Safer Grids with Powerful Cost Saving Solutions…not hype

I think many would be surprised how little has truly change in our electric grids since the early 20th century. Back then this was a massive achievement helping everyone to lessen their real life burdens.

Recently California had to deal with massive, self-inflicted, blackouts, depending on who you listen to they were due to everything from alternate energy (solar) to weather (heat wave). They were not due to equipment failure other than the failure to buy more equipment to support the demand.

We hear about Utilities not able to meet the new demands for energy due to all of our electronics, with a lot of conversation being about electric vehicles (EV) and how do they support them as the number of people with an EV grows. We do hear about utilities having to upgrade some of their grid, like substations to more modern equipment due to Government edict. The reason is that the current equipment has been in place for decades and needs to be upgraded. Decades!! and now it is being replaced by equipment that probably won’t last a decade before it needs replacement or at least an upgrade. CEO’s providing the equipment are happy for the opportunity to provide the equipment now and about every few years from now on.

Let’s go back a few decades. Not long into the grid’s deployments came the Tennessee Valley Authority, commonly known as TVA. The TVA was trying to help the customers and, yes, sell more power but their customer base was in the lower income bracket and couldn’t afford to buy these new-fangled appliances. The TVA brain trust (they had them then) came up with the TVA buying appliances with their large discounts and then selling them to their customers and letting them pay for the appliances via their electric bill…problem solved. What you might call a win-win.

For many years Utilities have enabled customers to prosper as never before by providing inexpensive power to every home via the power grid. Now we are at a crossroads where we need to pioneer even greater benefits of traditional energy as well as alternative energy.

The Electric Utilities are in a good place to provide new services and features that will benefit themselves and their customers with new services. These services will help customers with new options related to their power and at the same time provide new opportunities to increase the utility’s revenue streams.

Amazon a book seller which many said wouldn’t be successful selling books is a success because they added new and different products and services generating alternate revenue streams.

A power utility is connected physically to all their customer why aren’t they not doing the same thing in a unique way as Amazon? Offering products and services the customer wants at a price the customer is willing to pay? Options like better pricing options, feedback on the power they use, alternate power options, Internet, Telecoms, multi-media, and more.

The main reason is regulation by state commissions topped off with self-inflicted regulations and requirements imposed on the utility by themselves due to their “understanding” of the regulations. When they are self-imposed, then they are imposed by politicians at the state level that don’t really understand.

Power Options

Today we have alternative power sources like solar, wind, and batteries that can be large sources of power for many or a source of power for a few. Unless they are local to one or two users, these new energy sources with their new technologies still use the same legacy power grid as traditional sources. These newer technologies are greener but they also create their own cost and headaches and non-green issues.

Innovate, no fear of the past!!

When you think of innovation, what comes to mind? The buzz words and acronyms of the day like Smart, EV, EDGE, IoT, Cloud, Green, and AI to name a few. Maybe you think of phrases like “Thinking outside the box” or “A new paradigm”, or “Tomorrow’s technology today” or “If it ain’t broke, break it.” Or “The best way to predict the future…is to create it.”, you get the picture.

Steve Jobs once said, “ “Give the customers what they want." But that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, "If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, 'A faster horse!'" People don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why I never rely solely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.“ In other words, Innovate!

Too often power companies follow crowd thinking and therefore miss many truly great opportunities. We’ve talked to literally thousands of people who won’t make changes for fear of losing their job or other types of retribution. You would be surprised how many people won’t take a risk or make a change out of fear.

Ask someone why things are done a certain way and you will often hear “That’s the way we have always done it!”. When asked why doesn’t someone change it you get the response “We tried this or that and it didn’t work, and we lost money so now it’s’ “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it!” . The great companies need to work and look at all options or be left behind by those that do. When looking at a new product, like the AIS below, look at how flexible the product is, look at how you can make it work in areas it may not have been designed for, look at how you can partner with other companies to increase applications and revenue streams.

Today we need all grid types to be fully customizable. We further need these power systems to combine and simplify operations for employees and learning curve usage for customers. The cost to maintain these power systems safely and at reduced cost can be achieved, after all, it is not rocket science. The customers can have better bundling of all services due to smarter deployments of identified synergies.

