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Episode #174: "Embracing the Future of Residential Energy Management" with Prasanna Venkatesan, EVP of Strategy and M&A of Landis+Gyr Americas, and Arch Rao, Founder & CEO of Span [an Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast]

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Residential energy customers are being looked at differently by utilities these days. No longer are homes simply end points where energy is consumed, but more and more they are an asset in the dynamic and flexible grid. Recognizing the opportunity that such an evolution of thinking brings, today's guests on the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast are putting the technology in place to truly transform that relationship. In this conversation with Prasanna Venkatesan, EVP of Strategy and M&A of Landis+Gyr Americas, and Arch Rao, Founder & CEO of Span, these industry leaders explore the dynamic relationship between utilities and savvy residential energy customers.

Listen in to discover how distributed energy resources and innovative solutions are transforming the utility-customer interaction and enabling flexible energy management. Prasanna and Arch share with podcast host, Jason Price, and producer, Matt Chester, their experiences and predictions for the future, addressing the challenges and opportunities ahead. Tune in to understand how Landis+Gyr and Span are pioneering the way forward in the power sector.

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Thanks to the sponsor of this episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast: Landis+Gyr

 

Key Links:

Landis+Gyr on Energy Central: https://energycentral.com/o/landisgyr

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TRANSCRIPT

Jason Price:

Utilities want to tap into the savvy residential energy customer. Distributed energy combined with growing and more dynamic power consumption patterns will become a trend of the future, or will it? How far can the utility and customer relationship evolve and what does this mean for flexible energy management? Stay tuned as we discuss the evolution of the utility customer and the type of innovative solutions that are making it possible on today's episode of Energy Central Power Perspectives.

Matt, energy management at the residential level is a topic of growing focus in the utility sector. How are you seeing the conversation unfold with the Energy Central community?

 

Matt Chester:

Thanks, Jason. Yeah, the trends within Energy Central, it definitely reflects what you suggest, in that energy management at the residential level is gaining significant traction among utility professionals. And so on our platform at energycentral.com, those discussions today typically center around smart home technologies, energy efficiency programs, and the integration of renewable energy resources as offerings to customers, but also as a part of wider tools and opportunities that utilities are imagining for the future. And that latter part, how utilities can leverage technologies and programs that are installed at the individual level, that's where I think there's particularly enthusiasm and curiosity, so I think it's going to make today's conversation one that will certainly strike a chord for our listeners.

 

Jason Price:

Thanks Matt. And thank you to Landis+Gyr, our sponsor of today's show.

I'm Jason Price, Energy Central podcast host and director, with West Monroe, coming to you from New York City. And with me as always from Orlando, Florida is Energy Central producer and community manager Matt Chester.

As promised, we have two guests today that you won't want to miss for their leadership and insights into this rapidly changing area of the power sector. First, I'd like to welcome Prasanna Venkatesan, the EVP of strategy and M&A of Landis+Gyr Americas. Prasanna, Welcome to the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast.

 

Prasanna Venkatesan:

Thank you Jason and Matt for having us, really interested in the discussion going forward today.

 

Jason Price:

And Prasanna has done us a favor by bringing in one of his key partners at Landis+Gyr, Arch Rao, the founder and CEO of Span. Welcome as well Arch.

 

Arch Rao:

Thanks Jason. Nice to be speaking with you and Matt.

 

Jason Price:

All right, before we dive into our collaboration together, I'd like to give our audience a quick background of each of you. So Prasanna, let's start with you. Tell us a bit about your time at Landis+Gyr, and your role in the power sector.

 

Prasanna Venkatesan:

Yeah, thanks Jason. I joined Landis+Gyr roughly about 16, 17 years ago, back in 2006. I ran the technology piece of the business at that time and then started my career as running the business for Landis+Gyr across Americas, which includes North America, Japan, and South America. We had some fun times, introduced some really good technologies into the industry, two-way command and control of networks and devices. We solved some very critical use cases using our software and analytics for enablement of connect disconnected devices, which was monumental at that time because it prevented truck rolls. We did measurement and verification of load control devices, which was fundamental to starting the whole, call it digital revolution at that time, and also did some key use cases around outage and engaging the consumer in the industry. We also built the larger IOT network in Japan, about 50 million devices.

