9. How is AI innovating adotion of EV’s at scale

On this week's episode of the EV mini-series, hosts Chris and Niall delve into the transformative world of electric vehicles with an enlightening conversation with Tad Glauthier, Vice President of eMobility at Stem, Inc. This insightful discussion unveils how Stem, Inc. is pioneering the transition to electric vehicles for businesses. Their innovative approach involves constructing advanced battery storage systems and leveraging their AI-powered software platform, Athena. This groundbreaking technology not only facilitates a smoother shift to electric vehicles but also maximizes the utility and efficiency of clean energy assets on a large scale. The episode is a treasure trove of information for those curious about the intricate relationship between renewable energy storage solutions and the evolving landscape of electric vehicles.

Throughout the podcast, listeners are treated to an in-depth exploration of Stem, Inc.'s pivotal role in assisting major corporations like Sysco in their journey towards sustainability. By implementing robust battery storage and smart energy management systems, Stem, Inc. is enabling companies to significantly reduce their carbon footprint and embrace green energy solutions. This episode is particularly compelling as it sheds light on the practical challenges and innovative solutions involved in the large-scale electrification of fleet vehicles. It highlights the critical importance of AI in managing complex energy systems, ensuring reliability, and optimizing operational efficiency in a rapidly changing energy landscape.

Moreover, the podcast episode goes beyond technical aspects and delves into the broader implications of EV adoption for businesses and the environment. Discussions about the future of energy management, the impact of electrification on corporate sustainability initiatives, and the integration of renewable energy sources offer listeners a comprehensive understanding of the EV ecosystem. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the intersection of technology, sustainability, and business, providing valuable insights into how companies like Stem, Inc. are shaping the future of transportation and energy management.

Transcript

Transcript 

00:00:04 Speaker 1 

Broadcasting from the commodity capital of the world, Zurich, Switzerland, this is insiders guide to energy. 

00:00:20 

Addition to insiders guide to energy is brought to you by fidectus. 

00:00:24 

Go to www.fidectus.com For more information. 

00:00:59 Speaker 3 

This episode of Insiders Guide to Energy EV Miniseries is powered by paua. Paua helps your business transition to electric vehicles by simplifying charging, managing payments, and optimizing your charging data. Welcome to insiders guide to Energy EV miniseries I'm Chris Sass and with me is Neil Riddell. Neil, what's going on? 

00:01:18 Speaker 2 

Hey Chris. Busy day in Paradise as per usual. 

00:01:22 Speaker 3 

Another busy day, but the EV miniseries is really coming along, and we've had some amazing guests super excited about this episode. Maybe you want to share with the listeners what we hope to do today. 

00:01:31 Speaker 2 

Yeah. So this is something I'm super excited about. When I first started getting into the world of Distributed energy micro generation, the energy transition, I came across this crazy company out in the US who are building battery storage. So today we're speaking to Tad Glauthier about how STEM is supporting businesses as they transition to electric vehicles. 

00:01:52 Speaker 2 

So probably a nice easy place to start, Chris. If you're good with it is. Hey, Tad, can you tell us a bit about yourself? Where did you come from? How did you get here? And you know what? Might younger listeners who are maybe new to this platform learn from you? 

00:02:05 Speaker 4 

Hey Neil, thanks for having me on and and good to be here. Yeah. So a little about myself. I'm the vice president of E mobility and I'm also part of the founding team at STEM. I've been in this company since we got started in San Francisco in 2000. 

00:02:21 Speaker 4 

And that was really before there was much of an energy storage industry at all. Stem really helped to build it and we're kind of the first smart energy storage company to go public in the US and so it's been exciting to see this industry kind of come to pass over over the past decade or more. 

00:02:40 Speaker 4 

What our kind of core business is as a company is we use software with large batteries to help companies, businesses save money on their electricity bills, but also support the grid, help the grid be greener and operate with more. 

00:02:55 Speaker 4 

And energy we were with over 30 of the Fortune 500 companies. They use our technology and we're the largest energy storage virtual power plant operator in North America. And it really is a, it comes down to to us being a a software company, we've got a. 

00:03:15 Speaker 4 

Core platform called. 

00:03:16 Speaker 4 

Athena, that is a clean energy management platform and it it really helps to allow the batteries to store more renewable energy. You know you can't use sun, you can't use solar energy when the sun's not shining and the sun isn't shining at night and the the wind isn't always blowing. And so it makes it possible to use renewable energy those. 

00:03:36 Speaker 4 

Intermittent sources more and accelerates that adoption, and it also is a way for companies to save money. So we're really focused on kind of those those two, those two benefits and and every site's different. And so there's an AI engine needed for. 

00:03:54 Speaker 4 

To to operate a battery at every site where there's a different set of conditions. So that's really kind of the core of who who stem is and what what we do. 

00:04:02 Speaker 3 

So. So what I've heard so far is you were doing battery storage before it was cool to do battery storage, right? You you guys were the early innings of what went on. You developed a platform of software platform to help folks manage it and and and micro and help Fortune 500 companies along the way. I guess we're on an EV podcast. 

00:04:22 Speaker 3 

Right. And so we were talking about the greening of everything. So you know, turn the clock ahead from 2000. 

00:04:27 Speaker 3 

9 to today. 

00:04:28 Speaker 3 

Everybody wants to be green. Everybody says they're going to drive an electric. 

00:04:33 Speaker 3 

Where do you play? I mean battery tech absolutely falls into it, but how do you fit into this ecosystem? 

