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Good morning Grid Connections listeners and welcome back to season seven of Grid
Connections, the podcast where clean energy, electric vehicles in the grid converge.

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We're joined again today by Tom McCalmont, the CEO of Paired Power, to explore how
microgrid EV charging can transform the way we power transportation.

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From solar-powered chargers and battery-backed systems to intelligent load management and
vehicle-to-grid capabilities.

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Tom walks us through how paired power is solving the growing grid capacity challenge with
scalable, resilient infrastructure.

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If you've ever wondered how to make workplace charging reliable, offset peak demand costs,
or build energy independence with solar and storage, this episode is a must listen.

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Tom also gives us a live demo of Periscope, their powerful design and monitoring tool that
models energy savings and charger performance all in real time.

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I will also say in advance apologies for the audio on my side.

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If it doesn't always sound great, my allergies were in full swing and definitely left me a
bit congested for this interview.

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Also, this conversation is brought to you as always by Grid Connections Consulting,
helping businesses and communities accelerate clean energy and electric vehicle adoption

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with strategy insights and action.

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Plus, if you enjoyed this episode, share it with someone who's passionate about the future
of energy and don't forget to leave a review to help others discover the show.

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Sign up for our newsletter using the link in the show notes to stay connected with the
latest in electric vehicle energy and infrastructure innovation.

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With that, enjoy.

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Tom, thanks again for coming on in.

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Real briefly if you could just kind of share a little bit about yourself and background
for those who may be listening who aren't familiar

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Yeah, good, Chase.

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It's really great to be here again.

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I enjoyed the last time we had a chance to chat.

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So yes, Tom McCalmont and Paired Power.

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I've been actually in this solar space for 25 years, and I've been in the EV space for
about a dozen years.

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So lots of experience in both.

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What Paired Power does is we call it microgrid EV charging.

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There are many benefits, and I'll talk about this during our session today.

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where if you add a little bit of solar power to your EV charger project, you can get some
enormous benefits out of that.

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Reduced cost, more efficient use of energy, resiliency, things like that.

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And so what that really is, is creating a microgrid.

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It's putting together different sources of energy to not completely eliminate the existing
utility grid, but to augment it and get more capacity out.

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So that's what we do and we have a bunch of really interesting products in that space.

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And I look forward to the conversation here today.

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Yeah.

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And I think, um, so let's talk about where paired power is as a company right now and kind
of like what, if I'm a listener or if I'm either even just an EV driver or someone who may

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be interesting in, um, trying to augment with solar, how can paired power help me?

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And what, are some of the things that your company is offering today for those listening?

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great question.

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Let's take it from both viewpoints.

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First, from the viewpoint of the driver.

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uh Drivers are actually kind of frustrated.

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uh And reason is if you go out on the highway and you use a whole bunch of EV chargers,
you're going to find reliability problems.

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And so we've really invested deeply in making our systems very robust and providing
connectivity in every system that allows us to monitor at 24-7.

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So we always know if a charger

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is operational, if there's a problem with it, we can often diagnose and correct problems
remotely.

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So from the driver's perspective, we give a much, much better experience, and we hear that
from users all the time.

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And from the site host perspective, there are many challenges for site hosts today, and
particularly in places where EV adoption is high.

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We happen to be in California, there's a lot of EVs here, a lot of growth in the industry,
lot of workplaces are now adding EV chargers.

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and lot of fleets are looking to convert their fleets to electric vehicles.

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And what they're all kind of universally finding is as you start adding large numbers of
chargers, you run out of grid.

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You just run out of capacity.

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So, and so what are your choices?

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Well, you can kind of live within the constraints of your existing grid, which means live
in the constraints of whatever is delivered to your building if you're a commercial

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entity.

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but that will limit the number of chargers you can put in.

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Or you can go to your utility and say, I need more capacity.

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And the utility will do that, but it's a very, very long queue.

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Currently, it's about a three-year wait in most of the utilities in California.

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It's similar in other high-demand states.

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The utilities are at capacity.

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They're trying to build more capacity for data centers at the same time that they're
trying to build more capacity for EV charging, and there just isn't enough capacity.

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to do that quickly.

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And so it takes time to put those lines in, procure those transformers, put in those
service, the switch gears.

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uh All of that takes time.

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So we offer a solution that allows customers to do that with the grid they already have.

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We live within the constraints of the existing grid.

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And I'll give a little uh discussion about that and demo of that, how we do that.

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But that really is the secret sauce is being able to.

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uh

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help customers with that problem.

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And is that kind of how a lot of customers are coming to you today that they're reach kind
of running into these power issues on site or is it kind of, they're kind of curious.

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I mean, I think a lot of people, when they started driving electric vehicles, that is kind
of like the end goal is like, wow, what if I could just take the power from the sun and

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have it right there and some having to deal with the utility?

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I'm just kind of curious.

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Like what, if you can share like what you're seeing around who is coming um to kind of
work with your team or if it's.

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Just an open curiosity kind of earlier in the prospecting phase, I guess.

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we get lots of interest from people who have that problem I described, which is limited
grid.

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They don't have enough capacity.

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But there's also a lot of interest from people because we are truly a microgrid.

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So we're combining solar.

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Typically, there's some energy storage.

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Typically, there will be a grid connection as well.

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We're combining all three of those to serve the load, whatever the load may be.

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Typically, the load uh is electric vehicles.

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But in some cases, you may not have existing grid.

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You may be at a park or a beach or some place that's remote, which really doesn't have any
capacity.

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um And so then in that situation, we can also deliver off-grid charging solutions.

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We can deliver a solution that's powered purely by sunlight for charging EVs.

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That's great.

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Well, I know you have kind of additional information and kind of some data and stuff you
want to share with us.

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So maybe this is a good point is kind of hop into that.

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And then for those listening, we'll try to do our best to kind of go through and kind of
describe what is being shown on these slides.

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And then you can always find it online on our YouTube page as well.

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Yeah, good.

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Thank you.

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yeah, and I appreciate the little intro there.

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For those of you who might be listening on a podcast and don't have uh visual access,
we'll try to describe what we're showing here.

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So what I'm going to start with is our design tool.

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And one of the things that's really important in a microgrid environment is you have to
take into account kind of all of the energy flows that are occurring in your system.

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And so we use a tool that we call Periscope.

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uh

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pair is spelled with P-A-I-R because we're paired power, we pair solar with the charging.

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And so what I'm doing in Periscope, I'm first going to just create a new project.

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And that's going to bring up a little wizard window.

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And I'm just going to put in an address here.

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It's an address here in Silicon Valley.

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300 East Tasman Drive in San Jose, which I just happen to know is where Cisco is located.

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Cisco is not currently one of our customers, so I thought I'd just pick them at random.

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But they're certainly a large employer that you would find uh typical for the kind of
project that we do.

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And you can see, for those of you who can see the screen, you see a map of Cisco's campus.

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I'm going to put it in the satellite view.

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And you can see in satellite view, I can see all their buildings, and I can see kind of
where their parking spaces are.

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And then I'm going to move the pair over to here and say that's where we want to put our
project.

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So we're going to start with a location.

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Next, we're going to define our fleet.

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And so I'm bringing up a window that says add my electric vehicle group.

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So I'm going to click on that.

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And let's say Cisco wants to put in 100 chargers.

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So we'll click 100 electric vehicles.

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And we can see.

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that's pretty dynamic.

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mean, there's a number that popped up.

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They showed 5,000.

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I mean, is that like essentially what your program can design up to or even beyond maybe?

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Absolutely, yeah.

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We can design any level.

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So the whole purpose of this uh design tool is to model what's the energy I'm going to
need for this project.

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And I just picked 100, but it could have been any number, hundreds or thousands even, of
chargers.

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The next screen I brought up here um shows the capacity of vehicles.

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Vehicles get different amounts of range.

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So I'm just going to use the average EV.

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the average EV gets about three and a half miles per kilowatt hour.

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So we'll click that.

