Transcript 0:00 [on-hold music] Talk to me. Information, news and entertainment on demand. WUSradio.com. 0:11 [on-hold music] Welcome to The Peggy Smedley Show, the voice of IoT in our connected world, with your host, Peggy Smedley. All right, listeners. Welcome back to The Peggy Smedley Show. I'm your host, Peggy Smedley. 0:27 My first guest is a global management executive with more than twenty-five years of experience in finance, technology, and operations manament- management across a variety of industries. 0:39 His initial background started in finance and systems, and he has dedicated his fifteen-plus years in the utility industry to harnessing technology to achieve value through business transformation and grid modernization. 0:54 Please welcome Michael Carlson, President of Digital Grid North America, Siemens. Michael, welcome to the show. Thanks, Peggy. Glad to join you. Hey, we're glad to have you. 1:06 So, you know, Mike, today we're gonna talk about this whole distributed energy and the grid. And I'm, I'm just kinda curious on your thoughts. Where are we headed with all that? 1:17 Well, I think you're gonna see what has been a, a long-running central state grid that operates in the background, uh, from a utility perspective, and some would argue too much from a utility perspective, being transformed into, uh, options that various users, asset owners, and providers are going to bring to the table. 1:39 And with that optionality is gonna come some complexity, and technology is probably the best served to, uh, to bring it into the next generation of solutions. So what do you think is gonna require there? 1:52 You know, are there gonna be some key technology impacts that are gonna change that? What are you looking at? You know what I mean? 1:57 When we talk about this movement, when we talk about utilities and consumers, we seem to have these divergent discussions at times. 2:05 So, um, is there gonna be some key technology that's gonna bring us together that we're all gonna understand and say, "Hey, this is gonna bring us into this next decade," so to speak? 2:17 Yeah, and I, I think the thing that demonstrates it the best is, is an Internet of Things solution. Uh, the technologies to the most extent already exists. 2:27 If you look at devices that are automated, that communicate, and it's really a matter of bringing them together in a system that links the multiple participants. 2:38 Up until now, the utilities had the advantage, and something we've all gotta remember, the utility has controlled the grid in really a one-way flow. 2:47 They build the generation, push it down the line, consumer draws on it by flipping on a device, and that's a very one-way system that the utility has built, you know, over the decades to manage and control. 3:02 Now, by inter-interjecting other sources of u- uh, generation and consumption that the utility may not control, or worse, may not be aware of, you've gotta see an advancement in devices communicating to each other to keep this grid stable, something we've taken for granted in the past because of its one-way nature. 3:24 Well, isn't that part of our biggest weakness right now? The grid is old, and part of that challenge is there's too many things connecting it-- to it, and it wasn't designed to be connected. 3:35 And so now we're retrofitting in some ways and not updating in others the way it needs to be. So we have some challenges here, do we not? Yeah, absolutely. 3:46 I think you've got the physical challenge of a network that was designed as, uh, you know, in layman's terms, one direction to a multi-direction system. 3:57 And then all the components that sit on that system, how do they interact and talk to each other to keep that grid stable? 4:05 And one of the biggest things from a reliability perspective is the stability of the grid and the almost ubiquitous source of power whenever somebody wants it. 4:16 That's gotta be maintained and communicated to by all of the devices on the system. So the biggest advancement in the grid, and I think the technologies over the past decade have enabled that, is the communications. 4:32 Then you're picking up on the automation. Now, the latest frontier to be 4:39 conquered, so to speak, is the analytics and the speed at which that analytics of all these devices, these Internet of Things, needs to take place to maintain that static, uh, megahertz of, of electricity for us. 4:54 By doing that, by, by putting the consumers in, I don't wanna say the driver's seat, but giving them a passenger, putting them in this passenger seat, so to speak, and giving them insight in how to use the information, to have access into the data, so to speak, and being more knowledgeable in usage. 5:14 So we don't have brownouts, we don't have blackouts, we don't... It allows usage and, and everybody's more, i-i have access to the data. We're all better applying that. 5:25 So there's not all these things that are connected that we don't have all these power outages, or we don't have shortages of energy usage in general, water, whatever, whatever power grid we're talking about. 