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Industrial Talk is brought to you by Armis. Yes, you were in the digital transformation game. Yes, you need to find trusted companies, trusted individuals to help you along with that journey. The Armis platform delivers complete asset intelligence, you know what that means, insights into your connected assets, you're in the digital transformation game, you have to have that insights into what is connected, go to armis.com Find out more, you will not be disappointed. Also, AiDash. AiDash is on a mission to create a greener, cleaner, safer planet from space. AiDash helps core industries become more resilient, efficient, and sustainable through the power of satellites and AI. Go out to AiDash.com Find out more. Hi, guys, once again, thank you very much for joining industrial talk. We were on site at DistribuTECH. You might have heard the other great conversations we were having there. You know, you just got to come and learn with me. I'm, I'm just a sponge, and I get to learn from all of these incredible leaders. Speaking of which, we've got Minho, and Wayne Diaz, Siemens as a company. We're talking about cloud, we're talking about user experience. And I'm telling you right now you need to be engaged. You need to collaborate and you need to educate like, like me. Yeah. Industrial talk platform for education and highlighting industry leaders like me and Wayne, we are industry. It's the human side. So let's get cracking with the conversation.
01:50
Here's a cool, thank you for being flexible. Yeah, let's do this. You guys having a good conference?
01:59
Really good. Lots of good foot traffic. It's busy. So yeah. So far.
02:06
Is this the first conference guys getting went back to sort of face to face?
02:10
Yeah. Second conference? Yeah.
02:13
Was it was it stunning to see those virtual friends that you created, and then all of a sudden see him in person?
02:18
Yeah, they completely look different, too.
02:21
I used to wear a wig. So when everybody says, anyway, all right. For the listeners out there, we've got a little set, meaning give us a little background on who you are.
02:33
Had user experience and strategic innovations with air gap Well, or products within Siemens. It sounds like a strange combination. But what we believe in is to put user experience and customers users at the center of all of our students innovations going forward?
02:52
Does that sound stupid to me? I'm all about the experience. I'm telling you. Yeah. Big time.
02:59
And one of those is new offering this year, which is energetic he MDM SAS. So
03:06
we'll talk about that big gun. Yeah, we'll talk about All right, Ryan, your next background. Wayne, Wayne, hey, work with me. I'm a professional here on this podcast, not just kidding.
03:19
Okay, so Wayne Dias, I run the grid simulation software business here in the US. When I say grid simulation, anything that and everything that goes on in production or online on the grid needs to be simulated needs. We run a lot of what if scenarios, so our software suite at Siemens provides that infrastructure that support to basically prior to integrating anything onto the power grid, we get to simulate it, and then it finally goes into operations.
03:50
I gotta pull on that thread, when we start talking to simulation is simulations. It sounds like data, right? It sounds like the collection of data, it sounds like historical information to be able to try to simulate future events and all of that stuff. How does? How does your platform take into consideration the historical events to simulate future?
04:14
Absolutely. So when I say when I say simulation, I'm talking more grid planning. So I'm looking at various different scenarios, scenarios that were traditionally just looking at. How do I expand the power system? How do I integrate more generation onto the system? How do I integrate distributed generation renewable right, in other words onto the system? And prior to that coming online? How do I really run various different what if scenarios to see whether or not that's going to help the system? Is it going to hurt the system? Do I need reinforcements on the system?
04:51
Do it let's say you have a scenario as simulation that for renewable whatever, you know, external generates ation. And if it is deemed to, you know, hurt the system does the does the utility have the option to say, hey, we'd love to permit it, but you can't, because we don't have the resources to be able to, you know, fortify this, you know, wherever we're at, does that happen?
05:17
It does happen. But then we also complemented with additional technology and what we call non wired alternatives, alternatives, which is not just reinforcing the transmission lines, the power lines or transformers, it's more like, maybe I can alleviate that issue with a renewable resource. Battery, maybe. So those are some of the things simulation tools help simulate and plan for
05:45
Yeah, you're not going to shut them down. Yeah. Go over here. Our simulation says you go over here. So maybe talk about, let's say this cloud offering give us a little reason why, why that's important to utilities. But Cloud
06:00
offering there's different types, but specifically the software as a service. One of our really good customers Silicon Valley Power, they came to us. Hola. Hola. What power company? Silicon Valley Power. SVP,
06:15
I have never heard that one. Really? Yeah. Isn't that PG and E? No way. It's a different.
06:24
It's, it's a separate utility.
06:27
Worked in Southern California. And I know PG&E. I have never heard that one.
