173 - Harnessing Data to Fortify Our Power Grids

This episode of the Insider's Guide to Energy podcast features an insightful discussion with Mishal Thadani, Co-founder and COO of Rhizome, a company at the forefront of modernizing energy infrastructure through data analytics and innovative technologies. A seasoned expert in energy resilience, Mishal brings his rich background and passion for addressing pressing challenges in the energy sector to our conversation. 

Mishal discusses the substantial challenges facing today’s power grid, including severe weather events and outdated infrastructure that jeopardizes reliable electricity supply. He highlights Rhizome’s role in transforming grid management through precise risk modeling and strategic investment planning, crucial for adapting to our changing climate and energy demands. 

Listeners, here’s your chance to gain invaluable insights on topics, including the impact of regulatory frameworks on utility resilience strategies, the integration of distributed energy resources, and the significant role of data in forecasting and mitigating risks! The conversation also delves into the potential of AI and machine learning in revolutionizing how utilities predict and prepare for future challenges. 

Tune in for an engaging exploration of how technology and data are key to developing more resilient energy systems that can withstand the trials of modern demands and climate change. Whether you're an industry professional, technology enthusiast, or simply curious about the future of our energy systems, this episode with Mishal Thadani offers profound insights and forward-thinking solutions that promise to shape the future of energy resilience. 

Transcript

00:00:01 Mishal Thadani 

The power grid is experiencing an enormous amount of challenges related to extreme weather events that are causing devastation in communities, infrastructure that's been aging for decades and at the same time, we have vehicles, buildings that are being electrified, and data centers that are causing unprecedented load growth in the sector. And what we really need. 

00:00:22 Mishal Thadani 

Is data and information related to the system and how to make the right investments to increase the capacity and the reliability and resilience of the system at the lowest possible cost, and that's what rise ups are to do. 

00:00:36 Chris Sass 

Your trusted source for information on the energy transition. This is the insiders guide to Energy podcast. 

00:00:49 Chris Sass 

Welcome energy insiders to another edition of the Insiders Guide to Energy. I'm your host Chris Sass, and with me this week is Mish Thadani, Co-founder and CEO of Rhizome. Mish Welcome to the program. 

00:01:00 Mishal Thadani 

Thanks for having me here, Chris. 

00:01:02 Chris Sass 

I'm excited to have a conversation whenever technology can help the energy and utilities do something different. I'm excited in this world of machine learning, AI and all kinds of electrification of everything. The scale of the problem that we're facing is huge. Your opening statement. You talked about quantifying some things, reliability, resilience. 

00:01:21 Chris Sass 

It's what does rhizome do, and and how does it help us quantify those things? 

00:01:27 Mishal Thadani 

Yeah. Thanks for the question, Chris. And and really starting on the fundamental of what are the, what is the grid need today and what's it going to need in the? 

00:01:35 Mishal Thadani 

Future. 

00:01:36 Mishal Thadani 

And the reality is, is that we are facing unprecedented challenges on the grid. Extreme weather events are increasing in their frequency and severity. Meanwhile, the grid which actually 70% of it. 

00:01:47 Mishal Thadani 

Was built by the 1930s, so we have infrastructure that's existed for almost 100 years. If you think about. 

00:01:54 Mishal Thadani 

But it's put us in a position where the reliability of our grid is actually dead last when it comes to comparing to other developing countries. 

00:02:04 Mishal Thadani 

So what we do at rhizome is we really on a high resolution basis, identify the vulnerabilities on each and every asset of a utilities, transmission and distribution system against a variety of climate hazards like winds, storms, extreme temperatures and so. 

00:02:22 Mishal Thadani 

One and when you get that picture of risk, you're able to make long term decisions. Understanding how climate models are changing that future profile of risk and are able to inform decisions like where do we underground things, where do we rebuild lateral lines, where there especially where there is in a corridor of vegetation. 

00:02:43 Mishal Thadani 

And where do we start to put distributed energy resources and distribution automation devices like switches and reclosers to help mitigate those impacts if they do occur? 

00:02:52 Chris Sass 

All right. So you, you gave us quite a bit that you do, there's a lot to unpack there. You you started by talking about the grid as an old, you know, old infrastructure in place. You talk about in the singular like a grid, although I'd argue that there's probably more than a grid, but it's one system or one being, I guess to for lack of another thing is that. 

00:03:12 Chris Sass 

True assessment. 