And then I shifted my role to running mergers and acquisitions for Landes and Gyr in 2021. And my main area of focus every day is look for innovative partnerships and investments and Span was one of them that we completed in 2024 when I met Arch so many years ago.

 

Jason Price:

Fantastic, thanks Prasanna. Now Arch, I want to give you the same opportunity.

 

Arch Rao:

Sure. I started my career in energy about 20 years ago, initially as an academic focused on control systems and power conversion.

I quickly realized that I wanted to spend the rest of my career focusing on advancing technologies that can abate the impacts of climate change. I joined as the first employee at a company called Joby Energy, developing airborne wind turbines. Then subsequently worked on energy markets, developing trading algorithms for real-time energy pricing. Then I co-founded a company focused on energy efficiency and energy disaggregation called Vertigo in the early part of the last decade.

And soon after that I was fortunate to join Tesla in the early days of what subsequently became known as Tesla Energy. So I was fortunate to work on products and technology there helping design and develop products like the Powerwall for the home as well as large scale grid connected batteries in more of a commercial and operations capacity. I helped acquire and operate parts of the solar business at Solar City, but also grew our enterprise beyond North America into ME and APAC. So for me, a very formative experience learning not just how to build products and companies, but also how to scale them globally.

I started Span in 2018 with a core focus on enabling electrification for buildings, starting with the home, which is one of the largest opportunities for us to decarbonize at scale. Our focus has been redesigning or rethinking what the infrastructure in a home needs to look like to rapidly accelerate the adoption of fully electric homes. And that starts with the home electrical panel. The somewhat understated home electrical panel is the ubiquitous, there is no home or building in the world that doesn't have this distribution box in your home. That's been an analog device for as long as all of us can remember it. At Span, we set out on a mission to reinvent the panel, to be a fully digital power control system, to make it cheaper and more accessible for customers to take that first step towards solar, towards batteries, towards electric vehicles, towards heat pumps. And we've been on that successful journey over the last several years.

Much of our focus has been coming at it from the point of view of the customer. How do you enable the customer to make that shift seamlessly? And over the last few years I had the opportunity to meet Prasanna at Landis where he was looking at the same problem, albeit from the viewpoint of the utility. And I'm sure we'll talk about it more over the course of the podcast, but over the last several years we've found what we think is a necessary unlock for utilities and customers to unlock decarbonization at scale.

 

Jason Price:

Yes, we will be talking about that. We're here to talk about flexible energy management, a topic that is getting increasingly popular and growing in demand, especially as electrification grows and spreads, and utilities are trying to keep up. So most of our listeners will understand those basic principles moving the industry, but maybe you both can paint a picture for us about what you see in the coming years as the real challenges requiring flexible management and the cost of not acting today.

Prasanna, why don't we start with you?

 

Prasanna Venkatesan:

Yeah, listen, our industry goes through interesting times. If you look at the last 10 years prior to 2022, load growth was relatively flat. I think I remember making presentations to my board back in 2018 and '19 talking about the fact that regulatory approvals are hard to come by mainly because there is no load growth in the industry. If you now look back into '23, '24 we're very interesting and exciting times I would say.

I think the biggest technological revolution is happening in our industry right now. After being driven by periods of flat growth, if you look at any study, whether it's from McKinsey, whether it's from Frost & Sullivan, everybody sees a doubling of electricity demand over the next 25 years. And we're seeing largely this demand driven by data centers, which everybody now is aware of, especially with the support and growth of artificial intelligence, the onshoring of major manufacturing elements coming back to us, especially chip manufacturing, agriculture and such coming back into the US, cryptocurrency mining being one element, this, Arch talked about transportation electrification, and building electrification. All of this, and add to this energy efficiency being sought by everyone, has considerably changed the landscape in which loads are doubling. And flashback to 2007 and '08 when we retired coal plants, which is still in progress, almost a hundred percent achieved at this stage, we're largely dependent upon natural gas fired plants and also renewable energy, which is becoming front and center of every conversation that we have.

