Latest / Energy Empire / How My Retired EV Ended Up Powering Homes in Ukraine

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How My Retired EV Ended Up Powering Homes in Ukraine · Energy Empire

0:00
My daughter, she texted me and she says she says, Papa, what is
0:03
Georgia doing in Ukraine? So I'm like, what are you
0:05
talking about? And she reminds me our old car,
0:08
we named it, we named it Georgia.
0:10
And it turns out she just got a notification a year after my
0:13
cars accident and and presumed death that Georgia is now
0:19
charging in Ukraine. So she sends me the the link and
0:23
I go up, I go on the on the app and there it is in this rural
0:27
town in in western Ukraine near the near the Polish border.
0:36
Hello, my name is Jagger Shah and I'm a clean energy
0:40
entrepreneur. And I'm Jamie Nolan, a clean
0:42
energy communications consultant.
0:44
And this is Energy Empire. Today, I guess we're going to
0:49
try to figure out the whole EV thing.
0:52
Like, it just feels like everyone has been dumping on
0:56
electric vehicles since the new administration came in, right?
1:00
We cancelled the EV tax credits and, you know, like the big auto
1:04
companies are transitioning some of their EV battery
1:07
manufacturing facilities to making grid batteries.
1:10
And so, you know, I feel like there's still a whole bunch of
1:14
momentum behind EVs. And we caught an interesting
1:18
story from my good friend Philippe Dunsky.
1:22
And so it would be really good to hear from him around, you
1:25
know, his thoughts in this area. I feel like there is so much to
1:29
unpack when it comes to EVs and this is our first EV specific
1:33
episode after we we previously spoke to our friend Adam
1:37
Browning about electric freight, which was really cool.
1:41
This guest is more about like traditional EVs.
1:44
He has a really cool and unexpected story around his old
1:49
Tesla and what happened to it after it was totaled.
1:52
I it was really unexpected. So I think that it will be a
1:55
really, really fun for our listeners to think about some
1:59
different, a different future prospect for how we could
2:03
consider second lives for our V EVs after they leave our
2:07
driveways. Yeah, no, I'm a, as you know,
2:10
I've been thinking about this for a long time, so it'll be
2:13
really good to talk to Philippe about his point of view.
2:16
He's the top, you know, consultant in Canada to help
2:19
utilities with change management and figuring out how to get a
2:23
lot of these new technologies really into the hand of
2:25
consumers. And so it'll be good to see his
2:27
point of view. This episode is supported by S2G
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3:31
Philippe, how are you? Very well.
3:33
How are you Jigger? Good.
3:35
Where are you today? I'm in my hometown, Montreal,
3:39
just about an hour north of New York State.
3:41
While you and I have known each other for a long time, I'm
3:44
helping you out on some projects here and there.
3:48
But we called you because you have the craziest story.
3:56
Do you want to go through it with us?
3:57
Yeah, sure, sure. I can tell you about it.
4:00
So. So I posted a story because so,
4:04
so a little a little bit of background, right?
4:07
2016 I decided to, to get an EV, you know, lead by example.
4:13
And the only ones available then were were Tesla Model SI got
4:16
Tesla Model S had it for eight years was great.
4:20
And then last year my, my ex had a freak accident and car was
4:26
totaled. Everyone's fine, car was
4:28
totaled, insurance paid off, everything's good, car is gone.
4:33
I went and got, you know, a new, a new Tesla Model Y this time.
4:38
So, so I've been, I've been driving my, my car for about a
4:41
year. And then over Christmas this
4:44
year, my daughter who's 18, she, she drives my car.
4:48
She texts me and she says, she says, Papa, what is Georgia
4:52
doing in Ukraine? So I'm like, what are you
4:54
talking about? And and she reminds me, our old
4:57
car, We we named it, we named it Georgia.
5:00
And yeah, after the after the Ray Charles.
5:03
Georgia on my mind. OK, OK.
5:04
Lots of Georgia's. So it turns out anyone who has a
5:07
Tesla knows this. If you have an app and on the
5:09
app you can see where the where the car is.
5:11
And it turns out she just got a notification a year after my
5:15
car's accident and, and presumed death, that Georgia is now
5:20
charging in Ukraine. And, and so she sends me the,
5:26
the link and I go up and I go on the on the app.
5:28
And there it is like I see exactly where it is exactly the
5:32
lot that it's in, you know, in this, in this rural town in, in
5:38
western Ukraine near the, near the Polish border.
5:40
It's. Wild.
5:41
So what did you do from there? Did you track her down?
5:45
I I did my best tracker down yeah, and and kind of understand
5:48
what what happened like there's no way of knowing, you know,
5:50
100% certainty, but but it seems not likelihood.
5:53
What happened was that someone realized that all right, that
5:57
like the carcass of the car might be totaled, but there's a
6:00
really valuable battery in there and and they salvage it and
6:04
somehow it made its way over to Ukraine.
6:06
I'm guessing that's, you know, it's wartime and, and this is
6:10
what happens in wartime, right? Suddenly the stuff that you took
6:14
for granted before that you didn't care about, suddenly, you
6:17
know, you're looking for every possible resource and this is a
6:19
resource. So it was salvage and and
6:23
someone managed to take the battery and repurpose it and in
6:28
all likelihood being repurposed for, you know, for electricity,
6:32
for for homes, maybe business. But, you know, something like
6:36
that, which in Ukraine, especially in wartime right now,
6:40
especially as I'm sure you know, you know, Russia is, is bombing
6:45
in particular electricity infrastructure in Ukraine.
6:49
And so it's just constant series of blackouts in a country where,
6:54
yeah, it's a winter country and a third of the population heats
6:57
with electricity. This is, you know, this serious
6:59
stuff. So you know, my old car now is
7:04
is presumably keep the people warm in the winter, keeping the
7:08
lights on as well. So you did a newsletter post on
7:12
this. And I'm just, I'm I'm hoping
7:15
that it's going to be one of those like missed connections or
7:19
like a dog with a chip. Like are the the owners of
7:22
Georgia? Please stand up.
