00:00:05:16 - 00:00:29:19 Speaker 1 Hello friends. Welcome to the Your Project Shepherd podcast. I'm your host, Curtis Lawson, and we are here to teach that every successful construction project has four components demonstrated by the simple drawing of the house. The foundation is proper planning. The left wall is your team, the right walls, communication and the roof is proper execution. Have all four of these components in place and your project will succeed. 00:00:29:21 - 00:00:50:13 Speaker 1 We are here to help professionals and homeowners alike make the best decisions about designing, planning, and building custom homes. If you'd like more information about how Shepherd can help you with your project or business, visit us at your project shepherd.com. And now, here's today's episode. You're going to hear the official well. 00:00:50:15 - 00:00:56:01 Speaker 2 Yeah, I want I need the full experience. I can choose one. 00:00:56:03 - 00:01:14:02 Speaker 1 Take only. Hey everybody, welcome to a new episode of the Your Project Shepherd podcast. I am your host, Curtis Lawson. And today, I'd like to welcome Dylan Rupp with Savant Systems to talk about home energy management. So, Don, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being here. 00:01:14:06 - 00:01:16:13 Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely. Curtis, thanks for having me. 00:01:16:15 - 00:01:25:05 Speaker 1 So you're a senior product manager with savant. Tell us what a senior product manager does and is and and what you do with savant. 00:01:25:07 - 00:02:04:05 Speaker 2 Yeah. So I really steward our different residential energy solutions into the market. So everything from trying to understand our target market for some of these different solutions that we offer to understanding certification and code requirements as we go to deploy those technologies into our different customer's homes or properties, and how we can best achieve their end goals as an end user, while also ensuring that we're developing a product that can readily be installed per different code requirements. 00:02:04:07 - 00:02:25:07 Speaker 2 So kind of kind of runs the gamut. It's it's a fun role because within that job function, you kind of are a bit of a catchall, and get to fill in the gaps where maybe something unexpected comes up that we need to have a strategy and solution for. And so, I get to kind of touch everything as it relates to our different energy storage and energy management products. 00:02:25:09 - 00:02:43:22 Speaker 1 Cool. So let's talk about what kinds of things that savant as a company does now, because I think, like a lot of people in the construction industry, when I think of savant, I mainly think of home automation. You know, you know, ten years ago we were doing savant systems that, you know, had the app on your phone. 00:02:43:22 - 00:02:54:16 Speaker 1 You turn your lights on and off, change the music on your speakers, in your house, things like that. But savants doing a lot more than just home automation stuff now. So what? What all arenas is savant playing in these days? 00:02:54:16 - 00:03:30:07 Speaker 2 So certainly that traditional market that we served, smart home automation is still a core foundational element of our business. So everything from the way your shades operate to how those interact with your audio visual equipment in the home, down to climate control, still are things that we're controlling with our automation system. That said, about five years ago, our founder started a separate company called Race Point Energy with the idea that any smart home really foundationally starts at what's happening with the electricity consumption within that home. 00:03:30:13 - 00:04:01:07 Speaker 2 And with that idea, he developed some different technologies and equipment that we'll talk about today that enabled customers to really have a new level of control and visibility into how they were both producing and consuming power within their home. That company eventually was acquired and brought in under the savant umbrella, where now that energy management aspect of of what we do integrate seamlessly into our traditional smart control system to give those customers not only control with that same app. 00:04:01:07 - 00:04:23:00 Speaker 2 Of the things I touched on audio visual, lighting, shades now also how they're consuming and using power within their home, right? So if they have, for example, different electric rates where they want to do some different things with the type of loads that are powered during high peak rate periods, they can use that control system now to turn things off and on. 00:04:23:02 - 00:04:46:06 Speaker 2 Or if they have a backup resource like a whole home generator or energy storage system, they can ensure that the profile of loads connected within their home in a given point in time are one. The loads that are important to them based on the conditions around their home and around that power outage, but also to ensure that the number of loads connected is not going to cause issues for that backup resource. 00:04:46:06 - 00:05:09:10 Speaker 2 Right. It's not going to overload it. In the case of a generator, it's not going to drain the batteries too quickly in the case of an energy storage system. So really just giving our customer base now unparalleled access to how they're interacting with all of the different devices within their home. Right. Again, certainly that traditional control system, but now also pulling in how they're utilizing that power within their home to control those, those devices as well. 00:05:09:15 - 00:05:30:13 Speaker 1 Yeah. So these, smart panels and standalone CT monitors are getting to be more and more popular. There's more companies that are coming out with these types of products. So what is what is savant offering in that space? Is it a smart panel? Is it a module that goes in the panel to tell us about what you guys are offering? 00:05:30:15 - 00:06:07:22 Speaker 2 Yeah, we we have a really unique solution in the market where we've developed, piece of equipment that slots directly into the load center that a customer already has on site. And we have compatibility with all the leading loads. And our manufacturer ers to slot these, what we call power modules, into that customer's load center that can be paired with a breaker that they already have within that load center power and load in the home to now not only have that safety function at the breaker provides, but also to give circuit level control and data monitoring for that load where they've attached the system. 