Advancing Grid Technology and Energy Management w/ Nick Tumilowicz | Reimagine Mobility
Welcome everyone, to the latest edition of the reimagined Mobility Podcast series. I'm here with Nick Tumilowicz from an area that we haven't really talked much about it in the mobility space, but certainly very critical, which is the energy space. So Nick will really highlight what's going on in that space. And how is that helping us as we talk mobility in the broader sense, reimagine it as we go forward. So Nick, thank you so much for joining us. Maybe to start out with give a little bit of your background and then by all means, please talk about what you and your company are doing today.
And then we jump in together and reimagine mobility. Sounds good. Well, I appreciate you having me. Stephan and, team at the AVL, group. My name is Nick Tumilowicz director of products focused on distributed energy management.
And so this is, within the outcomes group at Itron. And Itron maybe for those in the audience that, do or don't know, is that oftentimes known as a 40 year old metering company? electric meters, gas meters, water meters, to enable that, for the past 40 years, we've also built networks on top of them. so that could be sub one gigahertz type mesh networks to communicate with all those devices. And so we deploy at cities, and utilities all across the globe. So we're, doing business across 100 countries today.
We have 8000 customers. We have 200 million endpoints communicating to, back end systems, where we provide analytics to really help facilitate this whole energy transition that we're all undergoing and discussing. in the energy business on a, on a daily basis. Now, my role in the last 25 years, within that context is how do we leverage all of this investment that's been deployed, all the metrology, all the telemetry communicating to enable us as consumers to be able to adopt whatever it is that we want to adopt, to be able to participate and to help the grid be a good grid citizen as opposed to, doing what we have been doing 20, 30 years ago as kind of fighting the grid.
So how do we become a part, work together, design and develop programs? So that way. So the fun you can install however much solar you'd like. I can, purchase as many EVs as I would like, and maybe things like battery energy storage, thermostats and hot water heaters and cool pumps can all be a part of these resources. that Itron is really helping provide access to to incentivize and motivate customers to help utilities do things bigger, better, and more cost effectively over time.
Interesting. So really, then we can also say you're really heavily into the decarbonization of the of the energy space, right. Or the energy solution, energy creation, etc..
And then with your company's view on how do we really connect to the grid, connect all the meters, get all this, this whole ecosystem sort of brought together. What are it, what is it? And then as it relates to the future of mobility or again reimagined mobility, what do you see happening next? Right. I mean, we see all sorts of different things from generating wind energy, generating, clean hydrogen to use that for energy generation, not only in vehicles, but in, in backup generators for critical IT infrastructure.
You mentioned everything goes to the cloud. Data is analyzed. So using AI. So you need more horsepower there more power. Again how is it that you guys see the future of mobility playing out in your space.
Sure. Yeah. So I mean mobility has been through its journey over the past, you know, a couple hundred years, it's gone through some pretty significant challenges, and evolutions. And it always takes some time for, society to really be able to accommodate from horse and buggy to our first foray in the early 1900s with electric transportation, which then turned to combustion, which now has another go round, of of of electric transportation. And everybody, you know, these days, has an opinion about where that's going.
Is it going to be the hockey stick that we would expect? But what we see in the industry, if we just kind of widen our lens a bit, is that these things always take time to get from the horse and buggy to the combustion engine to to really have confidence in the 12 volt, let us that battery that was going to be able to need to get that combustion engine to work, that really took time. And now we see, since, you know, whatever it's been the past 25 years, as long as I've been in this energy business, is, is, transportation starting to really mature? You know, that whole technology readiness level was very early Pre-Commercial days, 25 years ago. And now we start to see as as you can tell, every automated, we auto OEM is really participating. So the future I think that that we see is that there is no silver bullet. there's going to be, a, a a varied, amount of different types of technologies. Hydrogen is certainly the component.
There, plug in hybrid electric vehicles that still uses combustion and, and battery technology and then pure battery electric vehicles. that's just on the, the light duty, medium duty and heavy duty type of vehicles we're talking about today. But we don't want to forget about how Europe, as an example, has really electrified their, locomotives and trains. we're doing a similar thing. We're making an attempt in North America to do something very similar. The one thing that's clear is that whether it's mobility or it's the homes that we're all communicating from, everything is really starting to to shift and pivot towards electrification.
