Shared Energy Solutions with Virtual Power Plants

00:00:02:29 - 00:00:21:26
Mike Collignon: All right. Happy New Year, everyone. It's our first webinar of 2026. Hope you had a great holiday season. We're glad to have you back with us for another wonderful year of Green Builder media content. You know, we start off this year by celebrating International Kite Day. Now, you might be wondering why I'm mentioning that. And if you are.

00:00:22:01 - 00:00:44:20
Mike Collignon: Don't worry, our audience is off and do. But there's always a reason. As legend goes, Benjamin Franklin was unsafely flying his kite in a storm. And when it got zapped by lightning, he learned what he needed to learn about electricity. And hence the light bulb was born. Now. We've come a long way since Franklin's perilous kite adventures, but we are going to talk about energy and specifically distributed energy resources.

00:00:44:23 - 00:01:14:00
Mike Collignon: These also go by the name Virtual Power Plants. Back with us is Darren Walsh, who is the president of Learning Edge, LLC, a firm that specializes in residential energy efficiency training and building science consulting. Darren was a key implementer of the EPA's Energy Start for homes program for more than 20 years. He has helped solve warranty issues for hundreds of homes and trained thousands of individuals on the basics of building science, energy efficiency for buildings, energy efficiency programs, and the IPCC.

00:01:14:02 - 00:01:39:26
Mike Collignon: He holds a bachelor's degree in construction and master's and doctoral degrees in public administration and policy from Arizona State University. Speaking of electricity, we have an electric partner and the energy, and they want you to know about their incredible benefits. All power shift. It helps residential and business customers conserve energy and save money on their power bills. Power shift is a one stop resource to find energy efficient products and services.

00:01:39:28 - 00:01:59:06
Mike Collignon: For more information, check it out at NV energy.com/power shift. And during the course of today's presentation, you could submit questions for. Simply use the Q&A box located at the bottom of the zoom window. I'll review those questions and post them to Darren after his presentation. Darren welcome back.

00:01:59:08 - 00:02:19:27
Daran wastchak: Thanks so much. I appreciate the introduction. In two comments on your introduction, first of all, your story about Benjamin Franklin. In my one of my classes that I teach on, on, energy efficiency products, I talk about batteries, and Benjamin Franklin's the one that created the battery. In fact, he's the one that coined the name.

00:02:19:28 - 00:02:40:07
Daran wastchak: I'm not sure if you're aware of that. He took a bunch of lead in jars, but put them together, and it looked like, a battery of troops as they were lined up. And that's where the name battery came from. And I share that one of my other classes and by the way, the, the NV energy, program as our sponsor.

00:02:40:10 - 00:02:58:21
Daran wastchak: That program happens to be, part of and part and parcel to what we're going to talk about today when it comes to virtual power plants. So, the things that we'll talk about actually is what NV energy is doing in Nevada. So, we're supporting your sponsor very directly. Today in our presentation, I'm sure.

00:02:58:21 - 00:03:19:00
Daran wastchak: Yeah. Thumbs up for that and making sure those guys are happy. So, and so thank you, everybody, for being here today. And I especially want to thank Green Builder Media for allowing me to share yet another, one of my webinars that I offer, to my audience. And being able to share that wider with the green builder media audience.

00:03:19:00 - 00:03:40:01
Daran wastchak: So I'm very excited to do that today. Today's class being shared energy solutions with virtual power plants. It's not my newest class, it's my second newest class. Today you will learn what that newest class is because it's actually a compliment to this one. I want to start off by thanking Green Builder Media for, hosting today's class and also as a sponsor.

00:03:40:03 - 00:04:01:02
Daran wastchak: And then to one of my sponsors, that sponsors my class is salt River project, an electric utility here in the Arizona marketplace. And I'm grateful for their sponsorship as well. I have a lot to cover today, but I told Mike that I was aiming for 60 minutes, so that's that's my goal. And I might talk a little fast to make sure that we get close to that time frame.

00:04:01:07 - 00:04:22:07
Daran wastchak: So you guys are, within that, that, time slot. We're going to start off talking about setting the stage for flexible energy solutions, okay? Which is what virtual power plants and distributed energy resources are all about, managing the curve. Critical. If you've probably heard of it, we're going to make sure you guys know what that is.

00:04:22:14 - 00:04:44:23
Daran wastchak: Demand response approaches that the utility companies take, including feedback, behavior rate response and direct dispatch. We're going to talk about VPP as virtual power plants as a most, in fact, probably the most cost effective way for us to solve our energy needs, our energy demand, challenges that we have, that I'll tee up at the very beginning, defining those.

00:04:44:25 - 00:05:05:06
Daran wastchak: Then we'll talk about the role that energy efficiency plays in virtual power plants. The two are very and distributed energy resources. The two are actually very, very closely tied together and support each other. So we're going to make that very clear, because a lot of people are very familiar with energy efficiency. But what relation does it have to virtual power plants.

00:05:05:07 - 00:05:35:05
Daran wastchak: I'm going to make that clear. And then distributed energy resources. Dr.. In energy programs because they are doctors are in energy programs. You may or may not have been fully aware of that, but we'll make that clear today. And they're also in the code. The latest version of the code, the ICC 2024. We'll talk about incentives that are provided to builders and, and developers, as part of the, distributed energy resources and virtual power plants and then incentives to homeowners.

00:05:35:08 - 00:05:50:22
Daran wastchak: We'll also talk about that. So we got a lot to cover. As we go in and I want to get started and launch into that. Oh, by the way, everybody will get a copy or have an opportunity to get a copy of the presentation slides that you're going to see today. You'll all the slides, you'll have a copy of.

00:05:50:28 - 00:06:06:04
Daran wastchak: You just need to provide a little bit of feedback to me at the very end. And then you guys will be able to download the slides. So, keep an eye out for that when we get to the end. But do know you'll get a copy of all of these slides for today. Now, I want to start off by giving you, this little cheat sheet.

00:06:06:04 - 00:06:22:28
Daran wastchak: So pull out your, your phone and take a picture of this screen because we're going to be using a lot of acronyms today. And I want you to be able to refer back to this so that you understand some of them might have been thrown at you. Like distributed energy resources. Dr.. And battery battery energy storage systems.

00:06:22:28 - 00:06:52:03
Daran wastchak: Derms distributed energy resource management systems. Most people are good with energy efficiency. EV electric vehicle, PV photovoltaic, those are the easy ones. And then VPP virtual power plant. Now this slide some of you may have seen before, and that's because I borrowed it, from a good friend of mine, Tom Hines with Tierra solutions. So he talked about, virtual power plants a couple years ago.

00:06:52:06 - 00:07:10:28
Daran wastchak: Green Builder Media had him come in. And honestly, I'll tell you, that was the, the second time I had really learned about virtual power plants. Was that webinar, two years ago. And since then, I've really geeked out about this material because I think it's so powerful and so important to where we're going into the future.

00:07:11:00 - 00:07:34:17
Daran wastchak: And again, that'll be super clear by the time we're done today. But, Tom, in that webinar I thought was tremendous, shared some of the ten revolutionary energy industry trends that matter from a utility perspective. First of all, historically climate has been more or less predictable conditions. So I don't know if you can ever consider the weather predictable, but they certainly try.

00:07:34:17 - 00:08:07:27
Daran wastchak: And it's been a little bit more chaotic, in current times. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Utility policy. Historically, no carbon policies existed. Multiple fuels, and then also monopoly service territories. Power grid. What did that look look like? Historically centralized energy generation. Right. Utilities generated the energy, sent it out to their customers. One way power flows right from the utility to the user at the end.

00:08:08:00 - 00:08:33:08
Daran wastchak: And if you needed more energy, you built more power plants. That was the energy. That was a solution. If you needed more, you just built more. And then we also historically have had a highly reliable grid. And then when we talk about the customer, little to no competition for customers with the monopolies that we had, for utilities and still to some extent have and then consumers were fairly disinterested.

00:08:33:08 - 00:08:50:19
Daran wastchak: Hey, if I flip the switch and the lights go on, that's all I care about. If they don't go on, you're going to hear from me. And so that was really historically the trends that we've seen. Well, if you look at now and into the future, each of these points, we do have more extreme weather events, higher peak demand.

00:08:50:22 - 00:09:14:02
Daran wastchak: And so that's leading to higher peak demand because of, the conditions that we've been dealing with, higher demand in the winter times because of colder winters, higher demand in the summer times because of hotter summer times. From the utility policy perspective. The goal, out there, is typically decarbonization by 2050. That's a goal that's getting kicked around a lot these days.

00:09:14:02 - 00:09:45:16
Daran wastchak: But it's still out there. And a lot of things have been kind of pointing in that direction. So decarbonization and then for multiple fuels, huge push in lots and lots of arenas towards electrification. And that is again a big by lots of areas, of the, of the energy sector. And then we've got, of course, all the deregulation things, for 2 to 2 K and then the distributed energy resource aggregators, as far as the grids concerned.

00:09:45:19 - 00:10:14:11
Daran wastchak: Centralized energy generation, that's a thing of the past with distributed generation in particular. We've got generation of individual homes and businesses, right? Solar panels, maybe wind, those types of things. One, one way power flow that's gone because of the generation that is happening at our businesses and our residential properties. And so now we can send energy back into the grid, two way flows that the utilities have to manage and deal with.

00:10:14:14 - 00:10:40:04
Daran wastchak: And then, as far as managing, demand to intermittent supply, that is, an alternate or alternatives to what we're talking about building more power plants. We'll definitely get into that more. And then the reliability on the grid, is, is really declining. I'm going to share with you. I usually share quite a few, examples of that reliability.

00:10:40:04 - 00:11:01:17
Daran wastchak: I'm going to show you one important one today, just in the interest of time. And then, of course, when it comes to customers, we've got deregulation, we've got distributed energy resources, competition, self supply, all of these things are changing the world that the utilities have to operate in. And then, of course, savvy users, Tom called them prosumers.

00:11:01:17 - 00:11:31:04
Daran wastchak: Right. And that's anybody that's got an internet connection and can surf. The web is going to be able to be far more savvy, smart and a much more proactive, consumer when it comes to, energy and what they do with energy. Let's talk about that reliability piece real quick. So there's just one particular data point, that came out of, a really, good pub publication, that talks about a lot of issues that impact the utilities utility drive.

00:11:31:08 - 00:11:56:06
Daran wastchak: Explosive demand growth puts more than half of North America at risk of blackout. You know, according to the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. So, if you look deeper into that article, they, they describe the situation as effectively utilities, doing a lot of retirements of power plants to the tune of 60,000MW of coal capacity by 2029.

