You’re listening to Unite and Heal America and KABC 790. This is your host, Matt Matern. And today’s guests were pleasure to have Steve Wilburn, CEO of Verde Watts on the program. Welcome to you, Steve.

Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here.

So tell us a little bit about yourself, Steve, and kind of what your life path has been to, to come to Verity Watson. What? What motivated you to start the company?

Yeah, great question. Basically, my entire career since I served in the Marine Corps, during the Vietnam War, when I was discharged, I attended college, became a chemical engineer, and was always curious about energy. And its various forms. I worked at Monsanto Corporation. And one of my early responsibilities was to take a look at back in the early 80s, of alternative forms of energy, alternative pathways.

At that time, the alternatives were mostly to coal. Coal was the primary fuel for the United States. For decades. My group, as we evolved, we became more involved using natural gas, methane. And that was the infancy of the solar generation. And so ever since that particular moment in time, my career is advanced, I did consulting work with NASA, on what we were going to produce the hydrogen fuel for the fuel shuttle, when that program came online, at the Kennedy Space Center, eventually, it was decided to produce that fuel in Alabama.

But again, cutting edge taking a look at technology, finding different pathways, to create the fuels that we need. Looking at it from a standpoint of the environment, anything we could do to minimize the impacts on the environment, and still be able to produce fuel and energy cost effectively. That’s pretty much what I do.

When I was, when did you start Verde Watts?

I started Verde Watts in 2009, excuse me, in 2009. I had another company firm green with some patents in landfill gas to energy. Verde Watts was primarily to take a look at different pathways for solar, and the integration of batteries, which was a fairly new technology, as you can imagine, in 2009. So

tell us about how the company evolved. from its infancy to now.

Basically, we took the patents that I had and patents that we acquired, and we perfected them and commercialize them. It took us a number of years to commercialize these ideas and concepts. These are all well proven. Now we’ve done projects in Brazil, we’re doing projects here in the United States and abroad.

So our primary focus right now, it Verde Watts, is in the ability to tie together communications, along with the energy production, so that everyone knows we call them micro grids. Now, instead of major grids. micro grid is a smaller version of a grid. And it’s dedicated to certain energy users. And we protect those users, we keep them online, but we have to communicate. In order to make that happen. We have to know exactly the energy demand that they need, and the energy production that we’re capable of producing.

So I’ve read a bit about micro grids, and from what I understand it is the wave of the future to have a more resilient grid, so that we don’t have power shortages, say when wind and solar may not be available, say solar during the evening or wind when it’s not, you know, breezy outside. So tell us kind of how that works in a practical way.

Absolutely. A one a resource like a solar, obviously, if the sun is not shining, a rainy day or it’s in the evening. There’s no power that’s going to come from the solar cells. So therefore that power has to come from somewhere. That’s what source doesn’t have. If you’re not connected to the grid. It has to come from a battery source.

And that allows the user to schedule, the time they use their energy more efficiently. So they generated during the day when the sun or the wind is blowing in the case of a wind project. And that energy is stored in the batteries, and is used by the on demand, then, as the energy is required, it’s made available to the end user.

So why are these micro grids important? It to say California and into the rest of the country, the rest of the world? And how are we going to build them out going forward?

That’s a great question. Basically, what happens is, when you’re looking at a grid, in the old days of the early grid, Edison, etc, every town had its own power plant, there was no interconnected grid. So think of that as a mini grid, on into itself. And it operated to the best of its ability to serve its geographical location.

We’re going to a concept of that, or a subset of that, where we get together a building or a group of buildings or businesses, and we aggregate those electrical loads into a micro grid are a subset of the big utility grid, why it’s much more efficient, it can gain up to 80 to 85% efficiencies of the generation, as opposed to the utility grid, which is often less than 50% efficient.

Well tell us how is it that a micro grid can be 80 to 85% efficient versus 50 to 55% efficient?

