Catalyst with Shayle Kann - Introducing: With Great Power, a show about the people building the future grid

Episode Date: January 18, 2023

In this bonus episode, we present With Great Power, a podcast from GridX about the people building the future grid, today. The grid is no longer the biggest source of carbon emissions in America. It's transportation. Electric vehicles are a key part of decarbonizing the transportation sector – making utilities an important force in growing EV adoption. Electric cars will create a new opportunity for power providers to scale their business. But first, they need to get people to buy them. And that's where people like Karl Popham come in. “The mindset is how can we get EVs to your customers as quickly as possible and as profitable for the salesperson as possible,” explains Karl, who is manager of electric vehicles and emerging technologies at Austin Energy. This week, Brad speaks with Karl about Austin Energy’s work in making electric cars as accessible as possible by taking a dealership-centric approach. You can find many more episodes like this over at the With Great Power feed. Subscribe to it on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to shows.

Hey, it's executive editor Stephen Lacey dropping into your feed with a bonus episode. On Thursday, we're going to have a normal episode of Catalysts, so stay tuned for that. In the meantime, we've got an episode from a podcast called With Great Power. It's a show we make in partnership with GridX. It's all about the people building the future grid today. Now, there's this perception that utilities are outdated, slow, and not embracing innovation fast enough. And of course, it totally varies in the industry. Across the industry, there are definitely lots of people working hard to realize the customer-centric zero-carbon grid of the future. And this podcast features stories about the technology, climate, security, economic shifts that are reshaping utilities and the electricity system and the people who are ushering in those changes.

In this episode, we'll hear from Carl Popham about how utilities can be powerful drivers of electric vehicle adoption. Now, the grid is no longer the biggest source of carbon emissions in America, it's transportation, and EVs are a key part of decarbonizing the transportation sector. And that makes utilities an important force in growing EV adoption. And in this episode, host Brad Langley speaks with Carl Popham of Austin Energy about his work making electric cars as accessible as possible by taking a dealership-centric approach to selling and marketing cars. You can find many more episodes like this over at the With Great Power Feed. I hope you like it. And if you do, subscribe to it wherever you listen to Catalyst. And one final note, Shales Investment Firm EIP is an investor in GridX, but they had nothing to do with this podcast.

We just wanted to make that relationship clear. And now I hope you enjoy this episode of With Great Power. Back in 2018, a local radio host in Austin, Texas, her name was Amy. She wanted to buy an electric vehicle. She went to nearly every dealership in the city and all the same. salespeople steered her towards the gas-powered cars, the newest pickup truck, a versatile crossover, or the fuel-efficient sedan. They all dodged her inquiries about an EV. And Carl Popham, he wasn't shocked to hear this. Sadly, there weren't a lot of surprises. It was reinforcing things we've already

heard, both through national media, as well as our own research. Carl leads the electric vehicle team at Austin Energy, the city's utility. He already knew the point of sale was a problem for EV adoption, so much so that he'd been talking to dealerships about it for quite some time. One of the salespeople told me one time, the salesperson decides what you're going to buy when you walk through that door. And that's ultimately, why did the salesperson want to do that? One is historically, to sell an EV could take up to two hours, and to sell a gas car takes 40 minutes. And then for various reasons, based on how commissions work, typically the salesperson on most dealerships, not all, would then get paid less. and you're not even having close to a better chance of selling that vehicle.

So you're asking a salesperson to spend more time, get paid less, and the probability is the same or probably even lower because of the technology is so new. So you're just coming in with a loaded gun of everything going against you, and that's what she experienced. Now, Carl, he actually knew Amy. He'd been on her radio show in the past, and he decided it was time to invite her over for a conversation. After they talked, Carl realized it was time to get even more involved

with the dealerships. That kind of started planning the seed of, well, how can we get involved at the electric utility, even though we obviously don't sell cars? So one thing we did create is the EV Buyers Guide platform. So Austin Energy's EVBuyers Guide, it's designed to give consumers a Tesla experience when shopping for all kinds of electric cars. So you go to the homepage where it gives you the option to shop locally, showing real-time dealership inventory. People can also research cars to see what fits their needs. The buyer's guide also has information about federal and local incentives, and because of all this, it's quite popular, getting more than 10,000 unique visitors a month. Now, when they launched a buyer's guide, Carl and his team wanted to make

sure it would get the recognition it deserved. So they invited all the car salesmen out to a barbecue lunch, because who doesn't love barbecue in Texas, with Austin's mayor, and talked about how to sell EVs. We brought up a car salesperson who self-proclaimed has sold more EVs in Texas than anyone else. I have no reason to doubt them to kind of talk about how to sell units. And from the mayor, to include my team, we're all talking about what is your success? How do we get more EVs to customers? How do we make it easier for you? How do we get units through your dealership into your customers' hands as quickly as possible? Ultimately, you're not engaging the dealerships because they're going to help you with your Austin Climate and Equity Plan or utility financial health goals or anything like that.