I think this growth in demand presents a huge challenge for our utilities as I talk to them. Many of them see thousands of megawatts in their state being driven especially by data centers. And I think this is where the challenge comes in. If we continue to do what we have done in the past, which is investing in assets and other devices, which is one way to solve this problem, but I think more and more there are technologies available in the marketplace such as from Landis, and from Span, and from others, that are interesting non wires alternatives to what is happening in the industry today.

I think if we don't find the right mix of putting standard assets, transformers, all of that stuff, substations, all the stuff that is required, I think it needs to be coupled with all of the innovation that's happening in the industry in the last 10 to 15 years to really drive the balance that is needed with our energy supply to meet this growing demand. I personally think failure to do so, I think leads to large grid instability issues, power quality issues, reliability issues. I think the industry is faced with this already. And you add to it weather related issues as the one with Beryl that's just happening in Texas, really exacerbates the condition in our country right now.

However, I see this as a huge opportunity. I really believe with where technology innovation is in our space, and what we've been able to accomplish with better smart grid technologies and other non wires alternatives, can actually easily adapt to this distributed energy resources proliferation that is happening in our country today. Failure to do so, I think there's a lot of operational costs to think so and other things that the utilities will have to manage.

 

Jason Price:

Those are great points. Prasanna, and just to underscore something that you said with AI, and my understanding is that AI uses 10 times more power than a regular chip. So these data centers that are being built for tomorrow are going to be an enormous load centers here. So everything you're saying is spot on. Arch, I wonder if you feel the same way? Are you seeing anything differently and are you as optimistic as Prasanna is?

 

Arch Rao:

Well, I think we certainly see the world the same way. And the unfortunate reality is the utilities have a fairly important but thankless job of delivering electricity very reliably. And echoing what Prasanna just shared, every left to right model suggests that demands going to double if not quadruple in the coming decade through a combination of new applications, be it AI, fuel data centers, or growth in edge demand from customers wanting to electrify their lifestyles.

The question then becomes not will this growth happen? The question becomes in either scenario, be doubling our quadrupling, how do we manage it in a way that doesn't become exorbitant while not sacrificing reliability? The incumbent model to meeting load growth, which was often incremental, was let's build more poles and wires. Let's build more transformers. Let's build generation capacity as needed to meet this demand.

But the pace at which we're seeing this load growth happen cannot be met within incumbent solutions. So utilities like us are looking for smarter solutions, smarter solutions at the edge of grid. And that is, call it by what you will, at the end of the day is the ability to control demand, not just apply at the sink where the load is happening. And that requires a natural evolution of solutions that the utility has right now, from the meters that can have visibility into what is consuming power in real time, and solutions expand that can control these devices in a way that doesn't negatively impact customer experience.

 

Jason Price:

Okay. So given the ubiquity of these challenges and the fact that utilities have seen them coming, perhaps we would expect the power sector to be a bit further along in implementing some of these solutions, but Arch, you notice a shortcoming in that solution space and that's why you're doing what you're doing at Span. So talk to us about that gap in the solution space and what you saw as an opportunity.

 

Arch Rao:

I think even if you had perfect knowledge of the load growth, it is very difficult to predict where that load growth is going to happen, especially when you think about customer led adoption of electric vehicles, or customer adoption of solar, or battery adoption, or now increasing the electric appliance adoption. So what that means is the utility has to solve for load growth as it happens, as opposed to being able to have this perfect view of the world and build out power line capacity, and generation capacity, and distribution capacity, if you will. And not only is that difficult to do, it's also not the cost-effective thing to do anymore given that we have solutions like Span that can allow customers to adopt these measures without a long wait period or a very expensive cost to upgrade.

So to give you a specific anecdotal example, we have customers across the country, let's take for example a customer here in California. In order to add a 60 amp EV charger to their home, which only has a hundred amps of service capacity, they would typically have to contact the utility, wait between six and nine months to get a new power line dropped into their home, and typically have to pay for the power line upgrade. And if it's a below ground copper, pay for substantial amount of contractor labor to do the necessary electrical work and field work. That can be upwards of $20,000 for a single customer. That is not a cost-effective or a scalable solution to the problem.