Great question. Again, it’s basically the transmission and the distribution. For every mile, you move power, you lose, you lose efficiency, you go through transformers, you go through distribution substations, every time that energy is transferred, you lose efficiency.

So if you’re in a micro grid on site or contiguous properties, you can imagine that that is a much more efficient distribution pathway. And that’s primarily the reason plus the scheduling, where you’re able to schedule the loads in accordance with the demand.

Well, you I read a little bit about your company, and they were said that you guys focus on projects that are between 200 kilowatts to 50 megawatts. Maybe you could explain kind of the difference between the magnitudes of those projects and and what type of projects that you’re doing that fall into either both of those categories?

Yeah, primarily on the smaller end, one would conceive of a building complex like for residential condominiums at the 200 Kw level are a Walgreens are a commercial retail outlet, that would be at that size range. When you go all the way up to 50 megawatts. Now you’re dealing with either city blocks, or you’re dealing with large industrial complexes. That’s primarily the difference. It’s the size of the single block user that determines whether it’s 200 kW, or 50 megawatts.

So in terms of efficiency that you’re you’re gaining, from 50 to 55%, of a regular grid from 280 to 85%, efficient for micro grid, it seems as though the cost of the electricity would drop if you’re getting much higher levels of efficiency. Is that Is that a fair statement?

It’s a statement that we need to analyze just a little bit further. In other words, there you have the pathway to cheaper energy, but as you are developing the micro grid technology, remember, we’re talking small scale, relatively speaking to massive power distribution system, that infrastructure cost is there and heavily subsidized in the case of a micro grid.

That is not the case. That is a direct cost to the users of that particular system. It is cost competitive. Yes, in most cases, most cases in the United States. There are pockets were electrical energy, some in the Midwest, and some other areas. In even the West, where that’s not quite the case, it’s very close, but not quite as competitive.

So what kind of cost infrastructure is required to build one of these systems out? Unlike what’s your

Yeah, what you’re looking at would be, let’s say, for example, an office complex and office building. So you would take a look at what how we’re going to supply this office with its power, is there parking areas and parking garages that could be covered with solar. That’s one good example, then that solar energy would be made available to the end users.

But again, that’s only when the sun shines. So and it’s not dark out. So if we’re taking a look at a more around the clock operation, we would have to incorporate batteries. So the batteries then would store assuming we were connected to the grid, even, we would buy power at certain times of the day, when the grid power is, relatively speaking, less expensive, and store that energy for later use. Our WEVA

I’m gonna Steve, I’m gonna have to cut you there. But we’re going to get back to this interesting question of how a micro grid is adapted to to our modern world here, and you’re listening to Unite and Heal America and KABC 790 And we’ll be right back in one minute.

As you may know, your host Matt Matern of Unite and Heal America is also the founder of Matern Law Group, their team of experienced employment, consumer and environmental attorneys are dedicated to leveling the playing field by giving everyone access to the highest quality legal representation contact 844 MLG for you, that’s 844 MLG for you, or 8446544968446544968.

You’re listening to Unite and Heal America with KABC 790. My guest again, Steve Wilburn, CEO of Verde Watts. And Steve, you’re telling us walking us through an example of a micro grid at an office building and putting solar and batteries compound to increase efficiencies. Take us to the next level and how you would do this maybe on a bigger scale. Sure.

For example, in an industrial facility, let’s go to one of the larger ends, where you have a fabrication company that uses a considerable amount of electricity and thermal energy heat, we would take a look in those particular applications of renewable natural gas, which you can get from landfills and other sources distributed through the pipeline.

This is becoming commonplace. Now, these are being reused sources of methane. And what that does is allow us to generate electricity in a gas engine, but also capture the heat that is normally lost in the combustion process. That’s wasted energy. Normally, the building can use that for hot water, or the factory are chilled water even cooling.