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We'll say we have a hundred average EVs.

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The time I'm going to charge them, this is for workplace charging.

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So they're going to be there from eight to five.

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And let's say we want to give each vehicle about 40 miles of range.

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Okay.

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So that takes nine hours and it tells me I'm going to need 89, 32 amp level two chargers.

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And let's say that Cisco also has some transit vans that they use for deliveries.

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Maybe they have

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Four of those, so we'll pick four of those.

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And we'll define transit van.

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Transit vans only get about half the miles per kilowatt hour of an average EV.

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But those can charge at night rather than at daytime.

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So let's say we're going to charge those from 6 p.m.

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to 6 a.m.

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And let's say those need 100 miles of range per day.

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So we'll define that.

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So now I've defined my vehicle group.

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104 vehicles, 100 average EVs for transit vans.

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Next, I define my grid capacity.

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How much grid do I have today?

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Well, let's say it's a uh 208 volt 3 phase connection.

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And let's say we have 200 amps of capacity.

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And that grid connection is available all day long.

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And let's just model the utility rates here for this location.

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Pretty here.

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Here it'll populate with PG &E.

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we're in.

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Cisco is in Pacific Gas and Electric's tariff in this uh location.

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And let's pick um B20, which is probably the rate tariff they would be on for a large
campus like that.

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So we'll go to them.

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I mean, that is pretty wild.

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mean, this drop down menu just shows all the different options you can kind of do through
Pacific gas and electric.

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And I know you kind of before the screen, you were also talking about how those examples
were all AC charging.

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Is this something that you do like an onsite DC fast charging?

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I mean, there's now even some kind of like DC low charging technologies too.

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I'm just kind of curious if these are separate or if that's something that this model can
do as well.

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So it will do them.

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So yes, we can provide level three.

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And actually, as I go through and create the scenario, uh it will tell me the capacity of
the charges that I need.

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for example, if I had uh said instead of four transit vans, I need 100 transit vans, that
would have definitely considered that I would need level three charging.

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But I picked this example to be level two, but you could easily pick any other.

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So here we are, we're picking B20, that's the PG &E tariff.

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And you can see over here on the right, those of you who can see the screen, it shows the
actual rates that are gonna be charged under that tariff, both the energy rates and the

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demand.

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And demand is a very important characteristic for commercial electric bills.

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A lot of people don't really understand what demand is.

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Demand is instantaneous power.

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And so you can see from...

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The screen here, those of you who can see it, demand can be very, very expensive.

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In period four here, demand is $48.55 per kilowatt, so very, high cost.

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So I'll select that tariff.

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And now I'm going to go, I've defined my grid.

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Now I'm going to go define my solar.

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And so what the system does is based on what I've already input,

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it tells me what it thinks it's going to need.

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So it says the recommended solar size is 175 kilobots.

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So I'll click that.

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And it produces a nice chart.

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So it's using uh NREL's database, that's the National Renewable Energy Lab, to assess the
solar irradiance that's available at this location, at the location for Cisco in San Jose.

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And you can see it produced a little chart here.

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Solar irradiance varies throughout the year.

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It's more in the summer and less in the winter.

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So you usually get a typical bell curve like this.

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And it shows here what the annual energy that that solar array will produce.

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It's 293,000 kilowatt hours.

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And then what's going to be the energy production on the best day and the worst day and
the daily average.

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So all that's taken into account in the design.

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system.

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So now I'm going to go to the summary.

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In the summary, I'm just going to turn off two things to start with.

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So here's our scenario.

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So the red curve is the consumption, and that's the chargers.

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If those 100 vehicles all come to work at like 8 o'clock in the morning or thereabouts,
and they all plug in simultaneously, if there's no load management for that system,

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that's going to put a very heavy spike on the demand of the energy for that facility.

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And that's going to trigger those high demand costs that I talked about.

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And so what this is showing here in this quick analysis is under the tariff that I
selected, the annual energy costs are going to be about $400,000 just for those chargers.

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Now let's add intelligent charging to that.

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What is intelligent charging?

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Intelligent charging means, and this is what we do in our software, means we're going
to...

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not try to charge all the vehicles simultaneously, we're going to make sure that they all
get that 40 miles of optimum range that was requested in the scenario over the course of a

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day.

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And so over that day, we're going to make sure all the vehicles get at least 40 miles of
range, but we're not going to try to charge them all at once.

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And you can see that saved $283,000 annually.

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Now, if I add solar to that,

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I dropped my bill from $400,000 to $62,000 for the entire year.

215
00:15:49,927 --> 00:15:53,999
I saved a third of a million dollars in energy costs.

216
00:15:54,099 --> 00:16:01,823
So this is the power of combining solar and storage with the EV charging.

217
00:16:01,884 --> 00:16:04,465
It brings it home in a really dramatic fashion.

218
00:16:06,580 --> 00:16:09,702
Yeah, no, that's I mean, that's really impressive and really cool to kind of it.

219
00:16:09,702 --> 00:16:16,886
I think these are a lot of things we always talk about, but to kind of see it more
visually and then have those immediate numbers start kind of bouncing around to really

220
00:16:16,886 --> 00:16:17,786
cool.

221
00:16:18,347 --> 00:16:25,471
I guess one question to follow up on is you're saying and it makes sense to say, hey,
maybe we're not going to have all these cars might be plugged in, but we're not going to

222
00:16:25,471 --> 00:16:26,992
charge them all at once.

223
00:16:26,992 --> 00:16:33,524
Does that mean all the cars, the instant I charge, I might be getting like half a
kilowatt, but I am getting a charge.

224
00:16:33,524 --> 00:16:38,387
Or does it mean some will be on charging or some will be off and then it kind of just
rotates through them?

225
00:16:38,387 --> 00:16:41,234
Or is that kind of up to the site design as well?

226
00:16:41,665 --> 00:16:46,407
We can actually program it for either of those, and I can show that a little bit later if
we have time.

227
00:16:46,407 --> 00:16:52,610
um But um to answer your question, there are two charging modes.

228
00:16:52,610 --> 00:17:04,174
One is to share the power, so all of the cars get something, but they might only get as
much as being produced in combination with the sun and the grid.

229
00:17:04,615 --> 00:17:06,926
And that amount might vary throughout the day, right?

230
00:17:06,926 --> 00:17:10,257
In the middle of day, it'll be higher than it is in the tail parts of

231
00:17:10,933 --> 00:17:12,424
Or I can set it for priority mode.

232
00:17:12,424 --> 00:17:18,259
And priority mode is that some of the cars get charged in the morning and some of the cars
get charged in the afternoon.

233
00:17:18,259 --> 00:17:22,021
So it works throughout the day to spread the load.

234
00:17:22,021 --> 00:17:24,763
And we can do either of those or mix those.

235
00:17:25,704 --> 00:17:30,173
So now I'm going to review the project, and I'm just going to create it.

236
00:17:31,488 --> 00:17:35,541
And so now we've shifted to the second part of the design mode.

237
00:17:35,541 --> 00:17:38,423
What I had just gone through was the wizard.

238
00:17:38,873 --> 00:17:50,410
And this actually, this is not a system in operation, but what this view shows is very
similar to the view that we would show for a system in operation, which is to show all the

239
00:17:50,410 --> 00:17:51,410
elements in the system.

240
00:17:51,410 --> 00:17:57,784
We show the solar, we show the battery, we show the grid power, and we show the chargers.

241
00:17:57,784 --> 00:18:04,628
And so just to illustrate that last question you asked, Chase, oh right now we're in
shared power mode.

242
00:18:04,628 --> 00:18:06,309
OK, so.

243
00:18:06,909 --> 00:18:18,138
As the sun varies throughout the day, if you look at the chargers, you can see that the
amount of current delivered might vary a little bit based on what's available.

244
00:18:18,539 --> 00:18:29,949
If I go to priority mode, now in the morning, the first half of the cars are charging and
in the afternoon, the second half of the cars are charging.

