Lew Cox & Andrew Kelley from XCharge North America

[00:00:02] and we're more in-grid connections listeners. I'm really excited to be sharing this episode with you today. I'm joined by two different representatives from XCharge North America. I know a really common theme we have on our episode is talking about charging infrastructure,

[00:00:15] and so I think it'd be great to have two representatives from the space who can talk to us about all the different intricacies and different challenges along with most importantly the success they're seeing in this space. So today I'm joined by Andrew Kelley, the director of energy solutions

[00:00:30] at XCharge North America, as well as Luke Cox. He's the Senior Director of Business Development at XCharge North America. Thank you, gentlemen both for joining me today and we just really love to

[00:00:40] kind of hear a little bit more for our listeners, intro to what you do and XCharge in general. Sure, thanks Chase. We really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us a little bit.

[00:00:51] Guess how kick things off like I mentioned. My name's Luke Cox. I am the Senior Director of Business Development here for XCharge and my oversight is anything into some of our client solutions, you know helping people understand our hardware and the way to implement it as well as,

[00:01:04] you know, helping transact not only here in North America but in some of the other spaces that XCharge operates globally. All right. Thanks Luke. So I'm Andrew Kelley, the director of energy

[00:01:15] solutions. I joined XCharge this year and my role, my focus here is I work very closely with our grid operator utility partners on the operations side ensuring that our equipment is, you know, usable acceptable at all different kinds of use cases is accepted in various different kinds of,

[00:01:34] you know, subsidy programs, rebate programs, things like that. And then on the business development side, it I'm seeking and looking for partnerships with those, those same kind of customers, great operators utility companies, the developers who focus on the distributed energy space,

[00:01:49] you know, come from the renewable energy industry. So taking some of those, those perspectives into EV charging and something that we're working on, the top line philosophy we have is, you know, we're a really a partner of

[00:02:03] we are in support of all the things that the grid needs to do to operate effectively in the future electrification is coming and that's our goal here is to work with, work with the operators of the grid. Make sure everything happens as smoothly and as efficiently as possible.

[00:02:20] And I think that's exactly what our listeners like to hear and thank you both. I guess just I had to do a little bit of research in preparation of this. I come across

[00:02:31] extrage a few times, but I think real quickly can either you or both you just kind of go over how extrage kind of has come to the North American markets, some of the ways that

[00:02:43] maybe that the companies approaching it differently and just maybe the overall mindset of what makes extrage different from others in the space right now. Sure, happy to kind of take that one up first and then kick it over to Andrew.

[00:02:57] So extrage group as much larger in any of the North America is at this moment. So at the group level, we currently operate in 22 different countries. We've deployed more than 40,000 pieces of hardware globally. We are top two in market share for DC fast charging manufacturing in Europe.

[00:03:13] And then we brought the first bi-directional battery integrated direct current fast charger to market as well last year. One of the things that really sets us apart is not only our you know, juck or not status and how many things we've manufactured into plug globally,

[00:03:26] but in the way that we kind of create our charging solutions to be very solutions specific. Based on the use case based on the available power, you know, and what led to the launch of

[00:03:37] extrage in North America is that you know, we're based in Hamburg, Germany, and we've had great success in Europe with some of the largest operators in the world, some of the largest power companies

[00:03:45] like an LX, EDP and Votnfall, which we work with, you know, at significant scale globally. We realize that North America has always been about five or six years behind Europe from an infrastructure perspective. So transitioning some of the world's best equipment to North

[00:04:01] America is just a matter of education and a measure of working with your customers and clients to really find the right utilization and the right use case to deploy the technology we've already kind of perfected. So for us in North America, it's just a matter of giving the

[00:04:14] gospel out there, right, preaching out to build this stuff in a way that's scalable, sustainable, and does actually present an ROI if you can get to inside of a decade. And I was really excited

[00:04:23] to find the opportunity to work with X-Charge and get that done here in North America. I know that's great. I appreciate that overview. When you talk about some of the differences

[00:04:34] between kind of stirring Europe and maybe it's from the lag that you're seeing here, that five to six years you talk about between here in North America, what are, can you give a couple examples of like

[00:04:45] what are some of the things that you're still seeing as maybe, maybe misinformation's wrong were, but just a lot of maybe inaccurate assumptions that people are kind of thinking about when they hear or think about installing charging here in North America at least.

[00:05:04] Yeah, and do you want to take that one? Yeah. I'll jump in with a couple of examples. I think the first most obvious example is that if I think a lot of folks think at an individual or micro level

[00:05:18] and all the way to the other end of the spectrum at the macro level at a country or perhaps a state level as to how do we deploy this infrastructure on the micro level, what I see a lot of

[00:05:31] folks saying or whether it's through different media outlets in face-to-face conversations, you know, in comments sections on some of these articles or share a message that comes up time and time again. It's like folks tend to have tend to be scared about or have some

[00:05:48] either a combination of ranging anxiety and an anxiety about where and when they can charge their their vehicles as an individual user is on things like road trips on a daily day basis. They're scared about the distribution of the system of the over the equipment and then deploying

[00:06:05] at their concerns, they're concerned that they actually building out of the infrastructure. So part one is they're scared to drive a kind of convertible electric as a whole. There's some fear there. I'm going on the development side on the individual level. There's fear that

[00:06:24] there's going to be overly expensive, difficult to do and the local whether to utility company or power authority. The local provider isn't going to be able to support the transition in that

[00:06:38] specific area for for everybody that needs it. And then on the macro level a lot of folks are also saying well there's no way we can get 285 million or 385-300 million drivers in the next three

[00:06:52] years to transition fully. We don't have the capacity on the grid. We don't have the available resources to do so. This is a big task. So I think folks are really nervous. There's a lot of stress about

[00:07:07] both ends of the spectrum but we have solutions, pretty simple solutions to be honest for both both everything on the micro level, the macro level and kind of everything in between

[00:07:17] I can go through more of that as we go through a conversation today. But those are I think those fears are certainly prevalent and those fears trickle at a sort of or expand out to even on the commercial customers, to grid operators. There's certainly this fear about

[00:07:33] this kind of equipment as being overly burdensome, difficult and expensive to deploy and and maintain. So I think some of the challenges were really nice. Yeah just a few. Nothing serious right?

[00:07:48] Well I think one of the other things maybe to take a step back just for anyone listening who isn't familiar with X-Charge. You kind of give us just a quick overview because as far as I know,

[00:07:57] X-Charge only has a majority of the focus is in DC fast charging. I believe there may be it has been some AC in the past but yeah just kind of give a quick product overview real briefly.

