Demystifying Enterprise Energy Sources, Use Cases, and Applications

Hey, everybody, and welcome back to the show. As you can see behind me, we are in our Dallas studios today. And one of the things that you you hear about Dallas and Texas is things like power demands and energy infrastructure and data centers, but it's not unique to us just here in Texas even though a lot of those conversations happen just due to proximity. But, you know, as we continue to expand in the world of technology, the demand for power becomes higher. You look at data center demand, demand for AI capabilities, demand for ESG requirements. The power draw and demand for that is excruciatingly high and stresses our current current power systems really more than we even probably expected it to. And I wanna talk a little bit more about, that conversation today and how a lot of critical infrastructure and even corporations are leveraging new technologies and opportunities from a power standpoint to, to help fight some of that. So I've got Aaron Bowman on, president, of ELM Microgrid and Solar. Aaron, thanks for coming in today. Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Ben. Well, of course, Aaron. So I wanna ask. You know, a lot of our audience probably skews a little bit more technical. Right? So it doesn't always have to have the day to day conversation from a, hey. How am I managing and storing power? Some of those folks are. Right? Because there's some natural crossover. So I wanna ask kind of as the first question. I think that there's a lot of buzzwords and a lot of different conversations and ESG and all these different things. From a from a commercial power infrastructure standpoint, where sort of are we right now? What does that look like? I think, what we're seeing, Ben, is that a a lot of companies are are trying to road map that out and figure out where that goes. And it's it's not just they have to not only work amongst what they need as far as a major, energy source, say a data center in an area, but they have to actually work in conjunction with their local utility, and with technology providers such as ourselves to kinda all work hand in hand to figure out what what does a holistic solution look like, to get them where they need to go for their goals, and then map that out for the next five, ten, even fifteen years. I was on a call yesterday, for a working group I'm on in in New York City, actually. And, we had a array of different groups on, looking at, not only end users. So we had building representatives and some data center representatives and things like that. We had folks from Con Edison, the utility there, myself and few other groups from a technology perspective. We're all kinda trying to work to lay out what does this road map look like, and and we're seeing that here in the Dallas area as well. That demand is is growing here, and, we're working with groups where they're saying, hey. We're seeing that we're gonna be building faster than what the grid can support us. What do we do? A lot of it right now is starting to look at what's the technology available and how do I blend that in with what's available for my energy resources for a road map out, you know, three, five, ten years from now as well as I need this immediate solution right now. Well, it's interesting because the burden not only falls on the utility and energy providers for us locally here at Encore, but it it it applies pretty dramatically to building operators and managers and construction facilities because if you don't have that infrastructure at at the prebuild standpoint, it's very hard to retrofit something to to triple three, four x your pipe from an energy consumption standpoint, how early do those conversations has to have to happen? Is it is it total new build? It's gotta be done at the beginning, or or do those retrofit conversations happen a little bit? Both happen. Obviously, if we can get in a conversation on new build, it's a little easier to get the grid infrastructure there from the beginning. But you still have limitations of what's available in that specific region from that substation or group of substations in that region and what the utility can get from a power perspective. So we have a lot of conversations where we're talking to people about future expansion, but then from a microgrid standpoint, that's where we can really come in and help identify what we could do to enhance the existing, grid infrastructure that's there because we can come in and add additional power capability through solar and energy storage to enhance the existing grid infrastructure. And there's a lot of different ways you can attack that, both grid tied and even taking a portion of the building off grid sometimes. Well, I wanna ask. You said microgrid. Obviously, it's in the name of the company. Right? That that means different things to different people, and I think it's fair to acknowledge that. When you say microgrid, how would you define that in this context? Sure. In this context, what we define a microgrid is a system that we really focus on renewable energy microgrid. So solar or wind, source for generating source on-site with, energy storage component, that has a intelligent control system that can manage interacting between the great available power, the generated power on-site, and a way to store and manage that so it can be