245
00:18:30,029 --> 00:18:34,563
So that illustrates the two modes that you were asked about.

246
00:18:34,563 --> 00:18:38,778
And of course, we can vary this seasonally as well, because it does change a little bit
from winter to summer.

247
00:18:38,778 --> 00:18:49,190
um But the point is that this design has now taken into account the fact that we're going
to deliver exactly what was requested.

248
00:18:49,190 --> 00:18:55,317
We're going to deliver 40 miles of range per car per day in this combination of energy
resources.

249
00:18:57,758 --> 00:19:07,157
No, it's a really cool way to kind of visually show what is happening among all these
systems and then being able to kind of go between them and change even the different uh

250
00:19:07,157 --> 00:19:09,859
either requirements or parameters of what's going on live.

251
00:19:09,859 --> 00:19:11,100
That's really cool.

252
00:19:13,145 --> 00:19:18,305
I could show one more thing if you'd like, which would be the of the monitoring portal.

253
00:19:18,845 --> 00:19:21,405
So let me share that.

254
00:19:30,201 --> 00:19:33,444
So this is the dashboard um of our system.

255
00:19:33,444 --> 00:19:43,891
And what this shows, very comprehensive view of power flows across a broad uh variety of
chargers.

256
00:19:43,912 --> 00:19:51,998
Everything from real-time power flow, the sun, the grid, and the battery, how that's
flowing to cars, equipment status.

257
00:19:51,998 --> 00:19:56,461
And here you see everything is normal and healthy, but it shows the chargers.

258
00:19:56,471 --> 00:20:00,064
and all the components in the system to make sure those are operating correctly.

259
00:20:00,064 --> 00:20:07,050
um Customer service calls and contacts as we hear from customers, we keep track of those.

260
00:20:07,050 --> 00:20:08,511
We score the sessions.

261
00:20:08,511 --> 00:20:12,394
You can see that everybody has given us five stars so far.

262
00:20:12,394 --> 00:20:15,617
So that's a good indicator for the day.

263
00:20:15,617 --> 00:20:19,780
m Charging sessions and charger utilization.

264
00:20:19,780 --> 00:20:25,664
And if I hover over these, it'll kind of show me for different chargers how heavily
they're utilized.

265
00:20:26,167 --> 00:20:30,100
darker the color, the more heavily utilized the chargers are.

266
00:20:30,761 --> 00:20:34,313
And then finally, uh total energy distribution.

267
00:20:34,313 --> 00:20:39,668
And then we also have a revenue tab here for chargers and how they're used.

268
00:20:39,668 --> 00:20:45,072
um This is going to show the portal itself.

269
00:20:45,072 --> 00:20:46,573
And one final thing here.

270
00:20:46,573 --> 00:20:51,467
um If I can remember how to share, there we go.

271
00:20:57,817 --> 00:21:03,197
Yeah, so this is our site here in Campbell, California.

272
00:21:03,997 --> 00:21:09,337
And for those who can't see, what we're looking at here is graph.

273
00:21:09,337 --> 00:21:12,957
And this graph shows the different components of the system.

274
00:21:13,197 --> 00:21:16,737
So right now, I'm just looking at solar generation.

275
00:21:16,737 --> 00:21:18,677
And it's a gold curve.

276
00:21:18,897 --> 00:21:23,917
And so you can see about 6 in the morning this morning, the sun started to come up.

277
00:21:23,917 --> 00:21:27,737
And we had a little bit of cloudiness around 9 o'clock.

278
00:21:27,927 --> 00:21:30,878
and then it got bright and sunny from then on.

279
00:21:30,878 --> 00:21:34,079
So this is kind of a typical solar production curve.

280
00:21:34,119 --> 00:21:36,157
Let's go back to yesterday.

281
00:21:36,157 --> 00:21:38,250
You can see yesterday was a beautiful sunny day.

282
00:21:38,250 --> 00:21:43,501
So here's a perfect bell curve like you would like to see on a solar system in California.

283
00:21:43,861 --> 00:21:47,902
So now let's look at the grid.

284
00:21:48,143 --> 00:21:49,943
Actually, let's look at load.

285
00:21:50,003 --> 00:21:53,734
So load is how was our system here used?

286
00:21:53,734 --> 00:21:56,075
And we have 10 chargers here at our building.

287
00:21:56,075 --> 00:21:57,389
So how was...

288
00:21:57,389 --> 00:21:58,359
How was the system used?

289
00:21:58,359 --> 00:22:11,070
And the blue curve that's popped up now shows that about 7 o'clock in the morning, the
first car came, and then at about 8 o'clock, second car came, and then it kind of stayed

290
00:22:11,070 --> 00:22:15,724
as a square wave for most of the day until cars started getting fully charged.

291
00:22:15,724 --> 00:22:21,549
ah And so that's the load partially mitigated by solar.

292
00:22:21,549 --> 00:22:24,931
You can see the solar didn't quite do all of it.

293
00:22:25,152 --> 00:22:26,544
So now I'll turn on...

294
00:22:26,544 --> 00:22:28,442
a pretty healthy portion of it.

295
00:22:28,701 --> 00:22:31,363
A big portion, but so now I'll turn on the battery.

296
00:22:31,363 --> 00:22:34,205
So the battery is kind of a teal colored curve.

297
00:22:34,426 --> 00:22:37,314
And you can see it started the morning at 6 a.m.

298
00:22:37,314 --> 00:22:38,629
It was at about 80%.

299
00:22:38,629 --> 00:22:42,092
This is on the right hand scale here, 80 % state of charge.

300
00:22:42,092 --> 00:22:51,459
um And then basically helped augment the sun throughout the day to keep those chargers
running.

301
00:22:51,561 --> 00:22:55,443
And the final piece is the red curve, which is the grid itself.

302
00:22:55,443 --> 00:22:57,945
You can see the battery was

303
00:22:57,945 --> 00:23:02,745
pretty low yesterday at the beginning of the day, it was down to about 10%.

304
00:23:02,745 --> 00:23:08,125
But the grid came on at midnight and recharged that up to about 80%.

305
00:23:08,125 --> 00:23:12,705
And so then the battery was there to augment the charge session throughout the day.

306
00:23:13,345 --> 00:23:20,325
So that just gives a quick illustration of the kind of advantages and capabilities of our
system.

307
00:23:20,325 --> 00:23:24,145
The design tool showed the advantage in terms of cost savings.

308
00:23:24,969 --> 00:23:35,065
And this shows the advantage of that connectivity that I talked about to make sure we have
a very reliable system for drivers because we're always collecting data all the time from

309
00:23:35,065 --> 00:23:36,176
our systems.

310
00:23:38,004 --> 00:23:45,558
When it is also a really cool thing of just like visually making it very easy to see what
is going on and where the power is going, what's being offset by it.

311
00:23:45,558 --> 00:23:48,150
And it's really interesting looking at this graph.

312
00:23:48,150 --> 00:23:52,752
Obviously solar did majority of the power, but there was still that gap.

313
00:23:52,752 --> 00:23:55,253
And then the battery really did fill it in.

314
00:23:55,253 --> 00:23:56,004
I'm kind of curious.

315
00:23:56,004 --> 00:24:07,710
Are you for a lot of the sites, do you recommend doing a battery now, or is it kind of
just dependent or it just seems like this is such a clear, uh, visual visualization.

316
00:24:07,710 --> 00:24:14,935
that the battery really, I mean, it charged, got some power when power was really cheap
from the grid and then the solar did the rest.

317
00:24:14,935 --> 00:24:20,397
just, it kind of seems like it's almost a no brainer looking at this that that's the path
you would go with.

318
00:24:20,397 --> 00:24:21,137
Yeah, that's right.

319
00:24:21,137 --> 00:24:26,119
And the design tool will help you decide whether to use a battery in a system because it's
optional.

320
00:24:26,119 --> 00:24:28,000
It's not required in every system.

321
00:24:28,060 --> 00:24:29,851
But there's two advantages to the battery.