7:23
Like come forward. I have a feeling that the that
7:27
the that the owners in Georgia have more pressing things on
7:32
their mind right now. So I, I say, I said the owners
7:35
in Georgia orders in Ukraine would have more pressing things
7:39
on their mind right now. So I, I haven't managed to
7:41
connect with them yet, but, but I can still see exactly where it
7:45
is. I still, you know, I pick up my
7:47
phone and I can look at it anytime.
7:49
See the current charge state of of of the old batteries at 54%
7:53
right now. Awesome.
7:55
So how often do they charge the battery?
7:59
It seems to be like every, I don't know, maybe every week or
8:02
so, something like that. So have you ever?
8:05
Have you like concocted a story in your mind?
8:08
Right. So you're like, all right, like
8:10
they're charging every week. It goes from 100%, say a charge
8:14
down to like. Or do they actually only only
8:17
charge it to like 80 or 90%? I mean, I, I'm not following it
8:21
like, you know, day by day, hour by hour.
8:23
So I don't, I don't know what they're doing with it, but, but
8:26
I'm just assuming that, you know, it's, it's doing what
8:29
backup battery does best, which is just sit there and do nothing
8:32
until you need it. And then, and once in a while
8:35
you need it. You know, I in Ukraine, you
8:39
know, that there's this constant, constant bombing of,
8:42
of the electricity infrastructure.
8:44
And you know, it's, it turns out that when they bomb, you know,
8:48
kind of local transformer stations, on average takes
8:52
Ukraine something like 2 days to, to fix it all and get, get
8:57
the power back up. And you know, it's, it's an
8:59
average of really widespread, right, but something like 2 days
9:02
on average. So it's two days without heat
9:04
for the third of the country that heats with electricity in
9:08
the dead of winter. This stuff like I did, you know,
9:11
quick back the envelope calculations and you know, it's,
9:14
it's probably providing enough heat easily for a home for two
9:19
days, depending on how they heat, if they heat with heat
9:22
pumps, you know, it could be, it could be 6 to 8 days for for
9:26
that same home. So you know, this'll, this'll
9:29
get them through a lot of those bombardments, terror tactics.
9:34
Yeah, it's a large battery, right?
9:36
I mean, so this is 90 kilowatt hours would be like 7 power
9:39
walls on somebody's house, right?
9:42
Means most people have like one or two power walls.
9:44
And so it's it's a lot of power. It is, it is indeed.
9:48
And it's a lot of power, it's a lot of value.
9:50
And you know, it would be, it would be serving no purpose.
9:54
So I'm really glad to know that's that's serving still
9:58
alive, kind of resurrected. So Georgia is on your mind.
10:03
Sorry, I punted. Georgia was and and so, you
10:09
know, I'm just curious how you and your daughter think about
10:12
this now, right. I mean, like, you know, folks
10:14
have talked about how you can back up an entire house with a
10:18
car, right? Ford, I think, had that in a
10:20
Super Bowl ad a few years ago for their F-150 Lightning,
10:24
right? Like, I mean, have you thought
10:26
more about this use case and you know, sort of some of those
10:31
details? Yeah, for sure.
10:33
I mean, I mean, like, I'll be honest with you.
10:35
Like I, I would love to say, you know, the story is this happened
10:38
in a light bulb went off. And you know, the truth is, you
10:42
know, I've been working on this, my firm has been working on
10:44
this, you know, for the longest time now, like nearing on 10
10:48
years, we've been working on what we call AV to G vehicle to
10:51
grid or, or vehicle grid integration.
10:54
You know, I have like we have about 70 people in our, in our
10:57
team and I have a, a clean mobility practice area.
11:02
So, you know, that stuff was already on my mind.
11:04
Probably what led me to to, to have an idea of what we might,
11:08
what might have happened to the battery here.
11:10
But yeah, it's it, it's a huge opportunity.
11:13
And you know, like I said before, it's sort of thing that
11:16
maybe a wartime country is going to, is going to put just that
11:20
extra effort to, to get that value right now.
11:25
And, you know, hopefully we're just a few years behind.
11:29
So, Jigger, when the UK war started, it seemed like kind of
11:32
there was the story in Washington was like LNGLNG,
11:38
that's going to be what's going to save us.
11:39
And I know that when we were at LPO, you called Bill McKibben
11:45
and you asked him to personally get an article written pushing
11:50
the white, the White House towards LNG and heat pumps.
11:54
What was the resistance like inside the White House?
11:59
Well, you know, like, I mean, it's one of those things where
12:03
as Philippe was suggesting, we've been working on these
12:05
solutions for 15 years, right? Like, it's not like this is new
12:09
stuff, whether it's insulation in homes or whether it's heat
12:12
pumps or whether it's, you know, like energy efficient
12:15
appliances, right? And so when, when the war in
12:20
Ukraine broke out, everyone at the National Security Council
12:24
was only talking about LNG. And I was like, what the hell?
12:27
Like, what about all these other solutions that we've been
12:30
working on? Can't we scale this stuff up?
12:33
And they were like, oh, Jigger, you're so cute.
12:35
Like that. Like is such a great idea, but
12:38
like, we're never going to work on it.
12:40
And so it was pretty obvious that like going through normal
12:43
channels wasn't going to work. And so I was like, they need to
12:47
like, hear this from a news publication and like, they need
12:51
to hear outside pressure. So I called up Bill, who I've
12:54
known for years and said, hey, you know, like this is what's
12:57
happening, Like, you know, what do you want to do about it?
13:01
And he's like, well, let's write an article about how much, how
13:03
big this could become. And I remember I was taking my
13:06
son skiing at Whitetail with all the other dads and 'cause he was
13:13
like, I forgot like 5 and, and he hates skiing.