00:06:07:22 - 00:06:29:14 Speaker 2 With that, we also have monitoring only equipment that again, goes directly into that customer's load center to give them views over things like whole home consumption. If they just want to understand how much power their home is using at any given point in time throughout the day. But what's unique about this technology is it's not a separate panel that needs to be retrofitted into the customer's home. 00:06:29:14 - 00:06:53:04 Speaker 2 It's not a big additional box that gets added to that load center. It literally slots directly into that customer's load center, which makes it extremely modular. So we really give customers access to control as few or as many loads as they would like. And it also makes the installation extremely easy because we're not having to go in and drop in a new load center, for example. 00:06:53:06 - 00:06:55:17 Speaker 2 And I actually brought a sample if I can pull it out. 00:06:55:17 - 00:07:05:14 Speaker 1 Oh yeah. Sure. And the people, listening on the podcast only only have to use their imagination. You'll have to do your, your best. Description of the product. 00:07:05:16 - 00:07:06:02 Speaker 2 Sure. 00:07:06:05 - 00:07:10:04 Speaker 1 For people watching the video, you can kind of hold it up to the camera here, so can kind of see that. 00:07:10:08 - 00:07:26:02 Speaker 2 So it very much looks like a breaker when you, when you kind of look at it at first glance. And a lot of people think that's what it is when they first see it. Just a fancy breaker with kind of it. It's got an LCD screen on it that will actually read out the amount of power that's being consumed. 00:07:26:02 - 00:07:49:01 Speaker 2 It'll show you the state of the, circuit, whether it's connected or disconnected. When you when you do have the panel door open, for example, where these power modules are installed, but you can see the the clips on the back to actually grab on to the busting of that load center are essentially exactly what you're going to see with any traditional breaker that's designed to go into these load centers. 00:07:49:03 - 00:08:11:10 Speaker 2 So this one's particularly as a 20 amp dual relay. This will control to 120 volt circuits up to 20 amps. We have a few different sizes. We have a 30 amp for 20 40 volt loads and a 60 amp for those large two 40 volt loads. Things like your EV chargers, pool pumps, maybe a large air conditioning system. 00:08:11:12 - 00:08:21:21 Speaker 2 But really, like I said, the nice thing there is slots directly into that load center and kind of gives you that flexibility to control really what it is you want to have access to control. 00:08:21:21 - 00:08:27:18 Speaker 1 So I assume that that's dependent on having enough blanks. And if empty spaces in your load center though, right. 00:08:27:19 - 00:08:55:06 Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely. So and again, that's where the application really comes into play. What is the end goal for that customer. So some customers say I want to control every single load in the home because I like to have that unparalleled control. And I like to see the data to understand what's going on. But realistically, for most customers, it they're never going to shed, for example, the circuit powering their refrigerator or the circuit powering the lights and the living room. 00:08:55:06 - 00:09:14:10 Speaker 2 Right. They're either very important circuits or very low drawers. As far as the amount of power they consume. So for a lot of customers, they're going to come in and they're going to choose maybe 4 or 5 of these power modules to be paired with those large consumers, that really become important to be able to shed. 00:09:14:12 - 00:09:37:09 Speaker 2 If you're trying to do some energy arbitrage, I say a little bit of money on your utility bills, or to make sure that you're not overloading that backup resource that I talked about before. And those customers often do have the available slots, to your point, in their existing load center. But for customers that say, hey, we do want to do everything we can always the way that these actually install is they install again as a companion to the breaker. 00:09:37:09 - 00:09:59:21 Speaker 2 So kind of in series, you take your wire from the breaker. It goes into our companion module, from our companion module out to the load. If a customer wants to do every lesson in their home, they can add a sub panel with just the companion modules in there to become kind of a dedicated control panel as well. So again, just a lot of flexibility in how this solution is deployed. 00:09:59:21 - 00:10:06:07 Speaker 2 Right. And and really lets that customer pick and choose what the right path for their energy goals is. 00:10:06:10 - 00:10:26:08 Speaker 1 Yeah. So if you're planning a new construction, you can kind of figure out how much space you're going to need, right? And you can install that extra panel. I mean, a lot of the big custom homes that we do already have two panels anyway, and oftentimes those are starting to get pretty full. So, I like the idea of maybe even having a third smaller sub panel. 00:10:26:08 - 00:10:33:05 Speaker 1 There's kind of that's kind of dedicated to this. Yeah. Right. And you're just jumping and just just jumping those circuits over to that. Yeah. 00:10:33:09 - 00:10:34:23 Speaker 2 It really comes down to. 00:10:35:00 - 00:10:35:07 Speaker 1 Where. 00:10:35:07 - 00:10:53:16 Speaker 2 Those loads are located. And, what's important for you to control. And so the nice thing about a new construction is to your point, you have a ton of flexibility to come in and maybe resize that load center to add those additional slots if you need to. Or you can always add in an additional sub panel that can be, you know, surface mounted. 00:10:53:16 - 00:10:56:21 Speaker 2 So it's a nice clean look. Yeah. As you go to deploy these solutions. 00:10:56:21 - 00:11:13:19 Speaker 1 So if you're doing this on a, on a retrofit, you have to be a little more strategic about which circuits that you want to add this to, especially if you're got, you know, if you're in a 10 or 15 year old home that, the panel may be compatible, but oftentimes those houses are already kind of maxed out on their available space. 00:11:13:23 - 00:11:14:06 Speaker 1 Yeah. 00:11:14:06 - 00:11:31:09 Speaker 2 A good example I'll point to is, is my home obviously within my role, it made sense for me to do everything. And so I did take the route of I add an additional sub panel where I had, I believe it was 20 of these installed in that sub panel to give me control over every single circuit within the home. 00:11:31:11 - 00:11:57:05 Speaker 2 But realistically, if if I were not a part of the savant team and I were doing this just to have control over those important circuits, I would have deployed maybe 3 or 4 of these, which I did have available slots for in my in my load center of the home. And then I would have hooked up the Hvac unit, the electric dryer, and probably some of my cooking equipment, my oven, which is a pretty heavy consumer as well. 00:11:57:11 - 00:12:22:05 Speaker 1 Yeah. Let's talk about just kind of, energy management and energy monitoring a little bit. Not specifically related to this, but, you know, there's a quote that I'm sure you know, you've heard that it's been around forever. It's, you can't manage or you can't improve what you can't measure. So when we're talking about measuring or monitoring energy usage in the home, what exactly are we measuring it? 00:12:22:06 - 00:12:26:08 Speaker 1 We're we're measuring the current basically flowing through each circuit. Right. 