It is the mindset is how can we get EVs through you to your customers as quickly as possible and as profitable for the salesperson as possible. And if you go with that mindset, I think you'll have a much better collaboration. This is With Great Power, a show about the people building the future grid today. I'm Brad Langley. There's this perception that utilities are outdated. They're slow. They're not embracing innovation fast enough. But across the industry, there are people working really hard to realize that customer-centric is zero-carbon grid of the future.

This week, we're talking to Carl Popham about how utilities can be powerful drivers of electric vehicle adoption. The grid is no longer the biggest source of carbon emissions in America. It's transportation. That's why electric vehicles are such a key part of decarbonizing the transportation sector, which makes the sellers of electricity, the utilities, a really important force in growing the adoption of eBs. So these electric vehicles are going to create a whole new opportunity for utilities to scale their business. But in order to do that, they first need to get more people to buy them.

And that's where people like Carl Popham come in. My current role, and for the last 11 years, has been manager of electric vehicles and emerging technologies. So I co-founded and lead that team since its inception and anything in the electric vehicle utility space, but also in emerging technologies, we deal with a lot of other things around distributed energy resources and other just stuff that sounds cool to the team to go after. I spoke with Carl about his team's dealership-centric approach to EB adoption. But first, we talked about his love for new technology. It all started with his time in the Army.

I'd like to dig into your background a little bit as somebody that got their start in semiconductors in the early 2000s. I'm fascinated by your early career working in emerging tech. So you graduated from University of Texas at Austin, you joined the military, and it was there you worked on Port 80. What was Port 80, and what did it become? Yeah, so right out of college, a young lieutenant, I enlisted during college as a private, so I got that experience. And then upon graduation was a lieutenant in the Army Corps Engineers. I had a weakened job of leading a combat engineer platoon and then company, the military aspect of being in a full-time employee, an active duty, but for the National Guard.

But then my colonel realized I knew something about computers. So then I was also the computer guy for the directorate, the Facilities Engineering Directorate, to put in some of our first computer technologies, local area networks, wide area networks, etc. And when we first started accessing the Internet, you can tell how old or a foundational technology is, by how low the port number. So we were mostly looking in FTP and Telnet. And so that's like, I don't know, 14, 20. I'm guessing it's been a while.

And then we just had a little meeting invite come up and say, hey, there's a demonstration of Port 80. So that was like, what's Port 80? And that's one was demonstrated. Port 80 is the World Wide Web. So that is the visual representation of stuff we had been using, mostly static text, Telnet and FTP file transfers, into a visualization.

And after that meeting, that's when I realized this is huge. This is going to be big. This is what I want to do. Within months, I had left the military and started a nine-year consulting career with a focus on Port 80 e-commerce worldwide web for mostly Fortune 500 and global 100 companies. And I think you were at Cap Gemini at that time, and it was there that you wrote a paper, which you called the first-generation Web and, I guess the term smartphone didn't exist at the time. When you wrote that report, were you thinking the smartphone or the web-enabled phone would grow to be so prolific? Or did you think it'd be more of a niche technology?

Now, I thought it was to be huge. I knew Port 80 was going to be huge. I knew web-enabled phones. Like, to your point, that's just a term I just used because smartphone didn't exist yet. I knew that was going to be huge, just having the convenience. and I wanted to make sure our company was well aligned in understanding the technologies because it's a different form factor and there's different back-in technologies like XML and other ways to present on a phone.

And what are the pros and cons of having a phone form factor for e-commerce and customer experience on the internet? And then to push it forward, the third time I saw and I knew something was going to be huge, was EVs when a customer had a very early Tesla Roadster and gave me. me a quick tour of their EV, and that I knew that was going to be huge back then as well. So I assume it's this interest in EVs that led you to Austin Energy. You started in IT at Austin because of your experience there. You were in that role for, I think, about six years when in 2011, the EBs and Emerging Technologies Team was launched.