00:11:56:13 - 00:12:17:09
Daran wastchak: Now, of course, those of you that are paying attention to the headlines and especially the power and energy, headlines, you know that a lot of power plants, coal power plants are being, not just by the utilities decision, but by the federal government's decision saying, no, you keep running. We need you. That's causing all kinds of of other challenges.

00:12:17:09 - 00:12:41:05
Daran wastchak: Some of these power plants were actually set to be closed at the end of last year, and everything had been set up. They were ready to turn the switch off on December 31st. And then a month before that, the, the, current, administration said, no, no, no, you are you must keep that thing running, which is causing lots of challenges from from logistics to costs and all kinds of things.

00:12:41:05 - 00:13:05:22
Daran wastchak: But nonetheless, there is still this retirement going process going on. And at the same time that we've got that retirement, we've got 128MW in rising demand. And that's as of this article. Okay. When we talk about demand, the explosive demand is coming from lots of different sectors, right. Data centers. That's huge in the in the in the headlines a building in transportation electrification.

00:13:05:22 - 00:13:29:27
Daran wastchak: Right. Electric vehicles, electric all electric buildings and other large commercial and industrial loads such as manufacturing facilities. And then the hydrogen fuel plants are also, requiring energy, although those are also casualties of a lot of things that went away, last year, funding that went away last year. So that one might be not quite so bad. But let's talk about data centers here, because that's the big one.

00:13:29:27 - 00:13:59:06
Daran wastchak: That's seems to be the biggest one that we're trying to manage. This is a report that came out from Berkeley Labs looking at the total US data center electricity use from 2014 projected out to 2028. And you can see that from 2023 out to 2028. We've got a tripling in consumption just from data centers. This was a, a forecast that just came out in November of last year.

00:13:59:10 - 00:14:26:20
Daran wastchak: Looking at these projections, the five year nationwide peak summer peak growth, over the last several years. So originally they had, projected it at just under 850GW. And then they just have each year continued to revise that to our latest, up to 166GW of peak demand, peak demand in summertime, that, this is a moving target that is, again, freaking out.

00:14:26:26 - 00:14:51:11
Daran wastchak: Everybody, including and especially the utility companies that have to meet this demand, because it's hard to even figure out what is that demand when you continue to see these adjustments made over time. And so let's talk about distributed generation, which I've mentioned already. Distributed generation. And it and this is causing the huge challenge that we know as the duck curve managing the duck curve.

00:14:51:11 - 00:15:16:22
Daran wastchak: So what is the duck curve. Actually the duck curve is being caused by all of the solar panels, for example, that are on homes and businesses that are around our communities, around, in the metro areas and even in the remote areas, the, the rural areas, all of those collectively are distributed energy generation. All right. So when you hear of distributed generation, we're talking about basically solar panels.

00:15:16:28 - 00:15:37:02
Daran wastchak: It could be wind. Somebody could have a wind turbine on their property. That would be one. But by and large we're talking 95, 98% of what we're, what we're when we when we talk about distributed, resource, it's really going to be photovoltaics. Over on the left is a picture of what the solar, generation looks like.

00:15:37:08 - 00:15:57:04
Daran wastchak: During the course of a day, this happens to be July 4th of last summer. And you can see that, you know, obviously, as the sun comes up, we generate more and more power until we get to the to the middle of the day, right? Right at noon, in the middle of the summertime. And then it, goes down, of course, as the sun starts to go down as well.

00:15:57:09 - 00:16:20:04
Daran wastchak: And so that's creating this, the left hand side of that generation curve, that's when all the, all the distributed generation kicks on all the solar panels. When that happens, effectively, those, those users, those distributed businesses and homes, they don't need to grab any power from the grid. So yeah, we needed you until the sun came up as soon as the sun came up.

00:16:20:04 - 00:16:44:09
Daran wastchak: We don't need you anymore. Utility. So all of a sudden the demand on the grid takes a nosedive. That's a. And then, at the very belly of the duck, what we've got is too much energy production. This is the this is the, a the scenario that that keeps utility, operators, up at night because they've got to figure out what to do with that energy.

00:16:44:11 - 00:17:05:16
Daran wastchak: Oftentimes they actually have to pay somebody to take that energy. So it's actually an expense to them, not just, you know, what do we do with it? Because it's generated in these power plants, the big power plants, they don't turn on and off on a dime, like the switched on your lights. They they ramp, take a while to ramp up, and then they run constantly and continuously.

00:17:05:20 - 00:17:39:12
Daran wastchak: Now they do have what's called peaker plants. That will be able to they'll fire up fairly quickly. But that's another thing that the utilities have to invest in. So there are solutions to this. That's what we're talking about today. And then lastly, of course, when the sun goes down, that's when all of a sudden the demand spikes and you can see it actually overshoots, because what's happening between 6 and 9 is everybody's home watching TV, cooking their food, you know, and and the demand is really going to be high at that end of the day, that you can see the head of the duck.

00:17:39:12 - 00:18:05:00
Daran wastchak: So that's the duck curve that you might have heard about. And that's what it's all about. So distributed energy resources, if you look at the the clean energy that's being produced, worldwide, you can see the PV solar building on buildings has grown significantly in that yellow, the the yellow stripe, darker yellow stripe significantly, especially in 2023, 24 or 25.

00:18:05:02 - 00:18:29:03
Daran wastchak: We'll see, how that continues with the changes to incentives. But all indications are that the horse has left the barn, meaning that solar is going to continue to be something that's going to be adopted and implemented in lots of different ways. Because so much of the market has has matured and is moving forward that we we may not see quite the magnitude.

00:18:29:03 - 00:18:54:14
Daran wastchak: It might be more of a leveling off instead of a constant increase, but we we but PV solar is certainly here to stay. And this increase, by the way, is these various stripes from 2012, that continue to lower the belly. The more distributed energy resources, the more distributed photovoltaics we have. That just deepens that belly more and more over time.

00:18:54:14 - 00:19:24:26
Daran wastchak: That's the direct cause of that battery storage really is a huge solution. Not the only, but it is a very major solution for dealing with what do we do with all that excess energy in the middle of the day? And so if we looked into the past about, the energy storage, that has existed from 2018 to 2024, look at that massive increase of batteries, okay, battery adoption and implementation.

00:19:24:28 - 00:19:43:19
Daran wastchak: Basically up and running when it comes to battery. So that's the past. These are some of the predictions going into the future from Wood Mackenzie. And you can see that these are all upward trends. Worst case scenario is that we might have a little bit of a dip because of the incentives, that have been removed.

00:19:43:21 - 00:20:05:14
Daran wastchak: We might consider that middle of the road being probably pretty realistic. And then the, the best case scenario, is going to be that upper, upper, line on our chart, but again, solar and solar and batteries, we we're seeing an awful lot of that continuing into the future. It's you can't take the horse back in the barn.

00:20:05:14 - 00:20:31:00
Daran wastchak: It's already out. Or maybe the genie's out of the bottle. You're not going to stuff the genie back in again. We are moving forward. Although that pace pace may just change a little bit. So, who's manufacturing all the batteries that we need, by the way, who's manufacturing these things? Because this is the U.S. lithium ion battery, by and large, the batteries that are being produced for our vehicles in our in our in our homes and other purposes.

00:20:31:03 - 00:20:54:19
Daran wastchak: Notice that those that are bringing on the batteries are our auto manufacturers, right? Ford, Stellantis, GM they're the ones that are building those the battery plants because they need them for their electric vehicles. And of course, the electric vehicles have been taking their own hit as of the end of tax incentives last year. But all that infrastructure has been built.

00:20:54:21 - 00:21:16:10
Daran wastchak: It might be shelved for a little while because of demand shifts, but they're going to continue to build electric vehicles, maybe not quite at the same pace, and they're still going to need batteries, but it's the it's the and of course, these investments have been made capital investments by Ford and Stellantis and GM and of course Tesla being another one that's perhaps obvious.

00:21:16:12 - 00:21:36:24
Daran wastchak: In this mix, they've been, building their own battery factories. And then those batteries are not just for vehicles. They're also going to be able to be used for utilities. So who's buying the batteries that are being produced? Besides the ones that the manufacturers, the auto manufacturers are using for themselves? Front of meter. This is what it looks like.

00:21:36:24 - 00:22:00:22
Daran wastchak: It's the utility companies. They're the ones that are buying these things. So this is, Arizona Public Service, one of the large utilities in Arizona. They're building a huge have built brought on line already. They're a huge battery facility and it's not their last one. Tucson Electric Power, another Arizona utility. They just have built the first of 800MW of of battery energy storage systems.

00:22:00:25 - 00:22:26:12
Daran wastchak: And then salt River project. The other large third large utility. And our sponsor for today, they're building several of their own battery storage facilities. And the reason is that they've got to do something with that generation for those power plants in the middle of the day. So they're going to run those those power plants, and they're going to use these batteries to manage peak load, but also to have a place to send that energy.

00:22:26:12 - 00:22:48:09
Daran wastchak: So this is what the utilities are doing at the utility level to manage the duck curve. Okay. And what about other buyers like you and me? The individual customers. Well, on the left, this is a huge driver. It's the cost of batteries, okay? The cost of batteries. So it's dropped significantly over the last 15 years. The price of batteries.

00:22:48:09 - 00:23:08:05
Daran wastchak: And of course, this is the other half. And that is how many of the PV systems that are being installed these days are now going to be including batteries as part of that. I just purchased, a battery, solar battery system for my own property last year. I'm going to tell you a little bit about that towards the end of class today.

00:23:08:08 - 00:23:39:16
Daran wastchak: But of course, you see battery being added in as a very significant component. I will tell you that when you add battery to a photovoltaic system, the abilities and the power of that, combination is incredible. And there do need to be certain incentives around that, not necessarily getting money for doing that, but the utilities providing rate plans and other things that make it, so that you can take maximum advantage of having the PV and battery system.

00:23:39:19 - 00:24:11:10
Daran wastchak: But I'll come back to more, more of that, later. Okay. Now the utilities, in order to manage demand, the duck curve and everything else that goes into their world, they've created basically three different approaches. How can we modify, behavior through feedback? They also will do a rate response type of a mechanism. And then lastly direct dispatch, which is where distributed energy resources and virtual power plants come in.

00:24:11:17 - 00:24:29:21
Daran wastchak: I want to cover each of these in a little bit more detail so that you guys understand what we're talking about, that let's start off with feedback and behavior. What are we talking about that. So I went to San Diego many years ago. And while I was there for business, I rented a car at the San Diego airport, and I.

00:24:29:21 - 00:24:48:23
Daran wastchak: And they gave me this thing I had never seen before. It was a Toyota Prius. And this, of course, for those of you that have driven in or seen or own a Prius, I owned one for, for quite a while. This is the little heads up display that you get on the Prius. The first time I'd ever seen it, and you're like, oh, that's kind of cool.

00:24:48:25 - 00:25:13:03
Daran wastchak: But the most important part of this screen that you're looking at right there is this piece right there, current miles per gallon. How many miles per gallon are you getting? So I did eventually buy my own Prius. And I will tell you that when I was driving, if I was you know, maybe punching it off of the off of the, the green light to get going, or I was driving where I was basically using too much gas.

00:25:13:05 - 00:25:35:21
Daran wastchak: Man. My miles per gallon just went, went, went way down. And my of course, goal was to get them up as high as I could. And when I was driving on the freeway, I kind of gingerly moved the gas and when you broke, it actually did regeneration, so it would charge the battery. So braking was okay, but, you know, really had to be careful with your gas, in order to make sure that those miles per gallon were as high as possible.

00:25:35:21 - 00:25:54:24
Daran wastchak: In other words, my driving habits were being changed. I was changing because I was getting feedback. I didn't think about when I drive my regular gas car, when you hit the gas, you probably you of course know that you're going to be flushing a little extra gas down, out the door, out the window into your motor.

00:25:54:27 - 00:26:15:10
Daran wastchak: But you really don't know, right? Information is power. And that's what Prius was doing. Toyota was doing with the Prius, was providing feedback. And so the utilities are now able to and looking forward to how can we provide feedback to customers. And so you can put in, for example, first understanding how much energy is being used, right.

00:26:15:10 - 00:26:39:08
Daran wastchak: Feedback on your energy. And then also where are you using it. So you can figure out where those areas are that you can focus your attention. And then as far as, informed behavior, once you know where your energy is being used, you can do things like turn certain appliances off. This is a great illustration I found many, many years ago, I was able to dig it up again because it was so perfect.

00:26:39:10 - 00:27:02:23
Daran wastchak: This illustration about vampire power. Okay. And, vampire power is basically the amount of energy that is being, dribbled away from an appliance, waiting for you to turn it on. So, like, your, your DVR or your DVD player or your television, there's a light on if there's a light on, that means that it's using power, albeit not that much.

00:27:02:26 - 00:27:26:22
Daran wastchak: And it's waiting for you to pick up the remote control and say, turn on. So there's a little bit of energy that's being used by all of your different appliances that are especially the smart ones, and that is, dribbling away your energy to the tune of about 10% of your total power bill. That's not insignificant. So if we can change behavior like putting a bunch of stuff on a power strip so that you can turn on what off?

00:27:26:22 - 00:27:47:14
Daran wastchak: One switch at night time and all the all the TV and stereo system and everything else turns off. Off. Well, those are little bits of energy that can be saved. And then, of course, you can also, in a lot of today's houses, do smart systems, right? A lot of the smart homes that we have today have control all the way down to the individual circuits.

00:27:47:20 - 00:28:13:13
Daran wastchak: So, you know, through data feedback in an app that you have that your lights on the, on the, on the, on the, west side of your house, for some reason, man, that's a pretty high circuit of use. And for those of you that even care to geek out at that level, there's opportunity for that. There's even retrofit stuff that I would normally share with you, from Schneider Electric, that would be available to retrofit your existing house.

00:28:13:13 - 00:28:49:25
Daran wastchak: So that you can monitor things if you cared to. But this is about, being able to provide feedback and then behavior modification. What about rate response? This one's probably pretty familiar to everybody. The utility companies like salt River project, for example, they have, times of use so that when you're using energy at certain times of the day, like in the summertime prior to 2 p.m., you're only going to be paying 9.2 $0.08, okay, $0.90 a kilowatt hour, but during on peak, in other words, the the belly of the belly of the duck during on peak.

00:28:49:28 - 00:29:09:27
Daran wastchak: That's when they're going to really penalize you for using energy. That's peak load, right? When all the air conditioning is are running in the summer, air conditioning systems are running. So, what can we do to manage around that? The other, utilities have a similar program like Tucson Electric Power here in town, and then also Arizona Public Service.

00:29:10:00 - 00:29:27:12
Daran wastchak: Now an APS, by the way, is my electric utility. So I do talk about that because this is the rate plans that I manage around, like, right now in the winter time. Because there's not I mean, we have beautiful weather here in Phoenix in the wintertime. We don't use a lot of energy in the middle of the day, okay?

00:29:27:12 - 00:29:44:22
Daran wastchak: We're not using our heater. Just walk outside, catch a little sun, and, they have a super off peak. And by the way, that super off peak is incentivizing people to use as much energy as you want during that period of time. Because we need we've got extra capacity that we need to be able to use somewhere.

00:29:44:22 - 00:30:11:06
Daran wastchak: So we need to pick up demand. And that's where that, price signal is going to come into play. In all of these rate response, situations that are developed and implemented by the electric utilities. Now let's look at direct dispatch. Direct dispatch is distributed energy resources. Now we're back to the Dockers. What are those. That's going to be maybe your Hvac load.

00:30:11:08 - 00:30:38:07
Daran wastchak: All right. Your Hvac load, which would be your thermostat and controlling your how much air conditioning and heating your using. Your electric vehicle is a distributed energy resource. Water heaters, batteries, battery storage. Those are your Pete, your distributed photovoltaic. Those are all distributed energy resources, okay. And those distributed energy resources are all critical components of a virtual power plant.

00:30:38:12 - 00:30:57:25
Daran wastchak: Let's start with looking at distribute energy resources or what we call connected home devices. So a water heater that is connected to the internet is something that can be, offset. We could we could send a signal to that water heater and tell it when to run. Okay. Should we run it when energy is in low demand? And inexpensive.

00:30:57:27 - 00:31:19:19
Daran wastchak: Or maybe what we need to do is turn it on. If we need to soak up some energy, that would be the the, the purpose of all of these distribute energy resources in one way or the other. Electric vehicles. Right. The smart thermostat is what controls your air conditioning or in heating system. Some heating and cooling, systems, air conditioners and heaters.

00:31:19:24 - 00:31:43:09
Daran wastchak: They are directly controllable, through, remote control. Usually it's the thermostat that is most efficiently, controlling those appliances, optimized roof and solar and advanced inverters, as well as the batteries. So again, these are the distributed energy resources that are really in the marketplace. One other that I don't usually share or pool pumps. Right.

00:31:43:09 - 00:32:02:21
Daran wastchak: If you can take a pool pump and not run it during the, peak time, which is what I do, my pool pump runs up until you might have seen, my off, on peak is going to be 4 to 7 in the summertime with APS. So my tool pump runs right up to 4:00, and then it picks up again in the evening.

00:32:02:21 - 00:32:23:05
Daran wastchak: But it does not run during that that on peak because the energy is so expensive. I just stay out of that and push out as much of my energy consumption out of the on peak area. Now, when we look at the old ways, remember I described the situation for providing more power when that happened in the past.

00:32:23:05 - 00:32:48:03
Daran wastchak: Of course, the old way to do it was to build more power plants. All right. However, we cannot build enough power plants. And that's what you keep hearing on the national, on a national level, including from the current administration. That's why they are saying you can't you can't close down that that, coal power plant. Because again, we have this, this, this challenge of huge demand that is building and building.

00:32:48:08 - 00:33:10:08
Daran wastchak: And yet we've got to make sure we generate enough, but we can't build enough power plants, new ones, okay, fast enough to meet the environmental objectives. And without massive financial investment, it's not inexpensive to build a power plant. I think that goes without saying to anybody. And they also take a long time to to bring online. So, it really is an all the above solution.

00:33:10:08 - 00:33:37:14
Daran wastchak: We can't not build power plants. We just can't build them enough of them fast enough is really the challenge. And there's a lot of ways that's being looked at. Saw it being solved. But today we're going to talk about a really, really important one as we continue forward because there is a better way. Okay. It's much faster, meets all the environmental objectives and then some, and it's at a much lower, financial investment in order to do that.

00:33:37:14 - 00:34:07:14
Daran wastchak: And that is virtual power plants. Okay. Virtual power plants. So now let's talk about what this thing is. What the heck is a virtual power plant? So our standard traditional power plants generate energy, right. And whichever whatever format they're using, nuclear, hydro, burning of fossil fuel, whatever that might be. Or it could even be a solar generation or the battery generation, a battery storage, any one of those things.

00:34:07:14 - 00:34:28:27
Daran wastchak: But they're the utility is the one that is taking that energy, creating it, managing it, putting it into the grid. On the other hand, we could take this home in this neighborhood and we could turn it into its own power plant, because these homes would have a heating and cooling system. They are going to have a water heater.

00:34:29:00 - 00:34:51:13
Daran wastchak: They may have an electric vehicle. They may have batteries in. They may have distributed, photovoltaic. Those are the mais. Okay. They might have those. The bottom line is, is there are three of these components. The vehicle, the battery and the PV. All three of those resources can actually put energy back into the grid. Two way energy flows.

00:34:51:15 - 00:35:11:14
Daran wastchak: So those three element items can actually put power into the grid when it's needed. So when we have peak demand and we're really struggling to meet peak demand, if we can call on all of the virtual power plants or the virtual distributed energy resources out there and say, hey, we need you to dump power into the grid.

00:35:11:14 - 00:35:35:10
Daran wastchak: All right? That is a signal that is sent. I'll talk about how that happens here in just a moment. To that house and all the others out there to say, hey, put energy back into the grid. Now, virtual power plants, they actually balance electric supply. I talked to you about in this first picture, energy going from the house into the grid instead of maybe the utility company doing it.

00:35:35:13 - 00:36:02:19
Daran wastchak: But the reality is, is that homes can also soak up power, right? If we have to find a home for that energy during the middle of the day on the duck curve, well, homes can absorb that. We could always, run our air conditioner, air conditioning system, maybe to pre cool the house. Okay. To soak in some of that up, the electric vehicle could be charged in the middle of the day instead of another time when we need it to be, a a absorber of energy.

00:36:02:21 - 00:36:23:26
Daran wastchak: The water heater could be clicked on, the pool pump could be turned on, we could be charging batteries. Of course, the, PV is only one direction, so that one doesn't give us that benefit. But, one of the things that I stole, stealing also from Tom Hines, who's, a master in this industry, I learn from him so much, he called batteries the Swiss Army knife.

00:36:24:02 - 00:36:45:18
Daran wastchak: And that's, of course, because they're bi directional, right? They will absorb and they will give energy. That's the beauty of a battery. And by the way, electric vehicles, of course, have batteries. And one thing that I learned over time is that the the batteries that we have in our vehicles are way more powerful than the batteries that you might put in your home.

00:36:45:21 - 00:37:08:18
Daran wastchak: And think about it, the energy density, the ability to get as many miles as you can out of that battery in a single charge, and then also making them light, there's a lot more technology that goes into a vehicle's battery, then into the, the battery that you put on the side of your house or in your garage or workshop or wherever you decide to put a battery as part of your, your, energy system.

00:37:08:18 - 00:37:28:13
Daran wastchak: That's part of your house. So vehicle batteries are huge opportunities, for being able to feed energy back into the grid. Now, there's a lot of logistics that go into that. The utilities have to be prepared, to be able to do that. But it's something that's continually being worked on to make sure that we can do that.

00:37:28:13 - 00:37:51:20
Daran wastchak: The charger that's did your car is plugged into first off has to be bidirectional. And a lot of chargers, are only unidirectional giving power to your vehicle. So that's the other thing is that you got to make sure you got the right charger, which can also take energy out of your vehicle, not just put it in. And that's one of those things, that's a logistical issue that's being worked on.

00:37:51:20 - 00:38:17:03
Daran wastchak: But vehicles are a great opportunity for sending energy back into the grid. And, again, one of the other things when we talk about demand, I just talked about the, the homes absorbing energy, but they can also curtail energy use. So you might be able to take some of those distributed energy resources and move them away from the peak sector.

00:38:17:06 - 00:38:53:04
Daran wastchak: So now instead of maybe absorbing, we can actually use those to reduce demand. This is all virtual. This is all virtual. A signal being sent from a third party to say, hey, we need to make a modification to how your home or your business is using energy right now. And to be clear, on the points that I've raised VP reduce demand during hot or in the wintertime in cold climates, cold outdoor temperatures through peaks and troughs when bulk power generation is scarce, raising and lowering thermostat set points.

00:38:53:05 - 00:39:18:04
Daran wastchak: Okay. Turning off water heaters, shifting the timing of EV charging using solar and distributed battery power in lieu of grid power so your home will run off of your battery, or maybe your car, or your solar instead of the grid, because we need the grid doesn't have the capacity right now to do that. So how that's done is all very balanced.

00:39:18:06 - 00:39:40:22
Daran wastchak: Now VPP can also increase demand, right? This is the the duck curve. When the duck curve is low. Now what we can do is we can pick up demand so that it is more level. Now it is more level by charging distributed batteries when we need to dump energy, shifting the timing of EV charging to charge, as I said, and then turning on water heaters, pool pumps, etc. to absorb energy.

00:39:40:22 - 00:40:06:16
Daran wastchak: So just another way of saying the same thing. Let's talk about the EV one. This is a great illustration, a really great illustration of the power of being able to manage these distributed energy resources. So in California, how to make EVs get along with the grid? Great article from Canary Media. Pacific Gas and Electric. They have their EV charger EV charge manager program.

00:40:06:16 - 00:40:30:11
Daran wastchak: Okay. You can see where it is in in California it allows PG and E to schedule electric vehicle charging when electricity prices and demand are at their lowest, so that they're using the charging of electric vehicles, to kind of decide when that happens in order to, make sure that the vehicles are, charged, because that's number one.

00:40:30:11 - 00:40:47:26
Daran wastchak: They don't want to make they want to make sure they're still getting charge. But then at a time that makes more sense for the grid modulates how EVs power, power up throughout the day and night in response to how they're actually affecting the local grid. Participants receive insights on their charging habits, but also they get some money.

00:40:47:28 - 00:41:08:03
Daran wastchak: So there's an incentive that goes along with that $75 to enroll some utility companies will give you a, you know, a monthly credit after the initial enrollment incentives. But most of them are going to be a one time of year credit on your bill in this case, for PGA, e $75. This is the power of the PGA program.

00:41:08:05 - 00:41:30:28
Daran wastchak: What would have happened if everyone started charging when they plugged in? Because that's when people usually charge at nighttime. I have a, a Tesla charger. And so my Tesla charger, I tell it to charge at 10:00 at night. And I think a lot of people probably will charge overnight. I'm also trying to charge after my pool pump turns off in the evening, which is ten.

00:41:31:00 - 00:41:46:25
Daran wastchak: I don't want to be running my pool pump and my car at the same time. Charge my car at the same time, even though energy is, you know, more is is is affordable. At that time, I still like to tear things out. So I charge my car from 10:00 at night till six in the morning. And that's what I do.

00:41:47:01 - 00:42:13:07
Daran wastchak: But if everybody does the same as me, well, all the charges, all the cars would be do their charging. And you get this peak in demand from electric vehicles. And one of the challenges that PGA is talking about is a surge of electric vehicles in California. Over the next several years. Well, what happens if we take that energy and we basically tell the electric vehicles to spread out, okay, we're going to spread you out.

00:42:13:10 - 00:42:30:15
Daran wastchak: You only need maybe an hour of charging. So we're going to push you until, three in the morning and we'll make sure that you get your one hour from 3 to 4. You're, you need, a full charge. So we're going to go ahead and let you start early, right at ten and we'll, we'll, you know, have you charge up.

00:42:30:19 - 00:42:59:00
Daran wastchak: But what they're doing is they're spreading out that, you need for energy across the night in the electric vehicles. That's 250 kW of avoided power plant capacity. So we don't need to have a peak plant or even the batteries or whatever. We don't need that. Because if you take that load and distribute it across the night time, now all of a sudden we've shaved 250 kW off of the peak for PGA in California.

00:42:59:00 - 00:43:24:00
Daran wastchak: Huge. All right. Now who operates the VP's. This is distributed energy resource aggregators. All right. Who are these people. These are these are actually people that you know right. They bundle together distributed energy resources. Meaning they go out to homeowners and they enroll their thermostats in their PV system and their batteries in their electric vehicles. So they're the ones that go and enroll them in the program.

00:43:24:00 - 00:43:48:03
Daran wastchak: Oftentimes it's the utilities that will do that enrolling, by the way. They will be the ones that enroll people, but then they will work with a partner like Enphase, Sunrun, Tesla, Google, LG, these are all, organizations that are distributed energy resource aggregators. Some of them are pretty obvious, like the solar companies. I sell you a solar system and a Powerwall battery system.

00:43:48:07 - 00:44:11:23
Daran wastchak: Well, I'm going to sign you up for my my, my, virtual power plant, where I've aggregated all of your resources into my program and what they're basically doing, energy hub up. Like, these are some of the other ones that are out there and they are all run through a computer system because you got to imagine the complexity of this management process.

00:44:11:23 - 00:44:38:06
Daran wastchak: There is no one, no, no person to manage all this. This is a 100% computers. In fact, we're dipping into the AI to make it even better and better as we go forward. But effectively what they're doing is they're taking all the distributed energy resources. And when a electric utility says, hey, we got a peak event happening tomorrow, we know the the temperatures in Phoenix, maybe you're going to spike up to 117 tomorrow afternoon.

00:44:38:09 - 00:45:02:29
Daran wastchak: We're going to have huge demand. And then what they'll do is they'll turn to their aggregator partner, like usually Energy Hub, or any one of these, and they'll say, hey, we need you to take all of the people that you've signed up that we've given you to sign up in this virtual power, virtual power plan. And we basically need to, modify, send a signal out to their equipment to do something.

00:45:02:29 - 00:45:30:07
Daran wastchak: Okay. In the summer, it would be make sure that we're we're turning thermostats up a couple of degrees during that period of time. Now I want to make it clear, because the utilities want me to make this clear to you. These are voluntary programs, even if you're enrolled in these programs. If for some reason, when they say we're going to, we're going to set your thermostat up a couple of degrees, during the middle of the afternoon, you have the option to opt out.

00:45:30:09 - 00:45:49:21
Daran wastchak: That's important for you to know. These are all opt out programs. Now, they're hoping that you're not going to opt out every time. And, of course, in the middle of the day, although this is a historical artifact as way, as well, most people are not working at home during the middle of the day. And so if you're not working at home, what do you care if the thermostat is turned up a couple of degrees?

00:45:49:21 - 00:46:09:13
Daran wastchak: Your dog and your cat might be a little bit, disturbed and frustrated, but you're you're not there. So for that to happen for you in the middle of the day is not unreasonable. And by and large, they're going to have a lot of people that are not going to worry about that extra two degrees or three degree upset as set up of the thermostats just during that peak time.

00:46:09:18 - 00:46:34:04
Daran wastchak: But if the if the aggregators, in partnership with utilities can say, send a signal out to these distributed energy resources to do something, either turn on, turn off, whatever, that's huge. That is the virtual power plant, the ability for for us to virtually modify demand and supply so that we don't have to have power plants doing that. Okay.

00:46:34:04 - 00:47:06:18
Daran wastchak: Now I'm going to get into that cost effectiveness thing, okay. Dr. VP and energy efficiency are more cost effective than building power plants. Let me use that electric vehicle. PGA example because there was research on this. All right. The EV charging optimization, if we just do the optimization just for the EV program in California, the one I showed you, the graph on it is if it's predicted to save 24, excuse me, 27 to 42% in infrastructure upgrades.

00:47:06:20 - 00:47:37:08
Daran wastchak: That's power plants, but it's also power lines and other things. But it's mostly power power plants. In order to accommodate 13.5 million EVs that are coming onto the market by 2035. In California. All right. So they did some analysis on this. So the forecasted cost to upgrade the distribution grid with power plants and power lines, $22.7 billion by 2035, if they do the managed EV charging program at the utility level.

00:47:37:11 - 00:48:00:11
Daran wastchak: Okay, so the utility is tweaking things. You can actually go all the way down to the feeder level where you're being even more detailed, more fine tuning. But let's not go that far. Let's just talk about managing EVs at the utility level where they're generating the power. You're talking about, a 6.1 billion with a B billion dollar savings.

00:48:00:11 - 00:48:32:04
Daran wastchak: That's the 27%. I just want to deal with that, that little figure right there, because things just get better. If we talk about managing things at the feeder level, and as we look out to 2040, in this analysis, let's just look at the 6.1 and, and and put the cost effectiveness into perspective. If the managed EV charging if, if the EV charging and optimum optimized at the utility level again the smallest opportunity, the $6.1 billion over ten years.

00:48:32:11 - 00:48:50:21
Daran wastchak: I'm going to dive into a little math here. So you got to wake up now and pay attention because this is the, the, hardest part of what I'll describe. I'm a little in the weeds now, but hang with me here. The points a good one. Okay, so $610 million per year is what the utility's effectively going to say for right now.

00:48:50:25 - 00:49:19:06
Daran wastchak: If they're paying incentives to the EV owners. Remember there's 13.5 million of them. They're not all coming on it day one. Over time they're talking about this, but there's 13.5 million EV users assume that 75% of those EV users participate. It's a fairly high number, but assume 75 participate. 55% of the homes, have two EVs, which means that you only going to have one home at a time participating.

00:49:19:12 - 00:49:49:26
Daran wastchak: So you do the math. That works out to only 5.1 million homes. For our our our example here. And you're going to get $75 per home for your EV charging credit. That incentive is going to cost the utility $380 million a year. That's not a small number, $380 million a year. However, the key what the utility is actually saving is $230 million a year, because they didn't have to build the power plants and the infrastructure to manage that.

00:49:49:29 - 00:50:17:18
Daran wastchak: That's $230 million that the utility company can avoid that cost. And they can even use that is maybe reduced rates back to the customers, maybe incentives of another kind. But that's the opportunity when we talk about savings. And by the way, that's just the EV managed program in California for one utility company. Imagine all the other things that are opportunities that we've at least touched on today.

00:50:17:20 - 00:50:41:20
Daran wastchak: This is a great example. Talking about the cost. Again, the VP could provide the same resource adequacy, the same resource adequacy at a significant cost reduction. If you just look at the net cost of gas battery, which is a good one, and VP, I mean, there's just no question the cost to run a VP program is, incredibly low.

00:50:41:23 - 00:51:01:00
Daran wastchak: And if you as a utility company could, could spend your money that way and get the same effective benefit, of course you would do that and your, your stockholders for the public's would, would demand that. And and the privates, of course, would also be looking at or the quasi governmental they would look at that as well.

00:51:01:00 - 00:51:27:23
Daran wastchak: Again, that's the major, opportunity. And let's just look at two headlines from last year. This was virtual power plants helped save the grid during the heat dome. And the small fine techs talked about, in the East Coast on July, June 23rd, the eastern U.S. grid largely weathered the challenge of the peaks that they had in the summertime because of their virtual power plant opportunities.

00:51:27:27 - 00:51:57:00
Daran wastchak: Okay, that are in place, what about California? Looking back at California, their virtual power plant could save these again. They're ramping these things up $206 million by two, 20, 28, as they continue to ramp up more and more on the virtual power plants. And just looking at the current example from this past summer, on July 29th, they discharged, meaning they told the batteries that are in the virtual power plant to discharge 100,000 of them.

00:51:57:00 - 00:52:24:12
Daran wastchak: They discharged 539MW into the grid, saving between 28 and $206 million over time. Okay, so that's the power of the virtual power plant as a part of an important part of the energy mix. Let's talk about energy efficiency a little bit here. Why does the Environmental Protection Agency care about energy efficiency? I often get that question. Aren't they the Environmental Protection Agency?

00:52:24:18 - 00:52:50:22
Daran wastchak: What are they doing messing around with energy efficiency? Well, there's a really logical reason their power plants are polluters, right? Certainly back when Energy Star was created in the early 1990s, a lot of power plants, most of them were fossil fuel burning. So the EPA realized that they could indirectly reduce pollution if they could reduce the amount of time that a power plant runs or the number of them running by not having to build as many.

00:52:50:25 - 00:53:21:25
Daran wastchak: So if we could reduce demand by building energy efficient products, homes, buildings, appliances, light bulbs, anything that they label, if we could do that, we could indirectly reduce pollution, okay, we could reduce pollution. And the other thing too, they realized that few power plants, running less often is not only saving, pollution, but the incentives to builders are way less expensive okay, than building more power plants.

00:53:21:28 - 00:53:42:22
Daran wastchak: So again, we're talking about where's the biggest bang for the buck? Where can we spend our dollars and get the most mileage energy efficiency. And again, you guys are I'm sure the choir when it comes to everything I'm saying here, because you already believe in the things that I'm sharing with you. But again, this is just evidence of that entire, way of thinking.

00:53:42:24 - 00:54:06:27
Daran wastchak: Now, the role of energy efficiency in virtual power plants is actually not not maybe as obvious to some people, but let's see if we can make it a little bit more obvious. First of all, it allows homes to maintain comfort during extreme weather and therefore to better participate when a thermostat is increased or decreased okay in summer or winter.

00:54:07:00 - 00:54:26:13
Daran wastchak: So in cold climates, the virtual power plant may want to turn the thermostat down in the middle of the night when it's super cold. And of course, in places like Phoenix where I am, they're going to want to raise the thermostat in the middle of the summer so that that, air conditioning system is not, causing as much demand.

00:54:26:19 - 00:54:54:19
Daran wastchak: All right. But when you're raising and lowering thermostats, we're impacting the ability of that home to stay or business to stay warm or cool. Right. And so the envelope and by the way, this is, my old house, I have block construction. It's masonry, and I have zero insulation in my walls. All right. That's a, little research I was doing on my own house, and I cut the drywall out just to confirm what I already knew.

00:54:54:19 - 00:55:13:13
Daran wastchak: I had no insulation in my walls. So my walls are basically stone. That's it. I have no insulation. And so in the middle of the summertime, I get a fair amount of heat that moves through my uninsulated walls into my building. The block is a good thermal, thermal sink. Right. And thermal mass. I get benefits out of that.

00:55:13:13 - 00:55:37:22
Daran wastchak: That's why block homes are not the worst possible solution there. But nonetheless, I get a fair amount of heat flowing through my walls. Okay. And then my air conditioning system needs to take that heat and throw it outside. That's what air conditioning does. It takes the heat inside and throws it outside. Keeping keeping my house cool. Now, if I were to, insulate my house, okay, for example, what if I took.

00:55:37:22 - 00:56:02:11
Daran wastchak: Which is common in old homes that are masonry in at least Phoenix? We'll wrap our buildings in foam. Right. And then we'll put stucco over the top of that. If I wrap my building in foam. Well, now I've reduced the amount of heat gain coming into my house. All right, now imagine what that's going to do for me when I participate in a program where pre cooling is going on.

00:56:02:13 - 00:56:24:20
Daran wastchak: So what happens? And I do this on my home, my thermostat, my program, a thermostat will turn down to 75 degrees from 77. I keep it at 77. I'll turn it down to 70. I'll turn it down to 75 degrees and my house will pre cool down to 75 degrees. Up right up until on peak right up to 4:00.

00:56:24:22 - 00:56:47:18
Daran wastchak: And then I will my house will cruise. So it's cruising now. It's going to go up to I set it up to 79 degrees okay. I said up to 79. So now I've got this four degree increase that I can do. And my house will maintain at that temperature okay. And it increases over time. Well there are some super energy efficient houses being built.

00:56:47:20 - 00:57:06:11
Daran wastchak: Which have been built over the last several years. Most Energy Star homes, those are really well insulated. So am I going to have any concern now? My house is just fine. I got no insulation in the walls. What if I insulated my house wood right across that that set up in my thermostat. I wouldn't even blink.

00:57:06:11 - 00:57:25:07
Daran wastchak: I wouldn't even know. And most homes that are really well built, energy efficient, they're going to be just fine. The customer, importantly, is not going to be complaining. They're not going to be overriding. I don't want to participate. They'll probably go, all right, let's see how this goes when they first do it. And you turn my thermostat I don't even know it okay.

00:57:25:12 - 00:57:44:12
Daran wastchak: Sometimes I've only once if I had to adjust my thermostat, I think it was on a really, really hot day. Well, my house also has no insulation in the walls, but again a really good house. They're not even going to blink flinch. Now take this into the winter environment again. A really well-insulated house is going to be all because it's energy efficient.

00:57:44:13 - 00:58:10:19
Daran wastchak: It's going to be able to ride that out much better. What about putting ducks inside conditioned space? Another important energy efficiency opportunity. That I have a whole class about on getting ducks in conditioned space. And so if we were to cathedrals, our insulation at the roof deck, and then we had all this happy duct work in the summertime when, when the air conditioner did come on during the, on peak because it will run my runs.

00:58:10:24 - 00:58:32:20
Daran wastchak: But if all my ducks were inside conditioned space, well, then the air that's being run through those ducks would not be in a hot attic picking up heat, and that means it would be delivered cooler in my house, would right across that that that thermostat set point much, much more efficiently. See? And then connected devices, those ultimately save energy because they can participate.

00:58:32:22 - 00:58:56:25
Daran wastchak: Now we'll talk about the energy efficient devices like programable thermostats, high efficiency air source heat pumps, K heat pump water heaters, all of these things, are things that you, in the energy efficiency world might be just used to because they save energy. But when they're smart and they are connected to the internet now, they can participate in the virtual power plants.

00:58:56:28 - 00:59:29:12
Daran wastchak: But if they're not smart, then they're not able to be enrolled in these virtual power plant programs. And that's what is important is that we include these items in there. Now let's look at these programs that are fairly popular, like next gen from the EPA Energy Star program. And let's look at what they're doing. First of all, the key features are high efficient construction, connected multi-stage energy star certified, heat pumps, Energy Star certified connected heat pump water heaters.

00:59:29:12 - 00:59:50:01
Daran wastchak: These are requirements of the program, but connected is the key. Electric cooktop and oven, electric vehicle charging. And those also are, going to be things that can be enrolled in a virtual power plan. Notice that the next gen program, you guys might be wondering, why do they keep wanting things to be connected, right? I mean, what's the point of that?

00:59:50:01 - 01:00:09:22
Daran wastchak: Some of you guys probably are very clear on that, but some of us may have been scratching our head. Why are they doing that? That's so they can be a part of the virtual power plant. What about the code? The IC 2024 has the energy efficiency packages. The 21 code had five of them in there. Okay. Five packages in the.

01:00:09:28 - 01:00:29:21
Daran wastchak: This is again the packages that are required for the, prescriptive pass compliance. And so five were in the 2021 code, but they added a number of other packages, a lot more in the 24 code. Again, I talk about all of this in my My codes class. So if you want to dive deeper into this that's an opportunity for you.

01:00:29:26 - 01:00:54:16
Daran wastchak: But I'm I'm paying attention to this package that they tucked in to the 24 code called Demand Response. And this is something that you can do as a compliance option. And it's a wired or wireless bi directional communication thermostat that allows voluntary participation in a utility provided to man response program. So the codes recognize this, the importance of this.

01:00:54:23 - 01:01:17:12
Daran wastchak: And by the way, thermostats and being able to control heating and cooling equipment is absolutely one of the easiest ways to do the distributed energy resource and management. This is one of those, very easy ways to do this. Okay. And so putting it into the code as, hey, if you put in a smart thermostat and you're going to get credit for that in the code as one of the packages.

01:01:17:16 - 01:01:39:14
Daran wastchak: So the codes are including it. What about benefits, of the distributed energy resources and virtual power plants for builders? First of all, if you were if you were building a home that's got the things that we've talked about for distribute energy resources, that's going to be something that you should talk about as part of increasing your brand value.

01:01:39:16 - 01:02:06:13
Daran wastchak: You're going to be staying ahead of the codes because the codes are right now making some of this stuff voluntary. Eventually it's going to be something that's required. As we march forward with greater and greater, efficiency built into the energy codes. So through 2024, you know, if you already had a, a smart thermostat as part of your offering as a builder, well, heck, you can check that box office meeting the that piece of the code without even batting a bat and an eye.

01:02:06:13 - 01:02:30:24
Daran wastchak: There. That one's easy, more valuable product. Your home is going to be more valuable with all these distributed energy resources, right? Just because they're all great products, you know, having the electric vehicle charging infrastructure, you're not going to be providing the electric vehicle, obviously, but all the other things to be included or at least be capable. If you've got PV ready, then that's obviously going to make your home more valuable.

01:02:30:29 - 01:02:53:17
Daran wastchak: In fact, I think it's really key by future proofing your house, if the direction we're heading is virtual power plants, if the direction we're heading is, more and more and more homes having, their own generation through PV, then any distributed energy resource that you are putting into your house is future proofing your house for the future EV ready?

01:02:53:17 - 01:03:12:01
Daran wastchak: I mean, we know that EVs have taken a hit last year, although we had a record last year as people rushed to take advantage of the tax credit before it went away. There's going to be a dip this year in EV, you know, purchases and sales. There's going to be a hit. But again, the horse has left the barn.

01:03:12:04 - 01:03:33:08
Daran wastchak: Electric vehicles are here to stay. We just may not see the the the inclines as much as we've seen in the future, but that's where we're going into the future. So for you to build a home that doesn't at least have an outlet so somebody can put a charger in there, I mean, come on, it's so cheap for it to be as part of that initial home being bought compared to, you know, it costs me to put my charger in my house.

01:03:33:08 - 01:03:50:23
Daran wastchak: I had to have an electrician, I had to rewire everything and get the outlet over there. Then put the charger on is over $2,000 to do that. And so for you to put a plug that I could have, just plug my vehicle in with a charger that comes with my car, you know, it's not as cool as a wall charger, which eventually I can do, but I don't have to have it.

01:03:50:23 - 01:04:11:03
Daran wastchak: I can still charge at home. All you gave me was a 220 outlet, right? That's all I needed. And so that's future proofing homes. This is a cool thing. Virtual upgrades pushed out through the internet. I have, a Tesla vehicle, and my Tesla vehicle had a recall. Not good. Right? You get that notice in the mail.

01:04:11:04 - 01:04:33:25
Daran wastchak: Your your car has a recall notice something needs to be fixed okay. And so they say, you know, in the notice you got to go down to the dealership. You got to do all this stuff. Well for my vehicle I got the notice in the mail. It was my notification. And they said, by the way, tomorrow night we're going to push out that upgrade and fixed your car while you're sleeping in the morning when you wake up, it will all be done for you.

01:04:33:27 - 01:05:01:29
Daran wastchak: Oh, like, whoa. So that's the beauty. My car and Tesla for example. They've continued to get more and more mileage out of their vehicles, all because of the algorithms and and how they will integrate and and do the braking and the and the charging and all of those things. That's all just computers. And so I drive basically, a battery, I drive, an electric motor, a steering wheel and four tires.

01:05:01:29 - 01:05:24:17
Daran wastchak: That's what I drive. Okay. That's it. There's not much more complication there. Now, I do drive a a computer, so there is vulnerabilities there. I get that, but everything is so good so far. And my upgrade for my recall notice was a push out. That means that there's an opportunity for all these distributed energy resources to likewise be upgraded.

01:05:24:19 - 01:05:44:14
Daran wastchak: If you could push out an upgrade to a water heater so it's even more efficient, or, to a battery, or to anything that is attached that's just more powerful and upgrades as they go forward. So, there is potential for builders, by the way, that there could be an opportunity for the utilities to partner with you.

01:05:44:20 - 01:06:14:03
Daran wastchak: This is just talk, okay? No, utilities are promising anything, but there is an opportunity for you to actually enroll your home buyers in the virtual power plants. And the programs that the utilities are running. If you do that, there's an ongoing revenue opportunity that you could tap into. Is builder just saying it's out there? Not that I've seen anybody do that just yet, but as a builder, there's an opportunity for you to enroll your home buyer in the program and maybe create some type of a profit center.

01:06:14:06 - 01:06:35:10
Daran wastchak: Now. Incentives for the VP participants. I'm just going to give you one example. There are lots and lots of examples. And I'm going to only give you one APS, which is again my electric utility. I participate in their Storage Rewards battery virtual power plant program. So that just started this summer right. It just started this summer. It's bring your own device.

01:06:35:10 - 01:06:55:17
Daran wastchak: So I had my system installed and then I waited and waited and waited. And then this summer, at the end of the summer, they finally said, it's launched. Our virtual power plant is ready to roll. Would you like to sign up? And I was like, I'm in. So I signed up. It's $110 per average KW distributed, for the year.

01:06:55:17 - 01:07:20:15
Daran wastchak: So they'll take all of the events where your battery has put energy into the grid, and they will take the amount of energy you put into the grid during that event. And they will average your input to the grid across all the events for the year from May to October. They will average what you put into the grid during all those events, and then they will pay you $110 per average KW.

01:07:20:15 - 01:07:42:14
Daran wastchak: Okay. They also have their Smart Charge program, which I also am enrolled in. Okay. So this is basically just like the power shift program that that I told you about California. It's the same thing if you and by the way, if you're in Phoenix, SP and APS both have smart charge programs, Tucson Electric Power. They also have a Smart charge program.

01:07:42:16 - 01:08:07:19
Daran wastchak: But these programs basically pay an enrollment fee. I get five bucks per month, and then when I'm plugged in, they will take my, they will they will be able to charge or not charge my my electric vehicle. They're not taking power out of my vehicle. They're just moving when I charge. So maybe I will tell you in the summertime, when I start charging, I have my, my app running, so it will start at 10 p.m., remember?

01:08:07:21 - 01:08:24:28
Daran wastchak: What it will do is my car is supposed to start charging at ten. I've noticed that it didn't start charging until, like, one in the morning. Now I got the charger I needed, but they didn't start my car until one in the morning because all the EVs that they don't have enrolled, well, they're all turn it on.

01:08:25:01 - 01:08:48:20
Daran wastchak: All the ones that they do have enrolled is an opportunity to push those out a little so that their peak is shaved off. Just like the example from California. That's what they're doing with the Smart Charge program. Now, I'm going to tell you this in my PV, case study class, and I'm going to tell you about in a minute, I'm going to tell you how these two programs can also fight with each other.

01:08:48:26 - 01:09:09:15
Daran wastchak: So there's some lessons I've learned. One was a bit of an expensive one. Not horribly expensive, but more. More. I cost me a little bit of money, because these two programs, they have to work together. And so you can't be. You got to be kind of on the ball on these things as a homeowner, or else the, programs can compete with each other.

01:09:09:15 - 01:09:27:12
Daran wastchak: And maybe you don't maximize your opportunities. I'm going to save that for the for the, the case study class that I'm going to be doing with Green Builder media, in in May. I'll tell you about that here in a moment. So here's my system that I installed last year in the in the beginning of the summer. It came online in June of last year.

01:09:27:12 - 01:09:51:02
Daran wastchak: Okay. Now I enrolled in the virtual power plant program, and they maxed out at $400. So, that's the max. That they talk about in there. There's $110. So I enrolled in the app. This is basically the same app that you use for your, Tesla vehicle. Right. So it's the Tesla app. So my I have my car in the app and I also have my, my powerwalls.

01:09:51:04 - 01:10:10:24
Daran wastchak: I kind of move fast here. I have a very big array in the back to a 14.7 kW array. Plenty of energy. But there's a whole reason. I'll explain why I did that in the other class. And then here's my, my electric panel upgrade. And then I have two powerwalls that are operating for my part of my system.

01:10:10:28 - 01:10:31:23
Daran wastchak: Again, I'll dive into more detail in the other class on that one. I very, very good. So, I got this notice on my app that, hey, virtual power plant, do you want to enroll? I'm like, yeah, I was waiting for it to come. So then I got a notice once I was enrolled that said, hey, there's going to be an event that's starting at 7 p.m. at the end of on peak okay.

01:10:31:24 - 01:10:50:10
Daran wastchak: At 7 p.m., we're going to be, running the virtual power plant, tonight. And you notice that I could opt out. That's important. I remember I told you that. Well, I don't want to opt out and see how this all worked, and it. By the way, it worked just fine, but you could opt out. And that's the other thing is, keep that in mind.

01:10:50:17 - 01:11:12:23
Daran wastchak: So here's how my my thing one, I even got a little little a little animation going here for you guys. So here was my here was my virtual power plant. My battery's doing something that it had never done before, which was pushing energy out to the grid. It normally will feed the house. And that's all my my batteries normally do.

01:11:12:25 - 01:11:30:11
Daran wastchak: But on a virtual power plant event, it was pushing energy out into the grid and you could see that I was putting 8.7 kW out to the grid at that time. And so this is what happened. This is again, I'm geeking out a little. So hang in there with me, folks. This is what happened in the in the app.

01:11:30:11 - 01:11:50:04
Daran wastchak: I can watch what's happening. This is watching my battery. So my battery was fully charged. And then what happened at 7 p.m. is I started feeding energy out to the grid. Okay. And look what they did. They they said we're going to run from 7 to 9. That's what they said. My battery is set so it will go no less than 20%.