00:12:26:14 - 00:12:48:06 Speaker 2 Exactly what we're giving you unparalleled access to view not only how much power a given circuit's consuming, but also when it's consuming that power which which again, depending on where you're located, you know, we're in Texas, things are a little bit, easier here. I'll say with our typically with our rate plans, where cost of electricity generally is the same over the course of the day. 00:12:48:06 - 00:12:50:15 Speaker 2 But for some customers, they may have a plan that's. 00:12:50:19 - 00:12:52:08 Speaker 1 Nice and right. 00:12:52:09 - 00:12:59:21 Speaker 2 Or certainly for customers in California, this becomes very important where they have time of use rates, where the cost of electricity skyrockets during certain period of the day. 00:12:59:21 - 00:13:00:15 Speaker 1 Yeah. 00:13:00:17 - 00:13:16:00 Speaker 2 So again, with this solution, I'm going to tell you how much power that loads consuming. And also when it's consuming that power. And to your point now as a as an end user, I'm educated on where my power is going, why my electric. 00:13:16:00 - 00:13:17:01 Speaker 1 Bill. 00:13:17:03 - 00:13:42:20 Speaker 2 Is as high as it is, or what those numbers really are telling you. I think one of the challenging things about electric consumption is those bills are pretty ambiguous. A lot of times it's kind of hard to understand what's happening and where that power is going and why. You're getting charged 200 $300 for your electricity consumption. And a lot of customers would like to understand, just even understand where that power is going, how they're consuming power. 00:13:42:20 - 00:14:04:07 Speaker 2 Is there anything they can do with their behaviors that reduce that electric bill? And so we definitely have customers who have deployed this just for the monitoring and control, with no backup resource, no time of use. Right. Just so they have a better idea of of where that electricity is being utilized in their home. Is there anything I can do to change those behaviors? 00:14:04:09 - 00:14:12:14 Speaker 2 And then, of course, it gives you a ton of really, really useful data should you decide later on to invest in an energy storage system or a backup generator, for example? 00:14:12:14 - 00:14:28:00 Speaker 1 Yeah, there's a lot of, you know, so they call them CT monitors that are kind of on the market these days that, and some of them are standalone units that have little wires that go in and clamp onto the individual circuits inside the panel. They look a little clunky, in my opinion. You've got a bunch of wires kind of on the surface of your wall. 00:14:28:00 - 00:14:52:09 Speaker 1 And if it's an if it's outdoors, it's not that that module is often not protected. It's just kind of sitting. You have wires dangling going into your panel. Yeah. So this is a much more elegant solution, especially if you're panels on the outside of the house and you don't want all that stuff exposed regardless, you know, all these whether it's this are on the CT monitors that does give you the the ability to look at each and each individual circuit and see what's going on. 00:14:52:12 - 00:15:14:06 Speaker 1 And sometimes that gives you good information about the equipment that you're running to because like, if you know that your air conditioner or your refrigerator or whatever normally draws a certain amount of power and all of a sudden it's spiking, sometimes that can be indication. There's something wrong with the equipment, like it's struggling, like maybe your coils clogged up, it's having to work harder, or maybe it's going bad. 00:15:14:06 - 00:15:25:15 Speaker 1 And so if all of a sudden you see a spike in usage on that, on that one piece of equipment, you're like, hey, maybe I should call a repair guy to come out here and troubleshoot it, or maybe I should clean the coil on this or whatever, right? Yeah. 00:15:25:17 - 00:15:59:12 Speaker 2 Absolutely. That's that's awesome. That is certainly not something that we support today, but we have on our roadmap to build out that functionality to utilize. It's such a buzzword anymore, but to utilize some artificial intelligence to be able to notify that that customer, your Hvac compressor is pulling 30% more power on startup than it traditionally has. It might be time to to get it serviced or to have a maintenance individual come and look at that equipment that is, without a doubt, not only savant, but all of these smart load center manufacturers. 00:15:59:12 - 00:16:20:19 Speaker 2 An end goal that we all have is how are we going to improve the health and performance of these customers electric loads, as well as giving them that that access and control. So that is something that we are actively working on and scoping. How can we support that type of, function. And it is something that we we want to actively be notifying those end users. 00:16:20:21 - 00:16:40:15 Speaker 2 The health of your equipment may be deteriorating. And it's it's time to go ahead and have a technician come out. And realistically, if you can get out in front of a air conditioning compressor failure, you easily have paid for the equipment. Oh yeah, that you've deployed as far as the the load management and monitoring just by saving that compressor. 00:16:40:17 - 00:16:45:03 Speaker 1 Yeah. Or or just having the headache of having it not there functioning in the middle of the summer. 00:16:45:04 - 00:16:45:18 Speaker 2 Yeah. 00:16:45:20 - 00:16:56:13 Speaker 1 Yeah. Having it out for an hour while the technician, swaps a part versus being out for two days or 2 or 3 days while you're waiting for them to be to be available to come fix your equipment in the summer, if you're lucky. 00:16:56:13 - 00:16:56:20 Speaker 2 Yep. 00:16:57:02 - 00:17:11:03 Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. I wish there was a, individual water flow monitor that I could put on each one of my kids bathrooms to understand how much water each of my daughters uses. And that way I could, like, shut off the water to their bathroom if they're taking too long of a shower. 00:17:11:08 - 00:17:25:03 Speaker 2 Yeah, there you go. I know I, I joke with, people all the time that I drive my wife crazy now that I have this this equipment in my house, because I'm sitting there watching it and, like, you know, why is such and such on right now? Go turn that off or I'll turn it off from my phone. 