00:04:39 Speaker 4 

Yeah, that's a good question. So you know, when we look at EV charging, we want to think a little bit about where is that energy coming from that's going to charge those vehicles. You know the the mission of of electrification of transportation. 

00:04:53 Speaker 4 

Isn't just swap out a gas powered car for an electric car and then use more fossil fuel on the other end of the grid to charge it right? That's just kind of moving the problem around. 

00:05:05 Speaker 4 

And so we want to bring our technology to the electrification of transportation, so that more renewables can be used to power that transportation. And that means using renewables both at the locations where those vehicles are charging, but also remotely that, that, that renewable energy that may be far away on the grid. Again, that's. 

00:05:25 Speaker 4 

When that gets produced at a different time or solar, it's produced at a different time than the vehicle needs it. You've got to have batteries somewhere in that. 

00:05:32 Speaker 4 

System. And so we're looking at this from kind of a top down perspective and going, hey, there's an amazing amount of load that is coming to the grid. When we looked at the projections for load just in the in North America over the next about 15 years. 

00:05:50 Speaker 4 

You currently have about one third, one third, one third in terms of electricity use in in the United States in particular, which is residential, commercial and then heavy industrial. 

00:06:01 Speaker 4 

The electrification of transportation is adding a whole another third, so effectively you know as much as much electric load as we use in the entire residential or the entire commercial sector today is going to be added to to the grid. All that energy's got to come from something and we don't want to be burning more and more fossil fuels. We're we're trying to build the renewable resources. 

00:06:22 Speaker 4 

And that includes building out the battery storage and having the smart software to be able to manage all that distributed energy in a more it's just a much more complex. 

00:06:32 Speaker 4 

System, then. Then what you'd have with the kind of old hub and spoke model with big fossil fuel generators. So that's where storage and and smart software comes in at the highest level. 

00:06:42 Speaker 2 

So that that's really cool. We had a speaker on previously who was talking about their experience with the grid. The grid can't cope, you know, you just. 

00:06:48 Speaker 2 

Told us a. 

00:06:49 Speaker 2 

3rd 30% more is coming onto the electricity system to provide services for these vehicles. So effectively what you're doing with your battery storage is enabling that ecosystem to operate. Now the other thing you said at the start was Athena. 

00:07:02 Speaker 2 

Is your platform to enable this to happen. 

00:07:05 Speaker 2 

Athena wasn't born overnight. What was that journey like? Tell us what happened that took you from the first couple of units into something which is basically helping the grid expand by another third. 

00:07:17 Speaker 4 

Yeah, I mean it. It sure wasn't born overnight. You know, we started out by needing to collect data. We recognize that we've got to Start learning and being able to predict what loads are going to do, be able to predict what renewables are going to do and bring data sets from in, from other places, like bring in a weather feed into this platform. 

00:07:37 Speaker 4 

But like every startup we, you know, we have humble beginnings. You know, our first data monitor. 

00:07:42 Speaker 4 

That's a a laptop inside of a shoe box that we, you know, had under the manager's desk in the back of a coffee shop and the next one was under the manager's desk in the back of a car wash. And so those two first customers were really important to us, starting to gather data sets and understand how do loads change, what happens when you apply a battery to those loads. 

00:08:03 Speaker 4 

How can you? How can you reduce the impact on the grid from changing? 

00:08:08 Speaker 4 

Code that moved into the combination of changing loads and changing renewables. We started doing lots and lots more projects with solar, partly because of the tax structures in America, the the solar tax credit could be applied to the cost of the battery. So we started seeing lots and lots of projects that were solar and storage together. 

00:08:30 Speaker 4 

Athena kept on getting kind of smarter and smarter, and as we recognize kind of there's there's these renewable generation sources, there's load types. We looked at the other sort of energy assets in the ecosystem and said, hey, EV charging is a whole another category of of energy asset that Athena can can manage. 

00:08:50 Speaker 4 

And EV charging. 

00:08:52 Speaker 4 

Is is great because there's all this digital information that that it can send over to our platform. And so we think about kind of this AI engine just kind of feeding off of getting you know more and more data in from the world around it. A lot of times EV charging platforms, if it's a fleet charging platform for example where where vehicles go on a regular basis. 

00:09:13 Speaker 4 

It might know its own schedule. It could tell us what its schedule is public charging a little bit more tricky to predict, but our our you know kind of history is in prediction we we have a history of learning how to predict load shapes of all different kinds of industries and some are harder than others public. 

00:09:31 Speaker 4 

Charging is currently pretty hard because there aren't that many cars out on the road, so it's hard to guess when any individual car is going to stop at a public charging station. But as we get more and more electric vehicles on the roads, public charging will start to look a lot like regular traffic patterns will be more predictable so so you know, we're still. 

00:09:51 Speaker 4 

Evolving and that that's part of the exciting part of of where we are in the in the evolution of the industry. 

00:09:59 

You. You. 

00:09:59 Speaker 3 

Brought up an amazing buzzword in the industry today. AI, right? The the the, the, the the AI Genie is out of the bottle for many folks, right? You know, we're we're we're folks think that that there's different things. And then you talked about these data sets where you're saying that the public's hard to get that the public charging and things like that. 

00:10:17 Speaker 3 

How? How is the AI? 

00:10:19 Speaker 3 

Helping you do the prediction going forward, I mean I, you know, I I don't assume you know it's it's it's doing the ChatGPT thing here. I think you're you're doing some different things along the way. 