By contrast, now they can put a Span panel in that is a UL certified solution that allows them to electrify at their own pace and they're set for the next 20 or 30 years with a solution that costs them only few thousands of dollars to install. This now benefits the customer, but also interestingly benefits the U three because they can dedicate their resources to other upgrades on the network that's required as opposed to a single power line to a customer, while also getting the benefit of not being able to measure and control more devices in the home through the Span panel acting as a gateway, so to speak, with the devices in the home that are being connected to it. That I think is a great win-win solution for both the customers and the utilities, and that's where we see a tremendous amount of opportunity for us to scale together.

 

Jason Price:

Very interesting. And of course Landis+Gyr has been watching these same challenges as well. So Prasanna, I'm curious to hear from your perspective from the conversations you've been having with utilities, and how did that lead you to Arch and the partnership between Landis+Gyr and Span?

 

Prasanna Venkatesan:

Yeah, as you know, we have a very deep history of innovation at Landis. We've been around for a long time. The company was formed in Europe some hundred years ago. And our challenge, quite honestly Jason and Matt is you just can't sit still in the world of innovation that is rapidly increasing, especially in Silicon Valley. And we had introduced a lot of new products in the marketplace ever since the solid state meter came out. We've been putting more and more value into that sensor, adding grid edge computing. We've done a lot of, we can now completely do load disaggregation within the meter as previously mentioned, connect, disconnect, outage management. All of these are fine and great for the devices that were in existence about two to three years ago.

As we spoke about income's distributed energy resources, EVs, PVs, storage, heat pumps, after introducing our grid edge computing platform in roughly 2019, is when we introduced into the marketplace was a huge success because now you can collect information in real time and look at the load disaggregation curves, and actually within seconds can identify where that load came from.

But we didn't want to stop there because just looking at loads and the fact that you can recognize them is not enough. We wanted the control piece to this as well. So we went into the marketplace as part of my mergers and acquisitions role, trying to look for a potential company, someone that deeply understands electrification and how we can change the dynamics when it comes to the whole home.

Back in 2018, '19, I was introduced to Arch through a investment banker, and what we needed was not only load disaggregation at the meter but also how we, let's say for 80%, 90% of the whole home, do a full call it microgrid platform behind the meter. And we really said that would be game changing if we can just look at sub-metered loads that Landis can see through their meter and then use the partner's innovative whole home disaggregation methodology to provide demand flexibility to the utility, but also give good consumer engagement to our utility customers.

I met Arch back in 2018 in a Silicon Valley office. At that time he had just introduced what I would say the early stages of his product. And we formed a relationship that evolved over three to four years. It was a meeting of the minds I have to say, because partnerships usually don't work. And then we decided about increasing levels of investment, how can we do things together?

But I will say this Jason, what fundamentally got me attracted to Span was just the vision that Arch had for the Span device, especially innovating a device much like the panel which has been around for over 50 to 60 years, and making that digital and making that completely available as a whole home visibility device, and the fact that we can aggregate all these loads and provide this. And I don't want to steal Arch's thunder here, but provide a very elegant demand response platform for the utility was very compelling. And that led me to Arch, and we struck a partnership in 2024, and here we are.

 

Jason Price:

It's a fascinating journey.

All right, so you are now united from a commercial sense. And I'd love for you to walk through some use cases or use case if you will. And I'd love to also hear, and this is where it gets really interesting, is basically what does this joint deployment of Landis+Gyr, and Span look like at the property level in the context of FERC 2222.

Prasanna, why don't you start? And Arch certainly follow up.

 

Prasanna Venkatesan:

Yeah, well great question Jason. And probably Arch is chomping at the bit and saying can he go first.

Here's the deep value proposition that we offer. So we are the market leader when it comes to smart metering, networks, software solutions to the utilities. Span comes from a different point of view. They looked at the home in a completely different context through the panel and developed a solution set that was the industry first when it came to circuit level billing, grade metering, visibility, and controls for the whole home, demand flexibility if you will.

So I thought this was a great marriage in the sense that we continue to make our value proposition better, and we actually enhance our value proposition to existing utility infrastructure, and as Arch mentioned, enable utilities to avoid costly time, and time-consuming secondary distribution service level upgrades, balancing loads at the premise. All this, and Arch will probably hopefully add to this, without doing any further upgrades to the home. The 60 amp example that he said is very appropriate.