[00:08:10] Just so for those who might be out driving maybe they've plugged into an X-Charge and just didn't realize that's what it was. That's very possible right now X-Charge does power quite a bit of infrastructure not only around North America but globally. Our products

[00:08:24] sweet we make three major products we sell here in North America globally we do offer some other things based on use case including you know level two or AC charging products and the C2

[00:08:34] is what we call it. We don't actively sell that here in North America where focus primarily on DC fast charging. But what differentiates, excuse me, X-Charge from some of our competitors or some of

[00:08:44] the things that you've seen out there in the world is that our solutions are like I talked about very site specific whereas if you happen to be a commercial developer or somebody who owns a piece

[00:08:54] of commercial property and you said hey I would like to get in on this charge EV game right I would like to be able to turn my property into the refueling station of the future if you will.

[00:09:05] Now what you would typically do is you would contact someone called a charge point or any other EVSE manufacturer and you would say I would like to order two DC fast chargers and they say that's

[00:09:15] great it'll cost you you know call it a hundred fifty thousand dollars and then the install might be another hundred thousand dollars and then you've got 18 months and lead time from the utility

[00:09:24] in order to get that done because you don't have 480 power coming to your site right you've got two or a wait well we manufacture a two-await solution as well as the 480 solution so we get a little

[00:09:34] bit of the gambit of everybody if you are that commercial property owner and you have a couple hundred amps of 208 we have a product called the C6 AM which is up to 200 kilowatts you know this is

[00:09:44] something that you can install on 208 building infrastructure without any transformers without any supporting equipment this is not you know a power cabinet and dispenser setup it's an all in one contained unit that you can sit on a little concrete pad with minimal construction costs and it charges

[00:09:59] two vehicles simultaneously that is our most popular product we've deployed that one you know more than 10,000 times globally and that is something that uses what's called dynamic load balancing to determine the state of charge between the two vehicles and then prioritize the one with a

[00:10:13] lower state of charge so that everybody gets what they need and get back on the road now the revolutionary thing about that charger as I talked about as it's a single point in connection

[00:10:21] meaning that all you need is a little bit of conduit directly to the house panel on that property we're talking about which doesn't require any significant infrastructure upgrades that's the most popular way that people who are getting into the game today and aren't looking to build out

[00:10:35] these giant hubs of 20 or 30 stalls that's the way you would do it whereas if you do want to get into the 20 or 30 stall game we offer solutions that have battery integrated solutions we offer

[00:10:45] 420 kilowatts super high output chargers as well you know they can charge up to four vehicles at a time it really just depends on you know the customer the property what's available there but it

[00:10:56] extrage we typically like we talk about where solutions are oriented so you just say hey I have a property with x amount of power available and we definitely make a solution to get you energized

[00:11:05] today versus 18 months from yeah I really appreciate that context I think when you're talking about the sorts of solutions and apologies if you hear my dogs in the background right now no problem

[00:11:18] but what do you see as with this kind of focus like do you see a lot of it sounds like it's usually kind of maybe a company that's trying to offer charging for its workers as a

[00:11:33] kind of maybe like a benefit or are you going to see a pretty broad spectrum of customers the reason I ask is on the most recent episode we had JT from Franklin's charging and he actually has two

[00:11:46] charging locations in Arkansas where he has I think one that he's essentially set up to come to like modern convenience stores and just with the count the examples you were talking about it was interesting talking to him and kind of like some of the challenges he's obviously had

[00:12:00] to go through with setting this up and getting this going but yeah I'd just be curious if you can share any more maybe about what you if there's any kind of trends you're seeing with the people

[00:12:12] that are currently kind of looking at installing these or is it been a pretty wide range of interest yeah you know I think there's definitely a trend so my background I come from the EPC world

[00:12:23] which is engineering procurement and construction where you know my prior firm we were doing the design the engineering the permitting you know obviously the procurement and construction of DC fast charging equipment for all the largest operators currently in North America all the big

[00:12:35] names which I won't list here you can think of them their logos are blue or green or red or yellow or whoever you know we were doing work to help install their solutions and very often we would get

[00:12:44] on site and realize that it just wasn't feasible and any kind of reasonable amount of time frame for any reasonable amount of money so what we get now and and sort of what led to me joining

[00:12:54] extraages we see people who all think it's a good idea to put DC fast charges at their commercial properties at their shopping centers at their business centers at their you know a park and ride parking lots but they don't quite understand power right so when they get on

[00:13:07] site and they say okay these six stalls they look good it's in the open there's nothing around it let's turn those into charging locations and they go and get a quote and they realize that getting

[00:13:16] 480 power there will be north of half a million dollars just to get started right and then people really for some reason in North America people are very fixated on return on investment you know

[00:13:26] for an institutional investor or somebody who's a developer they're used to our allies of three four years before they get their money back and start seeing profit in DC fast charging it hasn't

[00:13:35] been that way it's typically been north of seven or eight or sometimes 12 years before you see a return on that first dollar you spent to build out this fast charging network because EV adoption isn't where it needs to be and the most aggressive of cases even including California

[00:13:49] you're talking sub 10% of all vehicles right but once that number gets to 30 or 40 percent it's a no-brainer and you make your money back extremely quickly but it's a chicken or an egg kind of

[00:14:00] situation right how do you get to 30 or 40 percent you know global adoption you build the infrastructure so those pioneers that are going out now and doing the research to figure out how to get it done

[00:14:09] are running into the power constraints right are running into the grid issues that everybody talks about in that rhetoric you know kind of that Andrew was alluding to earlier and what they do is

[00:14:19] they go and get these quotes like I said they're quoted a huge number they look at the ROI and say this is a bad business right and just objectively make that decision and kind of walk away from it

[00:14:27] and we run into a lot of those folks who after running into our solutions and finding out you can do this on two o'clock or you can do it on limited for a date with a battery as an integrated solution

[00:14:36] you know they start to come back to that table and start to really rethink what this looks light and they reset their expectations okay maybe I won't make my money back in three years

[00:14:44] right but you know I can dramatically increase it from 12 down to 4 or 5 if I use some of these extra solutions if I think about it you know in a different way than has been historically thought

[00:14:55] about in North America and Europe most of the charging is handled by the utility companies the overwhelming majority of the charging deployments are managed and handled by utility companies or very large energy services firms here in North America it's almost like outside of Tesla everybody does it

[00:15:10] as a business right to get a return on it and it's very difficult to do that if you don't also control the power like you do with Europe so you're going to need that interim solution that provides