00:03:14 Mishal Thadani 

Yeah, for all intents and purposes, the grid isn't a National Grid, but it operates and functions in similar ways from a transmission and distribution operation perspective anywhere across the country. So even though we have an Eastern Connect and a Western connect, we have different system operating organizations that manage you know the power. 

00:03:34 Mishal Thadani 

Low on the grid at the at the bulk scale. 

00:03:36 Mishal Thadani 

The really the the grid is operated under a common set of principles under a common set of assets such as the poles, transmission towers, transformer, substation and so on so forth. So in that sense, I do think of the grid as one entity, and in that sense the solutions in which to make the grid more resilient. 

00:03:57 Mishal Thadani 

Stay pretty consistent no matter the the geography that you're looking at. 

00:04:01 Chris Sass 

All right, so that takes me into what I asked you in the opening about resilience and reliability. 

00:04:07 Chris Sass 

Right when you're saying it wasn't actually designed for that. So does that mean they're designing for reliability and less so for resilience that they're building to try to give me power when I turn my light switch on? But every now and then this huge hurricane is going to come take the thing out. And I'm not designing for that. 

00:04:24 Mishal Thadani 

I'm sure this conversation is going to take many swings into into the regulatory aspects of the utility sector, but this is really one of the areas where regulation is key. 

00:04:34 Mishal Thadani 

So utilities for decades have been managed under a specific set of metrics related to reliability, and these are the duration and the frequency of outages on a given year and where and where they're experienced. 

00:04:50 Mishal Thadani 

Now when those metrics are actually designed and reported to the PUC or to FERC, they actually oftentimes exclude the major event days. So as to keep a consistent level playing field across the country for a different operating systems and different service territories. So really managing for the blue sky. 

00:05:10 Mishal Thadani 

Is the everyday outages as opposed to the extreme weather days that actually cost the majority of outages on the on the system. So on a national basis? 

00:05:22 Mishal Thadani 

75% of all power outages are extreme weather induced. Yet when you're reporting those metrics and when you're being judged on the reliability or the resilience of your system, those measure the major event. Day outages are actually taken out of the equation. 

00:05:38 Chris Sass 

Now. 

00:05:39 Chris Sass 

In in going. 

00:05:39 Chris Sass 

Through the the challenge statement, reading through some of the literature that RIZON has on its website and articles, you talk about the different things you mean. 

00:05:49 Chris Sass 

What are some of the disparate data that you use to come up and help help the utility make this forecast or understand their risk better? 

00:05:58 Mishal Thadani 

Yeah. And it's really an extension of what is the actual goal here. So if the actual goal is to get to a system where given any type of hazard, say you experience a hurricane or a storm or a winter. 

00:06:12 Mishal Thadani 

Event how do you mitigate all of the impacts from people losing power from the restoration costs that go in that end up costing, you know, oftentimes billions of dollars these days, and then making sure that people can stay, stay safe and healthy during those circumstances. So current reliability. 

00:06:32 Mishal Thadani 

Metrics and when you quantify you know the reduction outages from investments that are being made today don't really take into consideration those benefits. And so when we design our risk models, we're. 

00:06:43 Mishal Thadani 

Saying not only you know what are the likely outages that utilities are going to experience on a blue day basis, but given the likelihood of extreme weather events and given our understanding and this is where the machine learning aspect comes into play, what we've learned in history from previous extreme weather events and hazards and how that's had an impact on the system at high resolution. 

00:07:03 Mishal Thadani 

What's going to be the anticipated cost and loss related to the system and its customers and use that as the risk profile from which to draw down risk through investments. So you're going from a place of saying, hey, we're going to make sure that we maintain a certain outage reliability metric. 

00:07:22 Mishal Thadani 

To now saying, hey, we're going to forecast what's going to be the total amount of risk derived from all of these various climate hazards as well as on a normal day basis. And as we're doing our investment planning actually quantify the benefits from reducing those specific risks and that's something that is we're still in the early days of doing at scale, right. So when. 

00:07:42 Mishal Thadani 

The utility actually proposes an investment plan to a regulator, and these investment plans are numbering in the billions today, for instance, center point energy just dropped a $2 billion resilience plan in in Texas. 

00:07:55 Mishal Thadani 

Yes. 

00:07:56 Mishal Thadani 

Then they can actually come to the table with metrics related to the benefits and an optimized view of how those investments are going to actually create consumer benefit and societal benefit when when they actually get implemented. 

00:08:11 Chris Sass 

All right, so we have a high level goal of what, what the utility is trying to achieve or risk quantified, what what you want to do. When I look at someone like raise them, you get all the way down to the elements health, right, you go down. I was I was interested. I didn't realize that polls age and and performed differently over time. I didn't realize that. You know, I'm obviously Transformers heat, heat events could. 