For us, the key value proposition is we combine all the best of our mirroring platform for the entire house. We add to it the very critical loads that Arch is able to see through his sub-metering and now it becomes a very good disaggregation methodology used by Span for us to use to provide not only consumer engagement for the consumers, but it also gives you a classy way of doing distributed energy resource management, be it at the premise level or if you really think about this, you can use a series of homes and collect it and actually do, I'll just loosely dare I say, look at a zip code and pull all these homes that have Span plus Landis solution embedded, and actually do a complete not only whole home disaggregation and delivery to the utility, but we can also do it for an entire zip code if you want to. I think that's where the key value proposition is in the context of what you asked.

 

Arch Rao:

Yeah, Jason, I'm happy to echo what Prasanna is saying and maybe add to it if that's all right?

 

Jason Price:

Yeah, please do.

 

Arch Rao:

Yeah, so I think really the way to think about this is that the three buckets of value to a utility and by extension the customer. And the three key buckets that the Landis team and the Span team have identified, and are frankly finding meaningful positive responses from utilities for are advanced metering, demand flexibility, and electrification enablement.

On the advanced metering side, just as Prasanna has said, the meter has been evolving over the last several years to provide more than just 15 minute whole home data to be able to use edge compute to detect individual circuits, albeit as a derived dataset if you will. Combined now we're able to provide a lot more granularity and a lot more resolution because we measure every single circuit that flows through our panel. And we can share that data back to the utility through an existing network and software integration layer that they have through the Landis+Gyr software system and network.

On demand flexibility, to us it's not just about being able to enact occasional demand response events. That's interesting, but that still requires the utility to be able to understand the load specifically and potentially to be able to send demand response signal to individual loads. We want to be able to meet the utility where they really need for us to, which is at a distribution level, can we have certainty of a load shape so that we can plan our resources more accordingly and change that ideal load profile based on extraneous events, be it weather conditions, like really high temperature events. That's really what we're planning to provide together. So the ability to be able to say, much like Prasanna said, across a zip code or across a node on the network, "Hold my load profile to this ideal shape." And we're able to orchestrate that across a large fleet of homes that are enabled with Span technology.

Now the communication modality there is again leveraging what's already the backbone for utilities, IE. send a signal back to the meter requesting a certain desired set point. And we're orchestrating that across the different loads in the home using the Span technology.

The third piece is enabling electrification. We talked about the avoided cost for the customer where they can avoid the cost of an expensive service update to the individual home. They might only have a hundred amps of power coming in, but that problem actually not surprisingly, cascades upwards to the pole transformer, to the street level or community level transformer, or upstream to the substation if you will. Those are all also capitalized assets that have a desired operating life.

If load growth happens sporadically or in a dispersed way that it's happening as we see today, the utility has to be reactive as opposed to proactive in terms of how they upgrade these transformers and other capitalized assets. But with technology like Span, they can avoid that cost, not just for the end customer, but also can get high utilization rates or at least defer the cost of upgrades to their own assets.

So those are the three buckets really, advanced metering, demand flexibility, and electrification enablement, all while making sure the customer is looped in, delivering a very rich customer experience and an interface through our app that engages the customer just as much as they'd like to while giving them a better electric service.

 

Jason Price:

That's cost avoidance all around, both at the residential level and at the utility level.

But let's dig a bit further at the utility side. You know our listeners of Energy Central come from the utility space. What is the pitch that you give to utilities? What is the value proposition that you present to them? And how do you think something like this could scale at the utilities, which is what they're all about?

Arch, you want to start, and then Prasanna, anything to add?

 

Arch Rao:

Sure, happy to. It's those three categories of value proposition that we typically start with. But as you know, while most util utilities are similar in how they operate, they each are at different points in time in their own customer growth story. So they might each be solving for different things. And compound that with the fact that you have state regulations around decarbonization and public commissions requiring a certain degree of performance by the utility. The conversations have their own take, their own flavor if you'll.

For most utilities that are in the cycle where they're upgrading their existing metering solution to advanced metering solutions, we are able to have a very practical conversation around what the next generation solution needs to look like or how can we augment the rollout of their next generation smart meter or technology with capacity or capabilities that the Span panel can provide, or a version of the Span panel can provide.