00:17:25:03 - 00:17:30:21 Speaker 2 Right. Yeah. It gives me the body to do that. Unfortunately, sometimes it gives you a little bit too much information maybe. 00:17:30:21 - 00:17:38:02 Speaker 1 Yeah. Man, you left your, curling iron sitting on the counter way too long, warming up. You know, you turn that sucker off. 00:17:38:04 - 00:17:46:14 Speaker 2 In all seriousness, though, that does bring up an interesting idea where, you know, the classic story of you're on your way to the airport and oh my goodness, that I leave the. 00:17:46:14 - 00:17:47:05 Speaker 1 The iron, the. 00:17:47:06 - 00:18:12:18 Speaker 2 Straightener on. Yeah, yeah. This system now gives you that peace of mind to go. It doesn't matter. I'll go into the app and I'll turn that circuit off. So even if it was left on, there's no power to it anymore, right? So, it is it is cool what it can do for you as far and not something that we've heavily marketed, but I think it should be marketed a little bit more as far as the peace of mind that it can give you, as well as your away from the home, to really have access to control a little bit more. 00:18:12:18 - 00:18:15:00 Speaker 2 So how that power is flowing within the home. 00:18:15:00 - 00:18:34:13 Speaker 1 It seems like more and more companies are are trying to create kind of these ecosystems or these suites of products around home energy management and, you know, energy storage, battery backup, whatever you call that EV charging it, kind of integrate all this stuff into kind of a suite of products. I assume you guys are doing the same. 00:18:34:13 - 00:18:37:10 Speaker 1 You'll you'll have a EV solution, a storage solution. 00:18:37:14 - 00:19:01:16 Speaker 2 Yep. Absolutely. So alongside of our flexible load management solution, we have home battery system, the Power storage 20 is the name of that solution. We also have a level two EV charger that we've co-branded with Schumacher, that we can also have some level of control over as far as timing, one charge rate that we're supporting in a given point in time. 00:19:01:18 - 00:19:28:05 Speaker 2 Again, all put into that same ecosystem to your point, so that customer can open their savant smart home app, have a section that's dedicated to energy, and then have the ability to go in and say, tell my home's battery to discharge to offset utility consumption, or change the charge rate of that electric vehicle to ensure that I have enough power to also do my laundry at any given point in time. 00:19:28:05 - 00:19:49:12 Speaker 2 Right? So again, I think any time you're you're developing these types of solutions within a home, it greatly benefits the customer to have that that control system have eyes into everything going on. The more data you can pull into, understand what's happening in that home holistically, the better you're going to be able to control what's what's occurring at a given point in time. 00:19:49:12 - 00:19:59:11 Speaker 2 And so that's really been foundational for us is to have have access to all these different aspects of that customer's home, to offer them the best control system that we can. 00:19:59:11 - 00:20:16:04 Speaker 1 Is there compatibility with with other manufacturers. So if somebody had, you know, the savant power modules, but they had like a Tesla or a Panasonic battery or whatever, is there any compatibility there? If you're using the savant app, or does it need to kind of all be within your ecosystem? 00:20:16:04 - 00:20:53:13 Speaker 2 Yeah, it's a great question. No, we absolutely do have compatibility with third party energy storage systems for our load management solutions. Now, the the feature set that you're provided with those solutions isn't quite as rich as what you're going to get when you pair it with our power storage 20, for example. However, absolutely, we can still communicate with that Tesla Powerwall, for example, to understand what the state of charge at the battery is at any given point in time, what the status of the grid interconnection is, so we can make some intelligent decisions potentially automatically, depending on how the system has been set up, to go ahead and shed loads or turn loads on. 00:20:53:15 - 00:21:15:17 Speaker 1 A lot of the the energy storage systems, the battery systems that are out there, they come with a like a smart switch and, and and the same thing with generators like you'll have a gas backup generator and you'll have a, a critical load panel that's installed for that generator. But either way, like a lot of these only have the ability that to control a certain number of critical loads. 00:21:15:19 - 00:21:33:23 Speaker 1 Right? I know a couple of the battery solutions. For example, you can do like a max of like six different critical loads. But savant system gives you the ability to not be limited. Isn't that right? Can't user go into the app and and change which loads are being driven off of the battery? 00:21:34:01 - 00:21:56:00 Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely. So you're exactly right. Traditionally when you're deploying and I'll just say a backup resource here. So that's kind of encompasses both generators as well as energy storage just or home battery systems. The customer at the time of install has to go and determine which loads are what traditionally have been deemed critical loads for that customer's home. 00:21:56:00 - 00:22:00:03 Speaker 2 Right? The loads that have to be powered during some kind of utility outage. 00:22:00:05 - 00:22:02:16 Speaker 1 Usually like the AC and the refrigerator and things like that. 00:22:02:19 - 00:22:20:14 Speaker 2 Very stressful conversation to have with the homeowner, by the way, right? To say, oh no, you can't turn on this load when the power's out unless we wire it up into this new panel. And if the load just so happens to be critical at any given point in time, and it wasn't wired to that critical loads panel, you're out of luck, right? 00:22:20:16 - 00:22:42:14 Speaker 2 Perfect example in my view here in Texas was Winter Storm Uri a couple of years ago. Customers don't put heaters on the critical loads panel in Texas, right? It's ice cold two weeks out of the year. Well, during that storm, a lot of customers had some type of backup resource. But because the heater of their home wasn't physically wired into that critical load sub panel, they couldn't turn that heater on. 00:22:42:18 - 00:23:09:15 Speaker 2 So they had power to their Hvac, ironically, but they didn't have power to the heater or maybe the the blower for their furnace. And so they couldn't heat their home and get that. What at the time was the most critical resource in their home to be powered. So what our system does, to your point is it's going to allow those customers or those installers to wire everything into that backed up load center, place all the loads in the backup load center, but pair them with our power modules. 