Either way, it’s thermal energy. So we look at all pathways. When we examine an application for a micro grid, we look at Sun, we look at natural gas, we look at renewable natural gas, we even nowadays look at hydrogen. But we also almost always look at battery technology.

So what’s what’s happening on the battery technology front? I know there’s been a lot of advances. I read recently that they’re proposing a very large facility in Utah to hold energy in a hydrogen format and then releasing it in that way. What types of batteries is your company using and where do you see the future leading in battery technology?

Well battery to an engineer like myself, especially an energy engineer, it’s just a way to store energy, how you store it, and the method of storage defines whether it’s stored in a lithium ion battery, you probably know that from your cell phone. It’s charged lithium ion battery is in your cell phone and it’s recharged where as you look at the hydrogen example.

You’re talking about that storing under pressure, either in a tank or in a cavern sample as hydrogen or methane, and then that is released and used upon demand water, think of a large reservoir of water or hydro. It’s in the sense that lake is a large battery. So it’s storing potential energy that that you allow it to be discharged through a turbine generates through the hydraulic forces their power.

Does that help?

Sure.

And in terms of you know, how these micro grids are going to work in the current, I guess, macro grids that are existing? What can smaller communities do to increase their kind of self sufficiency and get off of, or at least have less than a dependence on the macro grid?

Basically, the integration of micro grids into a larger usable form of energy by a city would be dependent upon number one, the type of connection, you know, the wiring, and transmission system that exists. And then number two, the ability to communicate, so that the dispatcher if you would, if the city could aggregate some of these micro grids into a larger block of energy, during rolling blackouts, so that some of the energy could be contributed by a micro grid that is being used by others who aren’t members of the micro grid?

Well, that’s I guess, the the potential of the resilience of, of smaller communities having this micro grid, so we don’t have a big crash, like they did in Texas. Do we see any action on the governmental front, either at the state level in California or the federal level, across the country that is supporting or encouraging the use of micro grids?

It’s beginning, it’s actually gaining momentum. And with programs like yours, educating the public about the benefits of micro grids, I think that’s going to help politicians respond to pressure. And when rolling blackouts occur, and people are without the use of energy, they tend to gripe right.

And they tend to put pressure on that. So that becomes part of the regulatory process eventually, and we’re seeing from Texas and in California over the last couple of years, we’re seeing that roll into a a position where micro grids are now gaining favor, regulatory wise, and with the consumer. Well,

I interviewed Rex Parris, the mayor of Lancaster, a few weeks ago, and we’re talking about the work that his city has done to maybe be less dependent upon the utilities. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with the the Lancaster model and what he’s done. But what are you seeing in terms of kind of reducing the dependency of your clients on on the standard utilities?

Exactly. We work with our clients on a direct basis. So they seek us out. And they want to either exit the grid, either for economic and reliability reasons, or for their own particular need to go renewable.

And they want to do that on site. So what we’re what we’re finding is that people like the mayor of Lancaster and others are looking at an integrated model, what’s in it for their citizens? What’s best for their location, their city? How can we make better choices about energy?

To us, a beat to you is a BTO a British thermal unit is a British thermal unit, you ascribe attributes to that this is renewable, this is dirty, etc, etc. This is reliable, this is unreliable. What we mean by that you still need the kilowatt hour, you still need that unit of energy to do the job that you needed to do. So what we try to do is educate the officials like the mayor on the best way to acquire that energy with the lowest impact to the environment at the lowest possible cost.

So how did you come up with the name of your company?

That’s a good question. I was on an airplane. I haven’t I somebody else has not recently I had to think about it and I remembered I was lying back, actually from Brazil. And I had a company called firm, green, reliable green energy right firm. And that was in the biogas area. And now we were working in electricity.

And I was thinking of watts, what kind of name can I associate with watts. And I thought of green. And then I flashed on Verde, Hispanic, Spanish for green. And I put those two together, Verde Watts researched, it found that that was a name that I could register and trademark. And that’s how I started.