[00:15:19] you with opportunities to deploy infrastructure now or dramatically less than the way that most people have been thinking about it here in North America. Gotcha no I mean that that totally makes sense

[00:15:29] and it's funny you mentioned the focus on ROI because that doesn't surprise me at all for better or for worse unfortunately but I guess going back to JT's example of how he was kind of talking about

[00:15:42] the big thing is you're right there he saw the value but it is a longer kind of time horizon his focus was like okay I'm gonna look at these sites and have multiple cash flows and have other

[00:15:52] things that can make me money right or kind of up front and quickly and then that'll be a longer term thing which totally makes sense. One thing though that kind of surprised me but totally made

[00:16:01] sense was he was done about with some of the vendors he was working with for the charging pedestals essentially he had the option to lease them and that's what he thought there's a really

[00:16:15] attractive option it kind of gave him some form of future proving at least that's what it's like in the agreement is that something that extrage currently offers or is that something

[00:16:25] you're still right now. Yeah it is you know we for us it's just about getting the hardware and people's hands you know that's one of the benefits of being a large organization globally because

[00:16:34] we have you know the ability to provide these flexible solutions we really have three ways of transact and currently if you've decided you have right the right property you would bring it to us

[00:16:43] you would say I would like you know two to four stalls of DC fast charging how do I get that done either Andrew or I or some of the other folks on the business development team would sit down

[00:16:51] over a call with you and review what you have, review what you've looked into you know what's important to you on your wish list and then we decide okay two C6 is makes sense here. I would

[00:17:00] you like to pay for that that would be you know X amount of dollars do you want to pay up front for that and they're saying okay well I'm pretty capital constrained so you know what other options

[00:17:08] do you have we do provide leasing right we'll come and bring the infrastructure we'll bring the improvements we'll handle the utility portion of it and get you energized and then you kind of pay

[00:17:17] per kilowatt hour that's distributed and then you take a margin in the middle or we provide what's called charging as a service whereas if you're a fleet customer and you have an immediate need say you're an Amazon last-mile logistics company relatively small but you've just started

[00:17:31] up in Wyoming and you need to get your new Rivian delivery vans powered up so that you can take them out to your customers. So at your depot we would come in a value weight where we would put the

[00:17:40] chargers and how many vehicles you've got and then we'll come and just bring the infrastructure and then we work out a per month payment that you would make on the infrastructure for a period of time

[00:17:49] and at the end of that contract if you choose to buy the infrastructure and just own it outright will give you a buyout number at the end of that and that's very simple. Now if you're a public

[00:17:58] commercial parking lot say you're a mall or something and you want to just provide it as an amenity to your customers you can bring us the property and then in most cases we'll lease that

[00:18:06] property from you pay you a fixed amount per month per stall and then we will bring all the infrastructure and you still get to provide that to your customers as well. So if you do have the

[00:18:15] right property and you're forward thinking about how to charge vehicles in the future there is always a way to work with extra. Now that's that's interesting that's great to hear because I think

[00:18:27] one of the areas where there's a lot of opportunities definitely in the fleet charging and that I think that's something I'd be kind of curious to talk with you a little bit more about here in a second

[00:18:35] but not to go down too much or rabbit hole since you brought up your previous background and you were just talking about like installing charging in large parking lots. One thing that I

[00:18:48] have always been a big proponent of and I'm just quite not understood why it hasn't taken off more is installing essentially charging arrays in parking lots with having kind of the coverage solar and then doing that in conjunction with charging systems. I realize it's probably not

[00:19:05] going to be a one-to-one and it is more expensive to usually get those installed in the actual infrastructure for the kind of the solar awnings and the canopies in these parking garage or parking

[00:19:19] structures but it's still to me it's just fascinating that that hasn't taken off more just because of how close it is to the actual load that's being consumed versus like putting a solar installation

[00:19:32] further out I realize there are extra costs with that and some savings here and there but it just seems like that is such a great opportunity to have the energy being generated going right

[00:19:43] air, convert right into the cars and or the actual main thing using so much of this energy. Is that I just had to cure out so if you can share it is that something you're seeing more interesting

[00:19:53] or is that still just kind of too cost prohibitive? Andrew happens to be an expert in that territory. I'll help you right in here alright so great great tea off here appreciate that this is

[00:20:05] something near and dear to my heart as well. So when it comes to photovoltaic we'll call it integrated DC fast charger stations and you kind of commercial properties with photovoltaic infrastructure there's a few a few use cases and a few customer examples where it's a no-brainer or already

[00:20:28] really smart idea generally speaking of course there's going to be nuances here and there but generally speaking it's a very good idea in a certain number of applications. The typical applications

[00:20:39] where I think this makes a lot of sense we you'll you'll see it makes a lot of sense and since in this case means there's enough power to make it impact on the either charging or the

[00:20:50] energy consumed on site to make an actual measurable impact on what you use what you need on site that's the way it makes sense at once one sense and then financially it makes sense in another way

[00:21:01] there's a number of ways to further financials to make sense generally speaking when you're looking at certain types of parking lots if the parking lot is perhaps owned by a single business like

[00:21:15] it's a business center or perhaps as part of a school or a fleet owned by a single entity and owned and operated by a single entity for where that purpose like high school parking lot absolutely

[00:21:26] a solar a solar canopy with their eb charging infrastructure is a great kind of symbiotic project to do it it's a great it's a great option when you have a kind of on the flip side a

[00:21:39] shopping center owned perhaps by multiple or at least by various property you know various different users perhaps there's various businesses might be owned at the high level by the by a single operator or single commercial property owner but each each business is separately owned

[00:21:59] perhaps there's a bunch of franchises on there the infrastructure has to be tied to something kind of commonly used or owned by the owner it's a lot more challenging to if you want to

[00:22:13] call it divide up the value of that solar and charging infrastructure and assign that to 25 different businesses right that's a big challenge that doesn't mean there's there aren't examples where that does work but that's a little more complicated you see less of that happening on the

[00:22:30] way I gave you a habit at a school or a business where it's owned where they visit zones the entire parking lot the entire building or they're leasing it for say 25 years along term lease

[00:22:40] that kind of an investment makes a lot more sense for that business they're getting that return the economics of foldable tags differ from state to state so that does have a factor in it as well

[00:22:50] but you're I think just at a high level there's a really good some some by out of relationship between the two you generate power on site you can if you can divert as much of that power to

[00:23:01] the vehicles that need it when they need it during the daytime that's the most one of the most cost effective ways to do it especially over the long term and just a typical lifespan