00:23:09:17 - 00:23:29:13 Speaker 2 When our system detects that there's been a grid outage, it's going to automatically shed any of those non-critical loads to ensure that, again, we don't overload that backup resource. Right. That's the whole reason you do a critical load panel is because we want to make sure the amount of power that can be provided from that backup resource is adequate to power all of those backed up loads. 00:23:29:13 - 00:23:45:23 Speaker 2 So we'll shed any non-critical load that have been set up to be non-critical when a system was commissioned. But to your point, that customer is going to have full access to open their savant app and go and change what that load mix is at any given point in time, depending on the conditions that are present. 00:23:46:01 - 00:24:04:04 Speaker 1 So you could or I can have it set initially too. For example, in the winter have your heater on that critical load. Right? But let's say your house gets nice and toasty again and you want to run all the lighting circuits instead, or whatever else you want to run, right? So let's let's take the heater off, put these other circuits on. 00:24:04:08 - 00:24:24:03 Speaker 2 Absolutely. What we're doing is we're creating a virtual load panel. So everything has the ability to be added to that critical loads panel. And using our power modules, we're just going to turn things off and on and create that that virtual critical loads panel for you. Another common one is hurricane occurs. Power's been out for 4 or 5 days. 00:24:24:03 - 00:24:43:03 Speaker 2 Maybe laundry becomes an extremely critical load for you because you haven't washed your clothes in a week, and it's piling up again. This system will give you the access to turn off the Hvac for a couple of hours while you run your laundry machines so you can have what you know, the clean clothes you need, and then you can turn that Hvac back on so you're cooling off your home again. 00:24:43:03 - 00:24:48:19 Speaker 2 So again, just gives that end user unparalleled control over how their power is being deployed within their home. 00:24:48:21 - 00:25:10:17 Speaker 1 Yeah. I like that a lot that that's one of the big concerns that I hear about installing generators and battery systems is just me. And I have to decide now, not knowing what's going to happen six months, a year or two years from now. But I have to make all these critical decisions, up front. And if I want to change in the future now I'm paying the electrician to come back and rewire everything. 00:25:10:17 - 00:25:35:09 Speaker 2 And, yeah, like I said, an extremely stressful conversation for certainly the end user. Also the installer to try to also guide those customers because there things you don't even realize are critical. Garage door opener. Right people, if I came to you and said, well, maybe you you would answer a garage door opener, but a lot of individuals, if I said, hey, what are the most important loads within your home to be powered in an outage? 00:25:35:11 - 00:25:50:03 Speaker 2 They probably would not say a garage door opener, but then they would go out to their garage and try to open as they couldn't get out of their out of their home or they couldn't get their vehicle out of their garage. So again, it gives them that ability to say, okay, we didn't have that set up in the system as a critical load, but very easily. 00:25:50:03 - 00:25:54:15 Speaker 2 Now I can go on to that app, make that a load that's powered and open that garage door. 00:25:54:15 - 00:26:17:09 Speaker 1 So yeah, and this is a conversation, I think that people should have with their builder and the electrician when they're wiring the house, too, because, you know, again, if you don't want to put one of these on every single circuit in the house, which can be, you know, not only adding some cost, but also, again, if the space that's available on the panels. 00:26:17:11 - 00:26:39:21 Speaker 1 If you talk about what, what kinds of things are critical, you know, the electrician can actually wire some of those things on the same circuit within reason. Right? Because normally when they wire a house, they're going to group like, hey, we got these three bedrooms on a on one breaker. We've got the primary bedroom and this other area on another breaker. 00:26:39:21 - 00:26:57:23 Speaker 1 But if you say, okay, if my power goes out and I want to have my primary bedroom, you know, lighting and ceiling fans and everything, but I also don't want the garage door opener. The electrician could wire both of those to the same circuit, you know. Of course he has to do the calculations and make sure that it works out. 00:26:57:23 - 00:27:17:14 Speaker 1 But I'm just saying that oftentimes they can combine certain rooms of the house together on one breaker so that you can install one of those to control, but that requires advanced planning and, because every subcontractor is going to do things the quickest and easiest way by default. So let's go to all these bedrooms on this and all this on this. 00:27:17:14 - 00:27:34:19 Speaker 1 And so it takes a little bit of forethought, but it makes sense to to go through that thought process and decide what you might want to have grouped together right in the future. So that you're not having to install 20 of these. You could install again, four or 5 or 6 of them makes more sense. 00:27:34:19 - 00:27:53:06 Speaker 2 Yeah. And I think the the good news is these days, all all lighting is led very, very low power draw. And so generally speaking you're not going to need to have control over those loads even. I mean, looking at my own personal home, I think my, my age now, I'm, natural gas for a lot of my load. 00:27:53:10 - 00:28:14:10 Speaker 2 My Hvac is probably 30 plus percent of my consumption, right. So I, I could argue that I could probably get away with a power module only on my Hvac equipment because it's that significant of a load in my home. Now, I'd probably also want to put that laundry on there because it, you know, intermittently, when it does run, it's a heavy consumer as well. 00:28:14:10 - 00:28:36:09 Speaker 2 And I might trade off between those two to make sure that I have enough power available within my budget to run whatever my load mixes at any given point in time. But but again, I don't, you know, I don't usually recommend for customers who are either infrastructure constrained, meaning they've there's been a retrofit and they don't have available slots or maybe they're budget constrained. 