5:35 Is this what we're talking, that by, by giving consumers better insight, we're actually helping the utilities in the end? Yeah. I think at the end of the day, that's a great analogy that as the users can apply 5:50 more automation and expertise in how they use power, that 5:55 optionality that they're willing to interject or, or put into the system is something that then the utility can provide to keep the s- system more stable than it already is today.Let's talk about that. 6:09 Are we talking about something-- We always talk about we're applying the Internet of Things, and everyone says we're getting there, but we've had so many discussions, and people are afraid of how much insight to give a utility company into what's going on in their homes and Big Brother and all this other discussions. 6:26 Are we a few years away? Are we there now? 6:29 What, what are we talking about that the utilities are going to have the insight that they need, consumers are gonna have the insight that they need, and we're all gonna play and work nicely together? 6:39 Wh-where are we when this actually is the utopia of this? I think the utopia is still a bit a ways, uh, from our, uh, experience. 6:50 I think there's-- While we've seen in the last ten, five years, uh, very directly an increase in energy consumption and awareness by the consumer, there's still a great many variables that go into not only the choice of when to use power but how it's distributed. 7:10 The automation and expertise, and if you will, the intelligence that's gotta go along with connecting these devices still need some advancement. 7:19 And moreover, I think the user, uh, I know for myself, looking at my usage of energy, I don't wanna be tied to a device that's constantly telling me what's going on with the energy grid. 7:33 I want to be tied to a device that says, "Based on my preferences, my tolerances, my interests, here's what I'm willing to let the grid do automatically to influence when I consume power." 7:46 That automation and expertise is part of, you know, what I would say the next generation that's gonna embed distributed energy across the board. 7:56 You take a, a big solar, uh, wind, or even storage provider, those automations are starting to come out at the large scale, though it's gonna have to move all the way down, uh, to the individual consumer at a premise or location to reach that utopia that you just described. 8:15 Are we talking about the types of personalized devices in the home, or are you talking about the types of equipment that actually utilities are gonna be able to, um, invest and apply to actually maximize utility service, or are we talking about both? 8:32 Actually, both. Uh, if you think about the types of devices and how they use energy, a refrigerator in anybody's home is a great example. The majority of the power consumption of a refrigerator is in the defrost cycle. 8:46 I don't care when my refrigerator defrosts, but having the utility have the awareness to signal, and it might not be directly to a refrigerator, but signal the environment of, uh, the s- the energy situation on your particular, uh, substation, your feeder, maybe even your transformer, and have that refrigerator respond appropriately based on how much power is available, how much it needs. 9:15 That device then needs to communicate with that grid system that the utility will provide. 9:21 Those two things working in conjunction with each other and the consumer's choice will ultimately create that utopia of a balanced, uh, grid that is both consumer and supplier driven. 9:36 So we're getting there, but, you know, when we, we need to get there. Is the idea right now we have to make consumers aware that we have to get there? 9:45 I mean, and, and to be less and less concerned about it, or is it that we have to get consumers to buy the key products in their homes so that they understand that's where we have to go? Or both? Yeah. 9:56 Well, I think, I think the user, the, the energy consumer continuing to be aware of the situation and what is the tipping point that will create this demand. 10:07 Uh, before the, the recession, before two thousand and eight, we saw an increasing demand of energy that was going to create a tipping point. 10:16 Since then, we've seen energy costs and demand decline, uh, in certain sectors and somewhat remove that urgency of, "I need the next generation of a solution." 10:28 As distributed energy, so you look at solar, uh, and storage as it comes on board, you look at the, um, proliferation of EVs and that roving not only consumption device but storage device, those are gonna be those imp-- um, drivers that are going to help, uh, the user look for what's the more secure, the more reliable, the more economic options in my total, um, spectrum of, of energy consumption, and hence drive us for that next level of, of expectation by the consumer. 11:06 Well, Mike Carlson of Digital Grid North America, Siemens, thank you for being with us. So we appreciate the time and all the great insight. Thanks, Peggy. I appreciate it as well. Have a good day. All right. You too. 11:18 All right, listeners, you know there's always good insight. You know, we learned that we can conserve energy, and we can help the utilities and apply the Internet of Things. I think we're on our way. 11:26 All right, check out our website, learnatiot.com, alwaysconnectedworld.com, or you can check out past archives at thepeggySMEDLEYshow.com, or tweet at me at Peggy_Smedley. Stick around. 11:38 We've got more to come to you right here on The Peggy Smedley Show, The Voice of IoT. With great technology comes great responsibility. We'll be right back right after this commercial break. 11:48 [upbeat music] Education. Industry experts. Back to the basics. 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