called upon demand. And that can even include and quite often does include even other on-site like fossil fuel generation sorts, whether it be a a natural gas generator, a diesel generator. We have systems even, interconnected with CHP systems. And then working to optimize all that to get the end customer what they need, but in a method that they don't even know what's happening. Right? It it happens, smooth transitions, very intelligently controlled. Our definition of microgrid is an intelligent on-site generation source that is handling either a building or a group of buildings or even at times we're working with utilities, even sections of the utility where they wanna isolate portions to be able to handle their customer loads for, for their end customers usage. And we have all those arrays of applications that we've done across the country. Yeah. What what's what's interesting really about a lot of the microgrid technology is it's designed not only for for some of those on grid capabilities, but off. Right? You know, know, we see it from time to time especially being here in in Texas where we've got hurricanes and heaven forbid we talk about ERCOT on this show, but the the the failure of the grid a number of years ago. When you when you talk about kind of this coalition of of on grid, off grid, microgrid, solar battery storage technologies, you know, one of the the places that comes to my mind immediately is data centers. Right? And it's sort of the topic to Azure because you've got AI, you've got, all this data management, cloud storage that's happening. It's something that we deal with pretty regularly here in Texas as well. I'm gonna stop saying Texas one of these days. But, but it it it's it's ironic because we're sort of a microcosm of of the larger, energy consumption space. But how is that being leveraged in the world of data centers? Right? Because at this point, data centers really are or either are or are becoming critical infrastructure because you've got patient data, you've got, utility data. Obviously, you're keeping all sorts of just cloud storage systems up. But how are data centers specifically leveraging a lot of these tech? Well, what we've seen traditionally, you know, data centers have had a lot of, like, generators on-site to provide that backup power resiliency in case that goes down. But with the ESG goals that are now coming in, they have to look at, well, how do I integrate renewables? How do I have a a better controlled system? So we're we're doing a lot of work. We have some some great partners in the data center space actually that do a lot of that traditional construction and development of those energy systems for data centers. So we're working hand in hand with them on integrating, how we can integrate the microgrid features into that with, to enhance, the usage of those traditional energy, generation sources on-site. So it's a lot of people wanna go to an ore, or is it fossil based energy or is it renewable? And you get people on, you know, both sides very strongly, Especially here in Texas, you get people that are very into renewables, and you get people that are very strong on the fossils. But we really believe it's more of a philosophy of an and because ultimately, what you wanna have is the best solution. And that best solution a lot of times is integrating multiple of those components together. So in a data center, instance, it might be a solution where we say, hey. We can do some things with some natural gas generators that are gonna be low, low impact on the environment as far as their generating, capacity compared to maybe a diesel, generator. But then, integrate in renewables, so solar. You know, a lot of times, data centers have a nice big roof that you can work with, to get a lot of solar, but solar is very inconsistent. Right? You know, a cloud comes over, you're running at a hundred percent, and a cloud comes over, and all of a sudden, you drop down to ten percent. And, that has a big impact swing on things like your demand charges from the utility and and those those types of, issues with your electric bill as well as if you're running on generator. But by integrating an energy storage component with batteries and an intelligent control, you can mitigate those issues, smooth out, the impact to both the grid to generating source like a a generator, natural gas generator, which doesn't like to see a lot of fluctuation on the loads, that that hit hit the generator, but then also optimize your solar usage. So you can say, I can crank that solar, and even if I'm generating more solar power than I'm needing to use, I can store it, do a time of use shifting with it later, and kinda optimize that. You can also, with the energy storage system, potentially take advantage of time of use shifting of your price of electricity from the grid. So you could look at, taking when demands are high running on the data center. You can offset that with energy that's stored that maybe was stored from the batteries even overnight, not from solar, but was stored in the grid overnight and used because you have a time of use shift, pricing. We see that a lot in California, but it's it's making its way here. And, also, it helps you manage demand charges, which do we get hit with, quite a bit here in Texas and, the ability to to trim those. So, you know, when you start to look at it