00:10:30 Speaker 3 

And is it are you using it on both sides so you know on the on the power generation so that I know when I'm charging I'm getting green power or am I just getting power and I'm trying to predict the loads? 

00:10:42 Speaker 3 

Help me understand you guys are. 

00:10:43 Speaker 4 

Up. Yeah. Well, boy, there's a lot there, but let me see if I can kind of hit on one or two of the key points. I mean, I think we were doing AI before it was cool too. We've been we've been talking about this for a while and and doing it for a while. And so to give you a little glimpse into kind of the way that that we think about AI in our industry. 

00:11:04 Speaker 4 

A big part of our our ability to to save a customer money is around understanding what their load she's going to do and it's kind of like when you're going up a mountain. If you were trying to guess how thick that mountain is, you're going to go up and you're going to go across it and you're going to come down the backside of it. And if you, if you think of a load that same way, you know what we're. 

00:11:24 Speaker 4 

Doing the battery a lot of times trying to reduce. 

00:11:26 Speaker 4 

Peaks in the customer's use, and so we have to guess how long they're going to be because we we have to have enough battery to reduce that whole. 

00:11:33 Speaker 4 

Peak and those, so those loads are different within different industries. And so we have different families of algorithms and when whenever we bring a new site on board, we'll try out the algorithm that we think is best for that based on our experience with other sites in that industry. But we're always developing. 

00:11:53 Speaker 4 

Subcategories of of algorithms where different variables get weighted more and so for example. 

00:12:00 Speaker 4 

Some buildings have more air conditioning and more exposure to the temperature outside, and their load will change more when the weather changes. Others are more like industrial processes that maybe don't change that much when the weather changes, and so you weight the weather differently in your forecast of what the. 

00:12:20 Speaker 4 

Codes going to do and so that's what I mean by AI is really that there is often a human in the loop who's evaluating on, you know, monthly or yearly basis. How does this do? Maybe we're changing the algorithm family that we've got a site assigned to. 

00:12:36 Speaker 4 

But there is, but there's a real time decision that's getting made that's specific to every single location forecasting and then deciding what to do with the battery in order to deal with those circumstances. So really exciting stuff. And you mentioned greenhouse gas. We're also bringing in a signal that says here's the greenhouse gas of the energy. 

00:12:57 Speaker 4 

The greenhouse gas kind of weight of the energy right now on the grid. So if we want to weight the algorithms to care more about that, we can say hey, be sure to only charge when the grid is above a certain level of clean energy and. 

00:13:15 Speaker 4 

Charge when maybe the grid is running real real carbon heavy so that the customer is using the clean energy you put in earlier. So that gets us back to fleets, right. Some fleets want to want to charge cleaner and so we can we can kind of tie this back to the EV theme there, but that's something we can do for buildings as well. 

00:13:34 Speaker 2 

So I'm I'm a real big fan of this question of carbon on grids because it's a very, very nuanced. 

00:13:40 Speaker 2 

Question. How do you how do you do that? What? What carbon intensity did you look at? Do you look at the local carbon intensity at a regional or a state level carbon intensity or do you look at something that's national and do you consider things like the marginal intensity? So the last plant that came on? Or do you look specifically at the average during that given half an hour? 

00:13:59 Speaker 4 

Yeah. Again, that's a lot there. I mean, those, those are those are great questions. 

00:14:04 Speaker 4 

The the way that we bring that in in the same way that you know, we bring in effectively a a weather feed. You know we use a third party API and so we are not calculating the carbon intensity on the grid at any given moment. We're getting that from someone else's a whole specialty, you know field within that of doing that but. 

00:14:24 Speaker 4 

I will kind of circle back to the. 

00:14:27 Speaker 4 

The question around kind of where does the carbon intensity matter? And this is what some of the I think the the leaders in in the corporate world that are kind of taking the most you know forward-looking steps are doing is they're thinking about you have Microsoft for example not just buying. 

00:14:47 Speaker 4 

Clean energy Recs and saying hey, we used this much energy, so we're going to go buy, you know, X energy, you know X wind over in Wyoming, but it they're looking at it more from we need 24/7 renewable energy that's matched to the load that's on the same grid as our usage, right. 

00:15:06 Speaker 4 

So if they want to, if they want to build a data center somewhere, then they need to be within the same, you know, portion of the distribution grid. And I think you can interpret that differently. But you know, the United States grid is mostly all connected with the exception of our COP, but really, you know, you're trying to, you're trying to stay within your distribution grid or sort of your region. So I would think. 

00:15:28 Speaker 4 

Of it from from that perspective, where I think that's the way to. That's the way of the future. If you think about trying to decarbonize the entire planet. 

00:15:38 Speaker 4 

That's what we have to achieve, right? We have to get to 24/7 matched renewables to our load and that requires storage and it requires distributed distributed resources being near the loads. 

00:15:50 

So so it's. 

00:15:51 Speaker 3 

Go go back to more EV centric. So in our pre show conversations we talked about fleets and the kind of things that that you you do as an organization. There's a couple of rather large brands that you work with maybe let's let's let's start with maybe like a customer example of what kind of things you're doing that. 

00:16:10 Speaker 3 

That might be good for the next part of this conversation to. 

00:16:13 Speaker 3 

See who kind of. 

00:16:15 Speaker 3 

Uses your technology and how. 

00:16:17 Speaker 4 

Yeah, sure. Well, we we recently announced a project with Cisco and this is Cisco with an S, the food distributor that is one I'm really excited about. We've been working on this for a year and a half. The the Cisco team had been working on this for close to five years. 

00:16:37 Speaker 4 

And we just did a a kind of pre ribbon cutting or early ribbon cutting on Earth Day. About a month ago and it's just a really, you know, a lighthouse project for all of the technology partners involved and and for Cisco itself. 

00:16:53 Speaker 4 

What we're doing for Cisco is they are electrifying a a fleet charging hub. So Cisco's the largest food distributor in the world, they operate in about 90 different countries. They've got about 70 different, you know, major hubs around the United States that. 

00:17:13 Speaker 4 

Of if you can imagine kind of 18 Wheelers that are bringing food to. 

00:17:18 Speaker 4 

Everything from restaurants to retirement homes to schools, and that's that's critical that that, you know, they've got refrigerated cold supply chain, frozen supply chain that that's critical infrastructure that it functions at all times and they need to they need to go green. So Cisco's taken a great leadership position. 

00:17:39 Speaker 4 

They have signed up for climate, you know, climate goals that are in alignment with the Paris climate accord. 

00:17:45 Speaker 4 

They are electrifying 2800 of their of their 18 Wheeler vehicles. They're they're class 8 trucks. Over the next between now and 20-30, and that's about a third of their of all their class. 

00:17:58 Speaker 4 

8 and so this charging hub to kind of bring it down to. So what is stem doing with that project, this charging hub starting out with 40 Class A? 

00:18:07 Speaker 4 

Trucks and all electric and electric refrigerated trailers to go with them. 

00:18:13 Speaker 4 

20 high-powered DC fast chargers and then on the roof of this refrigerated warehouse they're building 1.5 megawatts of solar. That's a big solar field. And we're putting in four MW hours of battery storage and stems. Athena platform is managing the power flows of that whole site, so. 

00:18:34 Speaker 4 

On a site like this, it's pretty common when a fleet is building a big charging depot, they're going to get a new meter from their utility, so they've got existing meter for the for the refrigerated. 

00:18:44 Speaker 4 

Warehouse this new meter will have all these clean energy assets on it. Really nothing else. It will have the the solar, the solar field on the on the roof. It'll have the battery. It'll have the Chargers. And then in case of an extended outage, it'll have a small natural gas generator and R Athena Power controller will sense. 

00:19:04 Speaker 4 

When the trucks are. 

00:19:05 Speaker 4 

Out there's no load so that the solar will be producing during the day the trucks are running their operation. It will say OK, put that solar energy into the. 

00:19:15 Speaker 4 

Carries and the trucks come back. They'll they'll want to charge up by about 4:00. Their trucks come back. Well, that's about the worst time of day that you could charge from the grid. That's the most expensive energy. And it's some starting to be some of the dirtiest energy we're having to fire up peak power plants. So at about 4:00 or 5:00 instead of charging, the grid will be charging from the batteries. 

00:19:35 Speaker 4 

And if there is an outage, then our our power controller will operate the solar and the storage first to keep the charging going and if it's needed then it'll it'll turn on this natural gas generator. So we're operating that micro grid, but really it with the prioritization of using all the clean energy first. 

00:19:54 Speaker 3 

Now, isn't it easier in some sense because those delivery routes are well known? 

00:19:59 Speaker 3 

Right. So like. 

00:20:01 Speaker 3 

You. You. 

00:20:01 Speaker 3 

You have and and and Neal's for those of you listening. Neil is making faces at me and shaking his head because he's been in the EV business for some time and and he thinks the loaded question. But I mean, I I I just wonder you have predictable. 

00:20:15 Speaker 3 

About some predictable delivery schedules. Is that somewhat easier or do I? 

00:20:19 Speaker 3 

Need a bunch of AI to do all this? 

00:20:22 Speaker 4 

It it is easier and you know Cisco is taking taking the operation of their of their fleet very seriously. They generally have. 

00:20:33 Speaker 4 

Almost twice as much battery as they need in these vehicles to to do the routes that they'll that they'll have them running. 

00:20:40 Speaker 4 

So as far as as far as the the operation of the fleet and the and the, you know paths that they go on, those are fairly well known and and you don't need a lot of AI to kind of make that solution set better where the AI comes in really is in making the choices around that clean energy use on site. So if you think of. 

00:21:03 Speaker 4 

The solar, for example, the solar production is going to change on a day when it's cloudy and so we've got to know, hey, there's not going to be as much solar produced today, but we still need the battery to be full by 4:00. Well, when should we charge it? How much should we charge it? How much is that going to cost? So making those kind of decisions. 

00:21:22 Speaker 4 

Every day so that this. 

00:21:25 Speaker 4 

Operates in a cost effective way too, right? That's one of the big trade-offs that a company like Cisco has. The has the leadership and also has the balance sheet to to make. Is these vehicles cost more than their fossil fuel counterparts? A lot of times, about twice as much, but they're cheaper to operate and so you got a higher upfront cost. 

00:21:46 Speaker 4 

If you have a, you know a lower operational cost, they need fewer repairs. 

00:21:50 Speaker 4 

And that and that electricity, that electricity bill becomes their new gas bill, right. So we're trying to help them keep that electricity bill as low as possible by really by using that AI to constantly make sure we're doing the best that we can for for Cisco and what their fuel bill will be. 