322
00:24:29,851 --> 00:24:31,562
One is on costs.

323
00:24:31,562 --> 00:24:34,513
And you can kind of see that in this chart here today.

324
00:24:34,513 --> 00:24:39,405
You can see the grid power effectively stopped at about 1 o'clock.

325
00:24:39,405 --> 00:24:43,587
And we use no grid power from about 1 o'clock to about 7 o'clock.

326
00:24:43,587 --> 00:24:46,548
And the reason for that is that's the most expensive time of day.

327
00:24:46,548 --> 00:24:49,649
So we don't want to use grid power when it's expensive.

328
00:24:49,837 --> 00:24:56,760
So having the battery there to backstop and provide that energy when it's expensive is a
huge benefit.

329
00:24:56,941 --> 00:25:06,526
The other good example is in scenarios where you have fleet vehicles that are charging at
night, uh they may not have enough grid at night.

330
00:25:06,526 --> 00:25:16,692
But if you bank some of that solar energy into a battery in the daytime, now I can combine
that battery energy with the grid at night to get what I need to charge all the vehicles.

331
00:25:16,692 --> 00:25:19,737
So those are the two good use cases for

332
00:25:19,737 --> 00:25:32,546
for batteries and there's just a lot of intelligence in the system we use, extensively use
AI in our systems to make intelligent decisions as the system operates.

333
00:25:32,546 --> 00:25:40,632
it's collecting that data all the time and making good decisions about, you know, all the
variables that may be occurring.

334
00:25:40,632 --> 00:25:43,194
How does the sun change from day to day?

335
00:25:43,214 --> 00:25:46,836
How do the driver charging patterns change from day to day?

336
00:25:47,577 --> 00:25:50,195
and ticks that into account to do the right thing each day.

337
00:25:51,584 --> 00:25:59,913
I mean, kind looking at all this and the one thing we haven't talked about, and obviously
it can be kind of like hardware specific for vehicles and the chargers that a client might

338
00:25:59,913 --> 00:26:07,461
be using, but does your technology also kind of support like a vehicle to grid situation
or some sort of thing like that?

339
00:26:07,461 --> 00:26:11,565
Or I know that it's being approached by a lot of different people kind of in different
ways.

340
00:26:11,565 --> 00:26:14,468
So I realized too, if it's still a little bit early on your side.

341
00:26:14,477 --> 00:26:15,349
No, we haven't.

342
00:26:15,349 --> 00:26:20,293
Let me go back to the design tool.

343
00:26:22,329 --> 00:26:23,419
I didn't show that earlier.

344
00:26:23,419 --> 00:26:27,472
So I'm back on the DesignTool Periscope, and I'm going to click on the pair here.

345
00:26:27,513 --> 00:26:30,354
And you can see one of the modes is an emergency mode.

346
00:26:30,354 --> 00:26:36,570
And the emergency mode is maybe there's some other use of the energy.

347
00:26:36,570 --> 00:26:42,464
In the example that you see on the screen, the building is the priority over the chargers.

348
00:26:42,464 --> 00:26:48,368
And so in an emergency, let's say there's a time where the grid goes out or

349
00:26:50,109 --> 00:27:00,794
the building has a backup system that needs to be powered, we can deliver all that solar
energy back to the building or back to the grid and turn the chargers either off or down.

350
00:27:00,894 --> 00:27:16,751
But one of the things we can do is individually, I can click on the chargers that are
capable of V2G, and now they can add their energy to whatever support is needed for those

351
00:27:16,751 --> 00:27:18,029
other resources.

352
00:27:18,029 --> 00:27:21,251
So now you can see I turned on about five of these just to show it.

353
00:27:21,251 --> 00:27:29,235
um Five vehicles that are capable of doing V2G are now delivering their energy back
supporting the building as well.

354
00:27:29,235 --> 00:27:33,437
So yes, we do provide support for bidirectional charging.

355
00:27:33,888 --> 00:27:34,748
That's cool.

356
00:27:34,748 --> 00:27:39,348
So it looked like it alluded to it on one of the slides.

357
00:27:39,348 --> 00:27:44,628
But in this case, we've kind of talked about as if it's like giving the power to an EV
driver.

358
00:27:44,628 --> 00:27:50,308
I assume also there can be like, let's say you're a business to keep it simple.

359
00:27:50,308 --> 00:27:59,428
We'll just say power is 10 cents a kilowatt hour and you charge 12 cents like the two
cents for maintenance and other stuff.

360
00:27:59,508 --> 00:28:03,576
Does that figure into this whole kind of

361
00:28:03,658 --> 00:28:06,834
financial plan as to like what it maybe even recommends.

362
00:28:06,834 --> 00:28:16,081
You should be charging people for power or something to kind of make it uh either
profitable or at least self-sustaining just to kind of figure out for any long-term

363
00:28:16,081 --> 00:28:17,212
maintenance stuff.

364
00:28:17,318 --> 00:28:23,479
and it's a really good point actually, Chase, because I make this point frequently when I
talk to people.

365
00:28:23,479 --> 00:28:31,942
So if you're an EV driver, you're willing to pay a certain threshold for the energy that's
delivered to your car.

366
00:28:31,942 --> 00:28:34,032
a little bit depends on the scenario.

367
00:28:34,032 --> 00:28:42,684
If you're on the highway and it's a fast charging scenario, you might be willing to pay
more for that, maybe 50 or 60 cents a kilowatt hour.

368
00:28:42,785 --> 00:28:44,705
But if you're at the workplace,

369
00:28:44,861 --> 00:28:49,044
and you're just charging there, you probably won't pay more than you pay at home.

370
00:28:49,044 --> 00:28:54,587
And so it might only be 20 cents a kilowatt hour that you're willing to pay.

371
00:28:54,587 --> 00:29:05,974
so solar really can provide a huge benefit because now that offsets some of that expensive
grid power that the site host has to buy.

372
00:29:05,994 --> 00:29:08,456
They're essentially getting it for free from the sun.

373
00:29:08,456 --> 00:29:10,807
And so they can increase the margin.

374
00:29:10,975 --> 00:29:16,030
in that, or the marginal transaction value in that transaction with the driver.

375
00:29:16,051 --> 00:29:25,181
So instead of paying all of that 20 cents to the utility, they can capture some of that
and monetize some of that value.

376
00:29:25,181 --> 00:29:25,760
So yeah.

377
00:29:25,760 --> 00:29:27,461
I'm open to paying that 25 cents.

378
00:29:27,461 --> 00:29:33,904
mean, there is a premium unto itself because we've even seen this become a bit of an issue
with some level two charges that they're broken.

379
00:29:33,924 --> 00:29:38,626
And so like, let's say it's 20 cents, but the company's charging me 25 cents.

380
00:29:38,626 --> 00:29:40,147
That's still a pretty healthy Delta.

381
00:29:40,147 --> 00:29:49,890
If I just know I'm getting reliable power and when I go to plug in, it works and still
even then that's probably going to still be a decent savings over what gas would be.

382
00:29:49,891 --> 00:29:53,212
So I think there is definitely kind of a case to be made that

383
00:29:53,950 --> 00:30:04,933
while I as a user won't say no to free, uh I would probably prefer it to work when I go to
plug it in versus like, well, it was free for six months and then it broke or something

384
00:30:04,933 --> 00:30:05,583
happened to it.

385
00:30:05,583 --> 00:30:08,124
uh Which I totally understand.

386
00:30:08,124 --> 00:30:14,886
I think that kind of gets to a larger kind of industry and kind of where we are thought
process to it versus what, how you guys approach it.

387
00:30:14,886 --> 00:30:21,148
But I think it's really cool to have that built in and show those ways that if you're a
business owner, you can kind of approach it a few different ways.

388
00:30:21,253 --> 00:30:25,244
I've thought a lot about this problem because, uh I'll give you an analogy.

389
00:30:25,244 --> 00:30:32,216
you think back to 100 years ago when gas stations were kind of coming to the fore, there
was no competing fuel source, right?

