systems that include backup storage how can you when there are grid outages also improve people's like to me that's sort of like

[00:13:52] an added benefit on top of everything but I think there's so we're going to be adding so much load so much load to the grid in the future um through electrification that being able to like optimize

[00:14:09] and be really flexible is going to be really important to not having to over build generation systems uh and I personally think that like I would like to keep as much like I think solar

[00:14:22] and wind are wonderful I personally think wind is really beautiful but like I don't want us to have windmills everywhere and so I think we need to be really smart about like how we build and

[00:14:31] design systems so that we're efficient I want to just highlight something you said Colleen that I think is so crazy like in New York everything's a DER right you could be talking about replacing a 100

[00:14:44] megawatt peaker plant with a battery that's a DER it's like right in the middle of the city connected to the distribution grid it's kind of crazy like New York is the craziest grid in the country and it's really interesting because of that especially being transmission constrained

[00:14:57] and all of that um I mean my answer would be like I I live in New York but I actually don't do most of my projects here um most of my work lately is in California which is like very very different

[00:15:10] you know faces different challenges so much of what we do is based on public safety power shut off slightly and you know helping people have power when you know the the larger system is

[00:15:20] in a tough spot and has to shut down to prevent you know larger disasters um so I don't know I I found that interesting I've been doing that for the last few years whereas previously I did all my work in

[00:15:33] like super dense urban areas like New York City um so I don't know it's been cool cool to kind of see the contrast there well I'm kind of unpacking that you mentioned you're doing a lot on the

[00:15:44] west like is this if you're okay with kind of sharing are you coming across a lot of these through people reaching out to you or how are these projects kind of uh coming across your radar for

[00:15:55] your company and uh or being based in New York totally yeah so we we have a an office in California I I work on a lot of these projects despite living here but you know so we have people there and

[00:16:07] you know they're they're kind of working within that market I mean but how this is really happening right is you know people are losing power a lot and when that happens they go out

[00:16:16] and try to find solutions right like it's it's we use this word a lot on our podcast like it's emergent right people just do whatever they can figure out um and what you'll find in California

[00:16:27] is the past few years have been the best years for Generac salespeople of their lives right they're all driving new trucks uh you know maybe moving into new houses right like so that's sort of the main thing that's happening is people are just buying diesel backup generators um

[00:16:42] what we're trying to do is kind of inject ourselves into that process and say you could do that or you could buy this system that can give you all the same backup benefits but actually be good for you

[00:16:53] and be good for the grid the 99 percent of other hours of the year so so that's kind of the way we're we're approaching it um in addition to though just there's a lot of really cool activity

[00:17:03] in California like there's a bunch of schools that are installing solar plus storage there's all sorts of like interesting stuff uh happening there that you know we sort of bump elbows with as well i'd be curious kind of just giving your exposure kind of across the country better

[00:17:21] would you say the pilots on the west coast are kind of more common and maybe a little more forward thinking or is it pretty pretty universal across the u.s right now um definitely not universal

[00:17:38] however um i mean both new york and california have really cool stuff going on um probably more so than anywhere else in the u.s um one thing the california market has going for it right is just

[00:17:52] like broadly power is expensive so you can have a bit more fun with your solutions right because the economics are a little easier to make work um and there's some generous incentives

[00:18:02] there too um you know but at the same time you could say that so there's lots of cool solar plus storage projects happening in california at the same time there's things happening in new york

[00:18:12] that are really unique that aren't happening there new york's community solar program and the whole veeder you know value of distributed energy uh rates um are super innovative and if like

[00:18:24] sparked a big market here both new york city but upstate as well um so i think it's just different i'd say you know there's there's sort of like two different approaches i think new york's

[00:18:36] trying to take the like you know think about this kind of from like a fundamental engineering and economics perspective and like build up this market and california is a bit more forceful

[00:18:48] and tends to kind of like go top down and just like make stuff happen um and i don't know both both produce pretty interesting results with that uh i mean especially when you talk about

[00:19:00] backup for california obviously the forest fires and forest blackouts are becoming a thing uh unfortunately more commonly on the west coast i mean with that i guess let's rewind the clock i feel like there's just been so much that's happened in the space in the last 18 months so

[00:19:19] let's start with probably the one that most that's been universal would be the covet side of stuff how have i mean i think a big thing we saw locally at least in oregon i love the northwest

[00:19:31] grid and i'm sure it's probably the case for most of the country was just the power shift of the low to kind of becoming a little the the bell kind of flattening a bit where it's just

[00:19:42] stretched out through the day and you're not seeing this high peak near the end of the day because no one's leaving to go their house they're just working from home is that pretty common to

[00:19:50] what you were seeing i know it's kind of started changing as people go back more and more to the office but were there any interesting kind of unique trends that you've seen on your side

[00:19:59] of the country or just in your today uh day-to-day of what both you work on yeah so i think a lot of it was like really the there was definitely right like some shifts went as buildings i think

[00:20:14] especially not quite immediately because buildings use a lot of their load kind of regardless of how many people are in them if there's like any people in them um but there was a shift right obviously from areas that were super workplace oriented towards more residential spaces and

[00:20:33] where i think that gets more interesting for a lot of uh grid operators is like in the summer when all of a sudden you're dealing with like air conditioning load in spaces that like maybe

[00:20:49] you didn't really have it before right like people weren't home and so their air conditioner wasn't on um and now you have all these people moving back like being back home and like being in their

[00:21:00] home all day and they're like hot and so they're running things um you know i know like very anecdotally for me personally like my usage has gone up like 30 to 50 percent each month

[00:21:14] versus the prior year um because i was really good about turning things off and like didn't do things and i was i'm a relatively social person so like me coming you know turning things off during the

[00:21:25] day might mean that it's not coming on until like 9 p.m at night or and i it's been crazy right it's been like this huge increase in cost for me that i was not anticipating um

[00:21:37] is that a write-off can you write that off no because um we don't technically work from like working from home you it's like a designation by your company if you're like

[00:21:49] at your home if you're a home office i did look into this i spent a lot of time we got to change that in the post-COVID world i could get tax reductions um sorry go that's that sounds

[00:21:59] like the next thing you need to get the slack team to get around together on i'm sure a lot of them are working from home too right but no i so i think there is i mean i think for me one of