Pretty immediately, you found yourself in this group. Why was that of such interest to you to be in that EV and emerging tech group? When I joined the utility, EVs weren't on the radar yet. It was just an extension of an interest in energy, also of interest to get back in some form of public service. And so that's why I joined Austin Energy. First, as their IT leading the project management office, so that taught me a lot about emerging technologies and new projects in the utility space. And I liked IT, was the interim CIO for about eight months. And then I heard a rumor about a new team forming.

It was going to be called electric vehicles and emerging technologies. And I just knew that that's what I wanted to do. Because I always found even in IT, the most interesting aspects, was working with the business units and what they're trying to do, rather than necessarily the back office IT space of it. It was more about learning the business and how to empower and able the business. And then I also knew EVs was going to be huge. I had several colleagues call me out on that saying,

why would you, you know, you're the CIA right now. You have this great career ladder and path. Why would you go to a team that's not going to last 12 months, a flavor of the month? And to think about, you know, in 2011, there was a much bigger gamble of being, leading an EV effort at a utility than it is now. Now it's everyone's getting into the business. I knew it was going to be big. I just felt it in my heart.

And then I also like the fact that no one had led that team before. There had obviously been some EVE efforts, but that was the first organizational team within the utility to formalize it under the organization as a team like that, electric vehicles, emerging technologies. So I also like that clear slate, if you will, just in general in my career path. I like going into things that doesn't have a history of expectation.

It's more of a clean slate of, well, what can you do with it? So on that note, So if anybody is listening and they do want to start this, any advice on kind of the first couple of things to do to establish this group within a utility? Well, one is, you know, who you hire an emerging tech. I always look for people who understand the customer we're trying to serve, first and foremost.

And I think that's been helpful. And with a lot of different backgrounds, I look for people who have taken risks and who have been able to quickly change ideas, especially at that time, there wasn't like an experienced EV ecosystem to choose from. You had to look at what was a skill set you're looking for and a demographic that you were looking for.

The other thing I would say is the first thing you should kind of do as utility is decide what your strategy and your outcomes are and then make that public. have a public vision to your strategy, be a speaker and be seen as a leader, because what's going to happen is there's a lot of decisions being made about EVs and that can have a big impact in the utility.

And if you're not seen as an innovator or a leader in the space, the old adage, you're either at the table or on the table, you're going to be on the table, and then you're going to react to what other people think without really getting that weight in. So having that leadership position and building up your network so people know who you are.

And as these meetings address or as the commissions meet or staffers, they will ping you and allow you to weigh in very quickly. Because at the end of the day, transportation electrification does not happen without utilities. It just doesn't happen. And it doesn't happen well without active engagement of utilities. Another thing you'll find that's helped us. I mean, my team's small now.

We have 11 people. compared to other EV teams of utilities, maybe that's big. But what you'll find, you know, anything we've done, and we have a very active portfolio, we have over 25 active initiatives over a strategy called the 5 EV Pillars, has taken an ecosystem of a village, of friends, and an ecosystem to make happen. So I would say find out the friends of EVs in your utility. What we call them is Friends of the Show. And those are people throughout the utility.

Maybe they're in the rates team, maybe in their electric service delivery, maybe they're power generation. That just seemed to have vibed with what EVs can do and incorporate them into your ecosystem. You think EVs are an opportunity for utilities to showcase how wide they can go. What do you mean by that? Well, so I talk to a lot of utilities, and a lot of utilities I talk to, they think they have a very focused lane on what their area of participation is. in the EV space. Typically, they think it's on infrastructure. How can we provide charging infrastructure or infrastructure,

so other people can provide charging infrastructure? And by wide, I mean, there is a lot of space in the EV ecosystem for you to participate in. And so that's when I say wide, we develop the 5EV pillar strategy. So we have very wide lanes. So infrastructure is one of those lanes. It's definitely one of those lanes. We also talked about outreach and strategy and marketing. So outreach is one of those lanes.

But grid integration is another lane. So thinking about the pros and cons of putting in this new load. And I think a lot of utilities mistakenly call EV growth as load growth. I think that simplifies it because the load curves, both 24 hours and seasonally, look completely different. It's not more buildings. It's not more air conditioning. EVs charge differently.