13:18
So it was like a hot mess. And and so try to like, you
13:23
know, juggle with with Bill and figure that out.
13:26
And then the article came out and it was fascinating because
13:32
our good friend Michael Librecht came out swinging and was like,
13:36
like, Europe doesn't need your stinking heat pumps from the
13:39
United States. We can make our own heat pumps.
13:41
We don't need to have them exported to Europe.
13:45
And but lo and behold. Europe.
13:49
Took it up in a big way. That mean they installed so many
13:51
heat pumps that they actually did need to import heat pumps
13:54
from the United States because they didn't have enough
13:56
production domestically. And they did, you know, end up
14:00
reducing total natural gas consumption from Russia by like
14:04
45 to 50% just through energy efficiency and heat pumps.
14:08
And you know, like, obviously people turn down their
14:11
thermostat in the winter to like 66 instead of keeping it at 70.
14:15
And some of that as well. So some of that was behavioral,
14:18
but it was super important in in the response to losing Russian
14:23
gas. I mean, part of what's on my
14:25
mind is it does seem like Europe was this, you know, Canary in
14:30
the coal mine for all of us, right?
14:32
Like they had to think about this in a way that frankly was
14:35
very sophisticated. They had 27, they have 27 member
14:39
countries which speak different languages.
14:42
They had to convince them all that this was actually a plan
14:46
that they should pursue, right? Not not just importing USLNG,
14:50
but also demand response and electrification.
14:53
And some of these other things. I'm trying to understand like
14:57
how you think about it with your experience base, right?
15:00
Because now we're sitting in the, you know, like Iran crisis,
15:04
right, Straits of Hormuz crisis. And I'm just trying to think of
15:08
like, what the lessons are of Europe's efforts, like on the
15:13
Ukraine crisis and like, you know, like what, where, you
15:17
know, do those lessons like go into your doubling of your
15:22
demand, you know, reduction goals in, you know, Ontario?
15:27
Like it does to degree. I'll tell you the real lesson
15:30
that comes to my mind is funny because I remember again, when I
15:32
started in this, it was like, let's say 199091, something like
15:36
that. And the previous oil crises were
15:40
not that far behind us, right? And so when I started out, you
15:44
know, part of the conversation was energy security, and it was
15:48
valuing the energy Security benefits that come from energy
15:53
efficiency, from demand management.
15:55
This is, you know, 35 years ago, right?
15:57
And I remember I was new to it and think to myself, yeah,
16:00
energy security. I don't know.
16:01
It doesn't feel like I'm not really seeing the tangible
16:04
benefit. OK, now I am right.
16:07
So, so now we have an opportunity where this this this
16:10
kind of awakening of one of the streams of benefits that come
16:14
from, you know, better demand management and energy
16:17
efficiency, which is national security.
16:20
I think that's going to factor back into the conversation in a
16:25
way that it hasn't over the past, you know, two to three
16:28
decades. So that's like that's one aspect
16:30
to it. But but that aside, that's kind
16:33
of the conceptual on the, you know, the economic framework.
16:36
But that aside, I think what Europe has shown us here is just
16:41
a reminder that, yeah, there are all these, you know, $20 bills
16:46
lying on the ground. There are all these
16:48
opportunities that we always somehow convince ourselves are
16:52
not real, they're not tangible. Can't really count on them.
16:57
But actually you can if you, if it matters enough and you
17:01
organize enough to get at them. That that being said, it's a lot
17:05
easier when you're when your prices are actually through the
17:08
roof because because you know, you guys been cut off and, and
17:13
you're in the midst of war. So, you know, the context is a
17:16
lot, a lot different. But but I think this reminder is
17:20
going to help help a lot from a policy perspective to bring this
17:24
back to the fore. So Jigger, you've talked a lot
17:26
about how energy efficiency ended up replacing roughly 55%
17:31
of Europe's Russian gas volume and LNG, it made-up the
17:35
remaining 45%. And that's almost the exact
17:39
inverse of the way that this story has been covered largely
17:42
in mainstream media. So why does that demand Side
17:46
Story keep getting buried? Well, I mean, you know, I'd,
17:51
well, I'd love your opinion since you're the expert here,
17:54
but you know, I just, my sense is that it feels very weak,
17:58
right? LNG feels more masculine.
18:00
It feels like the like the, you know, robust way of solving
18:05
something. You know, Germany signed a
18:07
contract with, with, you know, an American LNG provider, the
18:11
LNG provider, you know, race to, you know, build their LNG export
18:16
terminal in record time. You know, Germany magically
18:20
figured out how to build an LNG import terminal in eight months.
18:23
And look how awesome we are, right?
18:26
And like, I just feel like it's an easier, like, visual than,
18:32
you know, millions of households turning down their thermostat,
18:37
millions of households, you know, hiring someone to do
18:40
insulation in their homes, replacing windows, installing
18:44
heat pumps, doing all of the necessary things to make their
18:48
bills go down, right? To make their energy a smaller
18:52
percentage of their overall household budget.
18:55
I feel like that narrative is constantly couched in sacrifice
19:02
instead of in sort of a robust response to a crisis.
19:05
It's. Funny because because you would
19:07
think that you would think that instead of the sacrifice
19:09
narrative, the efficiency narrative, the product, the
19:12
productivity narrative would, would somehow win.
19:15
But but I, I'm with you on this. There's something that's just,
19:19
it doesn't feel tangible, right? You can't like you can't touch
19:22
it. You can't, you can't cut a
19:24
ribbon, right? Or, you know, politician can't
19:27
cut a ribbon and, and you know, I, I don't say that to, to be
19:31
known politicians, but you know, that they need to make big
19:34
announcements. And you know, you make a big
19:36
announcement around a plant. You don't make her big
19:39
announcement around, you know, 10,000 solar panels being
19:44
distributed on, on roofs around a city or province or state.