[00:22:08] the questions is like almost like what will be the well like there were a lot of i think short term trends like what are the long-term trends of COVID going to be in terms of like how

[00:22:21] how we work right like if we aren't going back to these office buildings like will they convert to other things will they figure out how to better manage some of the

[00:22:32] like usage and load over time and like how you know our you know is i don't i'm not a believer in the new york city is dying um fan that's been flamed but a lot of people are moving to

[00:22:48] suburbs and like does does that have meaningful change i don't think it will in the long run but i do think you could see um you know grids are managed super locally right there's feeder

[00:22:58] level issues there's network level issues and i think you will see impacts from that i think it's hard to like tell what that will shake out over the next couple years but it's

[00:23:09] something that is forcing grid planning groups to like really have to like think at a very granular level how their forecast might need to change because when you're talking about substation upgrades like it matters if people are in like one burrow or another i was just talking

[00:23:29] to this co-generation developer in new york city he's like been around for a long time been doing this in multifamily buildings for a long time and like the way he put this i thought was so

[00:23:39] interesting he remarked on the same thing right that you know lots of people are working from home and you know increases power needs and like the shape of power needs but the way he said it is basically you know we now believe there is commercial load embedded in

[00:23:54] multifamily buildings um and that changes a lot actually right because a lot of people use like rules of thumb to think about like how different buildings use energy utilities use generic load profiles to like build reps right like and you know his point was just like moving forward

[00:24:12] there is commercial load inside of multifamily buildings like that's really interesting yeah when you start thinking about like line extensions and all sorts of stuff like how i mean there's there's obviously kind of clear delineations but you're right it starts kind of making the water

[00:24:26] is a little more murkier where where do you see that kind of in the short term going or as far as like is there are you seeing that with those discussions how they're looking to try and

[00:24:40] better incorporate that is do they have any sorts of numbers that they can tie to that or is it to be determined i couldn't tell you i'm not sure Colleen might know better than i yeah i

[00:24:54] know i don't have a good sense of how it's how it's being incorporated i i have a feeling that you know this year has been so turbulent and there's so many unknowns that i think right

[00:25:08] now it's kind of like a wait and see and like keep it keep or keep closer tabs on it right i think for a lot of a lot of places because ultimately like you investment decisions aren't made overnight

[00:25:25] by by planners or people and so like figuring that out will will take time um but it's certainly something to i think something that will be really interesting to watch um

[00:25:38] i and i think that's a great oh sorry oh no go for it i was just gonna say i think that's a great point it just seems like a lot of this will be uh it'll be interesting how much of a

[00:25:47] short term but what were you gonna add Duncan i was just gonna say like i agree investment decisions aren't made overnight but at the same time like right before covid hit i was developing

[00:25:57] for example a portfolio of hotel projects like those fell off a cliff like and it's not just short term right like i don't know let's let's hope that in the summer covid's like kind of over

[00:26:11] um that doesn't mean those hotels are credit worthy anymore um so i i do think this could have like interesting long-term impacts that aren't necessarily the obvious ones um so yeah i don't know i think

[00:26:24] there's stuff like that and you know you layer in yet i think you know a lot of people will move back to cities but probably not all of them it will probably have accelerated some trend a lot of

[00:26:34] people will go back to the office but probably not all of them and so i think there will be some some long-term changes we see out of this um that i mean just i don't know energy is related

[00:26:45] to everything right so a change in pretty much anything is going to have an effect on what we do so if we're talking about this chronologically we've discussed covid now we kind of get to the

[00:26:58] forest fires of the kind of late summer and fall where i mean i lived in pretty much i experienced pretty much the heart of it you cannot see more than a hundred yards and it just

[00:27:09] looked like hell on earth it was the craziest and most unfortunate thing but i think it's kind of going to be a more common occurrence what are either of you seeing um i guess especially with

[00:27:21] the projects you're working on duncan around this interest in battery backup um because i i think there's at least the discussions i've seen people have talked about for a long time we're finally starting to see some actual decent pilot projects actually turn into large commercial

[00:27:37] installations and start to get momentum around that but i just feel like since that event at least the discussions i've been in it's no longer kind of a quasi pilot science experiment thing

[00:27:49] it's like oh we have to do this and we have to figure it out now because of these increased enrolling blackouts in any way we can kind of help move to more uh a more stable grid

[00:27:58] yeah i mean this is until last week wildfires and public safety power shutoffs were like the craziest thing in energy right right um and our company's been following this for a while because this

[00:28:14] this really started back in like 2017 i want to say that was i mean public safety power shutoffs have been a thing for a while they've been used but just very sparingly um but with the increased

[00:28:25] frequency of wildfires in california being you know some of them sparked by utility downed utility lines um you know this has become in in the 2017 2018 season uh the you know utilities

[00:28:40] talked about this and said we're gonna have to start doing this more and like i want to be clear like we believe them like they're right like there's a lot of folks who are saying no

[00:28:48] you're just not doing your job but no they're they're they're protecting the state from being burned down um of course an impact of that though is people lose power more often um and

[00:28:59] we tried to get out in front of this prior to this we weren't pursuing any projects in california because it was just a very different market than what we were used to we were kind of

[00:29:07] doing our own thing here on the east coast um but since then you know late 2017 into 2018 we've we've been really um focusing a ton of our attention there um and like

[00:29:20] scarily enough it sort of just keeps getting worse each year right um and i don't actually have all the latest statistics like in my head at this moment but the i think it was the very first

[00:29:32] d er task force presentation and i was i was just gonna say that um so our o g presentation yeah yeah right um i should say new york's nyc durr's meetup um uh and uh at the time like the crazy stat

[00:29:50] was the year before you know largest wildfire season most destruction of property most deaths you know all records next year most fire most destruction most like property damage most that

[00:30:03] so it's as if it keeps sort of one upping itself um and yeah i think like the after the first year the question was like is this the new normal like are people gonna like change behaviors and

[00:30:16] find new solutions uh after the second year it was kind of like oh this is looking like it's the new normal and after the third year um you know people are figuring this out um like

[00:30:26] i mentioned earlier in all variety of ways not always that are great for the rest of our energy goals um like again i i always have to stress this diesel backup generators are the number