00:08:31 Chris Sass 

Affect them? They're different. 

00:08:32 Chris Sass 

Elements. How important is the ability to go down to the element? 

00:08:38 Chris Sass 

To your solution into the ultimate outcome that you just described. 

00:08:42 Mishal Thadani 

It's very important utilities are making decisions at high resolutions. Therefore, the models should reflect those high resolutions. There are oftentimes a a pole will be degraded because of soil conditions because of its orientation, proximity to vegetation, what what have you, and if utility wants to go out and replace a single pole, it should do so on reflection. 

00:09:04 Mishal Thadani 

Have a risk profile of that poll in conjunction with the the other assets that are nearby. 

00:09:10 Mishal Thadani 

So the the resolution really matters here, because on an everyday basis, the asset management team and the engineers at utility are actually evaluating what are the grid needs from a portfolio asset optimization perspective. That is, let's look at every single asset, understand which is the most vulnerable and which has the highest level of need. 

00:09:31 Mishal Thadani 

In order to prevent a potential failure. 

00:09:34 Mishal Thadani 

Not to take this directly into wildfire risk already, but the resolution matters, particularly in in the context of wildfire risk, where if one of those assets fails and say the conductor is not insulated, then it is a high likelihood of igniting A wildfire and then having that wildfire spread. So the the problem is getting. 

00:09:54 Mishal Thadani 

You know much more precise, and so the solutions must be a lot more precise and how to make those additions, those investment decisions again at high resolutions. 

00:10:05 Chris Sass 

Now you've got some marquee customers. You, you, you're. You're not just on the whiteboard at this point. Have you learned some system wide things as well? So I get the element that makes a lot of sense to me saying, OK, this pole maybe needs repaired or you know, we might have fire risk or whatever, but things behave differently as a system. So now when I have thousands of elements are are your data sets rich enough yet that you can start saying, hey, when these kind of things happen? 

00:10:29 Chris Sass 

Systematically, there's something that you need to do. 

00:10:33 Mishal Thadani 

What our platform is designed to do is is learn from history and how specific asset failures have led to some of the more systemic failures that you're talking about. So say if a substation got flooded and that impacted a critical facility that was connected to that circuit, so say it was a hospital or even a water treatment center, then what are those? 

00:10:53 Mishal Thadani 

Compounding effects that it has on society now. Luckily, utilities have gotten really good about identifying that critical infrastructure and making sure to to best protect those those resources that provide social. 

00:11:05 Mishal Thadani 

Value but one of the things that we're looking to uncover here is how do you systematically quantify the benefits of investing in, in the areas that are that are going to actually mitigate those more systemic widespread problems when a certain power outage occurs. So again, we we look. 

00:11:26 Mishal Thadani 

At very high resolution, not only at the asset but at every customer that's connected to a circuit, including those critical. 

00:11:32 Mishal Thadani 

Customers, we also look at some of the vulnerable customers, right? And you know when you have a hazard event where say it's a storm that causes flooding and you have vulnerable communities that don't have access to resources the same way that wealthy communities do, then you have some real real health and safety concerns. Folks that are connected to dialysis. 

00:11:52 Mishal Thadani 

Machines, older folks who are connected to respirators and other life saving devices if they don't experience. If they experience power outages and lose access to those devices, they have a limited window in which they can actually stay alive. So their ability to attain resource. 

00:12:09 Mishal Thadani 

During those events is extremely important and you know, given that example that I just stated, if there was a flood happening and whether they could drive or not, if they couldn't access a facility that actually had those resources or had power to connect those resources, then we have some some real problems. So within our tool. 

00:12:29 Mishal Thadani 

What we've done is start to understand. 

00:12:31 Mishal Thadani 

And where are the communities that need the most support from a vulnerability perspective? How can we model that social vulnerability and take into account some of the health and safety impacts of extreme weather events, and then use that as benefits when utilities actually make investments so that as these investments are again put in front of the regulator? 

00:12:52 Mishal Thadani 

They can understand, you know, if we're undergrounding this feeder, we can actually prevent a significant amount of the outages that happen, particularly at a vulnerable. 

00:13:00 Mishal Thadani 

Communities. So within our platform, you know a lot of this is done on an ad hoc basis on hand. But within our platform, we're making it systemic, allowing these decisions to be made easily and for the analysis to be done rather seamlessly. And then of course filed in front of the regulator on an accelerated time basis. 