19:49
So it, it's a lot harder. It's, it's just, it's like
19:52
diffusion versus concentration. The big infrastructure stuff is,
19:57
is concentrated and and the stuff that we're talking about
20:01
here is diffuse and it doesn't play as well for sure.
20:04
That's been the story for as long as I've been in this.
20:07
Set us straight, Jamie, What do you think?
20:09
Well, also when people are turning their thermostats down,
20:12
nobody's making money. You know, I think it has to do
20:15
with capitalism and spending. And so people cutting their
20:19
energy use is just not as sexy in our capitalist economy as
20:24
people buying more natural gas, whether that be, you know,
20:28
American imported LNG or Russian gas out of the pipeline.
20:32
So yeah, I mean I will say energy efficiency is like long
20:37
aligned in our sector. I mean, in a deal we, you know,
20:41
it was the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy,
20:44
but we all know the focus was on the renewable energy part of
20:47
that acronym. So much respect to folks who
20:50
have been like fighting the good fight and trying to raise the
20:53
profile of energy efficiency for a long time.
20:56
I do think that now, you know, as we're talking about ideas
21:00
like grid utilization, it's kind of like efficiency, but we've
21:05
rebranded it. Maybe we just need to try new
21:07
language to talk about some of these things.
21:10
But yeah, I think that energy efficiency was an unsung hero in
21:14
Ukraine's energy story in the face of of of war.
21:20
And I know, I know that the folks over there is still
21:24
dealing with significant long term power outages.
21:28
And a lot of those quote UN quote energy efficiency moments
21:31
are maybe not even chosen by them.
21:34
They're just have no choice but to cut their power use.
21:37
So anyway, our part goes out to them and I hope that the story
21:41
of the sacrifice that they have made in order to cut their
21:45
energy use and reduce their reliance on Russian gases, I
21:48
hope that story gets told. And by the way, like if I can,
21:53
if I can add, I mean, I think that Ukraine is, it's a great
21:56
example of, you know, we don't want that to be the reason,
22:00
right? We don't want to have to, you
22:02
know, have to, you know, put on sweaters and, and cut our usage
22:06
and sacrifice. And that's one of the reasons
22:08
why we want to use heat pumps more and get more efficient
22:13
appliances and insulate our homes and businesses better,
22:17
right? So that we're being more
22:18
productive and, and can actually squeeze more juice out of the,
22:22
the fruit that we have and not need to then, you know, go into
22:27
sacrifice mode for whatever reason, be it be it war or just,
22:31
or just not enough resources. Well, Jamie wears a sweater just
22:35
because she runs cold. I'm always.
22:37
Told I'm always told. I do have to say though, because
22:40
I have an electric heat pump in the powers half of my house, my
22:44
top floor of my house, and I have rooftop solar panels And so
22:48
my power bills are usually negligible.
22:50
And so it, it still feels like a big luxury when I'm like, I'm
22:54
freezing, I'm going to treat myself and turn the thermostat
22:57
up 2° because I know that I've got that solar on my roof.
23:00
So I feel good about that. But I hear you.
23:02
But I, I mean, I love energy efficiency.
23:04
I obviously I'm all bought in over here.
23:06
I've got the EV in the driveway and the the panels on the roof,
23:10
the extra insulation, the the you know, you name it, I've done
23:13
it. All right.
23:14
Let's go back to the $20 bills sitting on the ground.
23:18
I think you and I both know that they're not actually sitting on
23:20
the ground and they require a tremendous amount of work to
23:25
pick up. You know, I think the, you know,
23:28
when you think about applying this to batteries, you know, we
23:33
spent a lot of time with Redwood Materials when we were at the
23:36
loan programs office because they were doing big things and
23:39
still doing big things in terms of recycling EV batteries.
23:42
Most recently though, they realized that most of the
23:44
battery packs that they were receiving to be recycled were
23:49
actually in good condition. And so they've actually, I think
23:53
they built a power plant in 20 days for Crusoe to run a data
24:00
center off of, which I thought was fascinating.
24:03
And so, you know, like, so they've started an entire
24:06
division now to get more out of the battery packs that they are
24:12
receiving instead of actually mechanically recycling them.
24:16
They're, you know, giving them longer life.
24:20
It does feel like, it does feel like that is also found money,
24:26
like folks are figuring out how to reuse and repurpose these
24:31
sort of 90 kWh battery packs. Is that your sense, Philippe?
24:35
It's, it's starting right? Like honestly, the, the
24:39
repurposing stuff is, it's the kind of thing where where, yeah,
24:45
it's obvious, right, dude? Like it's, it could be obvious
24:47
to all of us at a really high level.
24:49
And, and then you get down to the nitty gritty and it gets a
24:52
bit complicated as as it always does.
24:56
So, you know, my understanding of the repurposing stuff and,
24:59
and again, I'm on this, you know, I'm not the expert.
25:02
Like I got, I got my team who, you know, who know this stuff
25:06
inside and out. They're all over this stuff.
25:09
And my understanding is that repurposing is it's got to
25:13
happen eventually because eventually, you know, with the
25:16
numbers of EVs on the road and just natural rates of attrition,
25:21
like you're literally looking at 10s of billions of dollars in
25:24
value annually, annually from from all these, all these, you
25:29
know, not end like batteries, but end like vehicles and their
25:32
batteries. But getting at that is really
25:35
complicated, partly because you have different chemistries,
25:39
partly because you have different battery designs,
25:42
partly because it's really hard to take all of that and separate
25:47
them right now. Because right now we don't
25:49
actually like they're not labeled right.
25:52
And we don't have a process for easily like really rapidly in
25:57
automated way testing the battery health of each of the
26:01
cells or each of the modules. So that stuff is all to be
26:06
developed. You know, right now you can do
26:09
it manually, but you know, so sure, you know, Redwood, we'll
26:12
do that for Crusoe, you know, on a as a one off basis.