[00:30:39] one solution to this that's happening right now um so finding out how to you know make that better is uh you know a big challenge but like people are doing it and it's it's pretty cool like

[00:30:51] you know for the past six or seven years you know there've been all these rfps for like school districts in california that want to get solar just because the economics makes sense um all of them

[00:31:02] are including storage now or at least all the ones i've seen um and the consultants running those rfps are smart they understand this stuff and like they're doing detailed analysis to figure out what

[00:31:12] makes sense uh and then you know sort of bringing the hammer to people like me who are trying to reply to these rfps right and like really they know what they're doing um and it's it's not because

[00:31:22] they went to battery school or something it's because like they had to figure it out right um so i i think yeah what's happening in california now because of this is like it's not just sort of

[00:31:33] the immediate impact of just like yeah more batteries are being deployed while that is true it's like it is forcing the industry to move a lot faster than was kind of the business's

[00:31:45] usual path of like yeah batteries are getting cheaper we can start to consider them you know now like the the biggest economy in the us and one of the biggest ones in the world has spun up an

[00:31:55] industry that really gets this stuff and is moving um so that's been my like biggest takeaway from this is just like whoa like we can actually like learn and move fast if there's like

[00:32:07] something behind us that's you know forcing us to yeah i think that's super super interesting dinkin i think for me like you know so as someone who is very um far removed from like the business

[00:32:23] side of this and also has been like terrified of living in california my whole life because i was scared of earthquakes and then like the fire started happening as like i hear it's great

[00:32:35] i love my friends who live there but oh my goodness natural disasters are like on my biggest list of fears just like in general like the northeast like only blizzards or that's like the only thing i

[00:32:44] can handle um but no but i think what i find so it's like right we have a lot of people going out and buying diesel backup which is obviously like you know people need need power right like as we've

[00:32:57] seen in way too many instances like lack of power can lead to really bad things for people and can lead to death right which is like it is worth it to get a diesel backup like i

[00:33:08] totally get that we have awesome companies like scale out there being like all right let's like let's try to like not not just do diesel let's like try to do some other things

[00:33:19] and then where i start getting like okay like how do we make this work is in those communities that are like in the forest right because again i'm not going to pretend to be a california

[00:33:29] expert but like i think we've all heard enough times that there's like part of the problem amongst many other things is like deeper and deeper built into forested areas that then you have these like lines that are running through these really big forest areas it's very difficult

[00:33:45] like how do you build community level micro grids and like shared resources in those areas so that you either don't need that line or you have that line but when you have

[00:34:00] how safety power shut off it's like not a big deal because you have this other power there and that line's really there as like backup for when you need it and for me like that's the

[00:34:10] i think the big thing that like people kind of talk about but it's so complicated because like it gets into you know james isn't here but i'll just like be both myself and james because we

[00:34:20] fight about this all the time utility franchise rights there's like question of like is that something that utilities like you know should pg and e be going out there and like allowed to

[00:34:31] to like build or incentivize d er is getting built and like helping understand how that infrastructure connects there so that there is backup power is that something the private market should be handling

[00:34:41] and like we allow for certain instances where like if you're in a public safety like high public safety risk area then you are like allowed to procure this like secondary backup like that conversation and how d er's can solve that because i think ultimately for me

[00:35:01] i struggle with like individual backup is great but it's like inherently unequal um because it's going to people who can afford it and it's going to people who are credit worthy

[00:35:13] and it's going to people maybe who can get grants and so like i don't think it's the right i think it's the only it's the best short term solution but i don't think it's the right solution

[00:35:24] um and i would love to see a lot more like holistic discussion around that and i know it does happen right like after every you know new jersey has my community microgrid programs new orcas community microgrid programs massachusetts does california has a bunch and like how many of

[00:35:42] those have actually gotten built um as i think zero yeah and it's a really really difficult thing to process because there's all these questions on like who pays who maintains like is it something

[00:35:58] that the community gets or is like if there's a school like should it be paid by all of the people even if like all the people in that utility service territory because they could drive to

[00:36:09] school and like have power and outage like how do you think about the community benefit and you know something we talk about on our podcast a lot because i think we're all super

[00:36:19] interested in it and come at it from like very various angles um but for me like that's that's like the i don't want to say like the magic bullet but like that's the solution

[00:36:30] that i think we like need to figure out right so i totally agree like and i think there's a lot of interesting ways to think about this um it gets particularly tricky i think with residential

[00:36:43] right so like we focus on commercial and industrial because it's kind of easy to say like the hospital needs its own power source when there's an outage right or you know beyond there's some like equity

[00:36:52] like built in to a lot of those things because there's universal access we've been working with a lot of water utilities like the water treatment plant needs a good source of power right or

[00:37:01] the pumping station um but i even sort of downstream of that like the grocery store needs power right like that is a essential part of a community i mean i know we're i know we're in california right

[00:37:13] now and we'll stay there because i want to hear the rest of your point duncan but like h e b has gotten so much love again in the past week from texas for having power and like staying open

[00:37:24] during outages and every time there's an outage in texas everyone's just like there's always like the h e b promo yeah this is like in my sales pitch now which is just like the brand power of

[00:37:36] staying open through an outage is awesome i've yet to convince anyone of that but i think it's true um what i was getting at though right is like so there are like i think quite a number of

[00:37:47] like single building micro grids that make sense even from the equity consideration but your point is right which is like that doesn't cover everything we need to cover right and i think there's really interesting emerging ideas about how to accomplish that um that um are

[00:38:06] kind of like run run the gamut of how this could work but i mean even a year ago sunrun released this white paper of how you could use customer-cited d er's you know single building you know rooftop

[00:38:20] solar and storage to power a whole feeder during an outage right and it's it's really cool because there's a bunch of work for the utility to do and then there's a bunch of work for the

[00:38:29] individual sources to do um and i mean i'm i'm not a power engineer so i'm not going to get too far into this because i'll probably just make a mistake but essentially right the idea was like

[00:38:40] if you have a block of homes on a feeder you isolate the feeder which means the utility has to have like cool stuff on that feeder to make that happen and like better you know better