390
00:30:32,216 --> 00:30:33,446
There was just gas stations.

391
00:30:33,446 --> 00:30:42,586
And so people would pay whatever the gas cost and factored into that cost was maintaining
the equipment, right?

392
00:30:42,586 --> 00:30:44,499
It had to be at that time.

393
00:30:44,599 --> 00:30:51,281
And I think one of the challenges we have in today's world with EVs is that maintenance
cost is often not factored.

394
00:30:51,789 --> 00:30:57,284
And so we end up with a lot of chargers that are out there that aren't, the maintenance
isn't fully covered in some way.

395
00:30:57,284 --> 00:31:00,797
And so they don't, they aren't maintained in an operational state.

396
00:31:00,857 --> 00:31:03,439
And so the public gets frustrated when they use those.

397
00:31:03,760 --> 00:31:15,030
And so we believe a key part of the secret sauce to prevent that or to overcome that is
this constant connectivity that I showed on the example here.

398
00:31:15,030 --> 00:31:19,393
If you have data coming from the stations all the time and you always know what's going
on,

399
00:31:19,565 --> 00:31:22,508
And we can do all kinds of things with our system remotely.

400
00:31:22,508 --> 00:31:26,851
We can reboot it, we can install new firmware.

401
00:31:27,092 --> 00:31:31,526
If a charger gets stuck, we can get it unstuck, all kinds of things.

402
00:31:31,526 --> 00:31:35,259
We also have a very good communication path for the driver.

403
00:31:35,259 --> 00:31:45,348
So when they're interacting on their smartphone with the charger, they can just push a
support button, be connected to our support center, and interact directly with the tech

404
00:31:45,348 --> 00:31:47,247
who tells them, you know,

405
00:31:47,461 --> 00:31:49,523
guides them through whatever the issue might be.

406
00:31:49,523 --> 00:31:57,279
And so all of that helps improve the reliability and the um response that the public has
to the chargers.

407
00:31:58,506 --> 00:32:01,177
Well, and I think that's that is a really valid point.

408
00:32:01,177 --> 00:32:02,848
It's really interesting way to approach that.

409
00:32:02,848 --> 00:32:11,233
think people are starting to kind of open up to I think we just had the kind of this first
wave and now we're kind of getting to a more matured market and just kind of market

410
00:32:11,233 --> 00:32:12,884
realities of how to approach this.

411
00:32:12,884 --> 00:32:17,547
ah And I guess I'm curious not to shift a little bit.

412
00:32:17,547 --> 00:32:27,412
I think this is uh I guess before I do that, I just want to say it's so I love the visual
of this because I think there's so many people that when they're thinking of doing this,

413
00:32:28,000 --> 00:32:30,060
It's really easy for some to talk to him about it.

414
00:32:30,060 --> 00:32:36,320
Who knows a lot, but if you're kind of coming in and you're curious about it, but you
don't know a lot of this stuff, the visual aspect of it and kind of being able to play

415
00:32:36,320 --> 00:32:43,980
around with it and kind of walk through a lot of these scenarios, cause there is still a
lot of kind of misinformation, good or bad about what like solar and about it can actually

416
00:32:43,980 --> 00:32:44,239
do.

417
00:32:44,239 --> 00:32:47,420
And then you can kind of go through this and play and find the right system for you.

418
00:32:47,420 --> 00:32:51,896
But I'm, kind of curious with all this technology we've kind of talked about like

419
00:32:51,966 --> 00:32:55,959
before we went live, we were kind of talking about the impacts of the tariffs and some of
that stuff on the industry.

420
00:32:55,959 --> 00:33:06,095
I'm kind of curious to hear what you're seeing and kind of like the current state and kind
of like future looking that paired powers kind of seeing for EV charging and the EV

421
00:33:06,095 --> 00:33:11,228
industry and how your team kind of you think fits into that and some of the things you'd
like to see.

422
00:33:11,427 --> 00:33:14,938
Well, I'll make a couple of observations.

423
00:33:14,959 --> 00:33:24,803
There was an article in the New York Times just in the last couple of days, and the author
was sort of expounding on, are EVs going to die the way they did 100 years ago?

424
00:33:24,803 --> 00:33:32,807
That was kind of their premise, because there were electric vehicles 100 years ago in the
beginning of the auto age, but they kind of died out.

425
00:33:32,967 --> 00:33:35,208
And I just don't believe that's going to happen.

426
00:33:35,208 --> 00:33:37,337
And for a bunch of reasons, uh

427
00:33:37,337 --> 00:33:39,797
You know, to start with the world market is growing.

428
00:33:39,797 --> 00:33:48,157
regardless of what happens in the United States, all over the world, people are doing
electric vehicles, even in places that are kind of thought of as not well developed like

429
00:33:48,157 --> 00:33:49,237
India.

430
00:33:49,437 --> 00:33:54,857
All these little, I forget what they call them, these little carts that they drive around
that spew diesel.

431
00:33:54,857 --> 00:33:57,757
A bunch of those are now converting to electric.

432
00:33:58,037 --> 00:34:01,557
And China is the leader in electric vehicles now.

433
00:34:01,557 --> 00:34:03,577
BYD is the largest supplier.

434
00:34:03,973 --> 00:34:07,736
They're exporting to Mexico, to South America, to Europe.

435
00:34:07,736 --> 00:34:12,239
So you just see all over the world that the growth is really there.

436
00:34:12,239 --> 00:34:17,993
uh you know, kind of for me, what goes along with that is the experience is better.

437
00:34:17,993 --> 00:34:22,145
The driving experience, they're quieter, they're cleaner, they're cheaper to run.

438
00:34:22,145 --> 00:34:26,148
um You know, they're just a joy to drive.

439
00:34:26,148 --> 00:34:28,329
um They're more comfortable.

440
00:34:28,450 --> 00:34:33,484
So once people try them and realize that's the case,

441
00:34:33,484 --> 00:34:35,766
they typically don't go back.

442
00:34:35,886 --> 00:34:39,064
And so I think the growth of the market will continue.

443
00:34:39,064 --> 00:34:48,277
I mean, it's unfortunate that the US is taking a little bit of uh a negative attitude
towards electric vehicles, but I don't think it will persist for long for those kinds of

444
00:34:48,277 --> 00:34:49,958
reasons.

445
00:34:50,399 --> 00:34:52,120
So I'm pretty bullish about this.

446
00:34:52,709 --> 00:34:52,999
Yeah.

447
00:34:52,999 --> 00:35:01,095
And I think that's a totally, uh, fair call out that, um, and I, and in some ways there's,
we'll see what actually happens.

448
00:35:01,095 --> 00:35:07,239
But as of this recording, there's kind of been talked about removing the $7,500 tax credit
for electric vehicles.

449
00:35:07,239 --> 00:35:10,451
And I think there is actually a decent case to be made.

450
00:35:10,451 --> 00:35:13,343
Well, obviously it's nice and kind of helps spur.

451
00:35:13,343 --> 00:35:18,267
I think it is a thing that there's a case to be made that maybe we should just get rid of
them.

452
00:35:18,267 --> 00:35:20,330
And it just becomes like one less like.

453
00:35:20,330 --> 00:35:23,381
thing that somebody can say, well, they're being incentivized, yada, yada, yada.

454
00:35:23,381 --> 00:35:27,982
Um, cause I think you wind back the clock only a couple of years of that.

455
00:35:28,022 --> 00:35:31,813
And yeah, those incentives made a difference, but we're just seeing from the market.

456
00:35:31,813 --> 00:35:37,374
I, and I think kind of to your point, that's just the part where I don't think we will see
the same thing happen.

457
00:35:37,374 --> 00:35:42,745
Like we did a hundred years ago is just the market price and availability of electricity
and everything else.

458
00:35:42,745 --> 00:35:49,189
And just the ease of use has really been figured out to a point that we just did not have
a hundred years ago.