from a data center perspective or any business, but data centers especially, you kind of start value stacking, these these items. So everybody always asks me, well, what's the one thing people buy? And and the answer is, well, there's usually one primary driver. There's this one primary driver that says this is why we wanna look at this. But then the real decision comes down to a stack of values that include perhaps some corporate ESG goals, a look at what the return on investment is, what's the long term IRR on this situation, as well as what's the upfront cost and CapEx and those sort of things. So so it's always, it starts with one objective usually that kinda drives the conversation, but the ultimate answer gets into a combined solution that that value stacks these things together and comes up with the, ultimately, the best balance of all these these, these potential, pieces of the puzzle. Well, I I wanna put a pin in solar, and I'm gonna ask you about it here in just a second. But, you know, you talk about ESG requirements. I think that, you know, as we look at resilient technologies and resilient energy and, backups and things like that, not just even specifically resilient, you talk about sustainability, environmental things like that. That has found its way into a lot of different verticals. Right? I think the two easy ones that come to my mind, we talk about data centers, but even places like hospitals and and, you know, utilities, things like that. But what are some of those other verticals where you're seeing a lot of growth from a an energy management and storage standpoint? Well, one area we're seeing a lot of growth right now is in, actually in schools, school districts. More from a resiliency standpoint, because they're looking at they could be a resiliency center for, the community in a natural disaster. But they also have ESG goals. Right? You know, these school districts have ESG goals just like a hospital does or a data center does or or things like that. And and it's layered because it's not only a lot of times tied to what they wanna achieve, but it's also tied to things like their federal funds available and and, these sort of things. So so school districts is an area. Hospitals definitely is a growing area that we see more and more. We just had a system go into a hospital, in Boston, that that is, going online here in about another two weeks out in Boston. We have systems for factories. We have a big system going into a factory in, Chicago, major automotive manufacturer. And so, you know, ESG goals at the corporate level, but it's also part of a broader ESG perspective. Right? So they're not only putting in energy storage and solar, but it's tied in with a program where they're, you know, putting in LED lighting throughout the plants, and they're putting in more efficient HVAC systems. Right? So, you know, it gets wrapped into these larger, goals that both drive, cost savings, but also achieve ESG goals for for stakeholders. I love that you mentioned kind of the education piece sort of being a safe house. Right? And I'm curious if a lot of these corporations and places like data centers and energy resilient spaces are trickling that down to the community. Right? Are there examples where you're seeing folks, you know, repurpose or leverage technology to maybe better support the community specifically, or is it more just sort of siloed? We have seen some instances, especially when you start working with, like, the utilities, where, we have some instances with some of the utilities where they're working on projects where they're putting in a microgrid, say, at a university campus, or talking to a major manufacturing facility or one of these data centers where they're saying, hey. The utility wants to come in and partner with you. Drop in this energy storage so we can give you this resiliency solution. But we wanna use your facility, your location to drop this unit in, but then we're gonna build a microgrid that expands out beyond the borders of your facility to support the surrounding neighborhood. And then they're putting isolators in and saying, okay. Well, we can we can not only support you, but then we can leverage this to support, the the greater community. So, there is some instances of that we're seeing. A lot of times that's like I said, that's that's some great examples of we're really seeing utilities start to think outside the box. I I think we're still growing into that here a little bit in the middle of the country, like Texas and things like that. But the the utilities we're working with out on the coast, you know, and I'm not just talking about California. So everybody gets all worked up about that. But, you know, like, I'm talking like up in Washington, Oregon, out on the East Coast, northeast, and things like that where they're really, really getting stressed on the grid, some of these utilities are doing a great job of starting to say, hey. We can't just be have this isolated wall between us and the end customer. We gotta start to to figure out how to bridge these gaps. And so there's some really interesting, projects going on where it's a blend of utility might bring in the energy storage, but then the end customer is putting in solar. So they have the renewable generation asset and the utilities tied in, the storage. So it's like a mix of behind the meter and