06:32
No, this is Northern California. Completely different animal. Yeah. Center Silicon Valley. So we're talking about Santa Clara, California, over 50 data centers they produce or they manage 1% of the power consumption within California. Huge, yet a very, very small real estate area, real small area. So some biggest data centers of the world, Intel, Nvidia, and all of those high tech data center. They're all coming in using Silicon Valley Power. So So why does it want to go to software as a service? Well, number one is software service allows us to be able to upgrade them and provide them with new features. So it's evergreen, it allows them to Yes, on the upgrade all that complexity,
07:36
it's seamless, it's invisible. That's what's I like it.
07:39
Yeah, yeah. And the second part of it is, they're fairly small. So they want to have their staff really focus on the core business. And they don't want to have to deal with all the IP issues, security and disaster recovery. And the list goes on and on. If you think about it, you have to own the hardware. Yeah, manage the hardware. Yeah, everything that happens, technical monitoring, performance monitoring, and the list again, goes on and on. So as a software service just makes a lot of sense for them. And thirdly, there is a financial benefit to it, because it's a subscription service. So it scales as you as you go up. And you don't have to have all that capex, although those licensing charges right up front, you can essentially amortize that and you have more predictability in terms of spending your expenditures.
08:41
So what's when do we say, the SAS? What services are in the cloud that you're providing this utility?
08:52
So in this particular case, is meter data management? Aha, so is smart meters. Yeah, so you have your advanced metering infrastructure. So now those guys are also going to cloud. And so we're sort of also arriving partway, because if you think about it, you have all your meters across all this geographical area, they're coming in through a communication network. And so they're already coming one way or the other through some communication infrastructure, which is almost in the cloud. Now, traditionally, those go on premise and then go through the meter data management system. We're just offering perhaps a more efficient path, and being able to bring all that data in, but also to be able to smooth that, that whole experience.
09:41
So these are services that are not you don't have you're not latency
09:48
dependent. Correct. That's not That's not real time. Yeah,
09:52
you don't need to whatever edge or whatever you want to do it that requires some type of That's right. But why again, now you have you have a bigger challenge, because here's, here's what I see. I see that your simulation, there's a lot of external generation coming on. There's a lot of distributed solutions out there. And and I, quite frankly, being an old, crusty utility guy, um, pretty much around the centralization of power and then the transmission and then that's it, and this whole dynamic grid is a bit can you run those simulations? I mean, it's happening. Right. And, and utilities? I would imagine
10:35
need it. Absolutely. So, you know, as the grids are getting smarter, right, more and more DRS coming online, they're also
10:42
getting more complicated. D ers gonna for the listeners? What does that say
10:45
distributed energy resources.
10:47
Thank you very much.
10:48
So as more and more distributed energy resources are coming online, the power system is getting more complicated, given it is getting smarter, but it's getting a lot more complicated and
11:00
you're you're underselling that. It's super complicated. It's your your, your soft pedaling, and quite frankly,
11:06
you know, but it's a start, right. But as what we're seeing as Siemens over the next five years, we're looking at 60% of that external renewable resources being implemented onto the system. The planners traditionally would run scenarios, will be snapshot scenarios basically looking at the peak load off peak load generation at a certain peak. But today, with all these D ers coming, there's a lot of volatility, right, this volatility due to that we might need additional scenarios, we might need to run more extensive snow,
11:43
my you know, that's the case, we because, you know, the market just continues to push the envelope and we're gonna we're gonna have a grand old time.
11:51
You're right, Scott, we definitely need to run additional scenarios, which we're not, not your traditional scenarios, right. So one of the examples I'll use is time series profile analysis. What is the grid doing at 8am? What is the grid doing a nine, what's on a 10? Now, before we would look at, okay, so my load Southern California for an example is happening at 4pm. But with D ers, that 4pm might not be valid, right? I might need to consider 12 o'clock as a as a problematic time. So what we're trying to drive additional studies, but these additional studies cannot be done on existing infrastructure. I cannot run those studies on my existing hardware on my existing laptop because I will burn it. It folks are talking to us saying our engineers, our planners need new hardware has an impact to OpEx. Right. So that's why our tool pssc transmission planning tool is now in the cloud. You know, it is a tool used all across the US. It's nothing new to the existing transmission planners, operations planners, long term planners, it's basically giving them the avenue to now take their analyses, analyses that may have taken three weeks to complete can now be done in three hours, leveraging the cloud, that's
13:16
pretty doggone cool. That's cool. But in a related use case, coming from the other side, from the distribution side, as you're doing some of those simulations, it's really important to be able to use real meter data as opposed to load profiles that are just copied over. Because then you can now really localize what's happening at the distribution grid and be able to do optimize planning. So yeah, again, with Wayne and his group, you know, we're getting together and trying to solve those problems.