And then there are utilities that are really actively trying to address the equitable electrification challenge ahead of them. You have some customers purchasing EV, some customers now funded through programs like the Inflation Reduction Act, adopting electric water heaters, or heat pumps as the case may be. They all consistently face the same problem, which is how do you cost effectively upgrade the network or avoid the upgrade of a network by using non wires alternatives.

So either looking at it left to right or looking at right to left, we often converge on the similar set of capabilities that Landis and Span are providing together to the utilities, and gives the utility the option to say, "Do we want to have this be solutions that are owned by the customer and rebated by the utility, or potentially over time rate based by the utility and distributed across their entire network of customers so that every customer can be cost-effectively upgraded to a better network with better electrification capabilities and better visibility?".

 

Prasanna Venkatesan:

So Arch and I have been in front of a lot of utility customers and a couple of regulatory discussions as well. I think if you look at our industry of roughly 3000 utilities in the US, a good bit of it is cooperatives. So Arch and I have met at least three or four of them. And I think their need is very different. They buy power from a GNT or sometimes in the spot market. And they find this solution set very compelling. They find this piece of technology and software, and consumer engagement that comes with the whole idea of maybe probably avoiding a costly buy in the spot market, mainly because they can aggregate all these loads and take it to their DERMS platform.

Whereas the IOUs, as Arch mentioned, driven by regulatory mandates and such are having a different conversation on, "Hey, Prasanna and Arch, how do we rate base this asset? How do we put this as part of our perhaps an energy efficiency plan that fits with it?". Or lately we've been getting a couple tractions on the grid modernization plan, the GRIP funding that's available for technology companies like us. So I think we're really getting a lot of traction around the discussion on what this technology can enable.

 

Jason Price:

Prasanna, you did mention you also pitched this to commissioners, so what's the feedback been with them?

 

Prasanna Venkatesan:

I think from a technology perspective, they really understand the value of what it can do, especially with the current state of affairs in terms of load growth and where we, and looking at the next 10 to 25 years. Everybody sees a dramatic increase in load and I think they too struggle with do we have enough supply to meet it? And therefore the feel that the combined technologies of both companies is a very good attraction.

The only thing that we have to do a lot of heavy lift around is to go around, our country is determined by, call it 50 states having a different view of how the investment should go. But I believe between a combination of what we're hearing from the grid innovation resilience program, the GRIP funding, as well as the traditional energy efficiency piece of what utility has access to, is an avenue of discussion and education for us to do over the next few months.

 

Jason Price:

Fantastic. This has been an eye-opening conversation no doubt. And I'm sure our audience will feel the same.

Before we let you go, we do have something called the lightning round, which gives us an opportunity to learn a little bit more about you the person rather than you the professional. So we have a series of questions we're going to throw at you, and we ask you to keep your response to one word or phrase. I think what we'll do is we'll tee off with Arch followed by Prasanna. Are you both ready?

 

Arch Rao:

Sure.

 

Prasanna Venkatesan:

Yes. Lightning round, good Jason.

 

Jason Price:

All right, here we go. Favorite analog device?

 

Arch Rao:

Oh, that's a good question. Probably a good self-winding watch.

 

Prasanna Venkatesan:

I guess a tape player. Bring it back.

 

Jason Price:

Favorite quote you'd like to drop with the intent to impress people. Arch?

 

Arch Rao:

There's an interesting quote around type of fun, type one fun versus type two fun that I like to draw on. Type one fun being it's fun when you do it. Type two fun being it's really hard when you're doing it, but it's really enjoyable after. I think building a company and especially executing at the pace we are is a lot about type two fun.

 

Jason Price:

Prasanna?

 

Prasanna Venkatesan:

Yeah. Since I'm in strategy, I have to go with Peter Drucker, "Culture eats strategy for lunch."

 

Jason Price:

A local favorite from your hometown that a visitor must experience?

 

Arch Rao:

This is going to be funny because Prasanna and I found out over the years that we actually come from the same hometown back in India, which is a city called Chennai. Must experience, there is a drive through South Indian restaurant, they have some of the best food. I would say please go experience that

 

Jason Price:

Prasanna?

 

Prasanna Venkatesan:

Yeah, yeah. We're literally kilometers away, from our hometown. It's a dish called masala dosa. Highly recommended, got to go eat it.