00:28:36:11 - 00:29:06:12 Speaker 2 You don't really need to place these power modules on all those lighting circuits, for example, because they're not probably something you're ever going to actually shed or need to shed to open up additional energy availability. Now, I think there is some end user education that should happen. Just in general, anytime you're installing any type of backup resource, frankly, to say, hey, when the app tells you that you're off grid and the seven app will tell you when you go off grid, maybe don't go decided in that it's time to, you know, do your hair and run the, the hair dryer, right? 00:29:06:12 - 00:29:22:13 Speaker 2 Because that is a pretty heavy consumer that could could draw you down pretty quickly. But by and large, that's just an easy conversation to have to let customers know. You might have to change your behavior a little bit when you are off grid. But the good news is we're going to give you that information to let you know when that is the case. 00:29:22:17 - 00:29:54:12 Speaker 1 Yeah. So one thing that I've said a lot of times on, on the, on this podcast is that builders and homeowners, but builders specifically need to when they're looking at deploying these systems in their builds, they need to use the resources the manufacturers have, which means you other savant reps. Right? So I would assume that either you or some of the reps with your company would be available to talk to a builder or prospective client about the best way to integrate this into their project. 00:29:54:12 - 00:29:55:07 Speaker 1 Right. 00:29:55:09 - 00:30:15:06 Speaker 2 Absolutely. We have an application engineering team that works on both our energy storage solutions as well as our flexible load management. That team is is more than happy to help guide any builder electrician through through a project and help educate them on which loads you know probably are the most important to be controlled. 00:30:15:08 - 00:30:32:17 Speaker 1 Yeah, there's so many of these things that that get kind of thrown at us builders. You know, I was at, IBM's The Big Builders show in Vegas, which you were at two and, you know, when you walk through, man, there's so many of these new products being thrown at you. You're like, try this, try this, try this. 00:30:32:19 - 00:30:47:18 Speaker 1 And, and unless we, you know, get the support from the, from the sales team, and the product team, it's just impossible to try to start integrating all of these products into our into our homes. You know, we have to use those resources. 00:30:47:21 - 00:31:19:04 Speaker 2 Yeah. I think with any new technology, having that support is as important as the technology itself. Right. So, inherently you might not understand exactly what this, this solution is going to do for you. And we're certainly there to help educate, again, not only the builder, the electrician, the end user. If you ask us to get on the phone and chat with that individual, our team is more than happy to have those conversations and let that customer know the value of what they're investing in. 00:31:19:06 - 00:31:37:18 Speaker 1 Yeah. And it's it's just it's better long term because I don't know how many products people install in their homes. And then a couple of years later, they're like, why did I spend the money on that? That was totally a total waste of money, because if they don't understand it and if they don't know how it works and how it benefits them, it's just going to be something that sits there that they never they never touch. 00:31:37:18 - 00:31:42:02 Speaker 1 So yeah, there has to be some education of the consumer upfront. 00:31:42:08 - 00:32:13:11 Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah. And I think ironically, the best use case for this system might be that the customer never interacts with it because it can all be automated to again shed that load when you when you do go into a backup energy situation or to shed load, if, for example, your energy storage system is starting to get down to a low state of charge on that battery, and so hopefully that customer, you know, has those automated systems already built out and it's all happening without their interaction. 00:32:13:13 - 00:32:24:18 Speaker 2 But again, at least the app is going to notify them that those things are happening so they can see that the system is actively working to ensure that your power budget is healthy and support at any given point in time. 00:32:24:20 - 00:32:42:17 Speaker 1 It's one of those things that, if if somebody was, was a real control freak, you know, engineer type, no offense. You know, they could really spend their time and, and go through there and drive their spouse crazy with, with monitoring every little detail. Right. Or they can just kind of sit back and coast and let it do its thing. 00:32:42:17 - 00:32:59:20 Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah, I think exactly I think it's important to understand is the manufacturer and my role on the product side, not everybody is the person that wants to sit there and look at it every day. And, you know, ideally for some customers, this system just works. It just works for them. It does what they need it to do. 00:32:59:22 - 00:33:07:17 Speaker 2 And they don't they don't really want to interact with it. And so, you know, kind of straddling that line is something that we, we try to do effectively. Yeah. 00:33:07:19 - 00:33:36:18 Speaker 1 But now savant, the home automation side of savant does have integration with your, your Hvac controls as well too. Right. And so again, kind of going back to having one ecosystem or, you know, there's nothing worse for me than to have like ten different apps on your phone for your house. Like I don't want to open one app for my AC, I want to have for my lighting and one app for my solar panels and all this, you know, it's like, let's get it all under one umbrella. 00:33:36:18 - 00:33:56:06 Speaker 1 So I think that's one great, great, advantage to the savant system is kind of one, one single, you know, usage control. Right. So I can I can do this monitoring. I can, you know, adjust my Hvac, my lighting kind of all in one spot, right? 00:33:56:07 - 00:34:19:18 Speaker 2 Yeah. And like I touched on earlier, it gives you that holistic view of exactly what's happening at those different locations within your home and how those systems are interacting with one another. So if you do lower your Hvac and it kicks that Hvac on, you know, understanding the implications elsewhere in that same app where you see that Hvac kick on at the same time can be really important. 