This means in some cases a telecom or technology company will work with power utilities to better supply the customer with services other than just power. By simply doing the right things for your customers you will in fact make them be your customer longer with your expanded services offering.

Companies need to think differently about whom they see as competitors and instead where possible make them part of the ecosystem for customers for real win wins. Using every company’s strength to empower them and customers with better service and lower cost.

The Grid

The Grid we have today is a white whale grid that everyone is trying to game in some way that benefits them and not the grid foundations or customers. Everyone is attempting to make money through the grid without making the proper maintenance and changes to enable the grid to be resilient and self-healing in this environment where everything is changing.

This means the grid, micro-grid or other type of delivery will vary and change over time, meaning all grid types will need greater flexibility and some form of future proofing.

Solar and wind power systems need converters and power conditioning and whether we like it or not this adds more cost to users. When I look around the world these green systems are adding factual cost of purchasing energy. In some areas this cost is very large, quite literally several times US cost today. Many also under estimate the size of this energy demand. I have no problem with any technologies as long as we all understand the holistic picture and what the goals are. We need to use very good common sense to construct modern competitive energy and broadband systems and have its availability anywhere you are.

What is a Smart Grid?

If you ask 10 knowledgeable people to define Smart Grid, you will probably get more than 10 different answers. Our definition is: “A Smart Grid is an electrical grid which includes a variety of operation and energy measures including smart meters, smart appliances, renewable energy resources, and energy efficient resources. Electronic power conditioning and control of the production and distribution of electricity are important aspects of the smart grid.”

In today’s world we tend to call everything smart even if it’s very limited in functional abilities. We further tend to put Band-Aids on systems, instead of being driven to holistic empowering solutions type implementations. This is true in all areas of energy production and delivery. We have these terms, smart grid, smart city, smart home, edge. These products have been around for some time but many think these are new, few are. To those of us that want real quality and simplicity these all miss the mark as being only small pieces of what even AIS alone can accomplish.

To CWT and team these seem like not well thought out. What I mean is why not start looking at all technologies, energy, communication, streaming, data, internet,5G,AI as a more integrated ecosystem with more security and self-healing and package with lower cost customers services. CWT has itself created literally a couple of hundred benefits.

This is sad because if we really put our heads together, we could build great product and service.

CoolWaters Technology Global Configurable Solution

We have identified a few things that could use some innovation above, something missing in today’s world of electricity. Too often companies are looking for the next iPhone product, a home run of product and then some, but they don’t realize the iPhone started as many smaller, already existing products.

The innovation we are going to start with is like that, smaller, simpler but with a wealth of features. It is “thinking outside the box” but not too far. This innovation was for a country and its leaders that saw the opportunities that came with the innovation (outside the box) and it fit well with what they wanted to do (not to far). They passed some new laws and brought together companies to make it happen. Then a new administration came into power and they shut down the project (outside the box too far).

CoolWaters Technology (CWT) is a small, specialized team known for developing unique, one of a kind, disruptive technologies. Our current disruptive technology is a product targeted for the end of the electric utility service loop, and the telecommunications last mile, into homes and business, the Advanced Infrastructure System (AIS).

The AIS is an innovative product that is outside the box but not too far. It is not a meter like you may be used to, you’ll see why shortly. The AIS is comparable in cost to smart meter systems with literally hundreds of new features and benefits for electric utilities, telecoms, and data groups, and their customers, more than any other global product. These feature rich technologies add efficiencies, multi-level load monitoring and control, theft prevention, blackout & brownout protection and control, safety, security, high speed communication, internet, multi-media, Smart Home, and much more. One UL approved, unitized, low cost, fully loaded configuration was proven in Mexico.

Product Innovation

We have done a lot of new things with the AIS product. First and foremost is bringing together features and functions into a single, low cost, product (remember the iPhone discussion above). Margaret Mead once said “Never Doubt That A Small Group of Thoughtful, Committed People Can Change the World. Indeed, It Is the Only Thing That Ever Has.” CoolWaters Technology is that small group. Our current product is one that was created via progression, with one solution providing the base for the next. We eventually had to stop although when we present this to other innovators, they come up with more things that can be done. Remember, “Innovation is also saying no to 1,000 things” - Steve Jobs.