26:17
But ultimately we need to get to a place where we have this
26:21
pretty much automated. And I think that's a ways away.
26:25
And quite frankly, I think it's a ways away because, you know,
26:28
we're just at the beginning, like there aren't that many end
26:32
of life EVs yet, right? It's still probably 5-10 years,
26:36
15 years down the road before we talk about really big scale, but
26:41
that'll happen for sure in in the meantime, you know, the
26:45
vehicle grid integration to me is the, is the nearer term
26:49
opportunity, the nearer term $20 bills.
26:52
So let's talk more about that because beyond emergency backup,
26:56
this year, Tesla unlocked the cyber truck, which can now
27:00
backup your home. And they promise that the rest
27:02
of their cars will be able to do that by the end of the year,
27:05
which seems pretty incredible. What do you think that change
27:08
will mean for the industry? Well, let me just add more
27:11
context to that just because I think I think people have a hard
27:14
time wrapping their brain around this.
27:16
If you look at the residential solar industry in the United
27:19
States, they add solar to like 5 to 600,000 homes a year, right?
27:26
We're selling over 1,000,000 electric vehicles per year,
27:31
right? And so like when you think about
27:34
like it is at a scale that's larger than the residential
27:38
solar industry is putting solar on rooftops every single year,
27:41
right? And so like, I think this is
27:43
like such a huge thing. And on top of that, 15% of
27:48
American households actually buy backup power for their house,
27:52
whether it's batteries or, you know, a gas engine or diesel
27:55
engine or whatever, right? So it's clearly on people's
27:59
minds that they want resiliency and they want to ride through
28:03
any electrical disruptions, right?
28:05
So like, it does feel like a product that American consumers
28:09
want. I want it.
28:12
I mean, I know when I, when I got my, my EV charger installed,
28:17
which by the way, I had that installed four years or five
28:21
years before I got my EV because I knew that my next vehicle
28:25
would be an EV. I wanted a bidirectional
28:28
charger, but they didn't sell them in the southern states.
28:31
It wasn't even a product that was available to me that when I
28:34
asked, they were like what they were like, this is not
28:37
Australia. We don't have that product
28:39
available. I'm ready.
28:40
Like I want to be an early adopter.
28:42
So please let me use my, I do not have battery backup for my
28:46
solar array and nor do I have a generator.
28:49
So I would love to use my the EV that mostly sits in my driveway
28:53
to back up my house and severe weather.
28:56
Yeah, yeah, it's, I mean it is, it is this huge opportunity,
29:01
right. Like we funny, we did, we've
29:04
done do deal on, on, on bidirectional charging companies
29:08
and absolutely, you know, the enormous opportunity we've
29:12
actually done, we've, we've run the numbers for, for a few
29:15
provinces here, you know, looking at what kind of
29:17
potential this, this actually is.
29:20
Like give you an example. My, my home province, we looked
29:23
at it, we looked at the question was, you know, what does it,
29:26
what does it look like by 2035? And this isn't just like the
29:29
theoretical, you know, the sum total of all the capacity of
29:32
the, of the batteries out there. It's really, you know, how much
29:34
of it can you actually count on as a utility to get, you know,
29:40
when you need it from, from those EV drivers, EV owners, it
29:46
came out to about 3000 megawatts by 2035, right?
29:51
That's like a, it's like a 3000 MW peaking plant that'll be
29:57
available already, you know, already paid for, not the whole
30:01
thing obviously, but the, the basic battery infrastructure
30:04
paid for by, by customers. That's more capacity than all
30:09
four reactors that OPG is building at Darlington using the
30:14
G Hitachi 300 MW nuclear reactor, right?
30:17
So, so it's a lot of capacity and my sense is those reactors
30:21
probably aren't going to be outlined by 2035.
30:25
Yeah, I'm, I'm not going to, I'm not going to speculate on that
30:28
one, but but yeah, it's, I mean like like you, you talk about
30:32
any, any 3000 MW, you know, peaker plant.
30:35
I mean, it's, you know, there isn't 1, of course it's, you
30:37
know, 6500 MW peaker plants. It's, it's huge.
30:41
And this is, this is in 10 years and it just keeps growing and
30:43
growing, growing as, you know, as more and more EVs come on,
30:48
come on the road. So the potential is there.
30:51
Absolutely. And that said, there are some
30:54
real challenges, again, you know.
30:56
And what are those challenges like?
30:58
I mean, I, you know, because I, because my sense is I feel like
31:02
those challenges are more cultural in nature within the
31:05
utility than it is like, you know, technical at this point.
31:11
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's definitely not technical.
31:13
It's like we, we've kind of gotten past the past, the
31:17
technical challenges. Now we're into the world of its
31:20
coordination. That's the problem.
31:22
It's not a technical problem, it's a coordination problem.
31:25
So, you know, ultimately, if you look at if you, if you look at
31:29
what's going on now you've got automakers are waiting for
31:36
customer demand before investing the additional dollars to make,
31:40
you know, to make this, to make the whole, the whole integration
31:44
work because it does require additional dollars.
31:46
Tech is there no problem, but requires additional dollars.
31:49
So automakers waiting for customers to demand it.
31:51
Customers are not demanding it because more often than not,
31:55
they can't really extract the value through utility rates
31:58
because the rates weren't built to enable that.
32:02
And, and those utility rates aren't really exposing the value
32:05
because no one's really pushing that.
32:07
So you have this kind of chicken and egg situation in terms of
32:12
demand supply. So like that's, that's one part
32:15
of it. The other part, it's not so much
32:18
technical. Again, it's, it's a coordination
32:21
one. If I look at what we've been
32:25
doing for the past 10 years, right, we've been working with
32:28
clients on their pilots, technical pilots, you know,
32:32
demonstration pilots, some, some, you know, slightly larger
32:36
pilots. Everyone's doing their own
32:37
little thing. And and that's on the utility
32:41
side and on the automaker side, they're looking at different,
32:46
they're developing different standards, right?