So how does your company help to heal the environment?

We do it in a lot of different ways. First of all, before we do anything, we study it. I’ve been in it for better part of four decades, and there’s been a lot of advances in energy technology, and the ability to assess environmental impacts. So what we do is we want to make sure that the solutions that we provide cause no harm, if they do cause harm, we minimize that harm.

Nothing. Ever, everything has an impact. Okay, there’s nothing that doesn’t have an impact, we have to minimize those impacts. So and we have to make our clients aware. And the people in the surrounding areas are aware of what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, and what the physical impacts, our environmental impacts are on those, those affected.

So what kind of renewable energy product projects is your company currently involved in?

We’re involved in hydrogen from methane, landfill gas, methane, primarily, we’re involved in electrolysis production of hydrogen. We’re working with a large stadium complex right now, on that very thing, where we would take the gray water from the building.

As the people wash their hands and other sources of water, drinking powder and water, we would take that and split that using solar and battery power to make hydrogen, hydrogen then would be used in a fuel cell to power the building. And that’s pretty out there as far as state of the art goes. And the client wanted a world class solution. And we’re happy to try to provide that.

That that’s very exciting stuff. I’ve been the owner of my second hydrogen vehicle, so I’m a big hydrogen proponent. But, you know, I think that the question is, how can people create hydrogen most efficiently? And so there’s less energy loss and kind of minimize the impacts? How are you doing this in terms of process to create a hydrogen product, which is competitive with other energy sources, methane is still one of the easiest pathways?

We’ll call it most efficient pathways. electrolysis of water is fairly efficient, but it does require an intense amount of, of energy. Whereas in the form of natural gas or methane, as we call it. Methane then is able to be disassociated into hydrogen. And we’re able to do that.

I’m gonna have to jump in there for a second Steve and discharge listeners that we’re going to be back in one minute. This is Unite and Heal America and KABC 790. This is Matt Matern. Our guest Steve Wilburn, CEO of Verde Watts, explaining to us a little bit about hydrogen technology. And we’ll be back in a minute to hear more. You’re listening to Unite and Heal America on KABC 790.

This is Matt Matt, and your host guest today is Steve Wilburn, CEO of Verde Watts. And we’re talking with Steve about a project he was working on recently for a major stadium where they’re going to take their gray water and split it into hydrogen, using solar and battery power that they’ve gotten from the facility says pretty exciting. cutting edge stuff. Do you see that rolling out more commercially, Steve in the next five to 10 years?

I do think once you’re proof of concepts become more mainstream like this and smaller scale, and you have more focused on the equipment that’s necessary for the infrastructure to support that.

Yeah, I think you’ll see that For sure. In terms of solar power generation, I know we’ve seen a lot of improvements in efficiency of capturing energy from the sun. Do you see that curve continuing to rise where we’re capturing sun’s energy more and more efficiently? And, and how will that affect us going forward?

Oh, absolutely. Just in the last decade, we’ve seen increases is as great as 40 to 50%. On the efficiency, I look for that to continue to, to go in a more positive direction, as we evolve other materials, and other ways of capturing it, the glass is more efficient, the coefficient of transfusion, as we call it is more efficient. All of these problems that we’re in the early stages have been worked on aggressively. And I look forward to some really significant breakthroughs in next five years.

So, you know, going back to what we’re doing in California, and what smaller communities can do to, to take control of their kind of fate? What are the types of things that that smaller communities or groups of businesses can do to get off the grid? Or have a micro grid where they’re not as dependent upon the major utilities? And where do we see where do you see this going?

I see it in a concept we call Island View, where you separate yourself from the grid, you’re still having an umbilical cord, so to speak, you are attached to the grid still. But it’s not your could not be your primary, let’s say source of power, it’s there a secondary, if it’s available at a cost effective basis, let’s say at night, to be able to use to charge batteries in a solar plant, that would be the use of the bigger grid.