459
00:35:49,189 --> 00:35:49,760
That's right.

460
00:35:49,760 --> 00:35:51,882
just has kind of went so many.

461
00:35:51,882 --> 00:35:55,075
mean, it's one of the things I've kind of brought up on this podcast.

462
00:35:55,075 --> 00:36:01,540
And even when we're at the EV charging, some I talked about this with a few people where
it's just like, I think the industry got ahead of itself in a lot of ways.

463
00:36:01,540 --> 00:36:10,458
And one of those areas was the idea that you still didn't need to get like butts in seats
and electric vehicles for people to have that kind of light bulb moment to understand that

464
00:36:10,458 --> 00:36:16,733
change and realize, this is actually a way better, way better experience.

465
00:36:16,733 --> 00:36:18,024
mean, there is kind of

466
00:36:18,513 --> 00:36:20,954
Like on paper, okay, maybe it saves me money.

467
00:36:20,954 --> 00:36:22,155
And then you see these things.

468
00:36:22,155 --> 00:36:23,206
there's now these charges.

469
00:36:23,206 --> 00:36:24,747
Maybe it won't save me money.

470
00:36:24,747 --> 00:36:31,811
But then once you start driving around, you're like, okay, I guess it has to do with break
changes as frequently or oil changes at all and all these other sorts of things.

471
00:36:31,811 --> 00:36:34,983
And then it really does start to click for a lot of people.

472
00:36:34,983 --> 00:36:47,340
And I think there's an element to that where I think people, might be easy to kind of have
a negative mindset, but overall, I just don't think you can have that, especially when you

473
00:36:47,340 --> 00:36:47,872
look long.

474
00:36:47,872 --> 00:36:56,317
term, but even like middle term, um, just with how things have grown and we're starting to
see these changes, it just seems like there's so much opportunity and it really is just as

475
00:36:56,317 --> 00:37:01,561
simple as getting people into an experienced electric vehicle that that starts to really
change.

476
00:37:01,561 --> 00:37:04,941
Yeah, you know, think they do a lot of ride and drive events now.

477
00:37:04,941 --> 00:37:09,581
And I think those are really great because it does give people that first experience.

478
00:37:09,581 --> 00:37:12,121
You know, I was probably a little bit skeptical myself.

479
00:37:12,121 --> 00:37:21,481
My first EV I bought in 2011, which sounds like a long time ago, if we could, but you
know, at the time I was a little skeptical first time I drove one.

480
00:37:21,481 --> 00:37:31,363
And the first time I drove one, it was a Nissan Leaf, which today isn't thought of as a
particularly sporty car, but it was way sportier than any other car I'd ever driven.

481
00:37:31,363 --> 00:37:32,854
that was a gas car.

482
00:37:33,675 --> 00:37:37,558
And so I drove and I was like, well, this is fun to drive.

483
00:37:37,558 --> 00:37:42,962
And then so I bought it and I had that car for about five years.

484
00:37:43,443 --> 00:37:47,125
I spent $120 on maintenance in five years.

485
00:37:47,686 --> 00:37:50,658
I think there were like four or five software updates.

486
00:37:50,658 --> 00:37:52,589
Each one was 20 bucks each.

487
00:37:52,810 --> 00:37:54,331
That's all I spent on maintenance.

488
00:37:54,331 --> 00:37:55,272
That was it.

489
00:37:55,272 --> 00:37:58,174
And so was like, okay, I was completely converted at that point.

490
00:37:58,174 --> 00:38:00,716
And I'm now on my sixth EV.

491
00:38:00,953 --> 00:38:03,560
ah No chance I'll ever go back.

492
00:38:03,560 --> 00:38:05,845
ah I just love it.

493
00:38:06,248 --> 00:38:08,091
And so other people will have this.

494
00:38:08,321 --> 00:38:08,621
agree.

495
00:38:08,621 --> 00:38:16,985
We have two electric vehicles and we have kind of a classic car thing that we use kind of
on the weekends for like going off-roading and stuff.

496
00:38:17,206 --> 00:38:21,728
But yeah, I mean like day to day and I realized that even puts us kind of out having the
three cars.

497
00:38:21,728 --> 00:38:26,691
For most people like having one car, it really has become a point where you can do that,
especially if you live in a city.

498
00:38:26,691 --> 00:38:31,183
uh It's become much easier, much more straightforward for that process.

499
00:38:31,183 --> 00:38:36,621
And obviously kind of what you guys do at Power makes it really easy if you work at a
company that offers charging.

500
00:38:36,621 --> 00:38:37,617
Right, exactly.

501
00:38:37,617 --> 00:38:41,543
having that reliable spot that you can charge as a huge huge service

502
00:38:43,577 --> 00:38:47,477
Yeah, and you know, now the cars are 250, 300 miles of range.

503
00:38:47,717 --> 00:38:50,297
So range anxiety has pretty much gone away.

504
00:38:50,297 --> 00:38:55,217
I, you know, I used to have a little bit of range anxiety in the early years, but now I go
all over the place.

505
00:38:55,217 --> 00:38:57,357
I never think about it.

506
00:38:57,577 --> 00:39:04,817
And you do start to learn that the charging mechanism or the fueling mechanism of an EV is
a little bit different than it is a gas car.

507
00:39:04,817 --> 00:39:06,937
You don't really want to have to fill it up.

508
00:39:06,937 --> 00:39:10,317
You don't have to go to the quote unquote gas station to fill it.

509
00:39:10,397 --> 00:39:13,057
Instead, you just want to plug it in wherever you are.

510
00:39:13,057 --> 00:39:19,773
at home, at work, at school, plug it in, walk away, do something else, and your vehicle is
fueling while you're doing something else.

511
00:39:19,773 --> 00:39:20,904
So don't have to wait.

512
00:39:20,904 --> 00:39:32,894
So somebody did an analysis and they concluded that the time people spend waiting at gas
stations for their car in 10-minute intervals over the life of the car is actually more

513
00:39:32,894 --> 00:39:39,179
time than it takes to fuel an EV because it only takes five seconds to plug in and you
walk away.

514
00:39:40,524 --> 00:39:46,996
No, and I know I've seen that as well and I totally believe because I can even think of
times Where especially when I was younger?

515
00:39:46,996 --> 00:39:55,685
I was just trying to be as cheap as possible when I had a few up so I might go to a Costco
and especially in the summer that could be like a 30 minute wait just to uh Fuel up at

516
00:39:55,685 --> 00:40:06,533
those prices which in retrospect is kind of crazy to think about but you still see those
lines all the time and As long as you have even just reliable uh accessible level to

517
00:40:06,533 --> 00:40:07,644
charging

518
00:40:07,892 --> 00:40:11,985
that experience and those kinds of issues just kind of melt away.

519
00:40:12,185 --> 00:40:13,167
That's right.

520
00:40:14,360 --> 00:40:24,106
I'm kind of curious, looking at where paired power is and kind of the future of it, guess,
are there, can you share some of the things that you're like going through like the

521
00:40:24,106 --> 00:40:25,567
evolution of it?

522
00:40:25,567 --> 00:40:34,132
Like what were some of the things that like bringing all these together that either were
really difficult or maybe even surprise you at how difficult it was?

523
00:40:34,132 --> 00:40:40,015
Cause I feel like it's only within the last couple of years, a lot of these systems were
reliably talking to each other.

524
00:40:40,015 --> 00:40:41,468
If that, um,

525
00:40:41,468 --> 00:40:42,264
a great question.

526
00:40:42,264 --> 00:40:46,424
it's really fascinating to see all these kind of finally brought together in a really
seamless way.

527
00:40:46,553 --> 00:40:48,453
Yeah, let me talk about that a little bit.

528
00:40:48,453 --> 00:40:50,953
So we actually started at a slightly different place.

529
00:40:50,953 --> 00:41:01,013
We had the original idea, could we charge EVs directly from solar, just DC to DC, just
take it directly out of the solar canopy, deliver it into the vehicle.