00:13:19 Chris Sass 

How much is this of the platform? I mean, a lot of data science is knowing the right questions to ask. 

00:13:26 Chris Sass 

And so machine learning has been around quite a while. It's not brand new and there's a lot of cool buzzwords around AI and machine learning, but it's not a new thing. 

00:13:32 Chris Sass 

It's it's understanding the problem you need to solve for. 

00:13:35 Chris Sass 

Are are we using AI to help find problems or uncover problem statements in your software or do I need to know that? Hey, here's my thesis and we're going to get the thesis. 

00:13:46 Mishal Thadani 

Yeah, that that's a great question. There are hundreds of use cases, maybe even thousands of use cases for AI in the utility sector and and through rhizome and through previous organizations. I've I've explored a lot of them. And where you always want to start with utilities is really identifying what's going to be the actual use case from. 

00:14:07 Mishal Thadani 

A business perspective and there are two major areas where AI can come into play. It can help automate things. That is, take some manual tasks and do so on an automated. 

00:14:18 Mishal Thadani 

Basis or it could help predict things. Take a bunch of information where utilities typically relied on subject matter expertise and actually make data informed decisions about the future and and help plan for the future. 

00:14:33 Mishal Thadani 

With those two things in mind, we approached the utility industry with the business mindset to understand what are the planning workflows within the engineering and asset management team and start from there and work backwards. So with the stated goal of trying to get to a cost benefit analysis that was high fidelity. 

00:14:52 Mishal Thadani 

Enough and precise enough to pass regulatory. 

00:14:54 Mishal Thadani 

Scrutiny we did our model building. We didn't come at this with AI as a solution, you know, fit for a problem. We started with the problem and backed into the solution. So from that cost benefit analysis you have investments and you can learn the behavior of those investments. What given that treatment effect, what was the actual? 

00:15:14 Mishal Thadani 

Measured benefit from the historic investments right, and moving even backward from the investments is the risk profile and that risk profile comes from the learnings and history from the hazards and the interaction on the assets and the asset. 

00:15:28 Mishal Thadani 

Failures and in order to get to that point, that's where AI is the really useful tool. So again, you know, if for any anyone out there looking to start a company in AI or trying to apply AI for a specific problem, unless you have a really specific use case that's really high value for of course an enterprise customer like the customers that we're working with on. 

00:15:49 Mishal Thadani 

An everyday basis. 

00:15:50 Mishal Thadani 

Then I wouldn't recommend introducing AI into the conversation until you know it's you're you're you're dead. Set that that is that the right solution for. 

00:15:58 Mishal Thadani 

The problem set. 

00:16:00 Chris Sass 

You gave a nice. 

00:16:03 Chris Sass 

Walk through of what it is. Let's make this more tangible. Let's let's look at like PG&E or somewhere where you got this aging infrastructure running around. There's wildfires that are gonna still occur because it's just gonna take time to do that. So you maybe you look at bearing all those wires, and that's a tremendous cost. Maybe you look at micro grids or something like that. How does a solution like yours? 

00:16:22 Chris Sass 

Help me. What if and figure out where I should be? 

00:16:26 Mishal Thadani 

Yeah, I mean, you're you're speaking to the entire cost benefit challenge, right? And how do you actually quantify that, which is essentially where we're trying to pin the OR the entire intellectual, you know, property behind the platform in other jurisdictions and that are not California, you have utility regulators and public policy. 

00:16:48 Mishal Thadani 

Advocates who say that utilities are spending too much whenever they propose these their their billion dollar resilience plans are. 

00:16:55 Mishal Thadani 

Structure plans in California, you actually have public policy folks who are saying that the utility should be spending more, that they should be undergrounding more that you know the seven and a 7.4 billion that PG&E spending in their current wildfire medication plan isn't actually enough. So the real question is, how do you actually get down to brass tacks? 

00:17:15 Mishal Thadani 

And for the decisions that the utility is making on an everyday basis can have each stakeholder involved really comfortable around the level of of spending around and around. How much risk is being mitigated. 

00:17:31 Mishal Thadani 

So with PG&E there's a classic example here, right? They have lots of, you know, medium voltage distribution lines spanning large distances to get out to rural areas. Oftentimes there is vegetation along these corridors and relatively high wildfire risk for a relatively small set of customers. 

00:17:52 Mishal Thadani 

In those rural areas. 

00:17:54 Mishal Thadani 

So they've strategically made the decision and have done some analysis around actually burying those lines as one option, continuing to maintain those lines on a regular basis, maybe doing more vegetation management, as I would say, the pseudo status quo option. And then the last option, which is now being considered and actually. 