A better meter

Current smart meters measure usage at the point of entry into the home. Smart meters do the same thing they are just smart (we’ll define smart in a different post). They add some proprietary communications, and few actually use to its fullest extent. They measure power as often as every 15 minutes but don’t do much with the information.

The AIS moves the measuring and all other features from the entry point to the actual electrical panel(s). It measures the power at the breaker level while monitoring power, continuously looking for anomalies provide a new level of granularity into how the power is used inside the home. The information is transmitted to the utility as scheduled via a common protocol (the AIS is communication agnostic).

Brownout and blackout prevention!

This is something currently in the news, self-inflicted Blackout and Brownouts in California…again. Turning off all the power to customers because you don’t have enough power for everyone. The AIS helps with this problem by giving the utility control of the user’s power at the breaker level.

With the AIS, the breakers can be prioritized for the situation of too much demand or needing to reduce load. Each breaker could have a priority say from 1 to 5 with 1 being the highest priority and 5 being the lowest. When the situation arises, the Utility sends out a notice to all the homes and businesses affected that a level x shutdown will be invoked in xx minutes. At that time, the utility issues a command to shutdown level X and above. Level 0 breakers can never be shut down. They would be reserved for breakers that have medical or other critical equipment attached. If the level picked isn’t enough then they bump it up a level. There are other options that could be done to help minimize the impact of a load reduction.

When the utility decides to restore all power, the AIS would do it safely with minimal impact to the grid with its soft power on feature limiting the jolt to the utility, the grid, and the equipment on the grid, including the user’s.

New Partnerships

Yes, a New Partnership can be innovative. We mentioned above that The AIS offers Utilities, Telecoms, Multimedia Companies and others opportunities to become partners in this fight to serve more customers, stabilize their markets and grow. No longer will they be on opposite sides of the fence. Governments and local jurisdictions should embrace these opportunities to do something new. They may even help get these companies to that point.

Think about it

We have only scratched the surface on how many ways we can produce energy and that in time we will have some very interesting ways to provide power. At this time, no one type of power, other than fossil fuel and nuclear could satisfy the global demand for power, and the demand is going up every day.

Think of the grid as somewhat like an irrigation ditch, the first customers get all the power they may need but the last customers on the line may get lower quality power or none. These grids are under strains when we load them up. Utilities may try to overpower them by raising the voltage and/or increasing the frequency to get more power in the system for customers. This adds to latent damages to the grids, homes and businesses.

These utility groups are always walking a tight rope in being able to earn real income. Thus, they tend to spend money on current/short term issues not long-term solutions. This has been made more difficult due to the new forms of marketing and sale of electric energy of non-asset companies. One area of income that has been mostly lost to electric utilities. There are some real opportunities for these Utilities to utilize their assets in newer ways creating new and powerful revenue streams. It’s very hard to take the leap into new business territory but all business needs to evolve or be left behind. Power companies are missing a golden opportunity to empower their customers and themselves.

For many years we have tried to find ways to solve or mitigate the many issues and we have succeeded. With a great deal of hard work and sweat equity we have delivered the AIS Ecosystem.

The CoolWaters’ AIS market is very large, about US$1.6T globally. The CoolWaters team has developed for other companies billion-dollar products using new and innovative technologies that are still in use today. CoolWaters product technology is both hardware and software. This technology creates a unique large-scale infrastructure ecosystem that creates the opportunity for disruptive sales with good margins and long-term low churn royalties. The product in Mexico was fully UL listed. The ecosystem can be packaged in different forms unitized or retrofitted in all global markets for homes or business.

The team and I are heavily invested in the success of CoolWaters Technology and open to working with others and their ideas/processes. We are ready to answer your questions, provide additional data and documentation (including pitches), and sit down with you, and others, so we can understand each other and the market we are aligned to disrupt.

Stephen Williams, CEO,  T: +1 (832) 715-0064, Email: [email protected] Jim Beals, COO, T: +1 (281) 301-5563, [email protected] https://CoolWatersTech.com/

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