530
00:41:01,133 --> 00:41:04,153
And we actually, our early systems, is what we did.

531
00:41:04,513 --> 00:41:09,673
And we moved away from that eventually because it creates some challenges.

532
00:41:09,673 --> 00:41:14,093
And one of the challenges is there's no good DC standards still.

533
00:41:14,093 --> 00:41:16,114
there's still a lot of conflict in that world.

534
00:41:16,114 --> 00:41:19,535
And so you have to support all the standards to kind of be effective.

535
00:41:19,755 --> 00:41:26,858
But the other thing we started to realize is that the battery can often have a number of
benefits and it can smooth out the power.

536
00:41:26,858 --> 00:41:32,741
can, as I talked about, it can have economic value and reducing your electric rates.

537
00:41:32,741 --> 00:41:39,124
And you saw on the example can be thousands and thousands of dollars of savings.

538
00:41:39,124 --> 00:41:42,775
So that's when we said, let's convert in.

539
00:41:43,209 --> 00:41:52,133
do AC charging, kind of ironic that even though we started in DC, we now do it with AC,
although we can do level three as well.

540
00:41:52,133 --> 00:42:02,727
uh But the advantages are just of that microgrid approach and the managed approach that I
demonstrated in the software is really where the value is.

541
00:42:02,727 --> 00:42:06,859
And so we've pivoted to that and that's what we're doing.

542
00:42:06,859 --> 00:42:11,443
We have uh two product lines, what we call pair fleet.

543
00:42:11,443 --> 00:42:13,804
is a solution for large numbers of vehicles.

544
00:42:13,804 --> 00:42:18,015
So any number from six to hundreds or thousands.

545
00:42:18,475 --> 00:42:25,157
And then we have a smaller system we call PairTree, which just has two chargers, but it's
pop-up.

546
00:42:25,157 --> 00:42:26,757
It's very quick to erect.

547
00:42:26,757 --> 00:42:28,838
It's designed to be installed in a single day.

548
00:42:28,838 --> 00:42:41,293
uh so if a place like a park, for example, or a beach where there is no grid
infrastructure, we can pop one of these up in a day uh and be providing charging.

549
00:42:41,293 --> 00:42:42,675
resources at that location.

550
00:42:42,675 --> 00:42:45,318
So those are the two product lines, Fleet and Pear Treat.

551
00:42:45,318 --> 00:42:50,985
ah And then of course, manage charging for both of those um as I talk.

552
00:42:52,672 --> 00:42:53,212
That's great.

553
00:42:53,212 --> 00:42:56,173
I'm kind of curious with all of the technologies.

554
00:42:56,173 --> 00:43:01,194
I mean, we covered from vehicle to grid and a lot of the things that you do support today.

555
00:43:01,194 --> 00:43:07,656
Are there any other technologies or things that you're hoping to add or kind of in the
future at support?

556
00:43:07,656 --> 00:43:12,598
Cause I, the more we talk to us, I'm starting to not be able to think of any that we
haven't really covered.

557
00:43:12,598 --> 00:43:21,560
Um, I mean, unless like maybe instead of solar, you could also do like a wind thing, but I
realized the, uh, locations and, uh

558
00:43:23,821 --> 00:43:28,700
I guess I'm wondering if there's other kind of DC power things you could swap in for the
solar.

559
00:43:28,700 --> 00:43:30,407
I mean, it should be straightforward enough.

560
00:43:30,407 --> 00:43:32,368
Really, you just need a charge controller.

561
00:43:32,486 --> 00:43:39,671
Wind is really great for certain kinds of situations like offshore, but it doesn't work
very well in urban environments.

562
00:43:39,671 --> 00:43:42,210
and solar, so solar is a lot more playful.

563
00:43:42,210 --> 00:43:45,594
I live is very windy, so it's like one of the few places you could actually do it.

564
00:43:45,594 --> 00:43:47,305
But no, I completely agree with them.

565
00:43:47,305 --> 00:43:52,840
I'm just kind of trying to think of things that you're looking to do or that you're
excited to add to.

566
00:43:53,133 --> 00:43:57,937
Yeah, solar is an amazingly good resource across the entire United States.

567
00:43:57,937 --> 00:44:09,455
Most people don't realize, you if you sort of look at the capacity of different sources of
energy around Earth, you know, whether it be oil or nuclear or wind or solar, solar is by

568
00:44:09,455 --> 00:44:11,858
far the biggest and richest resource.

569
00:44:11,858 --> 00:44:16,752
It's many, many times as much available energy as anything else.

570
00:44:16,752 --> 00:44:20,175
So ultimately, it'll be a big winner for our energy resource.

571
00:44:20,175 --> 00:44:22,733
um

572
00:44:22,733 --> 00:44:24,633
But we're looking at some really interesting things.

573
00:44:24,633 --> 00:44:28,127
are a number of things you can do with microgrids beyond just EV charging.

574
00:44:28,127 --> 00:44:35,942
There's a huge amount of benefit to providing power in remote applications or applications
that only have partial grid, things like that.

575
00:44:35,942 --> 00:44:50,472
uh We're also doing some really interesting things to add capabilities beyond what I've
talked about in terms of uh blending of solar uh grid and EV charging, some really, really

576
00:44:50,472 --> 00:44:51,353
innovative ideas.

577
00:44:51,353 --> 00:44:52,383
will not.

578
00:44:52,473 --> 00:44:55,774
I'll just tease you and tell you they're coming, but I won't say what they are.

579
00:44:55,774 --> 00:45:01,926
uh So, but yeah, there's a lot we can do.

580
00:45:01,926 --> 00:45:05,457
And, we're really, we view ourselves as the leader in this space.

581
00:45:05,457 --> 00:45:06,575
We really pioneered it.

582
00:45:06,575 --> 00:45:08,867
We have deep, deep solar experience.

583
00:45:08,867 --> 00:45:13,038
And so we really understand how to blend it with other energy sources.

584
00:45:13,259 --> 00:45:22,451
And of course, there's a lot of interest in that now with other parties, but uh we think
we bring a lot to the table in terms of what we can offer.

585
00:45:23,200 --> 00:45:25,980
No, that's really cool and it makes a lot of sense.

586
00:45:25,980 --> 00:45:37,720
guess going back to what you were kind of talking about around the DC and then switching
to AC, do you see that could ever change with kind of more and more things kind of go into

587
00:45:37,720 --> 00:45:41,000
the North American charging standard, the J3,400?

588
00:45:41,540 --> 00:45:48,696
Or is it still just not as, is that the biggest issue you ran into or were there other
issues as well?

589
00:45:48,835 --> 00:45:58,010
Yeah, think, well, I think what they call NACS, North American Charge Standard, or as it's
now been tagged by SAE as J3400.

590
00:45:58,010 --> 00:46:05,534
uh So that is an alternative to J1772, which is the standard interface.

591
00:46:06,094 --> 00:46:07,435
It might be the one that wins.

592
00:46:07,435 --> 00:46:15,225
uh It's certainly, I think there's a lot of appeal to the elegance of the connector.

593
00:46:15,225 --> 00:46:18,681
It's a very lightweight connector compared to the heavier connector of uh

594
00:46:18,681 --> 00:46:20,001
of CCS.

595
00:46:20,562 --> 00:46:24,944
And so I think uh we'll see how that evolves in the market.

596
00:46:24,944 --> 00:46:28,366
It's still kind of early days and there's still multiple standards.

597
00:46:28,626 --> 00:46:37,291
Yeah, but we certainly we can already support both interfaces and we believe at least for
the near future, they'll both be important.

598
00:46:37,291 --> 00:46:46,356
uh But it'll really probably be determined by the vehicles and as vehicles if they start
to adopt the J 3400 or

599
00:46:48,405 --> 00:46:54,294
adopted in place of J1772, that may tilt the market in that direction.

600
00:46:54,294 --> 00:47:00,743
and you know, assume your audience probably knows that the Nax or J3400 was pioneered by
Tesla.