So I see it evolving from a standpoint of a cooperation or more the neighbors on contiguous properties get together and share energy. They they form a micro or a mini grid, if you would, very reliable, very cost effective and environmentally beneficial, as well.

At this point in time, I know friends who have solar power, have told me that many times they’re not getting a very good rate when they end up selling their excess power to the utilities. What can we do to kind of change that? Is it battery technology?

So those people can store that energy at their own homes? Or is it sharing it amongst the micro grids or a combination of of all the above or negotiating better prices with utilities? You see any? Any progress on working with utilities on this front?

Now, let me say, let me see if I can slice that up just a bit. Let’s talk about utilities that first utilities are in business to turn to shareholders. They’re almost all publicly traded except for the municipal owned utilities. So they have an incentive, shareholder incentive, not a ratepayer incentive, per se.

Right. So that’s part of the problem of the structure. So unless you run to fundamentally change that structure, I don’t see that changing much. So in order to answer your question, I think fairly, I think battery technology is the key, or someone gets the benefit of the lower costs, compared to the utility energy that they’ve generated, whether or not they can sell that for a profit.

That remains to be seen. Okay, that requires some infrastructure improvements. Bi-directional power, transmission, and consumption. We’re not quite there yet, with the big grid, in a mini grid are a series of buildings connected to each other. Of course, you could design that. And I think that’s a good starting point.

When you talk about bidirectional power capabilities, maybe you could tell walk our listeners through that and how that operates and how a solar house at Amazon has solar can can upload its power onto the grid. Absolutely.

Let’s let’s look at a Tesla automobile just for a moment in a solar house. When I say bi directional, I also mean that the, if the solar car battery is connected to the house, bi directionally, we’re able to take that power from the battery up to a predetermined amount to give you a certain range, and use that to offset higher cost power in the home.

So that it’s also a bi-directional capability that we have. Now, the other bi directional is, as it sounds of utility at night, we can buy power from them if it’s available. So we can put that power in the batteries. During the day, we could sell that power, conceptually, to third parties, or ourselves as it’s available. That’s what I meant by bidirectional.

I know that a number of companies are selling these batteries that people can put in their homes. Is that something that you your company is involved in? Or what? What kind of work are you doing with batteries on with your clients?

We are and we’re also putting in independent, large scale battery storage, we have projects in not in this country, but in other countries, as large as 600 megawatts under construction. And that will be in Honduras, for example. And so we look at batteries. As a sponge, we take suck in power, when it’s available at a reasonable price. And we squeeze it out when it’s needed. So that’s really the way I look at a battery. So like a sponge.

Now in terms of the project in Honduras, what, what does that entail, what kind of batteries are using, and how much power is 600 megawatts.

That’s a lot of power, that’s 6000 kilowatts. I mean, it’s, it’s enough to, let’s say Lancaster, would would be somewhat larger than that, that city. But this is enough to handle a significant, let’s say 1/3 of that area of the country, on an emergency basis. So as the power goes down from hydro, they have a lot of hydro power. And during those seasons of a drought, or when it’s not readily available, these batteries will help balance those loads out significantly in the country.

So we use two types of batteries, lithium ion batteries, and we also use an iron flow battery, which is a chemical battery. So liquid. So there’s several different evolving technologies coming up. Lithium ion is what Tesla is probably the most famous for.

Right, I’ve read a bit about these, I think of the iron batteries that they have in kind of truck size. And they can store a bunch of power and they advantages they’re kind of a low tech solution and maybe a little more environmentally friendly, and that they don’t maybe cause much mining to be done, I’m not sure that’s part of it.

Then also you have the disposal cost lithium after let’s say five to seven years, most of those battery current technology becomes less efficient, you charged in recharging a number of cycles, each time you do that it becomes less efficient to store the power. So these iron flow batteries and other types of technologies that are coming onto the market chemical type processes, if you will, those are going to probably take over the large scale storage industry.