00:34:19:19 - 00:34:24:22 Speaker 2 As you're kind of if especially if you are that engineering type and trying to kind of balance things within your home at a given point in time. 00:34:24:23 - 00:34:49:19 Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, I, I have some customers that would definitely sit there and, and like optimize their, their, their usage throughout the day. Like, let's sit here, monitor this and, and jump on my kids when they're using too much power or whatever, you know. Yeah. What's what's next with all this. Like what's where's the where's the future of energy management and going like what's, what's the what's the next generation of this. 00:34:49:21 - 00:34:51:00 Speaker 1 It's coming down the road. 00:34:51:02 - 00:35:18:23 Speaker 2 Yeah. There's some really, really interesting momentum behind energy management systems. Not only with what manufacturers are doing. And again, there's a handful of manufacturers doing some really neat things in this space, but also what you're starting to see with national electric code and what they're enabling energy management systems to allow builders, for example, to do with energy systems and residential applications. 00:35:18:23 - 00:35:56:17 Speaker 2 So one of the really, really neat changes that came about in the 2023 NERC was the allowance of an energy management system to control on site load, to determine service size feeding at home, for example. So a pretty common scenario that that we're seeing kind of across the country as we're moving toward an electrified future is these customers who are investing in an EV charger or investing in a heat pump where they were traditionally on some kind of fossil fuel powered heat. 00:35:56:18 - 00:36:24:23 Speaker 2 The electric service that they have attached at their home isn't adequate to provide the additional power that would be drawn with this new large electric load that's being added to the home. Those customers then have the. The only choice those customers then have is to upgrade their electrical service, which, depending on the on site conditions, can cost tens of thousands of dollars, potentially, and even take months of time. 00:36:24:23 - 00:37:02:02 Speaker 2 Right. This technology, however, and what the NEC code is starting to allow is to deploy an energy management system in that customer's home to, for example, monitor how much power is being drawn at any given point in time and turn loads off if we need to, to ensure that we are protecting those conductors feeding that customer's home. So that's going to enable them to not be subjected to that service upgrade, which again, is going to save them thousands of dollars, complete their project significantly faster than if they were being subjected to that service upgrade that traditionally they would they would have to see. 00:37:02:02 - 00:37:36:12 Speaker 2 And so this is kind of on the bleeding edge of where we're moving with these energy management systems and the standards and, and, certifications around these systems are still kind of in a development phase. We're working with you all right now to understand that certification and start pursuing it with our system. But this is something that we see is going to have huge implications for, certainly for those individual homeowners who are looking to add that additional single electrical load or maybe two electrical loads and not have to pursue that service upgrade, but also for like I said, builders. 00:37:36:12 - 00:38:04:19 Speaker 2 So as you are building a new home or building a development where it's additionally to add an additional 400 amp service means we have to upgrade that transformer, and now you're on the hook to pay for that transformer upgrade, or at least some portion of it. Instead, we can say, now we'll feed this home with a 200 amp service, not upgrade the transformer, but deploy an energy management system within that home to save significant cost. 00:38:04:19 - 00:38:13:07 Speaker 2 And and frankly, you know, if you really start looking at this data, customers with a 200 amp service rarely pull more than 80 amps. 00:38:13:09 - 00:38:13:19 Speaker 1 Right. 00:38:14:00 - 00:38:34:09 Speaker 2 Customers of the 400 amp service probably rarely pull more than 80 amps as well, frankly. And so the traditional load calcs that needed to occur to sized service conductors, you know, they're they're there for safety. But the nice thing is we have a different pathway to ensure a safe installation now. Yeah. For those. 00:38:34:15 - 00:38:57:11 Speaker 1 It's pretty rare for, you know, all these circuits in your home, in your panel, in a 400 and panel to all be on at the same time. I mean, it probably never, ever happens, right? You'd have to have all your AC, like, starting up at the same time. All your appliances running, all the lighting. I mean, like, everything running the exact same time that it in in reality, that doesn't happen. 00:38:57:12 - 00:39:10:23 Speaker 2 Yeah, I've only ever seen it happen when somebody was trying to see what's the max I'll ever draw in this home and and ironically, even with all that, all the loads on, you're probably still only 50% of your real service. 00:39:10:23 - 00:39:31:10 Speaker 1 Which I realize is that most of your electric motors, like, you know, AC units, wash, clothes dryers, they draw the max number of amps at startup. And that startup is like a second or two, right? So, once they're once they're beyond the startup in the running, they're, they're, they're drawing a fraction of what that rating is. 00:39:31:12 - 00:39:32:00 Speaker 2 Exactly. 00:39:32:00 - 00:40:01:20 Speaker 1 So yeah, we actually just had a project where we had to get an upgraded transformer from, from the utility. And I think you know our, you know, our portion of the clients portion of whatever was about $4,500 for the transformer upgrade and it took six weeks to process. Yeah. It was an and that was once we got the the order finally submitted, plus all the hassle that we had to go through before that to even get that requested and on the schedule. 00:40:01:20 - 00:40:06:16 Speaker 1 So it was probably more like a two and a half month process all in. 00:40:06:18 - 00:40:31:20 Speaker 2 Yeah. Unfortunately that's that's not unique. But I've, I've certainly heard horror stories where, you know, if it's a long buried run from the transformer to that customer's meter, it's significantly more expensive than, than even the 4500, which is which is a huge cost, right? Frankly, when you can again deploy an energy management system for maybe $1,500 instead to work around that, that, situation. 00:40:31:22 - 00:40:58:17 Speaker 2 And the other thing I look at, you know, if you're a builder and you're working on a development, the amount of money you can save by reducing the amount of copper deploying within a given development can be massive for that. That developer over the course of or looking at, you know, ten, 15, 20 homes. So it has the potential, like I said, not only to greatly benefit that individual user, but builders all the way up through large project developers. 