 

Jason Price:

I'm writing that down. There's an excellent Indian restaurant near me.

All right, any clever ways to motivate children to be energy conscious, Arch?

 

Arch Rao:

Yeah, you show them that their iPad doesn't last very long if they keep playing games on it.

 

Jason Price:

I like that. Prasanna?

 

Arch Rao:

Or they that they have to ride a bike in order to use their iPad. There you go.

 

Prasanna Venkatesan:

So we have this thing called bring your children to work day. One of the things that we do very well with the kids that come in is kind of give them a good feel of what it takes as Arch pointed out, whether it's an iPad or anything else, what does electricity actually mean to us in our day-to-day lives. Because other than this conversation and our listeners, very few people understand the value of electricity, if you will. So it's a pretty good exercise with kids.

 

Jason Price:

Interesting. We're collecting lightning round questions from past podcast guests to ask future guests. And so this one comes from our past guest, Erik Krause, director of customer experience delivery for SMUD. He challenges future guests with the following, "What are you all doing to create a positive impact in the community for those who may not otherwise be able to participate?". Arch?

 

Arch Rao:

I'll try to keep this brief, but a personal motivation for me is having grown up in a country like India where you really see the dichotomy between the haves and the have-nots. And one of the things that I have long believed to be true is that access to energy, access to clean, inexpensive energy is the material unlock to accessing economic growth, and education, and healthcare and so on. So this is something that's actually personally important to me.

So at Span, as a matter of fact, we spent a lot of time working with affected communities. And in fact we did a project in New Orleans, for example, after a hurricane hit them to bring them our technology at cost, or where we can contribute without margin, technology along with batteries to give them resiliency. And that's our small way of giving back. And we do this as a team here as well where we work with local agencies to install solar systems in homes that otherwise could not afford to put it on themselves, where our employees volunteer their time to do it. I think it's an important way to give back to community and one that hopefully will have a meaningful impact on lives.

 

Jason Price:

Interesting. Prasanna?

 

Prasanna Venkatesan:

Yeah, similar to what Art said, for me kids are so important in our society today. One of the things that Landis does exceptionally well since we've been around for such a long time is the whole concept of mentoring, and going and spending quality volunteer hours in schools, providing internships, all the other things that are valuable to establishing and growing one's mind. And this is something not only near and dear to the Landis+Gyr executive team, but also near and dear to our employees. It's been around for a long time and that is something that we consistently try to do better every year.

 

Jason Price:

That's great. All right, so gentlemen, now's the opportunity for you to ask a future guest. So what would be a challenge for future guests to answer? Arch, go ahead and then Prasanna follow up.

 

Arch Rao:

Here's a question for you which I think I try to answer when I can. What is the most impactful thing you did this year to positively impact climate change?

 

Jason Price:

Okay, Prasanna?

 

Prasanna Venkatesan:

Yeah, we talked about energy. I'll sort of stick with the same theme, Jason. The next biggest challenge if you want to put electricity as one of the challenges or one of the top five challenges that the world is facing, I think water is one of the biggest challenges facing our nation and the globe, I would argue. So your next guest should probably be asked the question of, what is it specifically that they're doing in the areas of water conservation, clean water and the likes. Because much like our distribution network, the average age of a water pipe below us, I think is around 70 to 80 years. So I think that would be a good question, good theme for us to pull on the next time.

 

Jason Price:

I feel like both of you have taken the show to a new level. This will be hard to follow. So I want to thank you both for this intense and really thought-provoking conversation today.

I want to give you a final word to both of you, the final question. So if our listeners take one item away from today's conversation, an action item or a new way of thinking, or just a piece of advice, what do you want that to be? Arch, let's start with you.

 

Arch Rao:

I think the one thing to take away is, for me it is the most important takeaway would be all of us can have a positive impact in decarbonization by taking simple steps to electrify our own lives. And those can be done cost effectively today without having to sacrifice anything functionally or from a comfort standpoint. So go on the internet, pick up that phone, go buy that heat pump you've been wanting to buy, and of course buy a Span panel with it.

 

Jason Price:

Prasanna?