in front of the meter where you're optimizing that for not only the customer, the the single end customer like the factory, but then also the surrounding area as well. So we are starting to see some some progression that and people are people are realizing that this is not everybody has to kinda come together to solve this issue because they're looking down the road and saying the energy demand is not slowing down. You know, no matter what side of the aisle you're on when you get into the politics of renewables and that sort of thing, The truth of the matter is regardless of of what happens in November, the energy demand's not gonna slow down. That's gonna keep growing. We need every energy generating asset and every energy solution, that we can muster, to solve this challenge. And it's it's, you know, it's it's a solution based problem that we need to solve. Well, it it is it is interesting that you talk you know, we talk about that community piece, how much of that conversation seems to be driven by folks at the end of the line. Probably most of the time in the residential side of things where they're talking about, oh, I wanna put up solar. I wanna put up this. But a lot of that is driven, I think, from misconceptions. Right? Because, you know, we we've talked about solar a few times too, and and I think that people just assume, look. The only way I can generate power is I gotta stick up a windmill or I gotta put a eyesore of a solar panel in my house. The reality is, especially when you start to get to get into to commercial and and larger infrastructure applications, the conversation's far more nuanced. Right? There's thermal technologies. There's a lot of different ways that you can generate power. What are some of those ways maybe that people haven't had the conversation at scale yet that maybe should be coming to the forefront a little bit? Yeah. I think one big area you mentioned, briefly there is the thermal. So, we're we're, working with a group called, Naked Energy, which has a product called Virtue, that we're bringing to the US that that tackles the thermal loads. And and what people don't realize is fifty percent of the energy in the world is used for thermal, is used for heating, Whether it be process heat at a factory, whether it be heating hot water, whether it be heating buildings. You know, we all we all think of, you know, electricity demand, but there's a lot of that that's used to convert to, thermal. And, what we've found is this solution in the same footprint as traditional PV, we get three to four times the energy production in thermal at a site. So you talked about hospitals earlier. We've got a string of hospitals that we're working with right now, that have huge thermal loads as you can imagine. Right? You know, they they're constantly using hot water, doing a lot of laundry, needing to, you know, sterilize things, and a lot of their energy demand is is thermal. And they have a huge ESG goal to try and get their, their loads down for these sites. Well, we came in and we looked at the rooftop and said, we can get you almost four times the energy on this rooftop with thermal and still do some things to tie in PV as well. So what's exciting about that is this, the naked energy solution has a a solution called PVT, which is a PV plus thermal all combined in one solution. And with traditional PV, you're only maybe using about twenty percent of the sun's energy because a lot of it's just rejected in heat. That's a standard PV panel. With this solution, we're using almost ninety percent of the sun's energy because we're capturing the thermal and using that to create heat, but then also still capturing the PV, the electricity factor of that as well. So it's pretty exciting. You know, really, what we try to look at is what can we do to achieve the end goal? So whether it's, traditional PV, whether it's a solar thermal solution, whether it's a blend of those two, add in energy storage. And then, even as I talked about, like, what you, you know, what you were saying is everybody just thinks I gotta slap a bunch of solar panels up and and do this. We have customers that have just put in the energy storage because they're set they realize that there's a lot of electricity they're not using at night that their utilities are actually encouraging them to use. Right? You know, utilities have to generate this this base load no matter what. And at night when load's low in a lot of areas, they need somewhere for that energy to go. So really encouraging their customers to use that. So even that leads to the overall efficiency of the grid. So we do have applications and and utility customers that just put in energy storage because it helps with the efficiency because then they don't have to try and crank up those generating sources later on in the middle of the day when there's more energy demand or when everybody gets home from work. So we see a lot of different applications, and I think the biggest thing is for people to not get pigeonholed into its one solution. That's not the reality of it. Like you said, it's nuanced, and every situation's a little different. And and what you have to have though is standardized products and solutions that are flexible enough to achieve the goals. What you don't want is for every one of these things to be a science project. When we first came into the industry