00:18:16 Mishal Thadani 

Implemented is to actually deploy a micro grid at those for those rural customers and decommission the line entirely, save on the O&M spend, completely remove the wildfire risk and actually have that be the best decision based off of the represented costs and the benefits of deploying that micro grid so. 

00:18:36 Mishal Thadani 

As the most clear cut example like those are decisions that we're enabling on any condition on a distribution system. 

00:18:44 Mishal Thadani 

Most of those decisions are not as stark right whether or not to cover a conductor to deploy a recloser to continue performing vegetation management, whether it's trimming trees or removing trees, those are decisions that utilities have to complement. Contemplate on an everyday basis that they don't have complete information for on the actual. 

00:19:04 Mishal Thadani 

Trade-offs on the cost per investment versus what's actually being mitigated, right? So that's where really where we're we're looking to plug in. 

00:19:12 Chris Sass 

Let's talk a little bit about the journey your, your startup or a younger company, I should say. 

00:19:19 Chris Sass 

How do you introduce this concept and how? How receptive are folks to having technology coming in to do this for them? 

00:19:27 Mishal Thadani 

I'd say they're they're very receptive, right? 

00:19:31 Mishal Thadani 

At this at. 

00:19:32 Mishal Thadani 

On one level, we're introducing new technology, new approaches, new methodologies that they've never used before. On another level, they are actively experiencing the changes in extreme weather events and. 

00:19:44 Mishal Thadani 

You never hear from a utility that that they don't experience a change in extremes and that there's a need to to better plan for in the future. So again, starting with the use case, making sure you're bought in on what actually needs to change from a business perspective and on from a grid planning and operational perspective. 

00:20:04 Mishal Thadani 

And then backing into the solution from there. So when we ultimately offer an AI based solution. 

00:20:10 Mishal Thadani 

They're mostly already bought in onto how it would actually make an impact on the business. So while it's never going to be easy, you know selling into utilities when you have a really high priority issue, when you have executive level buy in and and when you you know have a product that looks to make the lives of who you're selling to a whole lot easier. 

00:20:33 Mishal Thadani 

As you know, a lot of our customers time is spent not just on kind of designing projects and pulling data and doing calculations on a manual basis, but even in front of the regulators whenever whenever they they're in a rate case or have filed a A. 

00:20:48 Mishal Thadani 

Plan and you know you have interveners, Commission staff that are filing rate data requests related to the plan that takes the bulk of the engineering and asset management time to respond to those data requests. So again these are just aspects and features of our solution that make. 

00:21:09 Mishal Thadani 

Our customers lives easier and oftentimes the way that we position it. So, so that you know, when they think about the alleviation of all this time that they could be putting in for the initial cost that we have, that's actually a pretty good prospect for them. 

00:21:25 Chris Sass 

Alright, so we we we got the utility perspective how does end up in this space. How did you decide to start a company solving this problem? 

00:21:33 Mishal Thadani 

Yeah. Look, I've been a climate and energy guy my entire career, actually going back to college, you know, studied at Rice University and. 

00:21:45 Mishal Thadani 

Being in Houston, you're at the center of the global energy economy, right? And I've always had an interest in environmental issues. I always wanted to fight the good fight, and I thought, you know, clean energy actually. And and new technology from a decarbonization standpoint was the way to go. And so that's really where I jumped into what I've. 

00:22:05 Mishal Thadani 

Since learned. 

00:22:06 Mishal Thadani 

Is that in order to get to that decarbonized economy? 

00:22:10 Mishal Thadani 

Me, we need to actually, you know, bridge the gap between mitigation and adaptation, right? So carbon mitigation being, you know, reducing emissions adaptation, being actually deal with real consequences and actually by doing so by increasing adaptation and resilience, especially in the utility sector, which is really the cornerstone of our entire. 

00:22:31 Mishal Thadani 

Economy. You know how society functions and also the source of the bulk of our emissions. 

00:22:41 Mishal Thadani 

What we need to do is ensure that the grid still continues to function as it is today. 

00:22:47 Mishal Thadani 

If it does not, if say, we get to much more of a decentralized grid, we're effectively going to double the cost of fighting climate change. So I'm not just coming at this from a health and safety perspective, making sure that, you know, we account for vulnerable customers and communities and utilities can of course make the right decisions in the right locations. 

00:23:09 Mishal Thadani 

From a thematic perspective. 

