Transcript 0:01 Well, first of all, uh, you know, Schneider has for decades been very committed to the cause of reducing CO2, not just in the United States, but at a global basis. 0:13 We're just fundamentally committed to that in order to address climate change. 0:17 And as we developed our solutions, we've said, "Not only can we develop solutions that make homeowners, data centers, and everything more sustainable, we apply those to our own company." 0:31 [rock music] Welcome back to The Peggy Smedley Show, your voice for our connected world, with your host, Peggy Smedley. Hello, listeners, and welcome back to The Peggy Smedley Show. 0:48 I'm your host, Peggy Smedley. My next guest is an experienced business development and marketing director with a demonstrated history of working the electrical and electronic manufacturing industry. 1:00 He is skilled in business planning, sales, market research, business development, and sales management. Please join me in welcoming Brad Wills, Director of Strategic Customers and Programs at Schneider Electric. 1:12 Brad, welcome to the show. Thanks, Peggy. Wow, I, uh, that's overwhelming to hear you [laughs] say all that. Well, when you've got- Thank you... 1:21 when you've got a great background, it's easy to say all those great things. Yeah. So, uh, I'm excited- All right, Peggy... 1:25 to have you on the show today 'cause we've got a lot to talk about, and it's jam-packed, so, uh, we don't have enough time to go through all these things. So we're- we've got, uh, so much in this industry right now. 1:36 That's why I'm excited to, uh, have you. 1:38 You and I have spent so many times talking on the phone about what's driving our homes to be more sustainable, and you and I have talked about the need to get consumers to understand to be more energy efficient, and you know this better than anyone. 1:53 Let's talk about it. Let's, let's tell our listeners all about it. Yeah. Yeah, so, you know, in, in my 28 years here, I think... 2:01 You know, f- first of all, I grew up as an IBM kid, so I was one of those kids that had one of the first computers on the block and everything. 2:07 And when I started working for Schneider, I, I looked at this thing called the electrical distribution system of the home, and I was like, "Why isn't this thing connected to the internet?" Right? 2:18 And so it only took 28 years, but now we're here. [laughs] And, uh, and there's a lot of, you know, a lot of big needs for it. I almost look at it like, you know, we've almost... 2:30 I- this, this market has almost developed the opposite of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? 2:34 So we started at the, at the top with self-actualization and a lot of the entertainment and fun stuff, but the base need, the base operation of the home hasn't really been digitized and connected to the internet, and now it is. 2:48 And I think that that's becoming a realization for folks today because COVID's forced people to start working from home, the age of the grid is ma- i- is less reliable, and now they're realizing, "Gee, you know, I have frequent outages," whether it's because of weather, whether it's because of public safety power outages in California, whatever it is. 3:11 And now it's not just about not being able [laughs] to watch Netflix, I can't work from home, right? And so that resiliency is, is just becoming more and more important for folks. 3:24 And then as a result of that, they're realizing, "Well, gee, all that power I use- that I used to use at the office, and that opportunity cost that I'm now giving up from not being able to set back my HVAC system because I'm home all day, that's adding up on my energy bill." 3:41 Then couple that with rising prices of energy and variable pricing of energy, and people are, are really starting to say, "Hey, I need to manage this better, and I need to understand where I'm really using my energy." 3:53 So it almost seems to me, you, as you describe this self-actualization, it's like the perfect storm because- Mm-hmm... 4:00 we've almost gotta understand it, but yet we don't really know what we, what we don't know, and that's kind of this challenge we have to do because now we've got this evolution of technology and, and consumer needs that you just described, and everyone's saying, "Well, what, what do I need to know?" 4:15 And we all think we know it, but there's so much waste in our homes. There's so much we don't know that we don't have. 4:23 It's like everything's coming at us all at once, and we don't have it in our homes right now, but yet we need it, yet we wanna be better citizens, but we don't even know how to do it yet. Exactly. 4:34 And, you know, uh, information is, is power, right? And, and you know, if you look at how we've evolved from a dumb meter, I get my bill 30 or 45 days later, I see, "Oh, wow, I used a lot of power. 4:49 I have no idea when I used that or what I used it on." 4:53 Now the smart meter comes in, and some utilities are giving homeowners the ability to go in and see that energy usage in real time, but it's still, it's just total energy usage. What do I do with that, right? 