00:22:08 Speaker 2 

This is a super exciting area. If I was going to turn Chris's question around and say how hard this is, this is all about a battery that is sometimes there and sometimes not. 

00:22:19 Speaker 2 

And you know, the idea that you're using your Athena platform to learn what you know, you've got a closed environment to some extent because you know they're coming and they're going. So you're learning the behaviours and the patterns, but this could get very quickly, very complex, particularly if you can consider vehicles moving to different depots or different locations. 

00:22:38 Speaker 2 

Maybe mixing up the vehicle? 

00:22:40 Speaker 2 

But the bit that blew my mind was I had to go and look up Cisco. I thought you were referring to Cisco with the CI. Looked at Cisco with an SI looked into the project and I was like, these are big vehicles, you know, they're classic HGV's. It's a bit of I was in the conference recently, they were talking about electrification of trucking. This is exactly it. It's happening right here and now big loads. 

00:23:01 Speaker 2 

Moving around. 

00:23:02 Speaker 2 

What do you you know as you go from that nice, simple, simple case study into something which is much more dynamic, different locations, maybe the public charging, what do you hope to learn what happens next? Where does the complexity go and what does Athena need to handle as you go into this more and more complex ecosys? 

00:23:22 Speaker 4 

Yeah, I think where you know where where you are going in in part is that the notion that for a company like Cisco they've they've got trucks that might move around the country. And so as the ranges get longer and longer on these vehicles, right. So right now you might have 150 mile range, 200 mile range. 

00:23:42 Speaker 4 

But pretty quickly, we'll have vehicles with 300 miles, 500 miles, 600 mile. 

00:23:47 Speaker 4 

Range. We need to look at it from a system of systems perspective and say OK, where should we actually be charging them if we have the option between somewhere in, you know, Western Arizona or should we charge that this truck that's headed to the port of Long Beach, should it wait until it gets there and charge there or somewhere in between? And the answer is going to. 

00:24:08 Speaker 4 

Be it depends. It's always going to be changing. It's going to be based on, well, how much renewable energy is on the grid in California right now, is it different? Is it a different mix? If they charged, you know, at the beginning of their route instead of halfway? 

00:24:20 Speaker 4 

Through and that's where I think some of the really exciting partnerships that that we have in place will grow. Stems partnered with some of the charging network providers. We have partnerships announced with in charge energy and with charge point and those both have really kind of different focuses charge. 

00:24:40 Speaker 4 

One is more focused on kind of public charging. They they are, you know, really a household name and have more charge points in the in the country than than any other provider in. 

00:24:52 Speaker 4 

Charge was really purpose designed to serve fleets and commercial kind of depots like the one that I've described and and as the as the provider of the charging on the Cisco project and that you know the the way that I think that system of systems. 

00:25:13 Speaker 4 

Kind of methodology evolves is through partnerships with companies like that that are aware of where are the vehicles, right? So we're managing the power flows at the individual site. 

00:25:27 Speaker 4 

That charge provider knows where the vehicles are when they're going to be back, you know and and that kind of. And we can we can kind of develop and imagine advanced product offerings where we're really optimizing for the whole system. 

00:25:40 Speaker 2 

This is a very exciting space because you've got very big systems with very big batteries and very high power charging. This is gonna go on a long journey, but it's relatively new to people. One of the things we mentioned in the the pre show conversation we had was the stem. 

00:25:56 Speaker 2 

Tell me, how do you help people on this journey? What? You know, what do you guys do to support people as they come to this ecosystem? They're learning new skills. They want to upskill. What are you guys to do to support, you know, younger generations coming into this space? 

00:26:11 Speaker 4 

Yeah. So we we have a, a, a portion of our website that's kind of walled off. You've got a, you've got a a get permission to get into it. It's called stem university and we built STEM university for the solar industry actually because the solar industries was fairly well matured, you have. 

00:26:30 Speaker 4 

Lots of what we call the long tail of of solar developers out there who. 

00:26:36 Speaker 4 

We're, you know, experienced at doing solar projects, but not experienced with doing solar and battery projects and the battery storage component of a project is the more technically involved component. This this you know the the need for advanced software just. 

00:26:56 Speaker 4 

Isn't, you know, hasn't been there in, in solar, right? Solar is all about kind of getting your cost of your of your product down we we kind of say solar is a is a hardware business. 

00:27:06 Speaker 4 

And battery is actually a software business. The the key with doing a battery project is having software that is able to really optimize and drive as much value out of that that expensive asset as possible. So we set stem university up to enable the solar industry to do solar and storage. 

00:27:26 Speaker 4 

Projects and what you have in there are. 

00:27:30 Speaker 4 

You know video classes on on you know how to talk about battery projects with your customers, how to do the financial evaluation, build a pro forma of a battery project and then how to install batteries or basic tools like spec sheets and installation manuals in there as well. So the whole library of actual resources. 

00:27:51 Speaker 4 

Thanks to the video modules and where we're going with with EV, I think is a very similar place where we're now seeing a whole, you know, kind of class of EV developers. 

00:28:05 Speaker 4 

Coming out of the woodwork like solar developers and building out EV charging stations all over the country and all over the world, and where it's useful or additive to have a battery as part of that project, we want to enable that whole category of of developers of EV. 

00:28:25 Speaker 4 

To do their battery projects and not have to become experts in it and we really want to partner with kind of that industry broadly and provide them that expertise so. 