[00:23:11] given idea if you invest in a solar full of affordable tag or the expectation is for that equipment to be up there to be productive for 20 plus years so theoretically that could be more than one

[00:23:25] DC fast charger you know generation one right one or two installations of DC fast charging equipment could be connected to that solar system so it's a case by case basis you want to pick you know the right locations for it but you're absolutely right there there's a good

[00:23:40] relationship between the two we're testing it ourselves we're excited to see how it works again I think the other factors is available space do you have enough parking lot space to produce enough power or it to be worth it the actual construction of those shade structures or

[00:23:59] carports you know there's there's a cost associated with that you have to get to a certain production level to offset or to make that kind of investment worth it but should you have rooftop

[00:24:09] space available that's a good solution too it doesn't have the same optics as a nice you know get a rate of carport but it might be more cost effective ways still getting that benefit

[00:24:20] especially when you have maybe a more constrained parking lot or shade threats or you don't have the right kind of layout in the parking lot but you still have a great rooftop if you have a big building

[00:24:29] there's different ways to do it so yep yeah your heads on the right place yeah I would just see if I can do that go for yeah so to add a little color when he's talking about the amount of space

[00:24:39] you need just you know using round numbers say take a typical electrify american stall for example you've got four stalls of 150 to 350 kilowatt dc fast chargers even just to get a 60 kilowatt

[00:24:51] solar system in place right which is which is not a ton of power which wouldn't you know on its own power even half of one of those units you're talking you know almost 300 square meters of space

[00:25:01] to get that done by the time you do the conversions and get that run to some battery you know 4,000 square feet worth of solar system in order to power half of one of those units right so

[00:25:11] the only way that solar really makes a ton of sense and in a commercial ultra high power charging circumstance would be to use batteries as as like an arbitrage device in between you know the

[00:25:22] solar to the DC battery or or converting that from sorry from AC to DC through the battery and the charger itself so that it's more efficient you know and that's one of the things that

[00:25:31] our net zero series the NCS the battery integrated charger that we manufacturer does do it is fully compatible with a 60 kilowatt solar system but i think people underestimate the amount of of surface area required for 60 kilowatt solar system up and running and even then we're talking

[00:25:48] you know one fifth of the power demanded at any one time it's going to be generated through solar and the rest of it is going to come from the grid anyway so you're going to have to store that

[00:25:56] somewhere and then utilize it all at once yeah and i agree and i think i i i i i i i i i was realized this is a little bit of a pipe dream i was um and this admittedly was a decade ago maybe

[00:26:07] long ago but i i actually was working with a lot of commercial solar and companies and back then if you're like talking about some like oh it's four to three dollars a lot that was like really cheap

[00:26:18] and so to see how much it's come down i i can almost like it's like it's got a pencil out and then even just recently and i realize this is definitely on the kind of farther side of the

[00:26:32] what makes sense for this kind of use case spectrum i was just down in Arizona over Thanksgiving and everywhere you go uh there are so many car ports that are installed over the parking lots in

[00:26:44] general just to give the car shade or i mean you see this in southern California of course too and i felt a little better because when i was down most recently i did drive it around

[00:26:54] see a couple of these that were being installed but did have solar on them but um and you're totally right i i i can argue with the physics of it as far as like surface area to what one of these charges

[00:27:08] uses at one time obviously the most efficient use of that is going to be a battery versus the solar but um i i i i they're still far me that just like this has got to work somehow but

[00:27:22] right i think that's a really interesting point that you're bringing up around and totally makes sense it's a pretty clear answer when you have one entity that owns the building and owns the parking lot

[00:27:33] the incident you started getting into things where it's multiple entities or right the main entity is leasing the building yeah i bird party charge by operator in the parking lot right that only has consent to operate the stalls typically where charge and companies would approach these large centers

[00:27:48] they're saying we're minimally invasive just these six stalls and the power cabinets right so when you start a serious construction project and put in a carport that didn't exist before hand that's 4,000 square feet right and then you're talking about the integration of the batteries

[00:28:02] and based on the jurisdiction and the fire code the batteries can't be directly next to the vehicles that are charging so that's another portion of the property you've got to take up with an entitlement

[00:28:11] it's not always as clean and easy as people would like it to be we wish it was you know we're actually traveling a project now in northern California where we are using the roof of a of a

[00:28:19] convenient store for some solar as well as you know using the parking lot for DC fast charging and then we're using our battery system to integrate in between that truly be off grid you know

[00:28:30] our net zero series does form a grid with its capabilities on the batteries so the battery itself like i mentioned is bidirectional and can back up the building can take in the solar input doesn't actually need a grid connection at all to still provide a 200 kilowatt output charge

[00:28:45] that's really cool technology and where it makes sense is in these places where they are very grid constrained and places like using Vegas as an example you know i just don't think you'll

[00:28:54] see a whole lot of solar battery DC fast charging integration when places in Vegas they typically have more solar energy than the rest of the world you know right most cases so they they're not hammering

[00:29:05] for for you to install more of it so that you can peak shave they'll just give you the energy and it's it's quicker and more efficient to take it from the utility directly there interesting

[00:29:14] and now i guess just a clarification for people listening or even myself when you say the systems have batteries is the battery a separate unit or is it part of the chargers or in some of these

[00:29:25] do you do both your question um it's built into the charger for our net zero series all of our units are capable of functioning with batteries you know and they are all of them are bidirectional

[00:29:35] but our net zero series is an all-in-one unit with a single point of connection to the battery and which really cool about that is to install say our net zero series gen 3 is a three-hunt output charger simultaneous charging between the two ports

[00:29:47] to get a 300 kilowatt output charger you typically need between four and five hundred amps of four eighty three phase just to put that in context no property has an open five hundred amps now maybe an airport right or some large distribution how many fact

[00:29:59] one facility exactly the parking lot of a vans definitely does right so in order to get that done you would need a significant power upgrade whereas we can deliver that on as little as 80 amps

[00:30:12] of four eighty three phase because we use the battery on a much smaller grid connection loads the battery up during off-peak times which is also the cheapest time to buy energy right between mid-night and six a.m. so you've stored the battery full of energy during off-peak

[00:30:26] and then during peak times you're able to sell it to vehicles you know for whatever the market rate of a per kilowatt hour chargers as well as participate in some of the open markets which were doing currently in California Texas in New York in these deregulated energy markets

[00:30:39] which I'll take over to Andrew to provide some more context but say you buy the energy at a certain number and then there's a demand event you know we sign up what's called demand response