So it could be, you know, my wife would like to remove the gas, dryer, and transition that to a, to a 240 volt, type of device or, replacing my old gas stove with induction because of air quality considerations. And so what that all does when we see all this electrification coming into play, coupled with the driver of decarbonization, and there are some utilities that we're working with today that actually have only six years to go to not get to net zero across their millions of end users, but they have to get to 100% clean and renewable energy. And and Itron to it's really trying to help say, okay, from a generation perspective, all the way down to transmission, distribution and to consumption at the edge Itron to is really trying to help solve the problem at the root, to say, I will manage my EV and will do it in an autonomous way in order to save me money as a consumer and to to help, overall reduce the costs and to increase operation efficiencies at the utility distribution side. Interesting. So you made an interesting point when we when we change systems in anything.
Right. Is that is that we moved from landlines to, to cell phones. We moved from gasoline powered vehicles to electric vehicles. We want it now. Now more than ever, probably in the last 100 or 200 years of of transportation. We wanted faster and faster, right.
So and you just mentioned you guys are trying to help make that transition happen, trying to educate not only the, the mobility consumers or the power consumers, but also those that generate and provide the power on how to do this. So is one thing really teaching, the public, teaching all the consumers of not only mobility, but in general of power, so to speak, of energy, that it just takes a little bit longer or what I need to be more patient as we kind of become more and more of, less patient society, I think globally or are there still more technical hurdles involved, similar to what we have with EVs, with batteries challenges, range challenges, infrastructure challenges, etc.? Would be interesting to see your perspective on the. Yeah, yeah, I think there's a couple things in there. one thing is that, yes, it's always good to educate the consumer base, especially since we're moving so fast. you know, I have I have a 20 year old and I have a five year old, and they're both on different journeys in terms of what they were faced with and their technology adoption.
and that's that's only a 15 year difference. So we're starting to see this acceleration and compression on how consumers need to get on board and moves with new technology, whether it's cloud, you know, type of integrations or, you know, telecommunications, like you said. So that's one piece is the education, without a doubt. Frankly, within my business, within, Itron within the electric industry.
That is easily 30% of the daily job is to educate, is to is to kind of set the expectations level the playing field. And it also is really, critical with our customers, with the utilities and cities, is to get them to clearly understand. But what I push back on a little bit is that we don't have much time. there are utilities out there, as I mentioned, they have six years, you know, to get to these aggressive, 20, 30 goals to be able to accommodate consumers like tomorrow.
And that's really where, Itron and, and I know our partners and, and, and some other, participants in the industry are trying to solve for those problems this year and next year, based on all the works that we've deployed over the past, you know, decade, or two. And that's where I think it's important to kind of share one of the things that's so important to us that we're getting a lot of good feedback and, new adoption is that that old metering technology that used to be out there, you could call it AI1 point zero. It started with just meter reading to operationalize efficiencies, and then it moved towards kind of smart meters. And we went through that in the mid late 2000 seconds. 2008 era.
And now we're moving to this next advanced metering, which is smarter than the smart meters that we deployed, which has literally an embedded Linux server, DER gateway inside of it. So that's what we used to do 20 plus years ago was install little computers on every system, whether it's a solar rooftop or it's battery energy storage or it's electric vehicles. There's no need to do that anymore. Because of all this technology advancement and compression that now fits within your fingertips, dropped into a meter that allows you to autonomously, use those energy resources on the customer side to be very aware of its limitations at that transformer that might be sitting outside your window on a pole pop, or in a green box in your in your driveway. And that's really where we're focus is to say in real time, within subsecond, what is it the condition of that transformer and you and I, before this call is over, we could all, you know, purchase four EVs and that cat, that transformer would be compromised.
The pre plugged it all in at the same time. So the goal is to be proactive, send that actionable data to the right people, like grid operators and allow customers to participate. and and one small example of that would be we we can we can simply say, why don't we just within cycles change and throttle. How many amps that device.
This. Yeah. Electric vehicle is charging it 60 amps is what it's set to by default. But because the, air conditioner just kicked in, that's 116 outside. Let's throttle that down to ten until that condition changes.
And then you can be on your way and take your kid to school or whatever you need to do. And so. So you touched a little bit of on on my next topic, Nick, is which the pathway. Right. How do we get to a reliable grid or a more reliable grid? Some states have a much more reliable than others.
Some areas are more than others. What is the pathway to not only renewable energy, but also, again, this this very much smart or maybe AI based metering that you just talked about. My meter is literally behind me and the other side on the outside. And once a month there's still a guy coming reading it and walking away again. Right? So maybe I'm still stuck in the 1980s, I don't know.
But what is what are some of the pathways to grid reliability to to really get to the and to the to the vision that you just shared where this metering is not just a metering anymore, but really helps us manage the entire grid with maybe not necessarily the need for many more power plants, but just much more smart management of the resources we have. Share a little bit about that, that pathway and and the pieces that you guys are looking at there. Sure. Yeah. I think we just to oversimplify, we kind of view this as the good, better and best type of scenario. And I've referenced a couple times this best scenario because we want to really share what, we're approaching a backup, but a score of utilities now that have now decided to, move towards and adopt this new distributed intelligence, technology we call a grid edge, type of intelligence.