00:28:34 Speaker 4 

You know, for for individuals who are interested we we particularly focus on on kind of that developer type and that that's that's what we're expecting to you know the the market we're expecting to service STEM university so individuals who are interested in that and kind of fit that profile should just go on our website look for STEM university and there's a little button that says. 

00:28:54 Speaker 4 

You know, contact us if you'd like to, if you like to have access. 

00:28:58 Speaker 3 

So I think our audience is generally an inquisitive audience. So I'd expect you'll get some some feedback or you wouldn't listen to an energy podcast on EV's if you aren't inquisitive wanting to learn, I guess I want to go back a couple of steps. We talked about one of the fleets in particular that you're one of your case studies. You know, you gave an example of Cisco and you know my, my esteemed colleague had to look them up, but I don't think you can drive around a North American road and. 

00:29:05 

All right. 

00:29:20 Speaker 3 

Not been behind a Cisco truck at one time or another, delivering to restaurants or commercial places because they're everywhere in the. 

00:29:25 Speaker 3 

Us. But there's other fleets that you work with as well, right? I mean, I think you've talked about Penske and some other brands that you work with and I notice a trend that you're working with heavy vehicles, right, you're you're working with big, big things. Is that because it moves the needle? Is it a different problem statement? Is the economies of scale like why, why? 

00:29:45 Speaker 3 

Not focus. 

00:29:47 Speaker 4 

Yeah, great. Great question. You know, part of the reason for that focus is if you think about kind of our history and where where we come at the energy industry, the energy landscape from as a battery provider and a software provider for for those distributed resources, we are looking for pockets of load that are fairly substantial. 

00:30:08 Speaker 4 

To do a project like ours, you've got some fixed costs involved, and so we don't really put batteries into. 

00:30:14 Speaker 4 

Through small places like little coffee shops, you know, we we provide batteries to buildings that are the size of a good size grocery store or larger and and that's partly just because there's fixed cost we're trying to cover and we we're doing a lot of cost saving with our technology. And so where you see that kind of electricity. 

00:30:34 Speaker 4 

Load from EV charging is typically fleets, right? It's commercial fleets that are are charging a large number of vehicles all in one place. So you have some rental car agencies for example, are electrifying their fleets and that would create enough of a kind of a load pocket to need solutions. 

00:30:52 Speaker 4 

That are on the scale of what we provide and then of course heavy duty charging. When you think about these these trucks, the same as school buses and and larger vehicles, just a few high-powered you know, DC fast chargers can can create 500 kilowatts of MW of load, right? 

00:31:13 Speaker 4 

Where where you think about a public charging is also going to be kind of hitting on that scale. So the the NEVY funds is a is probably a good, a good kind of. 

00:31:28 Speaker 4 

Federal incentive to to bring up here the federal government is putting a billion dollars a year for the next five years into this kind of chicken and egg problem we have with there's not enough fast charging along the highways to get people comfortable to switch over to electric. So OK, we'll build the charging out. 

00:31:48 Speaker 4 

And then people will switch. I mean that's kind of the thinking, right? 

00:31:51 Speaker 4 

Well, each of these nevy funded sites and nevy stands for National Electric vehicle infrastructure. It's a it's a federal program that will basically pay for 80% of the cost for a site owner who wants to build fast charging by the by the. 

00:32:06 Speaker 4 

Highway. So each one of these sites though has a requirement they've got to have. 

00:32:11 Speaker 4 

4 fast chargers at a minimum, and some will have lots more. Some might have 12 or 15. Whatever it is, 20, but even just four DC fast chargers that will create a little load of 600 kilowatts, right? Each one of those has to be 150 kilowatt. 

00:32:25 Speaker 4 

More so if you think about a convenience store with a little gas station and a little quickie Mart or something like that, that might have a load today of 60 kilowatts, and they they want to apply for this and they they get selected and they're building charging on their in the corner of their parking lot. 

00:32:45 Speaker 4 

Now they've got 600 kilowatts, you know, minimum. So they're, you know, changing it by a factor of 10X their impact on the grid right there. And that's an opportunity to bring in renewables and battery to help manage that. 

00:32:59 Speaker 3 

That impact. So I'm going to ask a a rookie question and I'm sure Neil would probably laugh at this. But you know, as we're talking, you know buses and trucks and and and they're EV's, definitely by definition, they're an electric vehicle, is bidirectional charging even something that you can consider at this scale or is that not something? I mean, their core competence of Cisco is getting the food to where it's needed. 

00:33:21 Speaker 3 

Not being in the energy business and shaving, you know, saving energy prices. So explain that how that works or maybe like. Please help educate me. 

00:33:29 Speaker 4 

Yeah, it's a great question. And you're right. You know for Cisco. 

00:33:33 Speaker 4 

Someone with an operation that is, you know, really critical, their view is the operation. And I'm speaking, you know, my opinion is is their view, but for for many of these fleets that are electrifying, the first priority they have is is consistent operation, you know and Cisco. 

00:33:53 Speaker 4 

They deliver food that is their mission. It has to get, you know where it's going, and it has to still be fresh. 

00:34:01 Speaker 4 

The same with the school bus operator. You know, they deliver kids and they've got to get them where they're going and so. 

00:34:07 Speaker 4 

For the for the most part, what we see with operators who are electrifying is their first concern is. 

00:34:14 Speaker 4 

Getting all the all the wrinkles out of their operation and that might take a couple of years. They've got driver training that they've got to do, they've got operational changes to their facility, they they need to park their vehicles in a different way. They might need to lay their parking lot out differently and then. 