13:49
I'm telling you, it's way above my paygrade. Guy, good, good job, it's going to only get more and more challenging, with a lot of changes that are taking place. One of the areas that we don't talk enough about, or discuss, for one reason or another. I know one reason, nobody wants to talk about it, but we're going to talk about it. And that is this is critical infrastructure stuff. This is impacting a lot of how do you secure? How do you ensure the security of let's say, these systems? Right,
14:23
great. Great question, man. If you don't mind, I'll take that. Sure. And then we'll hear he just stole it from you. So basically, as far as security that is, Scott, one of the things that we get asked all the time.
14:37
Yeah, but nobody wants to talk about it. Right. You know, it's like we're talking about it. Nobody wants to say, you know, I'm having a problem with my security and I had a breach coming up at night. Nobody's saying that. There's a saying, hey, I need to talk security. You are having problems. No, I'm not having a problem. No
14:51
critical infrastructure. Right. So how I've, how I look at it is do you have an online banking account? Yep, right? That's already in the cloud, your buddies in the cloud your financial snapshots in the cloud as an individual, right. But let's take it a step further. at Siemens, we're not just a great software company, we're also supporting and have a team of cloud experts, a cloud infrastructure team that is certified to run a certified with various cloud compliance agencies, I'll name a couple, ISO 27 001 is one of them. FedRAMP is another one, so and etc. And we're working with our regional reliability coordinators should drive that security for the right, I'll share a very, very good example. For me, I come from the grid planning the offline data side of the house. But we do have a customer or two that actually have their online operational data in Siemens is cloud infrastructure. So we provide the one stop shop for this utility that basically has all of their operational data in the cloud. So if operational data is in the cloud, Siemens is handling the cloud, we are cloud compliant, our whole team of cloud experts are there, you know, taking in operational offline data is just a no brainer.
16:16
But the reality is, it was just sort of lay it out there. Yeah. The I believe the cloud is fine. I don't Okay, because I got smart people like you. And I think that if utilities and other companies and not just utilities, although we're at the show, I think it's it has to happen. I think it's just when you when you have a tsunami of data, and you got all this stuff to analyze, you got to do that. It's insecure, right? me it is?
16:46
Well, it's gonna happen,
16:48
when it's gonna happen, you might as well figure out how to participate.
16:52
So it really boils down to if you're doing it yourself, can you catch up, right? All sorts of patches, all sorts of, you know, all this different software that's happening, right. And so from utilities perspective, you can either have your own set of experts, and many of them do, yeah, but ultimately, you have all these enterprise systems. And they're all using different patch levels, with all sorts of different components and things of this nature. And so that's why software is a service built on top of a good infrastructure, well architected, that's one side of it. And as Wayne's talked about, from a standards perspective, from a process perspective, being world class and being working with agencies around the world, and just being on top of everything, yeah, that's really a
17:45
part of it. Yeah. Come on. You guys are living a dream. I mean, it's cool stuff I got out of the utility business. And then now I'm regretted it. That's the way so if I was a professional, and I said, My gosh, Ming and Wayne are talking my talk, I want to cheer up with them. How do they get ahold of you Ming?
18:08
Ming got home@siemens.com. And he went
18:11
weaned DSDS with an s@siemens.com.
18:15
All right, you're saying you're so Scott, I want to do, I didn't get that email address. It's going to all be out on industrial talk.com you so you need to connect with these jets. They know what they're doing. They're going to make your life. They are trusted professionals in this world. That is the limit. That's alright, once again, we're broadcasting from distributech 22. Dallas is the place you can hear the buzz going on in the background solutions. And problem solving happening today. Put this on your bucket list big time. Thank you very much for joining industrial talk. We are going to wrap it up on the other side. Do not go away. We will be right back. You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network. All right, that was me and Wayne's excellent industrial adventurer incredible conversation, absolutely connect with them reach out, you got to know more about what's happening within the utility market. There are two jets that are prime for connecting with so do so I'll have all the contact, LinkedIn contact information out on industrial talk. Now, I've been talking a lot about the speed at which this technology and innovation is going. The only way that you can keep up with it is of course you got to constantly just pursue education. And you got to connect with people like me and Wayne to get the latest get that trusted information about what is happening in the market and how you and your company can take advantage of all of the wonderful innovation that is taking place out there. It is a must come go to industrial talk. Learn with me. I'm not the sharpest. tool in the shed. But boy, I'll tell you, I get access and talk to the best industrial leaders from around the world. Join me we are industry. follow that hashtag out there. Never miss a doggone episode or conversation or whatever. But that is important. Educate, collaborate, and innovate are key to your success. All right. Again, we're gonna have another great conversation from distribute tech. You can count on that. So be bold, be brave, dare greatly hang out with me and Wayne, and you're going to change the world. Thank you very much for joining industrial talk. So stay tuned for the next conversation.