32:47
So everyone has different standards.
32:49
It's like with the like with the chargers, right?
32:52
We wasted 10 years, you know, debating between between the
32:57
Chadimo and CCS and, you know, now we're finally seeming to
33:01
land on on Tesla's knacks. So that's a good thing for the
33:06
chargers. We need to do the same thing on
33:09
the BI directional side, which we which we don't have now.
33:13
So everyone has got, you know, different standards.
33:18
They're not going to be or that they're not currently planning
33:21
on being interoperable. You know, Jamie, you mentioned,
33:26
you mentioned Tesla and when you look at the fine print of
33:29
Tesla's announcements, really what they've said is the Model Y
33:35
will offer this as of the end of the year, but they'll only offer
33:40
it if you already have a Powerwall, a Tesla Powerwall,
33:44
and they'll only offer it with their own chargers and they'll
33:47
only offer it with their within their own ecosystem, right?
33:49
So this is going to be like the classic, you know, everyone
33:51
wants to build their Moat and, and keep, you know, own the
33:55
customer and keep them within, within the ecosystem.
33:58
But if that's happening and then if I want to change my car,
34:04
suddenly I need to change, you know, $10,000 of additional
34:08
equipment, like that's going to be a real break on the system.
34:11
So there is a, there's this really big coordination problem
34:15
that ultimately, you know, it's, it's partly a policy problem and
34:21
partly policy makers can address this and it's partly an industry
34:24
problem. And we're actually, you know,
34:28
one of the things once in a while we, we can't be a little,
34:32
we get a little proactive and try to make stuff happen.
34:35
And we're now convening utilities across Canada at
34:40
least, and automakers to sit down and figure out how can we
34:44
make this happen in a way that's standardized and interoperable.
34:48
So we won't. We don't waste another 10 years
34:50
trying to figure it out. So let's just like, you know,
34:56
try to figure out what's holding us back, right?
34:58
I mean, in the United States, there's an entire conversation
35:01
right now politically happening around affordability, right?
35:05
People are just all over whether data centers are raising rates
35:08
and also their stuff, right? And when you look at the math,
35:11
what it says is, is that power generation is actually cheaper
35:15
today than it was in 2010. Transmission is basically gone
35:20
up by the level of inflation, right?
35:22
So not like a big rise up, but distribution is where things
35:28
have really gone haywire, right? Because the utilities believe
35:32
that they have to let you, the consumer do whatever you want,
35:37
right? And they have to upgrade all the
35:40
substations and, and wires to make sure that you can do
35:43
whatever you want, right? And, and largely it's as an EV
35:46
problem, right? And what you find is when 5
35:48
people on your block get an EV, they spend $50,000,000 to
35:51
upgrade the circuits, right? And heat pumps.
35:54
And heat pumps, right? And you have the ability to
35:56
actually just say, well, they just need to be coordinated so
35:59
they're not all all on at the same time.
36:02
And we can get more out of the grid that we've already paid
36:04
for, right? But that's a cultural problem,
36:08
right? It's, it's, again, it's, it's
36:11
like it's, you're right, it's not a technological problem,
36:13
it's a coordination problem, right.
36:15
So, so it's a great example. One of the things that we did
36:20
about a year ago, very similar to the thing I was just talking
36:24
about for, for vehicle to grid is we, we created something
36:28
called the Consortium for Power efficiency.
36:30
And, and the idea there is pulling together all sorts of
36:33
different utilities and industry, like contractor
36:37
industry to say, all right, when contractors go to a home, if
36:41
they're, if they're, if they're being brought in because, you
36:43
know, you want to install a heat pump or you have an EV or you
36:46
want to go electric on, on whatever it is.
36:49
The first answer cannot always be OK.
36:52
You need to upgrade your panel and then the utility has to
36:55
upgrade everything else, you know, behind it.
36:57
No, it's, it's, you got splitters, you got, you know,
36:59
small energy management systems that can easily go in, save
37:03
people money, but they're just not being done.
37:06
They're just, it's not like the rule of thumb the contractors
37:08
have. So that's, that's a bit of an
37:11
industry that we need to, need to transform, a bit of practice
37:14
that we need to transform, but it's absolutely doable.
37:16
We're working on it right now with I think we have something
37:19
like 8 or 9 utilities together, you know, pulling the resources
37:25
on that so we can solve that. We can solve it on the on the on
37:28
the panel side and we can solve it on the on the vehicle and
37:32
grid integration side. But we need to bring these
37:35
players together. I.
37:36
Don't know. I feel like we're doing this all
37:38
wrong. I feel like we should just give
37:40
people free stuff. I mean, am I wrong?
37:43
I'd be like, in the United States, I'd say.
37:45
I think last year we spent $178 billion on wires, right?
37:51
Mostly just like upgrading stuff that didn't need to be upgraded,
37:55
right? I was like, if you're going to
37:56
spend $178 billion on crap, why don't you just give people free
37:59
stuff? Why don't you just give them
38:02
like a new service panel and, you know, with a battery
38:06
integrated in it from span or like, you know, give them a by,
38:10
you know, directional charger from like wall box or Hypervolt,
38:14
right? Why don't you just give them
38:15
stuff and then say in exchange for giving you this stuff, you
38:19
have to let us, you know, use your battery in your EV when
38:23
it's plugged in up to like 10% of the capacity and we'll like
38:28
manage the grid more efficiently with it.
38:30
I just feel like the level of imagination is so low that I
38:34
just can't help but hate the utility.
38:38
Utility executives, you heard it here first, but.
38:40
You know what I mean? Like I just think that like,
38:42
they would rather like, you know, like cry on my shoulder
38:47
and tell me why they need to upgrade my substation for $50
38:50
million. And like when I said, well, why
38:53
don't you just give me a piece of equipment that's $10,000 that
38:57
I can put in my garage that gives you access to my EV.