[00:30:48] where the utility says oh we're you know at risk of a blackout or a brownout you know what energy resources in that area do we have that we can pull from our net zero series chargers

[00:30:57] are registered as resources to do that and the utility can take a couple of hundred you know kilowatt hours maybe a mega-hour if we have several onsite and they'll buy that energy back

[00:31:07] from us you know at a little more than we paid for it overnight to store it and not only did we make money without having to charge any vehicles or really doing anything at all but we were

[00:31:15] able to support the local grid and provide a service to the utility companies you know and that's primarily some of the stuff that Andrew's working on so I'll kick it over to him to provide some

[00:31:23] more context as to what that really looks like on the ground yeah thanks Lou yeah it's a really exciting area I reference a couple times about the anxiety around straining the grid what can we

[00:31:35] do to make to deploy this equipment more efficiently faster more effectively and I think this really gets to the heart of that that those topics we have enough generation in the United States to convert every single driver to electric and still have 75% of our annual capacity available

[00:31:56] so there is enough power generating today like every vehicle in the country and we're talking just regular everyday drivers to delivery vehicles everything in between so we can convert the entire entire driving community in the United States to electric pretty pretty simply we just have to

[00:32:14] the demand and the supply they're not always in sync with one another so the battery component here is an essential and literally an essential component is an essential part of the equation where you

[00:32:25] as the TCFash Charger owner or property owner you get to start participating in managing these resources and you get compensated for for managing that a couple of examples Lou referenced a few are you get

[00:32:40] to offset the cost of your energy that you pull from the grid or that you need to supply to the vehicles so you get to offset some of those costs by choosing when in the day electricity is less

[00:32:52] expensive and that also works throughout the year that might fluctuate different times of the year depending on how far away we were talking about exactly so you can massage down that number

[00:33:02] that also helps you with demand charges we could probably spend a whole nice hour on various utility just reading a utility bill together but I'm not going to do that today if we can we press

[00:33:13] that's one of those topics for another time but the demand charge is something that all commercial property owners have to pay one way or the other and it's calculated on their potential energy uses regardless of their actual usage so they may have a peak usage event

[00:33:31] certain days per month maybe there are manufacturer for example and they have a manufacturing process that's very energy intensive but it only happens once a month they're going to be charged an incredible incredibly high demand charge to supply or potentially supply that building with enough

[00:33:50] energy this kind of a product when you add easy fast charging you're going to spend you're going to spend a little bit more money on your utility bill your electric usage is going to go

[00:34:02] up because you're supplying quite a large amount of electricity to vehicles we can help you manage those demand charges which again are pretty significant they could also be sometimes four or five

[00:34:14] times the cost of the energy you actually buy so we can help you manage that to the demand charge by choosing when you charge and how you charge how often and how long you charge

[00:34:25] your your system charging up that battery helps you do that helps you manage that so we can manage that energy flow appropriately and as efficiently as possible so minimize those charges you can

[00:34:37] use the battery again to supply power to the vehicles and it also works like any traditional backup power source too for your you know to prepare your local loads loads so if you have any

[00:34:48] loads you'd like to back up you have that backup power available and then in the bigger picture if there are customers ratepayers in the geographic area near you I'll regularly that need your that need supply or need electricity well the traditional method is to divert energy available

[00:35:05] to those those properties or turn on a power plant instead of turning on expensive power plants utilities are getting smart upgrade operators are smart and they're able to find and use resources

[00:35:18] in that general area signal a signal an event tell you hey x charge property a we have a demand for your energy we'd like to pay you this price do you accept so you get to start participating this

[00:35:33] automatically now we're going to set this up so this happens automatically for the proper you don't have to be engaged energy trader or anything like that but you it's an exciting time

[00:35:44] and exciting place for us to really work in tandem with the grid operator so while this is a DC fast charge or while we're charging cars you're also able to support your neighbor support

[00:35:56] the communities around you and help them with the the energy that they need so it's really a very holistic look at how we operate with the grid a couple of examples just to get kind of down

[00:36:06] to ground a couple of examples of ways you can monetize that as a demand response program is one of those one of California New York New England Texas a variety of states also have a lot of

[00:36:19] other wholesale energy trading options we essentially we can help you enroll and what's called a virtual power plant we can show you how to do this yourself if you don't want to go that route but we want

[00:36:30] to make it as simple as possible so you plug into the grid you plug into these different revenue streams you start supporting the grid we've seen this to be significantly beneficial

[00:36:42] to the ROI under project as well and this could shave off you know one or more years certainly at thousands and annual revenue and definitely increase that to IRR quite significantly so yeah we're

[00:36:53] really excited that all of these various operators are looking at the challenges of the grid holistically and seeing us as a participant rather than just a user or you know we're not just part of the

[00:37:04] demand equation it's really the yeah look here so yeah I think that hits on like a lot of really interesting different topics actually in kind of bringing all those together but especially with

[00:37:16] demand charges I think that something that probably doesn't get the full under standing or kind of full appreciation for actually how important and how big of a deal that is for a lot of these

[00:37:30] operators and the sites that they're going into and how much of a big cost that is sometimes to do these upgrades but I then working with someone who can kind of have that strategy to have

[00:37:41] how to proactively mitigate it and even especially in kind like the case like you're saying like a manufacturing or larger site you can actually then use this hardware and technology to kind of

[00:37:52] help bring those cost down and kind of look at it in a much more holistic and ideally help accelerate those savings whether they're making money on the charging or not at that point because it is shocking to me how expensive those demand charges can be for these companies

[00:38:10] I think this is also an interesting thing because we talk about I mean to do all this it requires software and I would be really interested in here kind of maybe some of the back end technology actually

[00:38:22] there's two things real quickly one you said the battery is a part of the charger what what is the actual size the battery in the charger yeah it's a 233 kilowatt hours per battery pack so you can

[00:38:37] design our system is comprised of a single or dual battery configuration so 233, 466 oh wow so almost either a quarter or almost a half megawatt hour of power just in the charger wow that is actually that's impressive that's larger than I thought yeah that's awesome that makes sense for

[00:38:56] those use cases but then yeah I guess yeah going to the second part of that then would be well I guess one other question so is there a limit in theory to like what size you could put these

[00:39:09] together so like can you do four of them and get close to like a megawatt hour or can you let's say you are some like aluminum smelter or something and you want to get like 10 or 20

[00:39:21] these things to mitigate those demand charges is there a limit with the extraages hardware not thought I'm the hardware side I want to point out just to set some clear expectations if any potential customers might be listening or folks who know customers the hardware operates independently