00:23:12 Mishal Thadani 

I'm much more focused on how do we make the grid more resilient as low of a cost as possible in order to enable that decarbonization that needs to occur. This grid transformation that needs to occur because unless people can start to experience fewer power outages, have you know an easier time with emergency response. 

00:23:32 Mishal Thadani 

And can stay especially healthy and safe during those extreme weather events. People are just not going to care about decarbonizing the greatest much. So that's really where I'm coming at. 

00:23:43 Chris Sass 

And and and here in your statement say that in order to achieve this, your hypothesis is we need the grid to be more resilient, but we need the grid. You don't want to distribute everything you don't want to have a bunch of siloed solutions. Is that what the take away was from that first part of your statement? 

00:24:02 Mishal Thadani 

The major take away is, is that we need to have a very measured approach in how we invest in the grid and make decisions. So where it makes sense to deploy micro grids in some parts of the grid, especially for rural customers, it definitely doesn't make sense in in some of the more urban areas, especially from a grid planning perspective, right from a. 

00:24:22 Mishal Thadani 

A a social buy in of having people have affordable, reliable, safe power, right? If you want to go on a micro grid and you're in the middle of the city for for your own benefits, you know my former college campus was on a micro grid. We actually had power during hurricanes. That is a very wise decision to make. 

00:24:42 Mishal Thadani 

But when it comes to the utility regulatory compact and what should be invested in in that decision making process, we need to be really nuanced about what are the investments to make that actually maximize the the benefit to customers for the cost going in. 

00:24:59 Chris Sass 

Right. As a former founder myself and some that works with a bunch of energy tech companies, the the one thing that we almost always find something we didn't expect, we always have a surprise or something that we learned. What have you learned? Now you have the technology out. What did you learn that you didn't expect or what is the technology uncovered that you weren't thinking you would? 

00:25:17 Mishal Thadani 

What? You know, this might sound really specific, but is actually extremely powerful and the power of data, and you know these distributed cloud systems and and artificial. 

00:25:29 Mishal Thadani 

Evidence is one of the things that we can actually do is simulate storms that have happened in the past, where utilities have, you know, made various investments since then and actually observe if there would be a reduction in power outages. And so we can do this on a historic basis, but we can also do it on a forward-looking basis. That is if a utility. 

00:25:49 Mishal Thadani 

Undergrounds these lines or if they upgrade the class of their poles in these areas, we can actually simulate a storm that's happened in the past and anticipate how many outages would have been. 

00:26:00 Mishal Thadani 

Produced and so before I met my co-founder Rahul, this concept was completely foreign to me. I didn't think you could take data and apply simulations in this sort of format. And so that's the one thing that I'll say is you know, you utilities are creatures of scenario planning and wanting to. 

00:26:20 Mishal Thadani 

Best prepare for the worst situations and what could happen. One of the things that I'm really excited about that I did not know before going into this is that we would really be able to simulate the impacts of of those events when they actually do happen. 

00:26:35 Mishal Thadani 

So it was pretty exciting for me. 

00:26:37 Chris Sass 

Was there any law of unintended consequences where utility made a plan to harden things or make it better and you ran the simulators later and said, well, you might have solved for this risk, but you created a newer additional risk. Have you seen that yet? 

00:26:51 Mishal Thadani 

Not yet. But that being said, we're still early in our journey. You know, we're we're deploying our models and have started to generate some really powerful insights for our customers, but haven't come to down to the those specific conclusions yet. So one of the if you talk to any company working in the utility sector, one thing, one of the things they'll tell. 

00:27:12 Mishal Thadani 

Do is you haven't really done the work until you have really resisted the burden of a regulatory filing or a rate case. And we have, I, I'm happy to say that you know by this summer we'll actually be be going through that process, but until then I I will stay. 

00:27:32 Mishal Thadani 

Shy of of commenting on on some of the outcomes here. 

00:27:36 Chris Sass 

Well, us and Mitch, this has been a lot of fun for me. I want to thank you for sharing with myself on our audience. It's been a great conversation. Thank you so much. 

00:27:43 Mishal Thadani 

Thanks for the invitation, Chris. Really great to be here and and and thanks again. 

00:27:47 Chris Sass 

We look forward to hearing about the future growth of your company and development as you move forward for our audience. If you like this content, don't forget to subscribe and do something really easy. It's a small thing for you, but it helps us quite a bit is like the content. Give us a like, give us a comment and we're going to see you again next time. 

00:28:03 Chris Sass 

Like the insiders guide to energy, bye bye for now.