5:05 I mean, okay, what's my big users? I don't know. And, you know, [laughs] the funny thing is a lot of people think, "Oh, it's turn off the lights." 5:13 Except it's not really the lights, especially if you're using LEDs, right? It's HVAC systems. It's other things such as that. 5:20 But people, without that real-time understanding at a granular level of what's going on in their home, they really can't make the behavioral changes, um, that they might, that they might desire to make 'cause they don't have the ability to see it or control it. 5:38 So this is at that point, that we are at this crossroads, that we've really gotta start leveraging technology to make our homes more sustainable, but we also have to take control of our energy use. 5:50 So it's, it's, it's- Mm-hmm... it's at that cr- fork in the road, so to speak, that we really have to understand. It's like which way do we go? But really it's both. Right. Right. 6:01 And-And I think, you know, so getting that, getting that electrical distribution system connected, but more importantly being able to see down to whether it's a branch level on the circuit, whether that be a, you know, an oven, a, a, a washing machine, a dryer, or even down to the plug level or switch level, right? 6:24 To be able to see, okay, here's this plug, here's what's plugged into it. I have everything turned off, but I'm still using a lot of power. Why is that, right? All those phantom loads. 6:34 And, and being able to allow a homeowner to pinpoint that and then automate it in such an e- you know, in a UI, in an app that allows them to very simply not only as a one-time action, say, "This is what I wanna do," but to schedule that and automate it so that they can move away from being the facility manager of their home and just live in their home, maintain the comfort and convenience that they want, but at the same time use a lot less energy. 7:03 Are we at that point as homeowners to realize that we can give up or that we should give up some conveniences to actually be better citizens in energy usage once we see it? 7:16 Because that's a thing that we don't have to if we know what we're, what the energy usage that we're wasting or that we can actually be better both. Because we don't know, again, this is how we can see it. 7:28 It's at our fingertips because we didn't know what we didn't know. Yeah. I, I, I think at first there's just so much just waste- [laughs]... that's not even related to convenience, right? 7:38 I mean, for instance, just think about an electric water heater. It sits there and it's heating all day long, and you don't need it all day long, right? 7:48 And so being able to implement some simple technologies that monitor that energy usage and tie into your daily living schedule to automate that electric water heater so it can be turned on and off with very little inconven- and that's just, you know, a traditional tank water heater, right? 8:07 Not, not even mentioning the, the ability to move to a tankless, but just what you could do with just a traditional tank water heater and really save energy and, and incur little to no inconvenience, quite frankly. 8:21 Do we somewhat have misconceptions about what this means because we think it's so all-encompassing and we're afraid to tackle it little at a time, to bite it o- off, bits and pieces of it? 8:33 Because just what you described, let's look at the little things we could do, and each time we learn that we can get better and better, we'll find out just how easy it is to actually monitor and be better global citizens for it. 8:46 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Exactly. I think, you know, uh, a- and, but it, it comes down to, again, being able to... 8:54 In that example I just used with the water heater, people don't know how much power that thing uses if, but if we can start to show them, "Here's how much power that electric water heater is using on a daily basis, and w- with some s- just very simple automation, you can reduce a, a vast majority of that," that's the key, and to make it simple. 9:16 Are homeowners gonna benefit a lot when they realize what their energy consumption is? Do they really recognize the money they're going to save, the efficiency they're g- going to have, the resiliency in their homes? 9:30 You know, I think they're getting there, and I think with some of the solutions we're starting, that we're developing and other solutions we're seeing in the marketplace is giving them that ability to say, "Oh, that is significant," and, "Gee, I really don't need to use that all this time." 9:45 And but it, it, it, to me, it gets down to getting beyond the total energy usage of the house because you, you can't make any insights from that, right? 9:55 So getting down to a more granular level of understanding is what's gonna enable that homeowner to really see what's going on. Is it require new home only that has to do this? 10:04 D- can it be something that's an existing home to start making the transition to, to actually monitor and see what's going on? Not at all. 10:12 I think, you know, w- at, at least with, you know, the sh- the solutions that Schneider is developing, we're, we're developing those with the mentality that they need to be equally easy to install in a new home. 10:27 And the roughly, you know, one point... 