[00:39:39] of itself right now we have software so you can control a whole station very you can organically and holistically and those are kind of general terms and also what they mean control your whole charging station so you could have a view where you look at all the

[00:39:53] chargers that might be say as mentioned five of these in that zero series on a single site you could control that with our back-end software virtually or onsite individually but you can

[00:40:03] control the whole plant virtually I do want to be careful to point out though that they the systems aren't really digitally talking to each other in a significant way at this point if there is interest in so many I would say advanced communication between these devices we'd

[00:40:22] want to evaluate what those needs are if we can't do it with our existing software where there are third parties that we can work with to coordinate you know the usage of those assets but

[00:40:33] generally speaking for for most applications for most use you know use cases especially large commercial energy storage use cases we can design the does we can tweak the software that we have

[00:40:48] right now to to be to give you enough control to get you know maximum benefit out of it but if they're expecting it to be as truly seamless as one one mega-hour battery it'll behave slightly

[00:41:01] different like you'll have to really think about it as five individual systems operating together just to be clear you wouldn't want to connect these or you wouldn't connect these all kind of string them all together in one system to make one giant battery integrated DC-Fest Charger

[00:41:21] system but that doesn't mean you're still out of out of sight where you have we'll say a mega-hour or a mega-watt of usage or you know you might want to back up a mega-watt load you have the ability to

[00:41:35] to actually to get pretty close to that you know pretty much close to that you know little bit a little bit of planning some some some some management of the software you'll be able to

[00:41:48] effectively manage your you know your loads pretty well and still use a DC-Fest Charger to your heart content yeah and I appreciate that clarification just realistically that is a pretty

[00:41:58] extreme use case yeah you know you want to power it just like yeah what I use that right now but that that is I mean even when you sound about like 233 kill what I was like you were saying

[00:42:08] early I think and that's still I mean that's essentially like two modelers or pretty large battery packs even a car just right there at any time so that that totally makes sense with

[00:42:21] um I guess just a curiosity are you able to share what kind of chemistry that those are uses is that like an LFP sort of or is LFP yep you got a jailed it good guess yep let's hear my an LFP

[00:42:32] chemistry yeah or you know that is LFP is it's much safer you know from an installation from public facing perspective we very much so use LFP to limit thermal runaway right so if you do have a bad cell

[00:42:43] it doesn't you know kind of power a lot of control and turn into a thermal event that does happen with other kind of battery technologies and it doesn't with with our right so that's something

[00:42:51] that we're very cognizant of you know and I think in addition to it being you know safer they retain their you know usefulness over light and over the time of deployment much better you know one

[00:43:03] of the use cases I was talking with a customer about the other day and you know a lot of the things we hear from pushback on battery and charging is oh well what happens in a power outage and

[00:43:12] I won't be able to charge my car and I'm like you are aware that an outage you can't get gas either right like it's not a thing you will not be able to go to a gas station and swipe your car

[00:43:21] and start distributing gallons the whole thing will be dark so what we've done in one of our our you'll be car flagship locations is we're installing the net zero series you know by

[00:43:30] directionally at a gas station so that when there is a blackout the only way people will be able to get gas is because of our DC fast charge around site right and that's kind of a fun little way

[00:43:39] to to show the nasaers really what this means in practicality it's good forming up to 120 kilowatt right so that means that you know any load on that same circuit up to 120 kilowatt which a gas station

[00:43:51] is far below you know it is going to be very reliable coming out of our units and you know that's the only way that any vehicle is getting rechargeed or refueled and a blackout is through a battery

[00:44:02] integrated by directional solution and if that's solar even by now I'm just messing but yeah no I totally totally get what you're saying in the LFP makes sense just because there's really

[00:44:12] no concern about weight penalty at that point right no and I think that that's something we're seeing with a lot of great type batteries it makes sense and I think you're totally right that is a really

[00:44:21] common and interesting miss perception understandably that a lot of people have about fuel pumps because I think I remember what was it like the reason they're called pump I mean technically there's

[00:44:33] still pumping fuel fuel yes but it was like back in the 50s and maybe even as late as the 60s like some of them were even hand pump especially I think for like the old diesel one so that's

[00:44:42] kind of how that absolutely kind of came from that I haven't seen one in a long time yeah yeah I don't think of it ever since but that's I believe why the name has that and like that would be like the

[00:44:53] only circumstance and I doubt any of those are still around today that that would work right yeah you're a delivery yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so no I this this is

[00:45:08] great but I think we have kind of talked about a little bit so I would be kind of interested in getting more of an overview of just what this software that X-Charge has and as a driver or maybe

[00:45:21] just let's say a civilian or just a regular person might how would they experience or see the software they would they be in their car and they could see that there's with they get live data from one

[00:45:33] of these chargers maybe just say that it's available or just may if you could just share kind of an overview what the software is like exactly exactly sure so I mean there's a couple

[00:45:44] of different viewpoints you see depending on which side of the equation you're on if you happen to be the site host or the property owner you get an included dashboard we don't charge for our

[00:45:52] software like a lot of other companies do there's no subscription fee no ongoing payment or anything like that we feel that it's an integral part of just being able to operate the equipment right

[00:46:01] so we included at sale and that's for life you know a license to use the software for life if you're the site host you get all the data that you want if you're using the battery in

[00:46:10] a grid of solutions you get five different energy management modes and that goes from eco mode meaning that you want to only charge the battery at the most efficient times overnight or in the

[00:46:20] we early hours of the morning you get max mode which is make sure the battery is topped up all the time you get a mix you know something 50 50 in the middle you get solar only and you get grid only

[00:46:30] right so you have the flexibility to determine what the input on your battery is going to be which helps you dramatically change the ROI on how effective it is to charging vehicles you can

[00:46:40] even limit the output current if your battery is at 20% and you only want to charge cars at 150 kilowatt versus 300 kilowatt right still a decent fast charge for folks but if the battery is still

[00:46:49] recharging you don't want to dump all of it you know at that time into a vehicle and another great thing about our units which is you know industry leading is once our battery is empty

[00:46:58] it's a direct pass through to our grid connection which will still give you up to 120 kilowatt output charge if you're a driver and you pull up to an extra charge station it couldn't be easier

[00:47:07] to determine you know what station you should plug into we have three different battery indicator lights from here's the state of charge of the battery itself here's the state of charge of the vehicle

[00:47:16] that's currently plugged in at the right port and how fast they're charging and then the left ports available where you could plug in and here's how much energy is available for you right and