They have different behaviors. and that's a huge opportunity for utilities. We also have a land of equity and affordability. How can we make sure our historic lender served customers are first in the line and how are we engaging them? So you see that with specific programs, but also just influence on all programs of making sure we have that equity lens very clear, very clear on everything we do. And our fifth pillar is fleets and new mobility. How are we enabling fleets to go electric and gig economy drivers, and just so it's a comprehensive.

And by having a comprehensive approach, I think our impact is much wider. And it also makes the individual, there's a synergy between those 25 projects. Siloed by themselves would have a lot less impact than the synergy of having 25 under the five pillars working together. It just puts water and raises all boats, if you will. Speaking of boats, you've said, that if you're still lagging behind on EVs as a utility, you're missing the boat. What's at stake for those utilities? Well, I think one is to have other people make major decisions about your business without

you participating. So you might have a utility commission or a state legislature or it depends how your governance is. They are making decisions that have a huge impact on you. So you're missing the boat there of not having discussions of the, of the utility perspective, everything from how demand charges work to how load works, how much load goes in the area. There's a big difference between how a rural utility might look at a DC fast charging hub

in the middle of nowhere, if you will, versus a city utility. So I would say you're missing the boat there. You're also missing the boat on a fantastic revenue stream. Kind of hinted out at little. It's more than load growth. what we find is EV charging just naturally happens a lot more at night. So here in Texas, when we look at peaks, it's about summer peaks in the afternoon. So we spend a lot of money on infrastructure to cover that peak load, that hot summer afternoon.

EVs charge a lot at night. They charge in the morning, so they're charged off peak. So it's very profitable in that you don't have to build all this new infrastructure like there's new buildings. It's soaking up excess capacity of your transmission and distribution network. It also doesn't have the same seasonal load profile. People typically drive the same amount on a cool fall day, a hot summer day, a winter day. So it doesn't, once again, have that stress and pressure and costs associated with adding more peak load during the summer. And then lastly, we've had several pilots, and then there's also studies on it.

People are just much more comfortable with shifting their load demand response from an EV. than with air conditioning load. With air conditioning load, people just get one degree uncomfortable. They'll do what a utility we call an opt-out. They'll override it. In our pilots, we had zero opt-outs in shifting EV load, and we had the expected number of opt-outs in air-conditioning load.

So you also have a customer experience, as long as the car is ready that the next day, are much more comfortable with shifting that load. So there's just a lot of, this just isn't the biggest new load generation since the invention of air conditioning, it's also a different profile, so you can leverage a lot of existing investments and then reap the profit, if you will,

from those investments rather than have to spend more capital to keep up. We call this show With Great Power, obviously as a reference to the power sector. It's also a famous Spider-Man quote, With Great Power comes great responsibility. What superpower do you bring to push the energy transition forward? I would say our superpower,

and a core tenant of all our programs is two things. One is keep it simple. If you can't explain it in 15 seconds to customer, you've already lost them. Two is when you implement programs, is how scalable is it? So really, if you have to choose resources, do things that are going to scale up quickly and go big,

and the whole time is keep your offerings as simple as possible. Carl, thank you very much for your time. Austin Energy is clearly doing some amazing, some amazing work around the electrification of transportation, and I really appreciate you sharing your perspective. It's been a pleasure to be on your show, and thank you for the conversation today, and any opportunity to nerd out on all things EV is a good time spent from my perspective. With Great Power is produced by GridX in partnership with PostScript Media. Delivering on the clean energy future is complex. GridX exists to simplify that journey. GridX is the

enterprise rate platform of choice for utilities undergoing rate reforms and transitions. Our analytics deliver the detailed cost of changing to a new time of use rate plan, buying an electric vehicle, installing solar, you name it. Learn more at gridX.com. Our awesome production team includes Aaron Hardick, Stephen Lacey, and Camille Stennis from PostScript Media. The original theme song and mixing came from Sean Mark Wan. The GridX production team includes Jenny Barber and myself, Brad Langley. If this show is providing value for you, and we really hope.

it is, please help us spread the word. You can rate or review as to Apple and Spotify, and you can also share a link with a friend, colleague, or the energy nerd in your life. Thanks for listening. I'm Brad Langley.