 

Prasanna Venkatesan:

Yeah. My thing is the concept of flexibility management. If you pick on that a bit, these are very long, long threaded conversations to have because our system of governance is one of regulation and convincing stakeholders. Some of the questions you asked Jason are just so spot on. What does it take for decision makers, or regulators, or commissioners to act upon the precipice of where we are in terms of energy transformation?

So I think it's imperative that it's to the listeners and people, especially in the energy utility side of the business, is to keep the conversations open between us, and just call it, the public officials. Because a lot of this is explaining the intent of what new technology can do to some very traditionally solved problems from many years ago. And these require investments. I would dare say it also requires intestinal fortitude to move things forward, but the solutions are there. It just requires us to keep talking about change, talking about the willingness to change. And for that Jason and Matt, and Energy Central, thank you guys. I mean this is what needs to happen on a regular cycle to keep this conversation going.

 

Jason Price:

Excellent. Thanks so much for today's conversation to each of you. And I'm sure our listeners will have some comments, questions, and follow-ups. And we invite them to leave those in the comment section of the Energy Central post for this episode. And when they do, we'll invite you both to hop in and keep the conversation going.

Until then though, we just want to thank you for sharing your insight with us in today's episode of the podcast.

 

Arch Rao:

Thanks, Jason and Matt for having me. This is Arch and Span. It was great to chat with you guys about the future of Energy.

 

Prasanna Venkatesan:

Yeah, thanks Jason and Matt. This is Prasanna. I really appreciate the time. Very useful conversation. Let's keep this going.

 

Jason Price:

You can always reach Prasanna and Arch to the Energy Central platform where they welcome your questions and comments. We also want to give a shout out of thanks to the podcast sponsors that made today's episode possible. Thanks to Landis+Gyr.

A global provider of integrated energy management solutions, Landis+Gyr engineers and delivers cutting-edge technology to measure, manage and control energy in real time at the grid edge.  The company’s innovative and proven portfolio of software, services and intelligent sensor technology is a key driver to decarbonize the grid. Working with an array of proven partners, Landis+Gyr is leading some of the largest smart grid projects in the world, while building the foundation for clean energy resource integration. To learn more, visit Landisgyr.com

Once again, I'm your host Jason Price. Plug in and stay fully charged in the discussion by hopping into the community at energycentral.com. And we'll see you next time at the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast.

 

About Energy Central Podcasts

The ‘Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast’ features conversations with thought leaders in the utility sector. At least twice monthly, we connect with an Energy Central Power Industry Network community member to discuss compelling topics that impact professionals who work in the power industry. Some podcasts may be a continuation of thought-provoking posts or discussions started in the community or with an industry leader that is interested in sharing their expertise and doing a deeper dive into hot topics or issues relevant to the industry.

The ‘Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast’ is the premiere podcast series from Energy Central, a Power Industry Network of Communities built specifically for professionals in the electric power industry and a place where professionals can share, learn, and connect in a collaborative environment. Supported by leading industry organizations, our mission is to help global power industry professionals work better. Since 1995, we’ve been a trusted news and information source for professionals working in the power industry, and today our managed communities are a place for lively discussions, debates, and analysis to take place. If you’re not yet a member, visit www.EnergyCentral.com to register for free and join over 200,000 of your peers working in the power industry.

The Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast is hosted by Jason Price, Community Ambassador of Energy Central. Jason is a Business Development Executive at West Monroe, working in the East Coast Energy and Utilities Group. Jason is joined in the podcast booth by the producer of the podcast, Matt Chester, who is also the Community Manager of Energy Central and energy analyst/independent consultant in energy policy, markets, and technology.  

If you want to be a guest on a future episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast, let us know! We’ll be pulling guests from our community members who submit engaging content that gets our community talking, and perhaps that next guest will be you! Likewise, if you see an article submitted by a fellow Energy Central community member that you’d like to see broken down in more detail in a conversation, feel free to send us a note to nominate them.  For more information, contact us at [email protected]. Podcast interviews are free for Expert Members and professionals who work for a utility.  We have package offers available for solution providers and vendors. 

Happy listening, and stay tuned for our next episode! Like what you hear, have a suggestion for future episodes, or a question for our guest? Leave a note in the comments below.

All new episodes of the Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast will be posted to the relevant Energy Central community group, but you can also subscribe to the podcast at all the major podcast outlets, including: