Smart Panels Make Smarter Homes

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Ron Jones: Hi, everybody. I'm Ron Jones, president of Green Gold Media. We're here at the Visuals Las Vegas, a project in conjunction with Beazer Homes. And we're very excited to have our big show here and look around and all of the contributing companies and products and systems. Today, I'm welcoming Stephen Cain, who is director of builder operations for spin.

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Stephen Kane: That's right.

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Ron Jones: Tell us about spin.

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Stephen Kane: Thanks, Ryan. I really appreciate being here with you and with the Beazer team. Yeah, we're really excited. So Spann reinvented the 100 year old electrical panel. We have the old gray box that we've been installing for a really long time, and it's functioned well for safety. But in order for us to hit more energy efficiency goals and have integrations with things like battery and EV charging, we needed something a little smarter.

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Stephen Kane: So we made an internet connected electrical panels interesting.

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Ron Jones: So that's the sort of the heart of the system and everything goes out from there. It is a play into home security as well, in terms of being able to, have power where you need it, when you need it and be able to distribute that.

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Stephen Kane: I would say it plays into resiliency, and it's what we call an energy management system. So with this energy management system, you know, we have a lot of homes that are being built to be all electric ready. Yes. Or all electric standard. No gas appliances per se. And in order to do that, a lot of times our electrical load counts push us into higher service sizes from the utility companies.

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Ron Jones: Here.

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Stephen Kane: We keep your system size for an average builder at 200 amps or lower, saving you lots of money on your per lot bill.

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Ron Jones: Absolutely.

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Stephen Kane: And so with that energy management, what we can do is we can curtail load going to say an EV charger like the span drive and make sure that the home doesn't over exceed its capacity.

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Ron Jones: Well, as you know, we are in an all electric subdivision here and the commitments been made to go, to a very clean product and a clean process. I think this is a big part of it. Now, you mentioned the charger a couple of times. I'd like to look at that with you.

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Stephen Kane: Sure. Yeah. This is called the span drives. And it's a level two EV charger. Delivers up to 48 amps to the car. If the car can handle that. And it integrates just with our span panel. You can install any kind of level two charger with the span panel. You don't have to use ours. But with our span drive, you get dynamic curtailment down in one environments as your home might need power at other places.

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Stephen Kane: With a regular electric car charger like a Tesla or Wallbox or any of the others. It would just be an on or off kind of experience for a home buyer, I see.

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Ron Jones: So, one of the main advantages of going to a modern system like this.

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Stephen Kane: Yeah, absolutely. So one of the key, benefits is that we can just add more load onto this system than you might classically have. That's one of the benefits for a builder is more optionality. Right. So builder can sell more options. Add that spa package or that upgraded kitchen option if the homeowner wants it without increasing the service size to the house and also the home buyer.

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Stephen Kane: Long term, they can add additional load, say they wanted to, you know, additional features outside or, you know, a larger, service related kind of load. They can add those after the purchase as well.

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Ron Jones: Precisely. One of the products that I came across and was able to recruit for this project now is an electric outdoor grill. Yeah. And, so that's sort of new territory for people.

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Stephen Kane: That's probably a big fat double pole breaker.

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Ron Jones: And absolutely. And if you happen to have a hot tub next to that, all of a sudden your load increased quite a bit. So it's sort of a different mindset. You need to be planning ahead and thinking of these things. But you guys have done some of that thinking ahead of time.

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Stephen Kane: We have. And then one of the really key benefits to a home buyer is that, you know, what is being actually consumed at every breaker level. So I don't know about you, but sometimes I'll ask friends or family of mine, how much was your electric bill last month? And they'll say 200, 406 hundred, whatever the number is. And I'll ask them why.

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Stephen Kane: And they're like, well, I don't know. I think my kids leave my lights on all the time. It's almost never the lights. It's usually these larger loads that you don't realize are running. Often this gives you the information to actually change that behavior or schedule them to be running at different times during high time of use events from your utility bills and net.

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Stephen Kane: You can save a lot of money on your, energy bill every month.

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Ron Jones: That's a big advantage, for sure, but there's no compromise in the systems or in the comfort or any of the other elements, because everything has been, really processed through to make sure that we're not having to leave something off the boat.

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Stephen Kane: Exactly. Yeah. We work with the electrical engineering firms and the construction and design firms all the time, just to make sure that they're getting all of the, you know, options and all the systems that they prefer to have for the home to operate. Well, and it fits, you know, seamlessly with our panel.

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Ron Jones: Well, let's explore that a little bit. So, let's say we're in a different market. If we're West Coast, we're California or Southeast or wherever it happens to be, and so there are different sets of criteria. And, and, you've got different code applications, etc.. Yeah. So when you're, you're doing the engineering and working through that engineering, permitting process, in the commissioning and all the things that have to take place.

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Ron Jones: Yes. How do you streamline that for the builder? For the developer?

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Stephen Kane: Yeah. We have lots of, you know, documentation for the engineering firms and for the permit submittal process, application notes that, you know, show all of our listings. You know, we work with third party breakers. We don't actually make a smart breaker. We use off the shelf breakers, which are a benefit to both the electrician and the builder.

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Stephen Kane: Sure. Regular supply agreements that they may have. And through that, and with all of our documentation, we smooth through permitting, you know, with no problems.

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Ron Jones: You don't have to invent the wheel every time you go ahead.

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Stephen Kane: And, a lot of doors were installed in every jurisdiction in the country, in every state in the country. We've been around for over seven years. This thing is no longer, you know, the newest thing on the block. It's now the trusted partner to electrician.

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Ron Jones: I was going to say that reliability has to be a big spoke. Spoken that wheel.

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Stephen Kane: Oh yeah. Yeah I mean we're at the heart of the system right where we are. The place where all of the energy is flowing. Yeah. And so we need to have, you know, a long term perspective of how we build this hardware.

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Ron Jones: If the lights go out, this is where you're coming, you know, all the time. But, in this situation, of course, being completely net zero ready, with you, we've got the preparation in place for solar system, you know, on all of the houses, in fact, the original house next door has a full system on it.

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Ron Jones: Yep. It's the wave of the future. It's a way of the present, for that matter. And I think we're going to continue to see refinement in, the systems to keep streamlining, and the integrating, more technologies as we go along.

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Stephen Kane: Oh, 100%. And that's one of the best things about span is we actually make your battery backup system better. So for those builders that might be familiar with installing a battery backup or battery ready system or even a house with solar on it, usually there's a separate a dedicated load center for just the backup battery loads. Any one of these breakers could either be on backup or not.

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Stephen Kane: The homeowner then has control over what is on a breaker for, battery backup during an outage and say the utility outage is going to last longer than they thought. They can drag and drop with an app. The breakers that they'd like to be powered by their battery and decide, you know, I need to prioritize my refrigerator over, say, my, you know, hallway lights or something like that.

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Stephen Kane: And then they could actually impact how long their battery will last. And also, if you were to hardwire over 6 or 8 loads when you constructed the home, inevitably somebody wishes that back bedroom that wasn't on battery backup was on battery backup. They would normally have to call an electrician to cut drywall and move loads. Any one of these can be on backup simply with the swipe of the finger by the homeowner.

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Ron Jones: That's amazing. What about your remote capabilities?

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Stephen Kane: Yeah, I mean, it works via an app on your phone as a homeowner called the Span Home app. One of the little anecdotes that we've heard from a few people is, you know, you left to go to work and you can't remember if you turned off the oven. You can actually look at the app, see if it is running, and you can remotely turn that off from your phone at the office or left and say, you know, I left my curling iron plugged in to the bathroom, right?

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Stephen Kane: Yeah. Well, I can see if it's there's a load there and I can open that relay from anywhere in the world. So yeah, having remote control and insight into what's happening at your home while you're away is really powerful for today's buyers.

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Ron Jones: So tell me, what is, most exciting for you? Looking ahead for span and for the industry itself, really?

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Stephen Kane: You know, what we're doing is, you know, really getting, really tight in the build community in order to make this an electric, all electric ready, standard and battery ready standard product. We're scaling really quickly with all the homebuilders, all the big production builders and custom and semi home, semi-custom builders as well. In addition to the home builder space, though, we're getting, really active in the utility space.

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Stephen Kane: As you can imagine, our grid isn't necessarily ready for everybody to have 400 and service to their homes. Right. We helps, you know, manage that, need with the utility companies. So a lot of utility companies are coming to us for solutions for their, you know, constrained grid as we start to electrify our cars, our cooking, our Hvac, things like that.

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Ron Jones: Efficiency is that the shortest path to, reliability.

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Stephen Kane: Is a lot easier than building out a larger grid than we need.

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Ron Jones: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And so what about, in terms of, if you could couch this in terms that relate to sustainability, overall sustainability, in terms of the relationship between the built environment and the natural environment, sustainability for families who have the largest investment in their lifetime? Sustainability has got to be important to spare.

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Stephen Kane: Yeah. I mean, to me, there's a lot about sustainability when you just, you know, purchase something that you think is, you know, made in a sustainable way. But I think it's actually how you operate. And live your life every day for ten, 20, 30, 40 years that you're going to live in that home, right? So operating your home in a smarter and more efficient way, integrating it with battery and solar, perhaps using an electric car, you need insight to tie all these things together.

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Stephen Kane: Yeah, this makes your life as a sustainable home occupier home buyer really easy. And so this thing is, I think, the key to making sustainability possible. Easy.

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Ron Jones: Well, you know, I've been in the green building arena for a very long time. And I had a good friend, actually out of Austin, Texas, who, was talking about water harvesting and, and he said, would you become a water harvester? You become a water steward. Right. The same thing is true with energy. Yeah. When you start monitoring and paying attention and participating with what's going on in terms of your energy consumption, what the possibilities are, what the limitations are, you become an energy steward.

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Ron Jones: And that helps everybody.

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Stephen Kane: Absolutely. And you can't improve what you don't measure. And as it is now in our gray box, we don't measure the electrical loads at every breaker. Now we do. And now I can improve how that is operating and make choices to be the steward of that electricity.

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Ron Jones: Even if you're a consumer and you go online to look for, an appliance, it's, a portable appliance of some sorts with all the information that's available to us now, we can compare the wattage or whatever life happened to be and make informed choices on the things that would affect the bottom line.

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Stephen Kane: Absolutely. And as energy prices are increasing, without that insight, like you're going to make a choice without an informed, you know, kind of a set of facts.

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Ron Jones: So yeah, I used to I used to ask, audiences of builders if, if anybody thought their energy bill was going to go down right. And I only had one guy raise the ceiling and I said, okay, let me out. And he said, I got two teenagers leaving for school at the end of the summer, and my energy bill is going down, you know, so I had to give him that.

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Ron Jones: Yeah. But in the meantime, you're right, the cost of energy is going to continue to go up. And so what we need to do is we need to have greater, respect for it and, and a reverence for the whole house picture. You know, the thing is, for too long, the different components were isolated from one another.

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Ron Jones: We didn't see it as a system where everything had to work together. Right. That's changing. And the consumer is much better. More, much more informed. Has better information. Actually, I was sometimes. Well ahead of the bill or in some cases for sure. And it helps to push the, it helps to push the bar up.

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Ron Jones: You know, we refer to this project, we have a tagline, Crossing the Rubicon. And, we selected that because we knew that visa was taking a big, courageous step to do this. And there's no going back. That's the bottom line on the Rubicon. Once you cross, you can go back, right? Hopefully what they will do, and I believe they will, is they will lead other, players in the industry across that river and, and into the future.

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Ron Jones: And I hope that, you will continue to be a big part of it. What's the most exciting thing for you? When you come into a model home or you work with a builder for the first time, is it is that the information you can share with the confidence that you can build in them?

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Stephen Kane: Absolutely. I mean, I've been at this company for a long time, and I've had so many anecdotal stories of homeowners saying how much we've helped them solve their problems. Right. They didn't know that their frigerator was going, you know, maybe the compressor was going up, but by looking at their energy data and their span app and downloading that data, they can realize I need a repairman out here.

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Stephen Kane: So enabling homeowners to have more control and insight and, you know, value within their home. It's just it's just it's just fun.

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Ron Jones: It's power. It's about being proactive instead of reactive. Yeah, but what a gift. Yeah.

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Stephen Kane: And you know, home buyers today, they're expecting, you know, app control on their phone like everything is internet connected. This is the last thing in our home that wasn't. So bringing this insight into somebody's palm of their hand to be able to control how they run their home. It's really powerful.

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Ron Jones: What else would you share with us in closing that you'd like for people to know about stand, or about the future of all of this?

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Stephen Kane: No, I mean, we're going to become the standard within a lot of home communities. And, you know, I think that, you know, we're here from the long term and we're meant to help enable electrification for everyone with a big, huge goal of electrifying America in this panel is what's going to get us there. And so we just love the journey that we're on.

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Stephen Kane: With builders like Beazer and other partners out there. It's happy to be here.

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Ron Jones: Well, congratulations. I know you guys are highly respected. You got a great brand.

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Stephen Kane: I appreciate that.

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Ron Jones: You lead in this part of the industry. And I think that the folks here that made a really wise choice.

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Stephen Kane: Thank you for their time. Appreciate it.

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Ron Jones: Good to see you. And thanks for joining us.