One of the things I’d like you to talk about when after we get back from our next break, which is the disposal and mining costs environmentally for lithium ion batteries, and it’s something that I’ve been concerned about is a rollout more and more electric cars. We’re going to have more and more lithium batteries which there’s a lot of mining that’s involved in and then also the disposal of that many could be millions 10s of millions maybe hundreds of millions of batteries.

If we go full lithium ion for batteries, battery powered cars across the world, we’re going to have a tremendous amount of material that’s going to need to be used by that. So that’s something I’d like you to talk about when we get back from our break. You’ve been listening to Unite and Heal America and KABC 790 This is Matt Matern, your host and my guest, Steve Wilburn, CEO of Verde Watts, talking to you about environment and, and lithium battery. So we’ll be back in one minute.

You’re listening to Unite and Heal America on KABC 790. This is Matt Matern. Guest today is Steve Wilbur and CEO of Verde Wattes. Steve, if you could answer that question we posed right before the break about these lithium batteries that are being generated by the 10s of 1000s. And pretty soon in the millions for battery powered cars, how are we going to, you know, judge the impact of mining for all those metals, as well as the disposal cost?

Well, there are impacts whatever we do, as we move about the world, we cause impact. One of the the problems with mining is the pollution of water and air, and soil. So when we’re engaged in heavy mining practices, we have those kinds of environmental impacts, we have to weigh that the risks to the environment, the efficiency of our daily lives to dispatch energy.

And that’s sort of what’s been done with your program and others like yours, and I really appreciate your program is to inform people give them a chance to hear about these impacts, and how severe they are on the environment. It’s a major problem. Most of the battery companies now have recycling programs, where at the end of its useful life, they will take the battery back.

And they will try to break that down into some usable components. But that’s in its infancy. It has a ways to go. Good progress, but we’re not there yet.

So how do you how do you go about measuring these costs when you’re when you’re doing a project, and determining what’s the most efficient and least environmentally damaging method to to go about getting power to your clients? What are the factors that you’re looking at?

Now we look, we look at their usage profile first, are there ways we can reduce or negate your energy usage and waste, that’s the best way, don’t use it. Okay, and then that sounds a little draconian, but it’s true, there are ways to make your process, even your home more efficient.

So that’s the way we use energy we look at first, then we look at how to supply that energy, and what choices we have to make. In order to get that energy, that we require that absolute amount of energy we require, we try to do that in the cleanest form possible. Solar is one of those pathways for the homeowner. The ability to store in batteries, as we talked about, enables that to go for a longer period of time without having to take dark or gray energy and off of the grid.

So in terms of negating usage of energy in the first place, that’s a great place to start, I think and something that is not talked about enough, which is if we can reduce our needs, then we will have don’t have to create as much energy and it’s obviously pretty simple to talk about.

But we’ve we’ve definitely seen a lot of improvement in terms of the efficiency of home products that use a lot less energy than they used to. Do you think that it’s useful to have more legislation to to encourage that type of innovation by manufacturers? Or is that something that we should let the free market to sort out?

I’m pretty much a free market person. But I would say this that I think incentives rather than regulation, per se, incentives, so that if I’m a manufacturer, and I can meet a certain incentive, there may be a tax implication for me on that positive way. that I think I would get behind that type of legislation.

Right, it seems as though encouraging our manufacturers to produce energy efficient products would be a very beneficial thing for everybody in society, because then we don’t have to have as many power plants, and that that’s going to, you know, redound to everybody’s benefit.

Do you think that we’re going to see the types of improvements in cutting the amount of greenhouse gas that the state of California for for one has set in terms of targets in the next 10 years?

I think that basically, you’re going to see more and more aggressive action having to be taken as our populations increase, the amount of cars that we have on the roads increase the amount of pollution from those sources increased, we have to do something. And I think you’re going to see more and more aggressive policies passed.