00:40:58:19 - 00:41:41:19 Speaker 1 Yeah. When you talk about, even just reducing your service size, going from a 4 to 200 or from a 200 to a 150 or something like that on dozens or hundreds of homes, that's a that's a massive savings for the developer or the builder over the course of that whole project. So great, great solution. So if if I'm a homeowner and I just wanted to get started with some basic level of, of, of understanding, where my energy uses energy usage is going, what's just was just kind of the baseline that I should, I should look at doing, you know, where do I start? 00:41:41:21 - 00:42:03:03 Speaker 2 Yeah. Well, I think it depends where you're located, I'll say. And the reason I say that is even before I had some of our equipment deployed in my home, I, you know, fairly regularly went and looked at my smart meter data that is available for most customers in Texas. Most customers at this point have a smart meter on their home. 00:42:03:05 - 00:42:31:00 Speaker 2 They can access, for example, where I'm at, I'm in Entergy territory. But other customers, you know, they have other portals they can go to and they can actually see even 15 minute interval data on how electricity is being consumed in their home. Now, that certainly is going to be the overall home's usage. And so you you lose that resolution on a per circuit level that our type of equipment can provide you, but at least give a customer an ability to understand. 00:42:31:02 - 00:43:07:23 Speaker 2 For example, if I'm on the free nights and weekends plans and I have a huge bill, oh, turns out I use my electricity during the weekdays, in the morning and in the late afternoon hours when I get home from work. Right. So that's that's a nice resource for any customer. You don't have to invest in anything to start understanding your electricity usage, but then beyond that, I would certainly encourage any of these customers, if they want to understand a little bit more granular, to go ahead and invest in the energy management equipment, the flexible load management equipment that a company like savant can provide to give you that per circuit data, especially on 00:43:07:23 - 00:43:31:10 Speaker 2 some of those large consumers. Right. Those two 40 volt loads, things like your laundry equipment, your Hvac equipment, if you have electric cooking equipment, because those are going to be the things that are really pulling most of the power. And so we can give you some really good data about when you're using that power. And then the the added benefit there is the control as well. 00:43:31:10 - 00:43:44:01 Speaker 2 Right. So you can say, yes, I'm on a free nights and weekends plan. So make sure I don't accidentally dry my clothes before the free nights portion of my electric rate kicks in. 00:43:44:03 - 00:44:07:00 Speaker 1 You know, so many of these new appliances have built in timer feature start stop features. I think most people never even look at that. I think. I mean, I'm guilty of this, too. I'm used to just going to my dishwasher and pressing start on my washing machine and pressing start. But I mean, almost all of the new appliances have some kind of delay start feature or time time to start feature on them. 00:44:07:00 - 00:44:24:10 Speaker 1 Just a great strategy is to, look at your if you're on some kind of plan with variable rates, look at, you know, hey, it's it's reduced cost after 10 p.m.. So maybe you use that delay start feature to program that unit to start it after you go to bed and let it run at night while you're asleep. 00:44:24:13 - 00:44:25:01 Speaker 2 Absolutely. 00:44:25:01 - 00:44:27:05 Speaker 1 And save some money that way. 00:44:27:07 - 00:44:47:00 Speaker 2 Yeah. And I mean again drawn it to a personal example. I actually have a time of you space right in Entergy territory, northern part of Houston. I have an energy storage system in my house, so I'm doing something a little bit different, where I'm fortunate to not have to shed load, but I can just say I'm going to use my battery during these peak rate periods. 00:44:47:00 - 00:45:07:09 Speaker 2 And then during the off peak periods, I'll let the utility go ahead and power my home. Just doing that, I'm saving $3,040 a month, which isn't a huge a huge dollars savings. But over the course of a year, five years, ten years, that certainly adds up and just becomes an additional return on my investment. Yeah, that I already, you know, I already had the return that I was going to capture with this technology. 00:45:07:09 - 00:45:24:15 Speaker 2 Now just by intelligently utilizing that equipment to work with the utility rate that I'm operating on, I can extract more value out of that equipment. And this load management is no different than what I'm doing with the energy storage. It just gets there a little bit different, with a little bit different strategy. 00:45:24:17 - 00:45:39:15 Speaker 1 And you're, you know, you're also kind of doing your part too. If you care about these things, you're kind of doing your part to help that to help the grid too. Yep. You know, especially during during the summer, during during times of, high demand, you know, you're doing your, your little part, right? 00:45:39:15 - 00:45:41:06 Speaker 2 Yep. Yep. Absolutely. 00:45:41:06 - 00:45:53:23 Speaker 1 Well, I think that kind of about wraps up our, our energy management discussion that I wanted to have. If people want more information on this event products and the solutions that you guys offer, go ahead and give us the, the website and all the details on that. 00:45:53:23 - 00:46:20:12 Speaker 2 Yeah. So savant.com, you can access to understand not only our different power solutions but also our smart home offerings. So kind of across the board, all the different solutions we can provide for any customer interested and having a smart home experience, whether that starts with energy or is all the way through the rest of their home. More specifically, they can go to savant.com backslash power to understand our load management solutions as well as our energy storage systems. 00:46:20:13 - 00:46:30:05 Speaker 1 Awesome. And we'll be sure and put some links to that on our show notes on YouTube and Instagram and all that kind of stuff too. So Dylan, thanks for joining us today. Appreciate your conversation with me. 00:46:30:05 - 00:46:30:23 Speaker 2 Yeah. Thanks, Curtis. 00:46:30:23 - 00:46:43:00 Speaker 1 Enjoyed it. All right. And thank all you for listening to this episode of the Your Project Shepherd podcast. I'll see you next time. Thanks. 00:46:43:01 - 00:47:07:05 Speaker 1 If you found this helpful, enjoy listening. Please support us by liking and subscribing here on your podcast platform. And also join us on our YouTube channel. We want to continue to bring you high quality content and expert guests, and your support truly helps us to continue this journey. If you have any questions for me or my guests or any feedback for us, you can email us at podcast at your project shepherd.com. 00:47:07:06 - 00:47:07:23 Speaker 1 Thanks again.