1.2, 1.5 million homes that are gonna be built, that's great. Let's go tackle those. 10:34 But you've got, you know, another 100 million homes or more in the United States that need to have this opportunity. 10:41 And so this, you know, solutions we're developing around this are, are things that can be retrofitted just as easily as, as the day they're installed in a new home. 10:51 When you look at this right now as this big picture, this has gotta be something we have to think of just not here in the States. This has gotta be a global initiative. 11:00 We have to look at how we become better energy consumers because we're never going to get better at reducing our emissions if we don't start looking at it at our homes first because that's part of the challenge. 11:15 We have to manage our energy consumption. Would you agree with that? Yeah. Oh, absolutely. 11:20 I think, you know, we often time we think about the challenge of reducing carbon, and we want, we wanna instantly go to heavy industry and smokestacks. That, that's what we think of, right? 11:32 But in actuality, 34% of CO2 is coming from residential homes, over a third, right? 11:41 And so, so i- if we as individuals can start tackling that, there's over a third of the CO2 that individual homeowners can start to address. 11:52 Why did Schneider step up to this right now and say it wants to be a sustainability leader in this, and understanding that we can tackle this at the home first versus industrial-wise- Yeah... 12:04 but really saying we- we've gotta look at how the homeowner can influence what we can do as individuals?Well, first of all, uh, you know, Schneider has for decades been very committed to the cause of reducing CO2, not just in the United States, but at a global basis. 12:21 We're just fundamentally committed to that in order to address climate change. 12:26 And as we developed our solutions, we've said, "Not only can we develop solutions that make homeowners, data centers, and everything more sustainable, we apply those to our own company," and we have aggressive initiatives to get to a net zero footprint for all of Schneider Electric going forward as well. 12:48 But when we look at residential homes, you know, at the end of the day, some of us work in industry, some of us work in other areas, but everyone lives in a home. 12:59 And so by bringing these solutions to that level so that people can see how at the end when you go home, this is how you can affect change, we think that'll carry over into their professional life as well. 13:15 And the most amazing part of this is when we all think that we can affect change, we make a giant difference in this, and I think that's our greatest contribution is because we could do it at our personal lives, we could do it at our professional lives, and now we're seeing by the pandemic that we can affect change much quicker than we ever thought. 13:32 Is that part of it? Because we're seeing it, and we don't even know if the... 13:37 You know, we've seen a pandemic change our lives, v- it disrupt it in a very quick way, and now that means we can disrupt the world in a very positive way if we start making change, all of us, at our homes. 13:48 Is, is, is that true to say? Yeah. Yeah, I think so, and I, I think, you know, your point on COVID is, uh, you know, just look at, look at all the home remodel that's occurring, right? People are now inwardly focused. 14:01 They're looking at their, their living spaces just from a usability standpoint, from an enjoyment standpoint, but inevitably they're gonna... 14:10 More and more people are looking at it from that sustainability, resiliency, and efficiency standpoint as well. 14:17 Well, I have to tell you, these are very interesting times, and I think we all need to look how we can play our part. 14:22 So Brad Wells, Director of Strategic Customer and Programs at Schneider Electric, thank you for your time. What is your URL so our listeners can learn more about what you guys are doing? 14:32 Actually, if you just, uh, go and Google Schneider Electric Connected Home, and it'll take you to our Connected Home landing page, and you can see all the, the new Connected Home solutions for our Grid Plug solutions for the home. 14:46 Thank you again, Brad. I appreciate all your time today. Thank you, Peggy. I really appreciate it. 14:50 All right, listeners, that's all the time we have for today's show, but as always, you can share your thoughts with me on Twitter at, and follow us at Connected World. 14:58 Remember, we're broadcast live every Tuesday at 12:00 PM Central. Check out our website at connectedworld.com or our show website at thepeggysmedleyshow.com. 15:06 This is The Peggy Smedley Show, y- your voice for our connected world. Remember, with great technology comes great responsibility. Have an awesome week. [upbeat music]