01:11:50:04 - 01:12:13:09
Daran wastchak: So it will no not go any less than 20%. So I always have a reserve for emergency purposes. And by the way, you can usually I can with my Powerwall. I can set whatever I want that to be. I set it to 20%. So the apps during this event, what they did is they basically took all of my battery or 80% I had, and they put it all out into the grid across that two hours.

01:12:13:09 - 01:12:39:27
Daran wastchak: So they maximized my battery, distribution out to the grid, no problem. And by the way, this is not never anything I see. My utility, my, solar panels will feed the grid. That's yellow. But I've never had my grid being fed by my battery, except this one virtual power plant event where they were taking, taking stuff from my battery and putting it out into the grid.

01:12:40:00 - 01:13:01:24
Daran wastchak: Okay. And so you could see how much that day did I give in to the grid? I put out to the grid for my PV system. 34 kW. I fed 15 kW into the grid at nighttime. During this event, my home did 9.9 kW. Is basically was the average that was done. This is what it said I contributed.

01:13:01:29 - 01:13:28:23
Daran wastchak: There were 390 homes as of this event, back in October. And 2.6 megawatts of energy was put by those 390 participants, me being one of them, of course. And then, basically I was paid could have been paid $1,089. The max reward is actually $400, as I told you. So, this is me participating in the virtual power plant.

01:13:28:27 - 01:13:51:20
Daran wastchak: Here's the class. I'm doing this with Green Builder on May 20th. I'll be the same, same time. 2:00 eastern time. And we're going to be talking about the my entire installation, the case study. I also I'm going to be comparing this to the installation of my brother system. My brother had his system installed as well at the same time as mine.

01:13:51:22 - 01:14:11:17
Daran wastchak: Actually faster than mine. And I can explain all that. But he did. A traditional rooftop mine, as you saw, was ground mounted. Very rare. But I'll walk you through from cradle to grave, from contract. All from inspection to contract to fire up an operation, okay, process for contract. And finally got all that system operation and performance.

01:14:11:22 - 01:14:30:21
Daran wastchak: I'm going to talk about that little battle I had between my my EV charging and my virtual power plant, distribute energy resource stuff. I'll explain that. And my experience of participating in those programs. So would love to have you guys join me for that class. That one will be on May 20th. I'm very excited to share that with everybody.

01:14:30:23 - 01:14:49:06
Daran wastchak: It's the next level of conversation around all of the things that we've talked about today. So we have covered a lot. Mike, I didn't quite hit my mark. I was pretty close there. And I apologize to everybody for going a little long. I even cut some content out to try and fit it in. I just get too excited, I guess, about all this stuff.

01:14:49:09 - 01:15:13:20
Daran wastchak: But we've covered a lot today, starting with where does this come from? To managing the curve, understanding the demand response approaches that are taken by the utility companies. We talked about the of more cost effective nature of VPP. We talked about the energy efficiency role in virtual power plants, distributed energy resource programs, how they're integrated into programs like next gen and into the codes.

01:15:13:26 - 01:15:37:17
Daran wastchak: We talked about the incentives for builders as well as the incentives for homeowners. And so I did mention and I wanted to, at least give you guys a plug for my a high performance home masterclass session that starting next week, these are all the classes that make up my core program, that talk about building science and, and on vented attics in the codes as well as the energy programs and products.

01:15:37:23 - 01:16:00:21
Daran wastchak: These are all part of my regular offering that I do throughout the year. And anybody that signs up for this, if you can't make all the dates, you can, it's no additional cost. You get to go to the additional, sessions to make up any classes that you missed. My goal is to get you through all six classes and also to get you, high performance math certification that comes along with the six classes.

01:16:00:26 - 01:16:23:25
Daran wastchak: And, again, I've got a lot of other classes that I teach and make available at, Learning Edge. If you go to my website, Learning Edge llc.com or with your camera real quick, hit the QR code that'll take you right to my website where all these classes are. The complimentary no cost for any of these classes for you to, take and enjoy those classes and learn.

01:16:23:27 - 01:16:43:04
Daran wastchak: I want to thank, green Builder media for hosting me today and also for Silver Project for their sponsorship for me to speak today. Now is the time for you guys before we take questions. And this is the last thing I'm doing is get out your phones, shoot the QR code. And you will be able to take the feedback survey, which is simple.

01:16:43:04 - 01:17:05:04
Daran wastchak: All you got to do is give me AA1 through ten. That's it. If you don't mind, you could, you don't have to, but give me a little positive. Would you like about today's class? And then if I could do something better, maybe make it shorter. Whatever. Please provide that feedback as well. When you're all done, you will be able to, download a copy of all the slides that you saw today.

01:17:05:04 - 01:17:21:10
Daran wastchak: And Mary, should have, I believe, put into the chat the, the, the, link where you guys can click and go do the feedback survey while Mike and I address any questions that come in. So, Mike, I'm done. Thanks for your patience. While I muscled my way through all that.

01:17:21:12 - 01:17:47:24
Mike Collignon: No, no problem at all. We do have some questions from the audience. I had a couple myself, so we'll get through those. And for those who haven't submitted questions yet, please do so via the, Q&A. Function of zoom. So our first question comes from Rosalie. She wanted to know your opinion on the MIT solution for energy storage, battery stores in concrete pads.

01:17:47:26 - 01:17:56:14
Mike Collignon: And I don't know if you're familiar with this or not. She goes on to explain what they are. So I'll first ask if you're familiar with what these are.

01:17:56:16 - 01:18:29:07
Daran wastchak: I'm not, but I am familiar that they're I am aware. Let's get put. Better put it that way. I am aware that there are a lot of storage opportunities. For example, solar thermal plants, which happens to be a part of one, they take, molten, salt solution and they warm it up, and then they put it into an underground tank so that they can use that molten solution at, at nighttime to generate, energy when the sun goes down on their, in that facility.

01:18:29:10 - 01:18:50:15
Daran wastchak: And there are lots of ones. There's even ones I have seen, write ups, Mike, about, underground caverns where they're where they're doing thermal storage is is that way. So I haven't heard of the specific one that she's referring to, but I'm sure it's along those lines, Mike, when it comes to that. So I don't know, Mike, if you wanted to weigh in on any of that, you might be more familiar than me.

01:18:50:17 - 01:19:18:09
Mike Collignon: Well, I'll read what she had said in, because it does sound very interesting. Apparently they have developed an electron conducting carbon concrete, which is a multifunctional material that acts as a supercapacitor. It uses cement, water and carbon black to create an conductive nano network. But the cool thing about it, from my perspective, is it allows things like walls, roads and foundations to store and release electricity.

01:19:18:12 - 01:19:45:16
Mike Collignon: Which could power off grid homes. It could charge EVs. And apparently they've made some improvements that increase its capacity tenfold now, tenfold over what I don't know, but I find this interesting because you're living here in the Midwest. Most people here have basements, and those basements are made out of concrete walls. So to be able to have something like this at basically every residence would be quite interesting.

01:19:45:19 - 01:19:49:22
Daran wastchak: Yep. In fact, Mike, who was it that asked that question again?

01:19:49:25 - 01:19:50:24
Mike Collignon: That was from Rosalie.

01:19:50:29 - 01:20:09:24
Daran wastchak: Rosalie. Rosalie, would you send me an email with some information on that? If you don't mind? I always am studying and learning about new things. I had not heard of that. It sounds fascinating. If you don't mind, if you send me an email. Darren at Learning Edge llc.com Darren at learning@jealousy.com. Send me an email if you don't mind.

01:20:09:24 - 01:20:12:09
Daran wastchak: I'd love to get some more information on that.

01:20:12:12 - 01:20:37:04
Mike Collignon: Yeah, yeah. We have another question from, Robert and, Robert. This question is, a little bit from the skeptical side of things. He wants to know what's going to prevent the utility from fraudulently managing, his use to improve their profits. You know, they, they kick in and say, well, you're going to charge your EV during the most costly time.

01:20:37:06 - 01:20:40:06
Mike Collignon: So can you address that, element?

01:20:40:09 - 01:21:13:20
Daran wastchak: Yeah. First of all, the skepticism is 100% understandable, right? There's a ton of big brother that people worry about when we're talking about somebody else managing your thermostat. I mean, or my EV charging. Are you crazy? There's going to be plenty of people that won't touch that with a ten foot pole. Mike, you and I both know that, the truth is, is that in my system, the there are guardrails, first of all, on when things are happening, I am always told in advance of when, an event is happening, so that I know that it's coming.

01:21:13:22 - 01:21:36:02
Daran wastchak: That's part of the trust, because that's what. That's what the question is about. Trust. And so the utilities are trying to do as much as they can to make sure that you there's no hidden surprises, there's no gotchas, there's no any of that. And that all comes from giving you plenty of notice of when it's going to happen, giving you the complete freedom to go and take your thermostat and crank it back down again.

01:21:36:02 - 01:22:00:20
Daran wastchak: If you prefer. Or opt out of the virtual power plant with a button on my phone or any of the EV charging stuff, I will tell you that, these programs are best if you're not doing a set it and forget it, especially if you're doing multiple programs, because I'm actually participating in three programs with APS their thermostat program, their Eve program, and their virtual power program.

01:22:00:22 - 01:22:25:09
Daran wastchak: So I've got to keep my eye on all three of these programs. If you if that's overwhelming to you, then pick the one that gives you the most benefit. It might be, just the thermostat program. Pretty simple. You know, when it's going to happen, they're going to set your thermostat up. The worst you could do is maybe get hot, during the summer or cold in the wintertime, but not if you've built your house, correctly, as I, as I pointed out.

01:22:25:11 - 01:22:41:25
Daran wastchak: But you have control over this, and so could they do that? Well, that would be one thing that I bet plenty of people would jump all over if all of a sudden the utilities were doing any kind of monkey business with this man that hit the front page. What would that do to their participation in the program?

01:22:41:29 - 01:23:08:11
Daran wastchak: Man, I dry it up so fast. It would be a complete loss to them. So they have a huge reason to maintain first get and then maintain trust, that they're going to do this, run this program in a way that is beneficial for everybody. But last thing, Mike, on that comment is to say, well, they are running this program so that they can run energy more efficiently, right?

01:23:08:11 - 01:23:27:18
Daran wastchak: So they are turning the thermostat up in the middle of the day, which makes your house a little warmer in the summer so that they can reduce the peak load that, that so they don't have to build another power plant. That's selfish, I get it. But it ultimately does keep their costs down, which do get passed on to people.