ten years ago, we started out, we were just gonna do the controls, just the software, the intelligent controls, and that's what we started doing. And then what we realized though was every every site was a new science project, and there was new things to figure it out. We we realized that what we needed to do is really standardize these solutions, and we kinda refer to them as like Lego blocks. Right? We have here's an array of Lego blocks we have, and you can do a mix and match of those to build exactly what you need for your solution. And what we found is that can really get about ninety five percent of the the, sites that customers have. You can use our Lego blocks and get there. Right? And and there's others like that in the industry as well. But, you know, that's that's really you know, what we've gotta continue to do is the industry like us needs to drive these solutions that give the flexibility to address all these different applications, whether it's a a small, small to medium sized business, all the way up to a big factory up all the way up to a full community like this. So we've got systems that range from, we've got sites with a hundred and twenty five k w that that's on a site in, New Orleans, that's a community resiliency center. It's there's actually three of those now. There's quite a few more we're going to tackle. But it's, one's a school. One's it's not a boys and girls club, but it's something like a boys and girls club in a community. And one's a church, and they've put those in. And those are resiliency systems, that are helping manage those sites' energy costs, but also in an outage situation, which we've already experienced, one of those, that the the facility can be a resiliency center, a place where the the lights are on and they can come and power their cell phones and they can come and get a hot meal and all these sort of things for the community. But then ranging up to, you know, large systems going into substations to support utilities that are concerned that, that substation is gonna get a lot of demand from EV chargers going into everyone's home in a community, and that the substation can't handle that demand. So they're putting in energy storage to buffer that, to factories and hospitals like we talked about. So there's a lot of different applications, and you have to have the scale and breadth of products, but have them in a way that are are consistent and repeatable and easy to adopt. I'm curious. You talked about a lot of different applications, everything from the small and medium business up to the to the enterprise and even the school and and municipal level. Where do a lot of those conversations start? Is it somebody typically who's an owner of ESG? Is it a facilities manager? Is it your CFO saying we gotta slash how much we're spending on energy? How do those conversations normally start? I would say yes. But, but it it really starts, to the reason it's a yes is because sometimes it is at the finance level. They're looking at it saying, holy cow. We're getting, you know, our butts kicked with this utility bill every month, and seventy percent of the bill is these demand charges. What do we do about that? Right? Other times, it's it's a corporate goal, so it's ESG. But but other times, it's operations saying, we've got to expand the operations here, and I can't get enough power. So, you know, really, we we see that breadth of of of starters for that conversation. You know, one thing we try to do too is we we try to be very active in as many communities as we're participating and even at the the federal level with a lot of different organizations that are trying to help drive these change. So it's it's interesting there. There's working groups that we're a part of where we find, different levels to start the conversation. So utilities, you know, that's a big area where we focus on. And it's interesting sometimes because some of the you get into the coop regions with some of these smaller utilities, and they will take us to, say, a manufacturing plant and say, I can't solve this problem for them, but I think you guys could. So they'll enter that conversation in. So, you know, generally, you know, ESG is definitely a great area to start. If there's an organization that has, an ESG lead, that's always, you know, that's always a good conversation starter. But finance isn't a isn't a bad area. They're gonna get involved at some point. Right? So I'd say most common is probably ESG or operations trying to drive a demand issue or a resiliency issue, and then it it flows into the finance side of things. So at the same time, you know, some of it is driven by, you know, public policies. EV is a huge driver right now of of the energy demand of what's going on. And it's not, again, get out of the politics of it. There's a lot of value that organizations are seeing going to an EV fleet from a manageability standpoint, from a, uptime standpoint, from a service cost standpoint, life of the vehicle, but then also getting into meeting their ESG goals and then also the predictability of the cost of electricity versus gas that can fluctuate prices, you know, over the course of a year, and you've got something you can look out and say, well, I know electricity is gonna be this cost for the next three years. I know this is what it's gonna cost to fuel my fleet, but then how do I get