[00:38:50] sensors and switches and stuff so there's there's kind of like things for the utility to play in this and then um rather than have all these homes self-isolate now there are little communities

[00:39:02] isolated and you have all of these systems talk to each other and manage load it's just a small grid right and the fact that the solar and storage is located on somebody's roof is kind of irrelevant

[00:39:12] right um some people will have it some people won't but they'd share the power right just like that's how our grid works now it's not as if you know new york city has all of its own

[00:39:22] generation and no we all share right um so i think that's what the one really interesting model the other one then is the kind of like upstream microgrid right so you could have all of the

[00:39:34] generation and storage um you know at the point that feeder is being isolated um and then just feed it downstream um and then you know you just have to figure out like what that thing's doing

[00:39:46] you know the 99 percent of the hour other hours like that's the whole thing with resilience it's like how can i give people what they need but like also have this be economically useful and

[00:39:55] like have people want to do it or like have the system you know the utility want to do it um there's i don't know it i agree with your main point which is just like this makes everybody's head

[00:40:06] explode like there's no right it's like really hard there's no easy answer but it's also like kind of obvious that it's a good idea like the like the end yeah and i i think the best one

[00:40:18] it's a little bit different but just um and the big thing obviously in this case is the cost of energy is so high but uh what they did in australia kind of with it was in a partnership uh the virtual

[00:40:31] power plant kind of set up they did with a lot of homes by the utility just paying to put the actual tesla powerwall thing in someone's house and then kind of put those in conjunction

[00:40:40] that kind of helped with a lot of blackouts issues they were having i think that that to me once again there's a huge economic factor but then it does start to make it to make it a lot

[00:40:50] more approachable where the person themselves doesn't have to buy it and the utility is being able to kind of get the return on it and get that um the one that who monitors it but it's kind of that

[00:41:00] seamless experience where no one who has these things in their homes really realize where the energy is going they just know they don't have blackouts and their costs have come wildly down for their whole uh i guess neighborhood for the most part yeah i think

[00:41:16] that that one in vermont is really cool um yeah that's kind of a similar mod i don't think it's the same scale but it's exactly kind of the same idea yeah it's a different version of like

[00:41:26] how can we take customer-cited resources but make sure they have social value and really what they're doing is making sure the day to day economics have social value right because they're using those batteries to like reduce the system's peak load and discharge at the

[00:41:41] right times and stuff and then the individual gets the backup um because they are isolated like one building systems with the one in vermont or yeah with the with the green mountain power

[00:41:52] one like it got you have one of those tesla batteries in your house that green mountain power gave you like it only provides backup to your home but it provides economic benefits to everybody else during the rest of the year so it it's a different it's like flipping

[00:42:07] the question on its head right which is yeah um we want social value out of these systems we don't want to just have a bunch of like little atomic grids and nobody cares about each other right

[00:42:17] right right you can also spin it the other way which is if people are going to spend money on their own resilience how can we make sure that also provides benefits to everybody else

[00:42:26] during i always say this the 99 percent of the other hours of the year um i think it's that's a cool model as well yeah i might be mistaken maybe the australia ones that way too i

[00:42:36] thought it was uh a little bit different but that that actually probably makes more sense that they did it that way we might be referring to different things too i i might have just just totally

[00:42:46] went off on a tangent there yeah but you're right it's it makes everyone's heads explode trying to figure this out but what were you gonna say guling yeah no i was gonna say just like just

[00:42:55] closing out on that idea what i think is like interesting about both of those two is that yes it's not like necessarily creating a maybe the australia one it is and that vermont one

[00:43:05] it's not necessarily creating like a community microgrid outage but it does make it a lot more accessible to people who couldn't have afforded it otherwise because then they can derive additional value and then for people who are like really wealthy and are like i want control over my

[00:43:20] battery 100 percent they don't have to participate in the program um but it does open it up to more people like i think they're still nominal enough fee that probably doesn't open up to everyone but

[00:43:31] it's like getting better so i think that's Duncan at really a really good point as well and then we also have to like layer on like anytime we're talking about energy technology we have to

[00:43:41] think about cost curves right like we can't like level set our ideas of how this works today because like a year from now is different five years from now is really different 10 years from

[00:43:50] now like how cheap is storage gonna be i have no idea but one while watching the solar cost curve happen i was wrong every single time i was like pessimistic five years ago about solar which was

[00:44:02] turned out to be the dumbest take ever so i don't know it's one more thing that makes this so hard to think through which is like you just can't really think about today you have to think about

[00:44:11] like 10 years from now if you want to really like create a good framework for how this stuff should work and you're completely right because it kind of goes back to what you both said

[00:44:20] none of this happens overnight and i i think especially speaking to solar i remember when i was doing we did both large commercial some utility and and then we had a smaller section that did

[00:44:33] residential and like a good deal on a residential project would be like eight bucks a watt which now is just yeah oh yeah and that was like 0809 and nowadays you just you mind i mean it's

[00:44:48] it's so economically inefficient whereas now it's i don't i know it's at least under two bucks but it's probably even lower than that for you just even residential um rezy still kind of

[00:44:58] tends to hit like high twos or threes even got you i mean i think what's wild is right like the sunshop program the doe sunshop program was to get like 100 megawatt utility scale plants

[00:45:09] down to a dollar a watt right and that was achieved i don't know a few years ago um you know i just did a very small commercial solar installation so like 150 kilowatts in new

[00:45:22] jersey and it was a dollar 34 a watt right like so whatever people were thinking about at the doe which was amazing by the way and was like they achieved their goals about like what that would

[00:45:33] unlock like they were missing this whole other thing right because you just don't expect this to happen um so i don't know it's i feel like everybody in our industry myself included has been caught like time and time again underestimating like how technology actually changes everything we

[00:45:52] think about and i think it's completely what i'm most fascinated right now about is battery costs because it's exact it reminds me of exactly that with solar but maybe a few years behind

[00:46:01] where it is just dropping so quickly that data you have from a year maybe even 18 months ago is just not worth using because the prices depending on what chemistry you're using the general production of it have completely dropped even further and i think that's where especially

[00:46:18] with grid backup systems you really if you're thinking five years ahead yeah you'll be fine cost effectiveness by the time you actually have something on the ground so we've we've talked about covid we just discussed the fires so let's try and get even more chronologically relevant

[00:46:36] and talk about what's happened over the last couple weeks with texas what are you talking about yeah oh there's uh oh there's this uh this rodeo i think that's uh that's what urcott urcott puts on

[00:46:51] right there oh my gosh sorry i just had this like very pre-covid i have a lot of friends in and i love rodeo i hope they're okay uh i mean they're they're doing okay it is almost rodeo season

[00:47:07] i would defend i guess pre-covid so yeah i can we just like pause for a second i was on the phone from texas yesterday who said that it was 80 degrees in texas yesterday and like

[00:47:21] it was like what like it was in the negatives before it's in the negatives like so recently like you know i'm used to like temperature fluctuations but not like 80 degrees in a week

[00:47:37] i i had something similar happen where i don't know if his cell towers or something or whatever happened but i have a good friend who lives down in austin and i thought i'd send a text

[00:47:47] and then i was like oh my god i guess it didn't go through and so a few days later i goes by when i finally realized it so i send it and then he kind of sent to me like yeah it's not

[00:47:56] great but then he takes a photo outside and it was the same deal i think it was like 72 out and i'm just like wait what the hell where you see such a massive swing and just like

[00:48:05] to be off by a few days where it has such a large impact on everything they're doing but then boom they're still they might not still have water and some of these other things that are critical

[00:48:16] infrastructure but the actual storm it was you wouldn't even tell you could tell it was even there we should probably back up and describe what the storm was since we're talking about the aftermath

[00:48:28] okay well who do you want me to do that do you want it sounds like dunk and i'll let you it sounds like dunk and i'll let you seem to volunteer i yeah i was like that sounded like a

[00:48:39] volunteering okay that's not what i meant oh no i'll go for it so i mean right basically you know a historic cold front came through much of the us basically if you imagine an inverted

[00:48:53] triangle that is you know sort of pointing down to texas and covers much of the upper midwest you know the the polar vortex i guess collapsed whatever that means i don't know exactly but

[00:49:05] it let let a bunch of arctic air flow flow south and i've been using this as sort of like the benchmark for how crazy this was you know there's if you design h-fax systems you have to understand what's

[00:49:19] the hottest temperature this is going to be exposed to and what's the coldest temperature this is going to be exposed to because that's how you size how much ac you need and how much heat

[00:49:26] you need the the manual that tells you what this weather data is if you looked at the low in dallas which at least the one day i was looking at it was five degrees that's 25 degrees less than

[00:49:43] the most conservative low that the manual tells you to consider right and that's a that's based on a 50 year data set with a 99.6 confidence so like five degrees was just like considered so improbable it wasn't even worth thinking about and it happened right um and

[00:50:04] so essentially this you know stressed the grid massively right first first it was just an economic impact so i remember the first couple days of this you know everyone on energy twitter was like

[00:50:14] oh my god prices are so high right um so the price of electricity went up to its regulated cap of $9,000 per megawatt hour that's nine dollars a kilowatt hour you know typically in texas powers like nine

[00:50:28] cents a kilowatt hour you know crazy stuff 100x the normal price um and you know for a long time that was just sort of an economic issue uh all basically the people who sell power to

[00:50:41] customers sell it at fixed rates with locked in contracts for the most part so those those retailers of power were you know getting crunched because they had to cover their contracts in the

[00:50:52] spot market if they weren't hedged enough there's going to be a bunch of bankruptcies from this but then there are also a handful of people on the real real time rate who got like $13,000

[00:51:01] electricity bills for like six days like really really crazy stuff um but then it escalated beyond just an economic issue and you know became like a crazy health and safety issue because the the pipelines and the gas power plants and even the gas wells themselves started freezing up

[00:51:20] which is just wild to think about yeah texas the land of gas right there's so much damn gas in that state that they just flare it because there's no way to get it to market and they couldn't

[00:51:30] get enough gas within the state to run power plants right um and uh so they had to start you know issuing rolling blackouts to at least keep some of the system up and now it's actually

[00:51:42] been understood that they were minutes away from a total system failure where the entire texas grid would have shut down and it can be really hard to start a grid back up to black start

[00:51:53] a grid you have to like isolate a section of it that has a generator bring up that section do another section sync them together and then do that like 50 times right it can take like weeks

[00:52:03] to black start a grid and that's that's what i'd heard was they were minutes away from their grid being out for at least weeks maybe even months so let's in case anyone hasn't heard what happened

[00:52:14] let's take a step back uh i think probably the biggest thing there's two elements to this that really explains this if obviously the weather component but the phenomenon with this

[00:52:25] is the fact that texas is texas and if anyone knows how the grid looks you really have the west center connection grid the east center connection grid and it goes down the middle of the country

[00:52:38] and then randomly you have texas and that kind of falls into its own uh its own grid so traditionally they haven't had to deal with a lot of these issues and there's

[00:52:51] the reasons for that partially was so they could kind of get around some FERC regulation by doing their own thing and then i believe it was 2001-2003 where they decided to deregulate some of their utility

[00:53:03] markets which i thought was an it's not it's an interesting concept and i think the best analogy i've been able to uh describe it to is like what you experience with telecom if you have

[00:53:16] Verizon or i mean like T-Mobile or Sprint they don't actually own the cell towers they're usually running space and cell capacity from AT&T and Verizon as their providers and that's essentially what

[00:53:31] this deregulation kind of allowed for is for a lot of these utilities to kind of come in and not always have the infrastructure to kind of upkeep but they could essentially sell to the end

[00:53:42] user and through that you kind of started having a lot of really unique things happen between not properly weatherizing the wind turbines the natural gas plants and all these things and it really did kind of create a perfect storm i don't know if there's any other kind of

[00:53:59] back uh backstory for what has happened that either of you want to kind of add to that you thought was really interesting but i think that those to me hit a lot of the highlights that

[00:54:08] were just really unique about the situation and it's going to be a long discussion of how they move forward yeah i think the i think the reason for the power plants not being winterized is like

[00:54:22] a little bit less of the deregulation of texas and a little bit more in that a lot of i mean i think a lot of power plants went through deregulation and weren't winterized um and then

[00:54:35] in the northeast i and drunken fact checked me here but i believe that there were basically similar kind of issues at some point and then the and then it was sort of like if you want to

[00:54:46] participate in the capacity market and be considered like a firm and reliable resource you have you must winterize your plan um and texas doesn't have capacity markets so it doesn't really have that same requirement uh they could have that requirement obviously in other ways you don't

[00:55:03] need a capacity market to mandate winterization to participate in the grid um right but it is sort of the way that it happens in a lot of other markets today well i think that was actually

[00:55:15] a better way to articulate it because the weatherization thing i think what was unique about that really comes out of what they saw i believe happened in 2011 where something similar did happen before and that that was supposed to be the wake-up call to hopefully address

[00:55:31] some of these issues and unfortunately that just never happened i mean i'll give my take here which is like i think it's all about what we assume the frequency of extreme mother's going to be right

[00:55:45] because whether you're an energy market or capacity market or you know to what extent the markets deregulated or not and like that i don't know there's a lot of details there i think generally though whoever owns and operates the plant whether it's a old school

[00:55:58] vertically integrated utility or you know a fully independent power producer what they want to know is if i'm going to spend money to upgrade this plant you know when when is that going to pay off like

[00:56:12] when am i going to need that right and in the texas construct what that means is like when our price is going to go to nine thousand dollars a megawatt hour again because of a cold front

[00:56:21] and if i don't weatherize i'm not going to be able to capture that and i mean as someone who develops financed projects of a very different kind but it's like a similar process like if i said

[00:56:35] one of these might happen in the next 25 years i would not get approval to include that cost if i said one of these might happen in the next 10 years i'd be very very lucky to get

[00:56:47] approval to include that cost even if it's like a huge payout if i said one of these might happen in the next five years like now we're starting to talk right um i you know i don't know

[00:57:00] specifically whether this texas cold front like was statistically normal or not like i don't know a lot of stuff to get into there but i do think what we know is more extreme weather is probably going

[00:57:10] to happen with more frequency right and how do we actually quantify that and think about that is like a huge lever on how we build our infrastructure regardless of who owns it and pays for it

[00:57:24] because you know just like the the sort of like h-fact design guidebook i was talking about they the most conservative thing they say is we look at this data set and then we cover 99.6 of the

[00:57:35] hours in the data set like one that's an arbitrary choice should that be 99.9 should that be 85 like who knows and two like the data is wrong right the historical data is not representative

[00:57:48] of where we are anymore so i my view on this is like that's what this is about i think an easy fix will probably be just mandating plants winterize but like we're gonna see this happen with all

[00:57:59] sorts of stuff right uh in l.a county in the summer it hit 120 degrees which is just the highest it ever hit right sorry 121 um and a lot of power systems and h-fac systems and everything

[00:58:13] else wasn't prepared for that um we're gonna see floodplains change and you know maybe critical infrastructures in what are the new floodplains like all this stuff is changing and we don't really have like standard practices for assuming what forward looking weather is going to be

[00:58:33] we've only been able to look backward um so for me not to kind of blow this topic up but for me like that is the crazy thing in this it's like there's probably a solution to the texas problem

[00:58:43] that can just be implemented and i'm sure iraqa it's going to figure that out but like over the next 40 50 years like stuff like this is going to keep happening and like we have to figure

[00:58:55] out how we deal with this across a variety of situations that's my concern right and like how do you anticipate what those risks are now right it reminds me like post sandy um you know

[00:59:08] sandy had so many people had generators on the ground floor and then they all flooded and everyone was like oh wait maybe they shouldn't be on the ground floor because we could they could flood but

[00:59:18] it was like no one had ever thought about it before because that was never the issue before um and suddenly you're you know you're faced with something and obviously right like texas i think there's there's some questions of whether like nobody had seen it before because

[00:59:31] there was like some cold related outages in the 90s and then in 2011 and then in 2021 but there is still this question of like what is the frequency and like what is that economic

[00:59:41] drive and so um and that's gonna vary you know wildly um in terms of what people think the value is and like what people think you know i think especially again i'm not gonna like try to

[00:59:55] speak to the culture of texas but like you know regulation solves that really easily it probably will in this case because there was enough enough of a big issue but it could also not and there's

[01:00:09] like a clear thing to fix here right right and it's like not crazy expensive right like what like weatherizing a plant is i mean i i know nothing about the economics but from my understanding

[01:00:19] is it's not like it's something you wouldn't pay for if you didn't think you needed it but it's not gonna like make all these places go bankrupt um and the potential economically you know attractive power plants in the northeast exactly weatherized it's fine like yeah um

[01:00:38] i do think there's one crazy thing though which is the gas supply was disrupted too so even if you weatherize the plant does can you get gas to it um this is also something we face in the

[01:00:50] northeast and our solution is have the plant be dual fuel have a massive oil tank next to it and every winter massachusetts fires up its oil turbines right or switches the fuel to them

[01:01:03] because gas becomes scarce when people on the coldest days are heating with it which is exactly what happened in texas so like not an awesome outcome right like burning fuel and oil fuel

[01:01:15] oil and peaker plants but like that could also be what weatherizing means um right or winterizing sorry so i i think like that's like a bigger thing um but if it's just kind of like make sure the

[01:01:28] instrumentation and like pressure sensors and stuff can deal with the cold like i think they should probably just mandate it and get it over with yeah for sure well what are your thoughts about just kind of rickett and texas being separate from the other interconnections is that

[01:01:49] do you think that may be what part of this regulation includes is to make it easier for in some sort of situation moving forward that it becomes part of the other the grid

[01:01:58] so it'll allow for that or do you think that's too far out of happening anytime soon i i mean i think that's fine i'm just i'm just curious yeah no i i think for two reasons

[01:02:08] i mean one i think is it would be bringing in potential like more federal oversight um but i think also like in this particular instance the specific neighboring areas weren't doing that

[01:02:21] great either um you know they were also having like rolling outages and it wasn't nearly as dire of a situation as texas was in but there wasn't a lot my understanding is there wasn't necessarily

[01:02:33] a lot of help readily available now maybe if like in the future you know we have like stronger cross grid interconnection texas will want to reconsider that when we have like you know high voltage transmission like crossing the country and everything's like great and wonderful

[01:02:52] maybe texas will be like oh that looks cool but right now i think they're like wouldn't have really helped us we don't really want to deal with federal things like we'll fix what

[01:03:00] we need to fix and we'll just deal with it and part of the reason i bring it up it's definitely a one-off is people are using el paso right now is kind of the example that they were able to stay up

[01:03:11] even it's not obviously the largest texas city but they had blackouts but they were only usually from what i've been told minutes to hours versus having they were actual rolling blackouts right like right ercott said they were doing rolling blackouts but then they just didn't have the

[01:03:27] power to unroll people exactly which i don't think it's the proper term for that but i think that is in itself is a really interesting question to ask which is like

[01:03:41] of course how do we prevent these issues to when they occur how do we respond to them better right and i think yeah the rolling blackouts topic is interesting like ideally like there's

[01:03:54] an optimal way to institute rolling blackouts that minimizes harm to people you know that relies on like the law of large numbers and like spreads out the burden you know um that is done maybe with a high

[01:04:10] sort of like resolution geographically and also temporally so you know my block can lose power for an hour but then it rotates to the next block right and all this stuff would be enabled

[01:04:25] you know if utilities could you know invest in more sort of like people call this like situational awareness and sensors and all sorts of stuff i think that's a really important discussion

[01:04:35] because right now the way it works is just like we have a couple of feeders we prioritize because there's like a hospital here and at this thing there and like if you're on that feeder

[01:04:42] you're lucky you're not losing power everyone else is for like two days right it's i think that's i'm very interested in that conversation blackouts are going to happen again and yeah i would

[01:04:53] love to empower utilities to like you know do it in a really good way right but i think but what i have read on texas is that they were planning on rotating people more but they just couldn't

[01:05:06] undo it because they lost too much generation so i i think like part of the miscommunication was they said we're going to have to be rolling blackouts and then so much generation was

[01:05:16] shed that they were just like we just can't bring these people back and there's like no and then all you all you can serve then are like the absolutely critical areas and that's why like the areas

[01:05:24] run hospitals stayed open i think in another situation where they hadn't lost quite as much generation just a little bit of generation you would have seen more rolling situation totally totally yeah yeah i even meant like relative to how it works today

[01:05:38] like yeah you could yeah right even more granular surgical kind of um but yeah it's a great point they were like in a tremendously difficult situation and even normal rolling blackouts weren't

[01:05:49] really possible yeah and i think what like one question i have that i haven't seen discussed a lot is like had we had there been a lower demand in the days leading up to the outages through like promotion of cold climate heat pumps instead of electric resistance heating

[01:06:11] um or better better weatherization of like homes and businesses what like how might that have like helped reduce some of the outages themselves right from these plants that had to like gear up super fast and then go to like a hundred percent and then just like broke down

[01:06:33] um like are there ways to think about like it became very much a supply and side issue but if you can mitigate some of the demand can you like could you have reduced some of that impact

[01:06:45] totally i think that's a great question right and i think electrification plays in here too right because like i don't know the exact number but like half of homes are heated with gas and

[01:06:56] half of homes have like electric heat in texas which is which is unique right in the northeast here everybody's gas basically or oil um you know there was a big reason plants couldn't get gasses

[01:07:09] because everybody was burning gas in their houses um you could say well electrification would have worsened the problem because it would have made made more electric demand but if it was with efficient cold climate heat pumps it might have actually been like a net gain right less

[01:07:26] gas demand in homes let's the plants run powering efficient heat pumps like all of that could have worked out better plus to your point yeah like a little bit of a little bit more insulation a

[01:07:37] bit a little bit of air sealing um and i think you could imagine a system that didn't end up in such a severe situation uh not to mention then if you do lose power um if you have a well

[01:07:52] insulated tight house like it retains its temperature for like a day like you're you're like you have a like essentially a thermal battery um exactly and you'd be in a much better

[01:08:03] shit you wouldn't be like i don't know you heard some like really really uh sad stories about like people burning furniture to stay warm and like there's like a young guy who like

[01:08:15] was like burning hand sanitizer to try to like stay warm in his living room like really terrible stuff right and i think winterizing homes is like just like previous like not only

[01:08:27] is it good that 99% of the rest of the time just because it reduces energy loads and all that but like if people lose power like it's a much better situation um anyway i think that's a super

[01:08:38] interesting topic Colleen um the the demand side of this so moving forward i mean now that we've kind of looked at that where i mean i guess it'd be interesting to hear both of your thoughts i mean

[01:08:55] i realized we're going to come in up on an hour here but both of your thoughts on which technology in this space do you find the most interesting or like do you think could hold

[01:09:07] like really the most immediate potential i think that the heat pump comment you made is incredibly insightful and completely accurate i love heat pumps i've had them on two houses and my work with electric vehicles they are game changers and so like the more that technology can

[01:09:25] be used i am all for it but i just be curious to talk to both you just kind of given the realms that you the spheres that you work in what you see is kind of like technologies that you're most

[01:09:37] excited about kind of on the horizon that i think will have a great impact i think we're both just thinking not because we don't have thoughts but there's so many thoughts a big

[01:09:52] question yeah like just hitting us trying to make it a softball i didn't expect i mean yeah i mean there are so many exciting technologies there are a lot of exciting technologies i guess

[01:10:02] you know i think i feel like this is a comment james had made before of like i'm just excited about a ton of dr is getting on the system and so then the technology that

[01:10:16] i'm then excited about is like software that can optimize those because i i think that like we're gonna need all types of dr's we're gonna need things like storage that can both take in and

[01:10:30] export power we're gonna need things that can be generators we're gonna need things that can just like be flexible load right and like man you know like manage eb charging but ultimately like those things are only really helpful if we have a good way of controlling them

[01:10:46] and a good way of them speaking to each other and like that's the technology that there's a lot of different solutions for now but i don't feel like that's like where i want to see the most development

[01:10:56] go um because that to me still feels like the missing link like we haven't really like found the true solution of how everything speaks to each other i think that's a cool answer

[01:11:09] um i'm gonna i'm gonna take the other side of that one um i personally even though i don't work with them that much i think evs are the most like revolutionary technology in the power system and the energy system broadly right not only do they just massively change