01:23:27:18 - 01:23:49:21
Daran wastchak: And if you're in Arizona, the corporate Arizona Corporation Commission, for example, they pay very close attention to what the utilities are doing. Their rates, their programs like virtual power plant, which, by the way, the OCC loves they love the virtual power plant program that the utilities are all participating in. They really like that. And so they're keeping an eye on that as well.

01:23:49:24 - 01:23:54:03
Daran wastchak: Beyond those words, Mike, I don't know what more I can share.

01:23:54:05 - 01:24:11:01
Mike Collignon: Well, I think you know, you point out a good point, which is it's a two way street that the you're you're trying to get benefits for the ratepayers, but also for the energy provider at the same time. So it's not just one or the other. It's got to be a benefit for all.

01:24:11:08 - 01:24:13:06
Daran wastchak: So win win.

01:24:13:09 - 01:24:41:11
Mike Collignon: So I had a couple questions and obviously, those who have been attending here obviously know Darren does not work for Ford. But I'm going to ask a question going back to the battery manufacturing section, of your presentation, do you, do you think that their, production is going to drop due to the discontinuation of the Ford Lightning and potentially other EVs, or do you see them getting out of the battery business altogether?

01:24:41:14 - 01:25:08:10
Daran wastchak: No. I don't. Ford discontinued the Ford Lightning truck, but if you looked at that, press release and some of the things around it, Ford still has a full line of electric vehicles. It's the truck that wasn't profitable anymore to them. So they still need batteries for their their vehicles. And Mike, I'm not I'm not a crystal ball person, but I spend a whole lot of time in this industry like you do.

01:25:08:14 - 01:25:31:07
Daran wastchak: And I will tell you that my sense is that, a lot of what's going on right now is a pause or, you know, a slow but not a stop. And so if they've invested, which they have because they've already committed all the dollars to build these infrastructure like battery manufacturing, they're going to of course, want to make sure they have buyers for that product.

01:25:31:09 - 01:25:51:02
Daran wastchak: But if it's not for themselves, the utilities are, are continuing to want batteries, need batteries for their purposes. And a lot of these manufacturers, they're not building just batteries, of course, for their vehicles. But it's also these grid sized or grid level battery systems that the utilities are going to need and others are going to need.

01:25:51:02 - 01:26:16:29
Daran wastchak: By the way, data centers, data centers are buying their own and setting up their own battery, facilities, the, the data centers, because one that's pretty cheap for them to do. And they can then take all the cheap energy and charge up the batteries so they can then use that energy during on peak and in. By the way, in California, the utilities are actively working with the data centers to do this.

01:26:16:29 - 01:26:35:22
Daran wastchak: They're helping them. They're consulting with them. How can you put a battery? We're not going to pay for it. But you know, we can't get you power fast enough. So why don't we help you to build a battery facility, on your property for your data center so that we can win win together. We'll still get you energy, and you can buy it from us cheap.

01:26:35:22 - 01:26:55:04
Daran wastchak: Put it into your own batteries for your own purposes. And the data centers are absolutely jumping on that. So I don't see at all a slowdown in battery manufacturing like, for those reasons, even if the EVs slow down for for a company like Ford, because they're they have plenty of buyers for their batteries in different forms.

01:26:55:07 - 01:27:06:20
Mike Collignon: Okay, and speaking of batteries and California too, Peter, asks the question, if you knew of any bi directional EV chargers that might be available, especially in California?

01:27:06:23 - 01:27:30:15
Daran wastchak: Yeah, I, I have not research that. So I apologize that I can't give you a ready, answer on that one. However, I'm sure that a little bit of research, on Google, our friend is going to, give you an answer of where you can buy bi directional chargers. They're out there. Third party. I honestly don't know if, if, Tesla's is a bi directional.

01:27:30:19 - 01:27:51:16
Daran wastchak: I have a Tesla wall charger. I don't know if it's bi directional. I never really, paid attention to that because it wasn't an option until very recently. But, Tesla is running virtual power plants in California. They have a couple of. Well, they have two versions of a power virtual power plant they're running in California with their Powerwall customers.

01:27:51:22 - 01:28:18:04
Daran wastchak: Now, that's the battery and batteries can, without a bidirectional car charger, do that? I would be very surprised if Tesla's wall charger is not bi directional. Now, as, the need for being able to to use car batteries, especially Tesla car batteries, is an opportunity. So, I don't have a good answer. That's a long answer to say I don't have a good answer, but I think a a search would get somebody, get the answer to that.

01:28:18:06 - 01:28:36:24
Mike Collignon: Well, your your answer did spur a question in my own mind, which is again, speaking to your, experience with the Tesla Powerwall. The the ability for it to be bi directional. Is that a is that a hardware, situation, or is that a software situation?

01:28:36:24 - 01:29:08:18
Daran wastchak: Well, it's both it's both, but it's a hardware especially situation. Yeah. So Tesla Tesla Powerwalls are pretty special because they have the inverters built right into the batteries. So my my solar array does not have inverters on it. Those because all the inverter happens because my my energy comes through my powerwalls. So if I've showed you the picture of my powerwalls, you'd see the power coming in on the right side, and then it goes through the batteries and then it goes to the my panel.

01:29:08:25 - 01:29:33:27
Daran wastchak: And I walk through this in my other class how it thing all set up. But the, the inverters which turn AC or excuse me DC direct current into alternating current that happens inside of the inside of the Tesla powerwalls. So, being able to though and there's additional hardware and the software capabilities, that are all built into the Powerwall that facilitates all that.

01:29:33:27 - 01:30:02:22
Daran wastchak: All of my, my virtual power plant enrollment was through my powerwalls. Okay. That was through the power walls. My Tesla system, is already set up to be a part of a virtual power plant. And apps said, hey, we're ready to roll and roll your system. And they had already worked out the software and the hardware and everything, with Tesla, so that then I could enroll and it would go right in.

01:30:02:22 - 01:30:12:08
Daran wastchak: So it's both, but it's mostly it's going to be that that hardware issue. But the software, of course, has to do its part as well. Mike.

01:30:12:10 - 01:30:38:04
Mike Collignon: Okay. Yeah. You talked about the, the software, you know, pushing out the software in that earlier. So I just didn't know. Final call for questions from our audience. I have one last one myself. You had that, fun slide about vampire power, and, I was just I was want to ask the question. There's a sneaky vampire power load in homes that wasn't listed on there.

01:30:38:07 - 01:30:50:19
Mike Collignon: And so I'm curious if, you know, because I don't know, I'm curious if you know, how much power does the garage door opener pull?

01:30:50:22 - 01:31:18:21
Daran wastchak: Great question. The garage door opener is a, an appliance waiting for a signal, so I, I really couldn't tell you. Those are such small dribbles that I wouldn't even be able to tell you as it is now, with my with my, Tesla app running the Tesla, system with the Powerwall in this port, the solar panels, I really have a very good idea of what my power consumption is at any moment.

01:31:18:21 - 01:31:37:17
Daran wastchak: I can open my app and I can see what my power consumption is. So I've done things, Mike, like turn on my pool pump to see what happens to my power consumption. And I've I've started the charging in my vehicle so I can I can again, I'm a geek about this stuff. Right. So I can see well how much power is my my pool pump drying?

01:31:37:17 - 01:32:06:13
Daran wastchak: How much power does my oven run? And it's so cool because I can again watch it, turn it on and then just see what happens and it will tell me what my power dry is. I don't have that minutia of, of of window into things like I doubt Mike, if I turn my buy power, my, my, garage door opener on and off, which I don't have one, but if I turned it on, I doubt I would be able to see that fine little dribble going on there.

01:32:06:13 - 01:32:15:07
Daran wastchak: So, I'm sorry, I don't have any answer for you on that one, but, it would be. It would be interesting to, to know. And maybe that one needs to be added into that list.

01:32:15:09 - 01:32:17:27
Mike Collignon: I was just testing your geekiness, that's all.

01:32:17:29 - 01:32:25:04
Daran wastchak: I don't geek out. Maybe that hard. So I would answer that, man, I put me in a whole nother league of geeky stuff, that's for sure.

01:32:25:10 - 01:32:47:23
Mike Collignon: Well, I think, you know, in your defense, that's something that you're just not going to, it would be very difficult to to manage that power. Yes. It's a small drip, like you said, but it's also hard to manage. It's easy if you say, okay, and we do this in our own home, we put our televisions on surge strips and and just kill the power to the whole thing.

01:32:47:25 - 01:32:51:24
Mike Collignon: Right? Most of the time, because we don't watch TV very much. That's easy.

01:32:51:27 - 01:32:52:15
Daran wastchak: That's right.

01:32:52:17 - 01:32:54:29
Mike Collignon: Garage door opener. That's a pain in the butt.

01:32:55:01 - 01:33:16:17
Daran wastchak: And the hard wired stuff is really that that you really can't do anything about the hard wired. Although that, that that electric panel that I showed you, with all the, each circuit is being monitored, and that's an expensive panel, by the way. That panel is, is not inexpensive. But that panel, you can turn circuits on and off.

01:33:16:24 - 01:33:36:12
Daran wastchak: Off with your phone. That's some serious control. To be able to turn with your phone, turn all the circuits off, that you could do it. I don't know that the savings benefit from that kind of a thing. Mike would ever pay itself back. I don't know that it would ever pay itself back. But you you could control down to that level.

01:33:36:12 - 01:33:45:29
Daran wastchak: You could. But I like the idea of a power strip on everything in the in the living room. That's that's that's on your your AV system. That's simple. We can all do that one.

01:33:46:01 - 01:33:49:00
Mike Collignon: Yeah. Yeah, that's low tech.

01:33:49:02 - 01:33:50:12
Daran wastchak: Low tech.

01:33:50:14 - 01:34:11:26
Mike Collignon: Well, I don't see any other question. So I want to thank you, Darren, for spending your time with us today. Very much appreciate it. Thank you also to our audience and to, not just for answering asking questions, but for being here with us. We really do appreciate it. Thank you also to Powershift by and the energy for their generous sponsorship.

01:34:11:28 - 01:34:35:06
Mike Collignon: Our next webinar is going to take place two weeks from today, this January 28th, 2 p.m. eastern time. We'll be discussing how to sell healthier homes. We're going to have Matt Power, Todd Usher, and Russell Pope with us for that. For more information and to register, please go to Green Builder Medium.com. Thanks again, everyone for joining us today and I hope to see you in two weeks.

01:34:35:06 - 01:34:38:28
Mike Collignon: Until then, stay safe, stay healthy and take care everyone. So long.