enough energy to do that? So, there's a lot of different areas where that conversation starts. But yeah, I would say most common is either from an ESG group within a big corporate corporation or operations within a smaller to midsize businesses trying to figure out how the heck do I solve this problem. Well, that is that's the next follow-up is is how do people start. Right? I mean, is it as simple as picking up the phone and calling and saying, look, here's my problem. Can you help me figure it out? Or Yeah. Or is it something a little bit more formal? You know, we like that, actually. We we we get that a lot, especially that's kind of one of our niche, areas in the industry is that we are the guys that that people come to with challenges. You know, we've got one group we're working with right now that came to us and said, hey. We wanna put a system on the telescope array in Chile that's at seventeen thousand feet in the air, and it's running on diesel generators nonstop right now. And we wanna figure out how to get this on renewable, But there's nobody in the world that offers an energy storage system that can operate here. Do you guys think you can look at this? And we're we're looking at it, and we think we have a solution for them on that. To the at the same time, we have a lot of times where customers call and say, I've got this challenge. What's this look like? Or they call and they have a preconceived notion like you were talking about. Hey. I need to do this with solar and battery. We'll take a look and we'll respond and say, here's what that would look like. But, also, here's some things we've done from another customer very similar to you. So so we try to kinda add that service to our customers. We've got a whole team of people that have seen a lot of different applications across not only the country. We've done a lot in the Caribbean. We're starting to get into Central and South America. We've done things in Canada. We've got system all the way out on the island of America and Samoa, with the military. So we've done military applications. So, yeah, it goes all the way from very formal, like people have really researched it and and have it together, but also we have people that just pick up the phone and call and say, I've got this problem. It seems like maybe you guys could help. And we're always happy to jump in there as well. So, you know, however we can get to providing that solution, we're happy happy to start there. Well, it's a good it's a good place to be when people are are picking up the phone and calling you. Right? That's a that's sort of a a business dream right there. And and, you know, Aaron, I wanna give you the last word here. I always love to wrap up with this question. If if you had a crystal ball, you know, and you said in the next five to ten years, here's where the industry is gonna go, what would you say? Is is it new technologies? Is it more scalability? Is it more options for renewables? Where would you say the industry is moving towards? I think it's a blend of, continued scalability. There are new technologies, but I always think that's gonna be an evolution Because everybody gets excited about new technology, but then the reality of it is you gotta get it to a point where it's bankable and repeatable. And, you know, people want these things with fifteen and twenty and twenty five year warranties. Right? And, you know, you can't just roll out a hot new technology and make you know, feel comfortable that you can do that. Right? So it's gotta be an evolution of technology, but then constantly working to make the current technology more scalable, easier to adopt. The biggest the biggest push is really is we need to continue to work to make this go faster, And that's a blend of both the technology, but also things like the permitting process and the approval process and having utilities comfortable with the technologies out there so they'll approve it faster, having, you know, municipalities understand what they're approving better. So there's a lot of education that needs to continue to happen with not only from the industry but out to the people that are gonna be doing the final sign off that this is approved to go into my community or to go on to my grid and those sort of things. So I think from a crystal ball perspective is that we continue to find ways to speed up that process of getting these systems in the field and up and running for people. Laren, I'll tell you what, it's been fantastic to have you in. And, I love really just your willingness to share the insight. Right? Because people like me who who live throughout different tangents of the industry, we don't always know the nuts and bolts behind everything. Right? Sometimes that's good. Sometimes that's a great thing. But sometimes it it it's an opportunity to educate. Right? And I love being able to ask questions of people that are that are willing to share their expertise with the industry. So thank you so much for coming in and joining us today. Yeah. Thank you very much for having me. It's been a a lot of fun and and really enjoy everything you guys do to help push the market forward. So it's, it's, mutual as far as the enjoyment. Thank you, Aaron, and thank you all for tuning in and joining us today. We hope you, stay tuned for our next episode. Like and subscribe. Be sure to check us out next time.