And while maybe 20 out of 1300 utilities, big utilities in the United States, you know, of the total, the 3000 of the munis and the co-ops that are out there, that they're electing to go this route because they're really see the business case, they see the value. But you do need that that next generation smart meter to be able to make that happen. You need a pretty solid pipe and throughput on all of the telecommunications that communicates with all those meters. and you need to be able to have those meters communicate directly to those devices.
And so we are doing that today for the kind of the more progressive, advanced, utilities and cities that need to make progress quickly. But one click down from that, we can't leave, you know, all of the other utilities and cities behind, right? So we have, you know, better scenarios which say, well, maybe you have, the stuff on that, maybe your, AMR that is sitting behind you, which is kind of 80s, but maybe they have the late 90s, or what is this early 2000 version of the initial smart meters that at least give you the opportunity to not work with them sub seconds, within minutes. And that could be a better solution than what we have today. that would help your utility. That might reduce your costs.
and then, of course, you know, we have, utilities that are a little bit further out that maybe don't have the aggressive decarbonization goals. Or if they do, it's a 2045, 2050 timeline. And we providing good solutions to them to, stitch all that data that's coming to, consolidated back end to help them make, you know, maybe minute plus decisions.
So this is a pathway that we're offering. We don't want to leave anybody behind. we want to help everybody, but but sometimes, investment cycles or regulatory cycles suggest you have to offer this good, better, best type of approach. Interesting. So, Nick, you talked a couple of times.
Now I think it can be summarized in this grid edge intelligence right that you're talking about. And and and my interest is and I think a lot of the listeners and viewers maybe as well is this is all sounds good and it makes total sense. But what are the challenges getting there.
You know, you mentioned again, more EVs, more is getting electric. More has to be sustainable power generation or green energy if we call it that. But for a moment, what are the challenges to really implement this, this edge intelligence you're talking about that that sustainability to to not necessarily having to build all more these power stations that were already struggling in this country and certainly in Europe as well, to create but live with what we have.
But live smart. What are the challenges to get there? Well, yeah. So we talked about North America. We talked about Europe a couple times. Now maybe I want to focus on, what we, characterized as the like a continent that is like a postcard of the future with renewables.
Australia, Hawaii also fits into that two islands, one slightly larger than the other. But Australia, just to put, put a fine point on it. when I first visited back in 2015 to help with renewables and do the deployments, all the utilities came to me and said, can you please slow down? because all of our citizens in Australia really appreciate energy independence and power of choice and being able to, purchase and adopt and save however they would like. They did a fabulous job of enabling, that that momentum for DER adoption, specifically with photovoltaic, solar electric. So you have all these rooftops and now there are certain, metropolitan areas and certain circuits that are now 60% PV penetration.
And when you get to saturation points like this, you have very limited ability to add any more PV. Your PV hosting capacity now is really compromise. This is a significant challenge.
And it's manifested in retirees that are home, you know, in the middle of the day calling up the operation center, yelling at their utilities, saying, why are my lights flickering between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. every time? Also? Well, you have you know, the technical explanation is you have way too much power being sent back through the transformer and it's trying to figure out where to go and what to do with itself. It's not the days of your the old Australian, you know, brown coal plants pushing it just to your refrigerator. So that was, that was several years ago.
And we're still really trying to focus on solutions to help enable more solar to be deployed on top of, how painful, you know, that already is to deploy technology like battery energy storage. Electric vehicles will be coming soon for, you know, for that particular region. And and then you can start getting all these to work in concert with each other and to really limit, the customer, dissatisfaction, which, which typically happens in early markets where you let everybody adapt and then you say, I'm going to turn off your solar for a little bit. You don't mind, do you? Then? So on. What actually affects my payback, my return on investment, my IRR. That's not really comfortable with that.
Thank you very much. Can you please come up with other, you know, answer solutions. And that's that's what we're trying to do here. Interesting. So yeah, my dad enlists in Europe, the solar panels as well. And every time I'm there a visiting or talk to him, he always wants to show me his app on how he how much energy is generated it goes into the battery and how much he has sold back to the local municipality. And it definitely is.