[00:47:24] you can make that decision on the fly through you know three different methods like I said the indicator lights there's a you know 33 inch LCD display that'll have the vehicle and charger in battery information upfront and there's also a 13 inch display down below where you would

[00:47:37] select your connector that'll tell you very specific information once you plug in you know here's how much energy we can give you for how long until that other car reaches full and once that car

[00:47:47] is full we'll redirect all of it back to you and then you'll finish your charging session as well so like I said it definitely varies depending on which side of the fence you're on being the

[00:47:55] site host or the user of the charging station but we find it very important to be transparent with people about what is available how quickly can you charge and and really which unit should you pick

[00:48:06] if you pulled up to a unit that had a red battery indicator light meaning it's currently recharging you're not going to be that fast go two stalls over and you've got one that's full you know that's

[00:48:14] sort of thing got you know that that that that all makes sense and that's really helpful and it's always good to kind of see the balance between the software and then also the physical hardware like

[00:48:23] kind of simplifies sometimes for yes so and who might not know otherwise um out of glance yep yeah yeah yeah with with that and kind of what your team is kind of looking at and hearing

[00:48:36] are there any interesting trends that you're kind of seeing as far as like the growth and kind of like where you see maybe the industry going over the next five years you know I think we've seen

[00:48:46] a whole lot of use cases a whole lot of businesses come out and say here's how we're going to do charging a little bit of everything is required I am in the camp that every single parking lot

[00:48:56] needs charging infrastructure because if every lot has charging infrastructure you'll never find yourself in a place where you need it and don't have it right i mean apparently if i can't a name

[00:49:04] a highway you know exit currently in California where you don't have four options for gas stations let alone one you know so i i very much feel that something similar is going to happen for EVs

[00:49:15] especially as the charge times decrease from a 40 minute average session down to 20 or 15 or who knows depending on the state of batteries and solid state it could be down to a 10 minute

[00:49:24] charging session with just enough time for you to stretch your legs used bathroom and then your car stun so i think you know the trend we're seeing right now is that it's shifting away a little bit

[00:49:35] from you know a large charge point operators just deploying and random empty parking lots and instead moving to what we call a destination charging model meaning looking at you know street light data looking at telematics looking at all the information you've got to figure out where these cars

[00:49:51] register and where do they typically go every day and try and capture that business somewhere in the middle right that's the most intelligent way to go about this or capture them at their end

[00:49:59] resort or in destination excuse me um where it'll be a little bit easier to have that vehicle charging on AC or level two right there is an extremely important use case in this industry for level two

[00:50:11] extra support all forms of eb charging initiatives and even if we don't sell L2 here in the United States we got our start on AC globally so we understand how important it can be but i think

[00:50:22] that right now the most important thing to help adoption would be providing DC fast charging not only so that people can use it all the time but just so that it provides the peace of mind that gives consumers

[00:50:32] the amount of confidence they need to go out and spin 30 40 50 thousand dollars on these vehicles and not in the back of their mind be worrying about ranging anxiety which is currently what's going on

[00:50:43] yeah i'd like to jump in with a little bit there um on the what we're definitely seeing there's a lot of signals being generated we're seeing a lot of these signals being created

[00:50:55] and they're created from from the organizations a lot of these those could be on the public side like government organizations institutions are directly supporting the adoption of infrastructure and vehicles so you'll see an almost every state some type of EV program or programs and that

[00:51:16] could be a combination of uh rebate for buying a home charger a small rebate for a vehicle a much of course there's a federal rebates and tax credits available a variety of special

[00:51:30] rate plans to support or to lower the cost of charging a vehicle at home or your business you'll see a variety of RFPs on a quarterly basis created by utility companies, governments, municipal organizations etc to support the build out of this infrastructure and or the adoption

[00:51:51] of these kinds of vehicles or electrifying your fleet so you're seeing a lot of these these things happening so the dollars are there it's another being they're being partitioned divided up measured how they're used properly and then uh the consumer's or buyers are starting to take

[00:52:08] advantage of these that's just starting to take off so really excited to see you know these public dollars becoming used and a design and and put it to subsidies in a useful way so I think over

[00:52:20] the next couple of years we're going to see uh these different kinds of programs be much more um much more organized we're going to go through versions of these iterations of these and we're

[00:52:33] going to see a pretty big consolidation as well on the kind of on the business side but that's another topic for another day and we're about at a time the I think the on the the public benefit the dollars

[00:52:43] are here now let's take the attention of them over the next couple of years to really help with that adoption it takes the some of the pain out of of making those those transitions as an individual so

[00:52:54] they're there let's let's use them wisely yeah that that's a great call and that's interesting because we've had a couple other guests and on that we kind of get into the incentive discussion and

[00:53:03] we had Lauren McDonald from uh Evia Dompsa talking about especially around kind of nevy funding and the pros and cons of it where he thinks in some ways it's kind of slowed down the rollout

[00:53:15] of DC fast charging to some extent because so many of these uh entities are kind of waiting for the money to try and get these right to prove which makes sense I mean if you can save some money

[00:53:25] on a very expensive installation it'd be a hard argument not to but I was just curious if you've been working with any um whether large scale or even just kind of smaller operators that have been

[00:53:36] looking at trying to get approval to use your hardware for nevy funds if there's been an kind of interesting insights that your team is in we definitely have and the good thing is that extra-erge currently has a nevy product um that's compliant in the C6 that there's currently

[00:53:51] waiver compliant and then we'll be fully compliant by the end of Q2 of the subcoming year um for any future nevy rollouts I think Lauren is an extremely sharp guy um I follow him on LinkedIn

[00:54:01] and a lot of the things that he talks about I couldn't like it more than once right like if I could I would um and I think he's dead on the money when we talk about some of these incentive programs

[00:54:11] doing more harm than good for the immediate adoption of electric vehicles now because at the beginning of this show we talk a little bit about how most of the operators in the space are focused

[00:54:19] on ROI there are some exceptions to that they're the evegos the electrify america's the testless of the world and no surprise those are the dominant networks in the country today right but everybody else is looking at it like a traditional investor I don't think people truly understand

[00:54:34] how little money that the oil and gas companies make on oil and gas right it's the the twin keys and coke model that we use that's what they want to sell they want to sell convenience inside the

[00:54:43] store more than they do gallons of gasoline and I think that there are other ways to monetize eve charging at this moment and looking at it on a three or four year ROI is not the best way to do it

[00:54:54] but government funding instantly gets you back in that territory where you can get your money back in two or three years and that distracts a whole lot of people a whole lot of sharp people with really