601
00:47:00,743 --> 00:47:04,669
So, and they certainly represent a large percentage of the cars still.

602
00:47:04,669 --> 00:47:05,344
So.

603
00:47:05,344 --> 00:47:05,864
That's true.

604
00:47:05,864 --> 00:47:09,724
mean, as far as the actual percentage of cars on the road, it's still a large one.

605
00:47:09,944 --> 00:47:14,024
And part of the reason I bring up is so many of the automakers have said they're going to
support.

606
00:47:14,024 --> 00:47:18,784
And now we're finally starting to see that with some of these models making it to market.

607
00:47:20,004 --> 00:47:26,004
I mean, I guess one thing to take a step back is obviously there are some inefficiencies
and losses.

608
00:47:26,464 --> 00:47:30,304
But a lot of the time, it's only like a few percent here and there.

609
00:47:30,664 --> 00:47:34,462
In like a perfect situation, let's say you just do the

610
00:47:34,462 --> 00:47:37,413
J 3400 Nax plug.

611
00:47:37,573 --> 00:47:42,525
What would be roughly the difference in like energy saved?

612
00:47:42,525 --> 00:47:53,520
Is it like five, maybe 10 % worst case or is there a pretty decent Delta and doing a fully
DC uh charging experience from directly from solar?

613
00:47:53,529 --> 00:47:55,090
So good question.

614
00:47:55,090 --> 00:48:00,669
There's two factors in that question that bear on it.

615
00:48:00,669 --> 00:48:05,698
uh So a lot of people don't understand electricity very well, so I'll expound on this a
little bit.

616
00:48:05,698 --> 00:48:07,039
one is the wires.

617
00:48:07,039 --> 00:48:08,280
How big are the wires?

618
00:48:08,280 --> 00:48:14,285
How large are the physical conductors that are in that cable?

619
00:48:14,285 --> 00:48:18,128
uh Tesla uses a very thin wire.

620
00:48:18,128 --> 00:48:19,673
uh

621
00:48:19,673 --> 00:48:23,713
And so you're essentially constricting the flow a little bit.

622
00:48:23,713 --> 00:48:25,853
The electrons can't get through there as easily.

623
00:48:25,853 --> 00:48:28,833
You can't push as many electrons through a tiny wire.

624
00:48:29,393 --> 00:48:33,973
One way you can address that is by increasing the voltage.

625
00:48:34,533 --> 00:48:41,033
Most people don't understand this, but the same wire can carry twice the power if I double
the voltage.

626
00:48:41,033 --> 00:48:45,033
So a lot of the cars that were developed first were 400 volt cars.

627
00:48:45,047 --> 00:48:47,989
Now the manufacturers are moving to 800 volt cards.

628
00:48:47,989 --> 00:48:51,982
So that allows me to push more power through that same cable.

629
00:48:51,982 --> 00:48:53,663
So that improves the efficiency.

630
00:48:53,663 --> 00:48:58,466
So that's one way to improve efficiency.

631
00:48:58,466 --> 00:49:06,832
um yeah, so I had a second thought, but it's escaped me for the moment.

632
00:49:06,832 --> 00:49:11,395
um But uh guess DC.

633
00:49:11,395 --> 00:49:12,866
So DC versus AC.

634
00:49:12,866 --> 00:49:13,876
The other thing that's.

635
00:49:13,876 --> 00:49:14,839
uh

636
00:49:14,839 --> 00:49:18,752
really uh just astounding.

637
00:49:18,752 --> 00:49:24,075
And you can read some of the trade press for EVs now, some of the technical journals like
Charge magazine.

638
00:49:24,496 --> 00:49:27,908
The amount of innovation going on is just truly incredible.

639
00:49:27,908 --> 00:49:30,779
There is just a lot of really good innovation going on.

640
00:49:30,779 --> 00:49:32,561
And a lot of that is around efficiency.

641
00:49:32,561 --> 00:49:43,905
If you look at the kind of components that are being developed, and these are power
reduction or power transference, uh

642
00:49:43,905 --> 00:49:46,568
semiconductors, those get more and more efficient.

643
00:49:46,568 --> 00:49:49,190
And so that efficiency curve gets better all the time.

644
00:49:49,190 --> 00:49:59,340
So you're correct, the DC is slightly more efficient than AC, but it may not be a
meaningful difference as these components continue to improve.

645
00:50:01,384 --> 00:50:05,526
Yeah, and that's what I kind of thought it might be, but was just curious and wanted to
check with you.

646
00:50:05,526 --> 00:50:09,047
I realized, Tom, we're kind of coming up a bit on the time here.

647
00:50:09,384 --> 00:50:18,850
So I do want to say thank you for coming on again, but I'm kind of curious if there's any
upcoming uh events or any other things that for those listening that people may want to be

648
00:50:18,850 --> 00:50:24,365
aware of with paired power or if what's the best way to kind of get a hold of you and the
company.

649
00:50:24,365 --> 00:50:26,456
Yeah, well, thank you for the opportunity, Chase.

650
00:50:26,456 --> 00:50:28,908
We really enjoyed the conversation.

651
00:50:29,008 --> 00:50:36,093
It's always great to interact with you and you bring uh such a high bar to these
discussions and I really appreciate that.

652
00:50:36,173 --> 00:50:42,297
Paired Power is Paired Power, P-A-I-R-E-D, PairedPower.com.

653
00:50:42,558 --> 00:50:44,269
All our products are listed on our website.

654
00:50:44,269 --> 00:50:46,340
There's a lot of good information there.

655
00:50:46,360 --> 00:50:51,454
There's places you can click on a link if you need more and that'll get to the right
people.

656
00:50:51,454 --> 00:50:53,601
So we'd love to talk to...

657
00:50:53,601 --> 00:50:58,449
customers who might be listeners and really appreciate the opportunity to meet with you
today.

658
00:50:58,449 --> 00:50:59,350
Thanks.

659
00:50:59,850 --> 00:51:00,651
Yeah, thank you, Tom.

660
00:51:00,651 --> 00:51:08,214
And I know you tease some upcoming things, so we'll have to have you on again soon to find
out what those new upcoming things that your team's looking to support.

661
00:51:08,214 --> 00:51:10,236
thanks again, Tom, and talk soon.

662
00:51:10,297 --> 00:51:11,709
Okay, take care, Chase.

663
00:51:11,709 --> 00:51:12,333
Thank you.

664
00:51:17,458 --> 00:51:19,630
That wraps up another episode of Grid Connections.

665
00:51:19,630 --> 00:51:29,051
A big thank you again to Tom McCalmont from Paired Power for joining us and sharing how a
microgrid EV charging is unlocking smarter, more resilient energy solutions powered by the

666
00:51:29,051 --> 00:51:29,842
sun.

667
00:51:29,842 --> 00:51:36,529
If this conversation got you thinking differently about solar storage and electric vehicle
infrastructure, help us spread the word.

668
00:51:36,529 --> 00:51:39,564
Share this episode with one other person who'd find it valuable as well.

669
00:51:39,564 --> 00:51:43,864
And if you haven't yet, please leave us a quick review on your favorite podcast platform.

670
00:51:43,864 --> 00:51:47,024
It really does help make a big difference for our show.

671
00:51:47,024 --> 00:51:57,004
So we can continue to bring guests on like Tom and many more for you to enjoy to stay in
the loop with the latest trends and clean energy electric vehicles and grid innovation,

672
00:51:57,004 --> 00:51:58,724
sign up for a new newsletter.

673
00:51:58,724 --> 00:52:00,344
Just click the link in the show notes.

674
00:52:00,344 --> 00:52:08,780
This episode, as always, was brought to you by Grid Connections Consulting, helping
organizations navigate the evolving energy landscape and build toward a more electrified

675
00:52:08,780 --> 00:52:09,682
future.

676
00:52:09,682 --> 00:52:13,468
Until next time, this is the Grid Connections Podcast signing off.