00:34:31 Speaker 4 

You know, managing the charging, they're kind of first consideration is getting that charging to work every time. If you know if they leave that charging until until you know overnight and go OK I'm going to put this on a timer. I'm going to have it charged from midnight to 6:00 AM so that my my electricity bill will be lower and then go home. 

00:34:51 Speaker 4 

And they come in and and something happen. 

00:34:52 Speaker 4 

And right they didn't. And the charge didn't occur. Well, that's a major disruption to that operation and a real set back for electrification because it kind of reinforces these fears. Oh, I can't rely on electric vehicles as much as I could my old vehicles. So we've got to get through that set of hurdles. And that's where 95% of the. 

00:35:14 Speaker 4 

The operators of all these different fleets that we talked to where they are on their journey right now, there is a next phase which is around kind of cost management. 

00:35:24 Speaker 4 

And we can do a lot of cost management with the software that operates the Chargers. So both of the partners I mentioned charge point and in charge, you know they've got software that will manage the charging to try to reduce the electricity bill but still get the vehicles charged to the point they need by the time they need them. But you're still going to have some vehicles that. 

00:35:44 Speaker 4 

Come in. And hey, we've got to run this truck twice today because we had a driver who was sick and we gotta do use the fast charger at lunchtime and you're still going to have all these events where you you want to be managing the cost with smart and you know, intelligent software and store. 

00:36:00 Speaker 4 

And so. 

00:36:02 Speaker 4 

That's really, I think, kind of the secondary consideration and and it's after those measures have been taken that you, you can make a little bit more return on your system, maybe you can improve the ROI of your system by supporting the grid with some kind of a vehicle to grid application and. 

00:36:22 Speaker 4 

We think that's still a few years away before we see mass adoption of that. There are, of course technologies that are available and ready today, but there are very few utilities that have. 

00:36:34 Speaker 4 

Programs in place to actually allow you to put energy back onto the grid and get paid for that. So it's there's a lot more that can be done in the in the near and medium term with changing the way you're using energy at your site. But as far as putting energy back onto the grid, those opportunities are fewer and farther between. They're, they're they're pilots, there's pilots in New York. 

00:36:54 Speaker 4 

Pilots happening in Northern California, we'll we'll get. We'll, you know, we'll get to the point where those are more mass adopted. 

00:37:01 Speaker 4 

But right now, we think that's still it's still more important to get the operations really sound. 

00:37:09 Speaker 3 

I appreciate that and and one other question. So you, you put in, you talked about having battery and capacity, so you got these big solar and you got a battery there. Are we talking lithium batteries, are we talking flow batteries? What kind of battery storage are you using not on the truck but in these facilities? 

00:37:28 Speaker 4 

Yeah, you know, that's that's it's always kind of on our radar to be watching these other kinds of energy storage, the developments that are out there, we're using all lithium. 

00:37:38 Speaker 4 

Lithium iron phosphate tends to be kind of the dominant. You know, there's different, different flavors of lithium batteries too. Lithium iron phosphate. It's kind of a favorite for stationary storage projects. It's a little bit heavier than some of the other lithium types that you might want to use in a vehicle, but that doesn't matter because it's stationary. 

00:37:57 Speaker 4 

And it has better safety properties. So lithium iron phosphate won't go into the kind of thermal runaway. You know, problems that that some other lithium batteries with higher energy density will. So it's a real good choice for stationary storage. 

00:38:14 Speaker 4 

You know, and it's it's the, it's the chosen chemistry of these kind of global companies that really have the balance sheet to give us the confidence we know they'll be around for the next 15 years. We need to work with battery providers who are large and stable companies because they're giving you a warranty for 15 years. 

00:38:34 Speaker 4 

Typically, sometimes 20 on this product. And so I mean, you know other companies like like flow batteries, a lot of times they're a lot smaller and they're and they're technologies are not at scale yet and they're there's less certainty there. So that they'd be a little less bankable from a from an investment standpoint. 

00:38:53 Speaker 2 

So Athena sits behind all of this and like you said, you know battery storage is a software problem. You've started to describe some of the issues with the battery technologies and how you might optimize and manage the battery. You've then got the vehicles and these drivers who do or don't do what they're supposed to do and you've got an operational consideration and you've got charge point and in charge you run, you know. 

00:39:14 Speaker 2 

Charging profiles to optimize. You know the battery charging. This is like a massive command and control problem. 

00:39:21 Speaker 2 

Who's in charge? 

00:39:24 Speaker 4 

Who is it? Charge the customer. The customer's always right. You know it. It's it's an interesting question. If we have, we have a real partner ecosystem right now where we are supporting the customer with our partners. And we are, we're integrated so that the systems. 

00:39:43 Speaker 4 

Work together and not fight each other, but we're not sitting one on top of the other. 

00:39:51 Speaker 4 

You know where where our partnership, the way our partnerships with charge management companies are set up is the charge management company operates the Chargers, the connection between the charger and the vehicle and all the tools that the driver sees the app on your phone that might tell you where the nearest charging station is, that's their domain. They've got all that. 

00:40:10 Speaker 4 

And we manage the power flows. So when there's a charge happening, choosing which source is that energy going to come from? Is that going to come from the battery or from the grid or from the solar? If there is solar or if the grid down and we're operating in a micro grid. So we're operating the power flow side of it and. 

00:40:30 Speaker 4 

If we're able to integrate with that platform, we can find out what it's going to do. We can tell it maybe what what it might be nice if it didn't charge right now. If it has that option because energy is expensive, but we're not sitting on top of it, forcing it to do anything and they're not sitting on top of ours. We're really working as partners and. 

00:40:48 Speaker 4 

Equals with different roles. 

00:40:50 Speaker 2 

That that's really interesting, because what you're basically saying is the the vehicle might say I need to be charged by 6:00 in the morning and I've got 8 hours to live or 4 hours of charging. And you then go well, it's cheap at this point. It's dirty. At this point. We recommend this period and you only give them three hours and they go no, I need 4 hours. So it's kind of like a machine to machine. 

00:41:10 Speaker 2 

Which then leads to an optimal profile being created, and presumably in there the customer because the customer is always right, has chosen operational right at the top of the tree, then maybe cost, then maybe carbon, then maybe local generation, and they can tweak that formula with a customer input. 

00:41:30 Speaker 2 

Athena does the genius and then communicates with the Chargers and the other software systems you're working with to enable the optimal outcome to. 

00:41:39 Speaker 4 

You're hired. 

00:41:41 Speaker 2 

Yes, I I've. I've just achieved a life goal. Brilliant. 

00:41:45 Speaker 4 

I'm not sure whether to put you on our marketing team or our data science team because that that is right. We we we really have to you know think about those prioritizations and recognize this is kind of that that buyers journey or the operators journey. I was trying to describe earlier is that the. 

00:42:01 Speaker 4 

The prioritization will change overtime as the operators get more and more confident with the charging, with the with the pairing between the the vehicle and the charger happening every time without fail, then they'll they'll move along. This kind of Maslow's hierarchy of fleet operation. 

00:42:19 Speaker 2 

I'm going to. 

00:42:20 Speaker 2 

Use that, by the way, Maslow's hierarchy of fleet operation. 

00:42:25 Speaker 3 

Well, I I think we've done a pretty thorough journey on this conversation. We've gone all over the place, I guess as we pull it together, you know, for me, it's interesting just to see the complexity of managing a simple problem in my mind, right. So as as Neil pointed out that you know what seems to be simple at face value is is quite more. 

00:42:45 Speaker 3 

Quite a bit more complex, right when you start laying the layers of logic on and I think that's what we want to achieve with the EV mini series is kind of expose those kind of thinking and go there. Any final thoughts as we bring this together that you want to share with our audience? 

00:43:01 Speaker 4 

You know, I I think one of the things that I I I theme, I I do try to bring people back to is acceleration and and that's one of the things that I think is so exciting about about the projects we've done with Penske with Cisco. If you'd asked me five years ago about about electric trucks, I would have said that's that's ten years away. 

00:43:20 Speaker 4 

You know that's that's way out in the future. Cars. Yeah. They're starting to pick up, but electric trucks are just way out there and. 

00:43:27 Speaker 4 

And I love how much we've just accelerated. I don't, you know, I can't say that with one particular thing that did it. I think the world kind of came, came together in a strange way during the, you know, the pandemic kind of maybe at the global awareness increase and and then of course, some some. 

00:43:47 Speaker 4 

Major federal incentives and and you know, but this is a global trend. And so it's really exciting to me to see the acceleration. We see companies. 

00:43:55 Speaker 4 

You know, corporations putting climate based goals, science based targets out there, and in general they're they're always accelerating, they're pulling them forward. You know, you very rarely hear corporations saying, you know, we we pushed our climate goals back 10 years. They're pulling them in, they're pulling them in and they're and they're competing with each other to do it more. 

00:44:15 Speaker 4 

And that's that's something I just I'm really excited about and I just you know, want to see more of. 

00:44:22 Speaker 2 

This is a fabulous journey we've been on from the shoebox and the coffee shop that controls the battery storage system to the hierarchy of fleet operation. But you know, we've talked a lot about electric vehicles. What's your personal opinion? What's your view on EV? Where do you see it going in your life? 

00:44:38 Speaker 4 

Well, I I love how many options there are. Now you know. A couple years ago, yeah, you had one or two, right? It was a leaf for a Tesla. And and now we've we've got options. 

00:44:50 Speaker 4 

Where if we you know, for various reasons I didn't want either one of those. 

00:44:55 Speaker 4 

So now we've got so many more choices and they and they're just they keep coming out with more every year. So we've got a deposit in for a an ID 4, which is perfect for our family, right. That's going to be, he's got room for the kids and the dog in the back and it's so, yeah, it's so cool. 

00:45:11 Speaker 4 

Now you get to go and pick all exactly what you want and and you know it it it gets made to your exact spec, right? The various features and color that you. 

00:45:20 Speaker 4 

Want and all that? 

00:45:20 Speaker 4 

So I think it's just, it's really exciting the way the technology has allowed us to, to have choices like that that are much more broad set in the EV sector now. 

00:45:32 Speaker 3 

Well, Todd, I I appreciate you being a guest. Our audience, I'm sure enjoy that. Thank you so much for being on the show today. 

00:45:38 Speaker 4 

Hey, it's been a real pleasure. Thanks for having me, Chris and Neal. 

00:45:41 Speaker 3 

For our audience, we hope you've enjoyed this episode as much as we have making it's been a fun time. We've enjoyed it. If you're not a subscriber, subscribe, listen to the entire EV mini series. There's lots of content here. Find us on YouTube, find us where you get your podcasts. Find us on Facebook. But we look forward to having you subscribe and we'll talk to You again in the next episode. Bye bye.