I think also an incentive or to some degree right to do this, but let's, let's maybe take it a step further with what you just explained with Australia, which is very interesting. So if you if you take globally where you guys operate, which countries are really leading to what you just explained to our listeners and viewers over the last 20 minutes that you guys are doing or word is smart grid or edge grid intelligence can help us and is going and what the future looks like. It also then impacts obviously the future of mobility or how we reimagine in it. What are some of what are some leading countries? Again, you it sounds like you mentioned here, Australia will be in part of that by, well, is there and then maybe at the end for our maybe more U.S based listeners. What does the U.S. saying with all this.
Sure. Yeah. maybe I'll start with, we talked about Australia and the challenges that they're experiencing. and I think an important quick note is that for the listeners and what you hear on mainstream media, my mother will call me up and say, well, you know, 30% PV penetration in the continent or the country of Australia, but you have to be very careful with that message because that doesn't paint a very clear picture of the problem. The problem is what I had mentioned a minute ago.
It's 60% PV penetration on a particular circuit at that particular feeder, compromising that particular neighborhood that you live in. So we have to be careful of these gross, broad brush stroke generalizations. A very similar thing happens in the U.S. where they say, oh my gosh, all these EVs are coming on board. And, how can this country, in the United States accommodate all of these EVs? And that might be a little bit in versus to say, well, we have plenty of, of, of space to accommodate all of this new load.
We did it back in the 1950s with a thing called the air conditioner. and that started in New York City in the 19 tens, 1920s. And then it became commercialized in a scaled. And then, you know, we got low cost. And then everybody in the southeast United States adopted.
And what utilities distribution system operators had to do was to quickly figure out how do we respond to this. And at that time, the solution was transmission, distribution, upgrades. Take out the old, very skinny copper aluminum conductor and upsize that to accommodate that more capacity.
So that way they could have the reliability and the choice that they wanted. That was amazing. The air conditioners at the time, living in the South. Now fast forward, whatever it is, 75 years later and now we have this new load, which is bigger than a five kilowatt point load. It's could be easily, you know, whatever that might be.
It could be 12 amps easily on a level two charger in your garage, a new 60 amp circuit, and you might have multiple in your, in your, garage. So it is it is okay to do to solve that problem the old way with distribution upgrades, transformer upgrades. What have you're conductor in.
But there's also other tools in the in the chest that we have to provide what we call like automated or autonomous load management out. So that way utilities like they do in New York City don't have to replace that 20 year old 100 kVA transformer. They can let those school busses that are being replaced at a pretty high velocity right now, from combustion to electric.
And, and it's just a matter of being smart about it. You don't have to charge all of the 20 busses simultaneously to get the kids to school. Rather, you can just stagger these. And while you do that, always be grid aware to recognize the capacity of that transformer that's providing the energy and to protect it. And if something gets a little bit and that headroom starts to go to zero and you start to really stress the transformer, you can send a command and have everything wind down. So now to your question about countries that so so so there are different pockets within us.
and they typically seem to flank either the left or the right coasts, you know, with a lot of that metropolitan areas and kind of progressive adoption policies. but there's also countries in Europe like Spain, UK, France, to name a few, that are really starting to adopt large point loads with fleets. And this could be ten, 20 megawatt point loads that these utilities have. These DSO distribution system operators have to accommodate. So so those are some pretty, pretty progressive areas that we're, we're focused on. great.
That's been really interesting. And certainly as I think we mentioned at the beginning, right, very much related to how we reimagine mobility, because the future of mobility, independent of what it is that makes the vehicle to move forward one way or the other, energy, distribute system. And certainly electrification, is a is a critical part of this. So thank you very much, Nick. And maybe on the last question, not related to your field of expertise, but what is the next car you're going to buy and why? Well, I have to share that.
I, I have his I have moved many years ago, decade plus ago from combustion to plug in hybrid. And that's been really great, especially to accommodate, any of the anxieties of my family members. you know, going up to the mountains here in the Colorado Rockies and being able to come back down and it's it's good, but it's a complicated vehicle. I have to, you know, my combustion engine has to. The answer in merrily with my battery, energy storage, DC drivetrain. And overall, these technologies are pretty robust and it's been fascinate ING over the past decade to see them, move together.
But to answer your question, I think moving to a pure battery electric vehicle because of its efficiencies, because of its reduced total cost of operations and ownership, certainly becomes interesting and most important, when I drop my kid off at school and it's 20°F out in Denver, my combustion engine doesn't turn on frustratingly like I don't want it to. And I blow smoke, you know, in some kids space somewhere. So. So that's that's why I'm going be easy. All right. Very good.
Thank you so much, Nick, for your time and for your insight in this very interesting space that hopefully many of our listeners will really benefit from learning what's just outside of traditional mobility, that we think something that's moving to something that really helps move the mobility space. Thank you very much, Nick.
2024-08-01 06:40