38:59
They're like, I don't know, we need a workshop with Dunsky.
39:04
We need to like have 8 utilities come together around a table and
39:08
work together for two years and figure out standards.
39:12
We know how to like fleece you with $50 million upgrades, but
39:16
giving you $10,000 of free stuff.
39:17
I don't, I don't know, like we're going to need a, we're
39:19
going to need a meeting for that.
39:21
I'm, I'm going to completely disagree with you on this.
39:25
And, and partly because, you know, those executives you're
39:28
talking about, like I'm working with them and often times, and
39:32
I'm, I'm not saying that to defend because, because they pay
39:34
me, I'm saying that that to defend them because often times
39:37
they're coming to me and saying like, we want to get this stuff
39:40
into people's homes, right? But so what's like, what is it
39:43
that's stopping that from happening?
39:45
And in the example that you were just giving there, like the
39:48
thing that's stopping them is the contractors who are coming
39:51
to their home and who are saying, all right, before you
39:54
get the CV or before you put in this heat pump, I need to
39:57
upgrade your panel. And that's going to cost you,
39:59
you know, whatever, whatever, thousands of dollars.
40:02
And then the customer's not doing it and the utility is not
40:04
there. Like they're not part of the
40:06
equation. No one's even, and no one's
40:08
asked them. Yeah, but I mean, seriously, who
40:10
thinks like, you know, who could bail me out of this jam?
40:13
The utility. I should call the 1800 number
40:16
and be on hold for 47 minutes to see whether the utility is going
40:20
to solve this problem. I'm just saying that like, you
40:23
know, like for all of the warm feelings I have for the
40:27
reliability and dependability of my utility, I don't view them as
40:30
a customer service organization. Yeah.
40:33
I mean, you know, that's, that's I think like my experience is
40:37
that depends on the utility. And you know, there are there
40:40
are utilities out there that have been monopolies for way too
40:43
long and you know, kind of never lost or never had that customer
40:47
service touch. There are others that that are
40:50
working like working like dogs to, to get it and to keep it and
40:53
to service their their customers.
40:56
But it's not as simple as just saying it, right?
40:59
Because they're working in this vast ecosystem with piles of
41:03
players that they don't control and piles of decisions that are
41:07
never even coming to them that they're not even aware of.
41:10
And they need to influence those decisions and those actors also
41:15
to be, you know, to be all rowing in the same direction.
41:18
And if they're not like utilities, not not like all
41:22
powerful, you know, all powerful God out there, they can't
41:26
control what, what the contractor says.
41:30
Sure. I mean, it feels solvable.
41:32
First of all, if you can name it, it can and you can define it
41:35
so clearly what you did beautifully, fully, it feels
41:38
like something that can be resolved.
41:40
And you know, I do think that utilities are, you know, my
41:46
perception is that they are quite married to doing things in
41:49
a very traditional manner. And so it's a lot more feasible
41:53
and attractive for them to update a substation that it is
41:57
for them to launch some type of new demand response.
42:01
Very customer focused program where they insert themselves in
42:05
the process of people getting smart panels or carrier is about
42:09
to introduce an H FAC system with a battery, which sounds so
42:13
rad. And that's like next to my wish
42:15
list. But you know, I think we just
42:18
invite them to embrace this innovation.
42:21
I mean, these solutions are here and yet they're they're still
42:25
just does seem to be an emphasis on continuing to deploy these
42:29
very traditional technologies to try and tackle these very modern
42:34
issues. I think it might be like a self
42:37
selection bias thing right? But I can say many, most of of
42:44
my clients are, are not that like they're desperate for
42:48
demand savings. They're desperate for demand
42:50
savings because they can't even get authorization to build, to
42:54
build the substations that need to be built, right?
42:57
And so they're, they're desperately, desperately worried
42:59
about reliability and about the lights going out.
43:01
That being said, and now I'm not sure if this is part of the part
43:05
of the factor, but you know, we, we work both in Canada and the
43:10
US. One of the differences between
43:13
them is on the Canadian side more, not all, but more of the
43:16
utilities are, are government owned, state owned.
43:20
So they're nonprofit and that might influence a bit of a
43:25
difference of you. But honestly, I think it's more
43:28
cultural and I'm not seeing that bias as much that you're talking
43:32
about that I used to see, right? Like, you know, 2530 years ago
43:36
it was always just, you know, whatever is CapEx, I want it and
43:39
whatever's, you know, demand side, I don't, I'm not seeing
43:43
that as much anymore. Like I, I can't tell you how
43:46
many calls I I get from from executives or like how can I get
43:50
more of this demand side stuff? So we're telling that the the
43:54
the elder millennials are coming to save the day like we have
43:57
saved so many other industries with, with our approach.
44:02
That's what you're saying. That's what I'm hearing or what
44:04
I'm choosing to take away from that belief.
44:07
My goodness, elder millennials, my goodness, Gen.
44:11
X is always overlooked. That's all I have to say.
44:14
But like, all right, so final question.
44:18
So if you've got a million EVs a year being sold, right, that's
44:21
roughly 100,000 MW hours worth of battery capacity in those
44:26
EVs. Predict a year for me where you
44:30
think that that capacity will be thought of as a resource by the
44:35
utility instead of, you know, sort of another load to be
44:40
managed. I think, I think within the next
44:44
five years you're going to see a big chunk of the utilities, you
44:49
know, the more forward-looking ones.
44:51
Seriously, seriously looking at that as a resource within the
44:56
next 5. But you know, like, you know how
44:58
it is, right? You got, you know, a kind of
45:00
chunk of the most forward-looking utilities and
45:03
then you got the ones that follow afterwards.
45:05
And so those might be more in the, you know, the five to 10
45:08
rate, 10 year range. But yeah, you can't ignore this
45:11
stuff. I mean, you know when, when
45:13
you've got in my home province, we expect to have about 2
45:17
million EVs on the road in five years from now.