[01:11:29] transportation you know moving from oil to electricity that's like a huge shift and there's all these interesting transportation specific benefits to that but i think evs like become the more most important factor in the power grid as well right um not only do are they a massive load

[01:11:49] you imagine just like your house uh once you get an ev like that's really the only load that matters anymore maybe your heat pump in the winter as well but like that's that's what

[01:11:58] you're doing you're charging your car like the rest is kind of like interesting um and like it just connects to everything right i think in the not so distant future folks with evs in texas

[01:12:10] during an outage are going to be using their evs as backup generators um i think there's a really good chance that ev oems reach into the rest of the home energy ecosystem um maybe providing

[01:12:27] um you know uh like third party like rate plans that optimize ev charging and give you a better better rate i think that's very likely right because this thing just sits in your garage

[01:12:37] 10 hours a day you could charge it anytime in those 10 hours um i like i think there's just all these ways in which like the interesting activity in the power system organizes itself around the emergence of evs not to mention also like the only thing that's actually making

[01:12:57] stationary storage attractive from an economic perspective is that we're building out a ton of storage manufacturing capacity for evs so like that is very related in itself too right like my projects that have stationary storage are just like riding the ev momentum basically and uh

[01:13:16] so so that that would be my view i think there's just like so much to happen there um not to mention also like the type of work callin does right which is thinking about like we also have like a

[01:13:26] lot of infrastructure to build to to charge and manage evs and like it's like what's really cool about it beyond it being a lot is that like it's a blank slate right like for most of our

[01:13:39] loads on the grid we're like working with existing stuff right you have this 100 year old building with like 75 year old switch gear in the basement and you're like we'll throw out whatever the best

[01:13:49] solution is like what can i fit into this right if you're electrifying a municipal bus fleet right it's a parking lot there's nothing on it like just buses park there right but like now it has to

[01:14:03] become a sophisticated power distribution center and like you can do whatever you want right because there's no power in that parking lot other than for some street lights right you build it from the ground up and i think that's so exciting um because like you can do

[01:14:17] everything really right you know you could have like all this awesome software and batteries to back it up and carport solar and like all this cool stuff because like you're not working with like you know these strange vestigial infrastructures you're you're just starting over um so anyway

[01:14:35] that's my long-winded answer i think like the intersection of evs in the power sector is like probably the coolest place to be right now well that's great to hear because that's what this podcast

[01:14:45] is about so shameless plot really uh but no it's funny because actually that i was kind of thinking the question to myself and that was honestly i was going back and forth between both your answers

[01:14:59] because if i had it like what would be the thing that i think can have the greatest impact to everyone right now is software and just better use of what we have today uh i'm i think we've even mentioned a few times where we're we're talking about how

[01:15:13] utilities have to make the decisions on which feeders and different things to keep up and it's obviously you have to work with the system you have but it's it's still just so crazy that

[01:15:23] it's gone to a point where it's still kind of and it's so analog still and so Edison would recognize the grid right and that's exactly that's my favorite analogy yeah um yeah the if

[01:15:36] alex the if anyone hasn't heard of before it's if alexander grand bell came today he would never recognize what a phone is but if Edison somehow made it to today he could pretty quickly figure out

[01:15:48] where the outlets are how the electrical system works here because nothing's really changed but then completely to your point on evs i think um there's just so much to unlock there

[01:16:00] i'm i'm probably not as bullish on the v2g thing i'm i want to see that happen the question just becomes um and the only reason i'm not bullish on it not because i believe in it's the issues for

[01:16:13] the actual automotive oems as far as the warranty um and how all of that works out i think i have for a caveat to my statement oh please do so i'm bullish on v to h not v to g right so v to h like

[01:16:28] v to house right like backup right so and that's that's i think i think oems are going to realize that's super valuable it just could be like we're going to figure out the warranty stuff because

[01:16:37] this is going to happen like once in a while it doesn't really matter yeah v to g i agree i don't know how you get through those barriers i think that's really tough and i think that's i think

[01:16:46] we're perfectly aligned there um because i worry we are seeing oems talking about moving the warranties from miles to cycles on a battery which in that case makes sense and those one off

[01:16:57] but i think where we'd actually see the vg would v to g would be around uh fleet where you do have a bunch of electric buses they're just kind of when they're parked there

[01:17:08] you have a tremendous potential for a large battery that if you're able to kind of take advantage of that more effectively i think for a city in minu municipality that's

[01:17:16] where we're going to see it first um yeah i hate to do this but yeah i was gonna say we have to we're gonna have to wrap wrap this up now and i i appreciate it's easy for me being on the west

[01:17:28] go so i do want to say uh thank you for having both of you on but before we hop off i would just like to uh if people are interested in learning more about what either of you doing and especially

[01:17:39] the d r task force where can they find out more and find the podcast and everything that your team's doing totally so easiest place to find all of it is dr task force dot com

[01:17:54] you can also find us on twitter uh dr underscore task underscore force yep that's that's the place to go um i don't know we're we're also on like all the major we're everywhere i don't know just

[01:18:09] search i don't know how it works there's a podcast you're there well calling and dunk it i just want to say once again this has been great thank you so much i know i've learned a lot

[01:18:20] i've been i i think honestly that's what i was so excited to have both of you on was when i've listened to your podcast listening to both of you or at least i know dunk and you've been on some of those

[01:18:30] clubhouse things that we happen to be in the same room on i was just blown away how quickly you guys were just laying down the facts and really uh being pretty articulate because that's a whole podcast unto itself is the world the clubhouse good and bad

[01:18:46] but when you find those sources of people who know their stuff it's pretty amazing so i just want to say thanks to both again if you haven't listened to it listen to dr task force

[01:18:56] and uh look forward to speaking to both of you soon thanks for being on thanks jace this is great yeah likewise thanks jace this was a good time thanks for joining us be sure to visit our

[01:19:06] website connecting the grid dot com there you can listen to our podcasts contact us about sponsorship or even be a guest on grid connections while you're at it if you found value in this show we'd appreciate

[01:19:18] a positive rating on your favorite podcast or video streaming service or if you'd simply tell a friend about the show that would help us out a lot too thank you again and i look forward to us learning more together soon