[00:55:03] talented ideas with really good properties and what's really you know unfortunate is you know I've worked with a lot of our customers and a lot of people that have submitted some dynamite properties

[00:55:13] and some great locations you know saying oh I've got 15 of what are going to be ideally v charging sites that they submit in Ohio for example and then they win zero and that's really disheartening

[00:55:23] and it almost convinces this operator to kind of leave the state of Ohio alone because evia adoption is too low whereas if it was more transparent how to win this funding if it was more widely available instead

[00:55:34] of getting all of it to one or two or three entities you know or in some cases giving the money to the utility companies directly that sort of thing almost disincentivizes private investment in

[00:55:45] the space which only drives us away from everybody's mutual goal of as much charging as humanly possible everywhere which helps adoption you know but when you put these extremely competitive federal programs in place and then you limit the amount of people that can actually win these dollars

[00:55:59] everybody's kind of waiting and trying to see is it even possible is this a good idea or should I just not bother you know and that's unfortunate for the industry but I do think that like Andrew

[00:56:09] talked about over time you know these entities will get more intelligent about the way they distribute the funds and then the companies that are looking to use them will be more intelligent about where it doesn't make sense if you've got a great charging location government funding or not

[00:56:23] you should be building chargers on that location and you know and I'll quickly plug us and say if you have a good location and don't have the funds for it call me we'll figure that part out

[00:56:32] yep I will absolutely echo exactly what Lu said those entities will become smarter we want to be we will always do our everything we can to inform you know the government institutions etc about

[00:56:44] how to design their programs a little better so more so it's more effective you know they're measured on how well those programs are used if they're not used well they're going to discontinue

[00:56:53] a re-aider incentive and move on to something else so we do regularly work with different lobbying groups different industry and trade groups to try to share our recommendations our customer feedback market feedback but regardless of what happens I say the federal or state or local level on the

[00:57:11] subsidy side there is no there's no reasons to lay a project in hopes of getting a small incentive there's a variety of other revenue streams outside of just a charging revenue which could still be

[00:57:23] astronomical outside of that revenue there's a variety of other revenue streams on site and regionally with we want to get into the energy trading there's a variety of revenue streams we can

[00:57:34] tap you into today rather than waiting a few years rather than rating a few years for that expensive infrastructure upgrade you were hoping for we can get your started early on and we can work

[00:57:44] with you on a holistic you know 10 year strategy if you want to design something now planned for some expansions or changes in the future we're here we're not just a hardware provider we

[00:57:55] want to be an actual partner with our customers going forward that's the way we look at things yeah I think that's kind of really well encapsulates the state of the where those things are

[00:58:07] and what your team can do for it I realize we are kind of getting to the end of the hour so I'm curious something I ask all of the guests that come on here is if there's any innovative ways

[00:58:20] that they see that either public industry or government or maybe hybrid about can accelerate the rollout of can I EV and EV charging technology what you think that would look like oh Chase that's a great question especially coming from my background as an EPC and

[00:58:40] submitting numerous amounts of applications and then waiting months for the city planner to look at them you know I think that there are some states that are better at it than others California for

[00:58:50] example has an assembly bill that puts effectively a shot clock on all applications from a zoning and permitting perspective that says hey if we receive your application and it isn't you know either denied or have comments on it inside of 30 days it's automatically deemed approved that's a

[00:59:07] that's wonderful right four weeks even though it's crazy that it may take four weeks to look at a one line diagram and a couple of stalls in a parking lot of an existing infrastructure build

[00:59:16] I can live with four weeks what I can't live with is some of the timelines we get in some parts of the world which are you know between 12 and 16 and 24 weeks or even you know

[00:59:26] if the government really wanted to speed this process up rather than you know blindly firing cash into the industry why not work more closely with you know the transformer companies right and and the utilities directly to bring down the 60 week lead times on 2500 KVA transformers which again

[00:59:44] these are going to have to be everywhere we know that it's not a it's not okay we get this stuff installed and wait for a transformer later what's the point in doing that you know I mean how far

[00:59:53] could several billion dollars go for the sheet metal and transportation industry surrounding you know the components that make up these transformers and switch gear for example those are the two longest lead times we currently have in the industry outside of permitting so if I could

[01:00:07] submit an application which we currently do for some of our projects let's use San Diego as an example every project that we have signed up on the last three months in San Diego won't get built

[01:00:16] till 2025 that is through no fault of our own we we can't get power from the utility they don't have the transformers in the switch gear so all we could do is kind of sit and wait and hope

[01:00:25] you know and I think that's the portion that if I was going to stand on a mountain top and screen for government intervention there it is right there I would absolutely echo that if you

[01:00:35] were called during the the pandemic and right after the the world started to open up again there was a significant strain on microchips various kinds of micro processors the president Biden to his credit took steps to try to work with those different manufacturers

[01:00:57] globally and creating a plan to allocate you know to eat some of the challenges in the supply chain now I'm not an expert on how all that went but we would love to see we were asking the federal

[01:01:10] government and the state and local governments certainly to work with them in coordinating something that that supports you know the the allocation the development of these these kinds of components these kinds of these kinds of resources for our industry we know that the grid has

[01:01:25] to go through various upgrades all over the country for lots of reasons not just for us so this isn't just but this is this kind of effort you know supporting the you know allocating

[01:01:34] these kinds of materials the components that go into transformers and switch gear isn't just beneficial to EV charging right not a full beneficial to every single industry in the United States and

[01:01:45] that we need a robust electrical grid we're working to that's a priority of pretty much I think everybody on the political side of this spectrum too so let's put our money where our mouse

[01:01:56] are and what could actually make this happen because if if we can support the that then we'll all be better off yeah I don't think I could agree with either yet is more that's a great call out

[01:02:10] I think a lot of people might be aware of how permitting can slow a lot of these projects down but then there is still a large part of that is the supply chain and the utilities for getting those

[01:02:21] things in place like and then delayed even another year so um totally appreciate your time both you today I just want to say thank you again Andrew and Lou for both joining today and kind of

[01:02:32] having both of you on to explain what at extrage is doing in the space and how you're kind of making a difference and this has been super fascinating and really great to hear not just what

[01:02:42] extrage is doing but also just what both of you are seeing in the space and kind of insights that you've shared with us today so thank you both absolutely chase it's been a pleasure we very

[01:02:51] much appreciate the invite and let an us ramble a little bit about some of this stuff that we're involved in every single day so it's been a breath of fresh air to talk to somebody who truly

[01:02:59] does understand my my pleasure we'll have to have you both on against and talk later certainly thank you very much have a great day