Now, how does, how does it work that you do as far as creating a micro grids? How is that going to help reduce the amount of carbon emissions and other greenhouse gases?
When you compare us to the grid sources of power? Or we use the word alternative sources of power? What’s the alternative? Is mine? Cleaner? We’ll use that word relative, right? Is mine cleaner? Does it put up less co2? As it put out less methane? Am I emitting less harmful pollutants into the atmosphere? That’s really the way you gauge that.

And that’s easily done. Because we know the mix of the electric utilities. We know what resources they’re using to supply you the power. We know what our pollution index looks like, from our sources. So it’s a delta, it’s a comparison.

And tell us what is is the use of a micro grid is a cleaner than then getting regular electricity off the grid?

Again, that’s a good question. But let me make sure that that I’m fair to to the question. Assuming the micro grid is using clean forms of energy to generate its power, it would be solar battery powered technology, very clean engine technology, with the gas engine technology, for example, with the proper pollution controls on to the engines. When you’re comparing that to a coal fired power plant in Arizona, putting power onto the grid, there’s a significant benefit to the micro grid.

Okay, but say comparing it to because I believe that California has kind of gotten off coal, the use of coal, for the most part, even its imported power, I believe has little to none as far as from coal fired plants. And you can correct me if I’m wrong on that.

Well, it has, but you’re right in there moving the face it completely out. But natural gas has an emissions profile. Okay. And that emissions profile it hang on one second, sorry. The emissions profile is documented.

So the grid, we know what the grid south coast, Air Quality Management District monitors is Bay Area, air quality, all the air quality district’s monitor it. So there’s a baseline we know what it is. If we’re less than the baseline, then there’s a benefit to the environment. That’s how we go about it.

So you rate each project that you do?

We do we study each project that we do.

And are those ratings that you give your projects? Are they publicly available or this primarily for your private clients?

No, that’s public. Well, if the client is okay with us disclosing them, we will disclose them. We talk generically about a certain size project, how many kilowatts, so we can do it that way as well.

So the goal is to have less emissions than the standard utility. So that correct?

Absolutely. And we do that all the time. There’s not a case that we would have higher emissions any utility Now, remember, utilities also have solar farms. And they also have other types of resources. And they’re developing batteries. So when we’re speaking, that’s a pretty broad statement that I made. But let’s say when we’re comparing it to fossil fuel generating sources, the answer the question is yes.

Ask a question in terms of what percentage of the State of California or the country or other parts of the world are being served by micro grids currently? And where do you see that going in the next 510 1520 years?

Yeah, we’re less than 2%. In California, probably less than a percent. I see that going up to 10 15%. Within a decade, and even higher and other countries, other countries have a different type of utility structure less reliable, and it’s more conducive to small pockets of energy production. Where we’re competing, again, we’re competing with a shareholder on utility, that he’s going to defend its turf, pretty rigorous.

Right? Well, certainly, that’s something that I think would help all of us is a little bit of competition for utilities. Because for pretty much since their inception, as you described earlier, they’ve they’ve dominated the communities that they’ve served and didn’t have much competition, and many times they were monopolies.

So giving them a little bit of a run for their money is always useful to improve their performance. You’ve been listening to Unite and Heal America and KABC 790. Again, my guest Steve Wilburn, CEO of Verde Watts. You can find Steve and Verde Watts at verdewatts.com.

It’s pleasure having Steve on the show, and we look forward to hearing more about this topic as we go forward. Because, as Steve said, it is definitely the wave of the future that the micro grid has, is going to take take hold here in this country. So you heard you heard it here on KABC 790 and Unite and Heal America.

As you may know, your host Matt Matern of Unite and Heal America is also the founder of Matern Law Group, their team of experienced employment consumer and environmental attorneys are dedicated to leveling the playing field by giving everyone access to the highest quality legal representation contact 844 MLG for you, that’s 844 MLG for you or 84465449688446544968.