45:21
You can't ignore 2,000,000 mobile batteries that are unused
45:27
95% of the time of every day. Well said, well said.
45:33
Well, Philippe Dunsky, after 35 years of service, 19 years at
45:40
your firm with an 18 year old daughter who is so smart that
45:45
you guys tracked down a an old, an old EV in Ukraine.
45:51
Thank you for being on the show. It's it's just so great to get
45:55
your wisdom well. Thanks so much for having me, I
45:58
really appreciate it. Well, Jamie, my goodness, we
46:08
covered a lot of ground. I mean, who would have thought
46:12
that that Tesla was still connected to the app?
46:15
Although I guess I'm not surprised the the star link is
46:20
like is going over Ukraine and collecting all this data from
46:24
that old Tesla. But my goodness, like the
46:28
Ukrainian people are just so creative and inventive.
46:31
So creative. I have to admit that I was
46:34
really hoping that that story was going to go in the direction
46:37
of like, a quest where he and his daughter went to Ukraine to
46:41
like, track down Georgia and find out, like, what small
46:45
village she was powering and all the children she was helping to
46:48
feed. Like, I still think, Philippe,
46:50
you should do it. Like, you should hire a film
46:52
crew and go and track down Georgia.
46:55
I think it would be great. We would love to put it on our
46:58
feed. Like, think about it, think
47:00
about it. You know who we should pitch Is
47:02
our friend from Semaphore, right?
47:05
Isn't Tim in Kiev? Yes, amazing energy reporter Tim
47:10
McDonnell is lives in Kiev and his wife is a war correspondent.
47:15
So I do think about them. It is does make it a little bit
47:18
more personal. I mean, obviously he's a he's a
47:21
professional colleague of mine, but just knowing someone there
47:24
makes it seem more real. But hey, Tim, let us know if you
47:28
want to go and locate Georgia. I feel like it could be a really
47:31
cool story. Oh my goodness, look at that.
47:35
We're just making connections all over the place.
47:37
You know I see an Oscar in your future in.
47:41
My future. Well, you're going to have to be
47:43
part of it, of course. I mean, you know.
47:45
Like, I mean, I, I, the storytelling is in my vein, so I
47:49
can't help but take it that way. I wanted a dramatization of the
47:53
story. Like I think that's what I was
47:55
going for. Philippe very much so a straight
47:58
shooter. But it's kind of like the
48:00
dynamic with my husband where when he's telling a story, I'll
48:04
periodically jump in to make it more exciting.
48:07
Yeah, I think, I think had we got his daughter on it would
48:10
have like been like instant talk videos ready for ready for
48:15
posting. Well, look, I think I found it
48:19
interesting that the electric utilities are almost there but
48:24
not quite there. I think Philippe had talked
48:26
about a five year window for this stuff to really get
48:29
integrated. I think that's far too long.
48:32
I mean as you know, our friend of poor, that weave grid is
48:35
already fully integrating EV capacity into, you know, the
48:39
grids here at Baltimore Gas and Electric, at Pepco, at DTE and
48:43
in Detroit Edison. And so I think the US utilities
48:46
are already fully integrating EVs into their grid management
48:51
plans for distribution circuits. I mean, I hope that's the case.
48:55
I will say in 2022 when I had my my EV charger installed in my
49:00
driveway like a two way charger was not that wasn't even on the
49:05
market as I mentioned in our interview with Philippe.
49:07
But I'm ready for Dominion Virginia power to reach out to
49:11
me to upgrade. But I am very happy to upgrade
49:14
my charger in exchange for giving you access to my EV
49:17
battery, please. But I don't know what on the
49:20
grounds are those are those, you know, programs really rolling
49:26
well I. Mean I already get a $10
49:28
discount on my bill every month for, you know, charging my EV
49:33
when the grid has more capacity and you know like the next stage
49:37
of the drive Act is supposed to get implemented next next year.
49:42
And so that's going to give me even more incentives to, you
49:46
know, allow the utility to charge my car when it needs the
49:50
load, right? And so, so I mean, I think that
49:54
I think we're heading in that direction.
49:55
But I, I think the bigger thing is, you know, this is as you and
49:59
I know, right? I mean, this is all about grid
50:02
utilization, right? Like our distribution grid costs
50:05
have doubled and figuring out how to charge all this stuff
50:09
when there's excess capacity reduces electricity bills for
50:12
everybody. Absolutely.
50:14
I mean, it's just common sense. But you know, this is this is
50:18
very common across our very fractured utility landscape in
50:23
the United States. When you have 2500 different
50:26
utility service territories, all of these things roll out very
50:29
unevenly. And so that's why even though
50:31
you live in Maryland, I live in Virginia.
50:34
We're not, we don't, I don't have access to a program like
50:36
that in Virginia. So I really do hope that belief
50:40
is right and that utilities or at least some of them are really
50:43
chomping at the bit to try and integrate more of these types of
50:46
programs. I know, of course, Virginia just
50:49
passed the first in the nation grid utilization bill and
50:54
Dominion supported that bill, at least they didn't oppose it.
51:00
So, you know, hopefully we're going to see additional programs
51:03
like this roll out nationwide. Well, kudos to our friends are
51:08
now Paul and then Kyle Winslow, who played, you know, critical
51:12
roles there. Yes, and also our friends at the
51:15
utilized coalition, which they're finally public.
51:19
They announced that coalition this week and they also were
51:21
behind the scenes kind of helping to make that a reality.
51:24
So really excited to see how that program rolls out.
51:27
And I think Governor Spanberger should be signing that
51:30
legislation here in a couple of weeks.
51:32
Yay. All right, well, with that,
51:35
thank you so much everyone for sticking around.
51:39
This episode was a lot of fun and really want to thank Simon
51:44
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