184 - Curtis Bonn Discusses SPAN Panels Enhancing Home Electrification and Grid Flexibility

Welcome to another insightful episode of the Insider’s Guide to Energy, where hosts Chris Sass and Jeff McAulay delve into the increasingly relevant topic of home electrification. This episode features a conversation with Curtis Bonn, head of utility partnerships at SPAN, who sheds light on the transformative SPAN smart panel. Curtis explains how the SPAN smart panel simplifies the electrification process for homeowners, offering a solution that manages electrical loads efficiently and potentially eliminates the need for costly utility service upgrades.

Jeff shares his personal journey of home electrification, highlighting the challenges he faces with his current electrical panel when trying to integrate new technologies like EV chargers, heat pumps, solar panels, and home batteries. Curtis emphasizes how the SPAN smart panel can alleviate these issues by managing the electrical load within the home, ensuring that all devices operate seamlessly without requiring an expensive and time-consuming utility upgrade. He details how the panel uses a proprietary energy management system to monitor and control electrical usage, providing homeowners with an optimized and convenient energy solution.

The conversation also touches on the broader implications for the energy grid, noting that SPAN’s technology can contribute to demand response programs, offering benefits not only to individual homeowners but also to utilities and the overall energy infrastructure. Curtis elaborates on the potential cost savings, both from avoiding utility service upgrades and from improved energy efficiency, supported by various incentives and rebates available under the IRA. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the future of home energy management and electrification, offering practical insights and solutions for modern energy challenges.

Meet our Guest: https://www.linkedin.com/in/curtisbonn/

Visit our website: https://insidersguidetoenergy.com/

Chapters

• 0:47 Meet Curtis Bonn of SPAN
• 1:48 The SPAN Smart Panel Overview
• 3:08 Real-World Application and Benefits
• 7:24 Energy Management and Safety
• 22:23 Financial Considerations and Incentives
• 28:09 New Home Construction and Market Expansion
• 31:51 Final Thoughts and Conclusion

Transcript

Transcript 

00:00:02 Intro 

Broadcasting from Washington, DC, This is Insider's Guide to Energy. 

00:00:19 Chris Sass 

Welcome to another edition of the Insider’s Guide to Energy. I'm your host, Chris Sass, with me as your co-host. Jeff McAulay. Jeff, what are we going to do this week? 

00:00:28 Jeff McAulay 

Chris, I'm really excited about today's conversation because it's it's actually part of my personal home electrification journey. A lot of the conversations we have are very high level and abstract national or international. And this one really hits home. So we're talking about home electrification and the importance of that. 

00:00:47 Jeff McAulay 

Little Gray box that's hanging on your wall and in your basement. So excited to be talking to Curtis. We're excited to be talking to Curt Bonn  ahead of utility partnerships at SPAN. Curt, welcome to the show. 

00:01:00 Curtis Bonn 

Jeff, great to be here. Chris. Thanks for having me on the show. Really appreciate it guys. 

00:01:05 Jeff McAulay 

So Curt, I got to say from our our prep call, I discovered that I'm actually one of the. I wouldn't want to say poster child, but one of the key target audiences of the the spam panel, we want to hear a little bit about what that was. We want to hear a little bit about what the spam panel is and. 

00:01:24 Jeff McAulay 

How it helps. 

00:01:25 Jeff McAulay 

But just to set a little context first. 

00:01:28 Jeff McAulay 

I'm a homeowner. I just recently bought a new house. It requires substantial renovations and we want to go in, rip out oil heat. We want to add heat pumps. We want to add EV chargers. Maybe we want to add solar and home battery and I'm learning that actually our current electric panel. 

00:01:48 Jeff McAulay 

Is significantly constrained to the point that we might need to do a utility upgrade or other types of electrical rewiring. How to SPAN. What does the SPAN panel do and how does it fit into that context? 

00:02:03 Curtis Bonn 

Yeah. Well, first and foremost, Jeff, you are the poster child. This is fantastic and really classic use case where we see SPAN becoming a relevant technology for homes. They're looking to electrify. So at SPAN, we've been making smart panels and we've been on this mission of electrification for residential homes since around 2018. 

00:02:24 Curtis Bonn 

Our flagship product, as you're alluding to is our SPAN smart panel. 

00:02:28 Curtis Bonn 

We've had that market now since 2020 and and really we're seeing great adoption of this product for homes that are literally going through the same kind of renovation and electrification journey that you are in your house. And so ultimately what our technology does is prevent the need for the utility to come out and increase the service drop. 

00:02:49 Curtis Bonn 

To your home so that all these new electric loads in the home can ultimately work just fine without any without any inconvenience on behalf of of yourself or your or your family. And we do that through proprietary technology. And what we call an energy management system within our smart panel that basically handles and manages all the electric load. 

00:03:08 Curtis Bonn 

Pausing, shifting, taking control on behalf of you and your preferences on how you want the home to ultimately act and behave again without any need for waiting for that utility to come to your home. And the costs that are associated with that. So it's been a great journey and very, very excited for you and your family to be on that journey as well. 

00:03:29 Jeff McAulay 

So follow up question there. 

00:03:32 Jeff McAulay 

How does one know what the electrical service is to the home in the 1st place and how would anybody realize that they were going to exceed that? That's not a normal math calculation that I have. It's not on my electricity bill. How do I even learn that I need that utility service upgrade? 

00:03:53 Curtis Bonn 

It's a really great question, Jeff. I would say the vast majority of customers across the US and probably frankly the world for that matter really have no idea how much power in terms of either amperage or you know, currents flowing into the home from the utility. It would be, I'd be surprised if, you know, to see if the majority of if household owners would actually know where the panel is. 

00:04:14 Curtis Bonn 

Located I'm probably the only one in my house that knows where it's at. I'm sitting collecting dust in in my basement today, but. 

00:04:21 Curtis Bonn 

You know, again most most customers don't, the utility wouldn't even be able to tell you if you likely picked up the phone to call. Ultimately homeowner has to go to the basement, open up that panel and look at the main circuit breaker rating. You're going to see their 100 amps, 150 amps, 200 amps. Again, whatever it's going to see on that main breaker rating, that's certainly one path. 

00:04:41 Curtis Bonn 

Likely the majority of situations in terms of how the homeowners going to learn about how much power is coming into the home. 

00:04:47 Curtis Bonn 

Is through an installer or through an electrician or a contractor that they're working with as they think through the different electric appliances that they may want to add to the home? Could be an EV, could be an induction stove. It's usually going to be that contractor that helps and educates that homeowner through. 

00:05:02 Curtis Bonn 

The process. 

00:05:03 Chris Sass 

Well, I think that's where I was going to go. I mean, I didn't get it tuned into SPAN until one of my close friends came over and I was having some electric bill issues and I wanted to troubleshoot it and he's a huge EV fanatic and he was super excited to tell me all about SPAN and what it could do for me and how my life would change. 

00:05:20 Chris Sass 

But Jeff started this saying that people are starting to care about the Gray box. So is it mainstream or is it people that have? Is there an inflection point in someones life that suddenly that panel in the basement that's been working for the last 20-30 years just great becomes important? What what's changing to drive this? I mean, obviously Jeff case, they're doing renovation, they're looking at solar, they're looking at batteries. 

00:05:40 Chris Sass 

A lot of stuff happening there, a lot of moving parts, but the average homeowner is probably not doing that. What when do they get this inflection point? 

00:05:48 Curtis Bonn 

Yeah, you're right. I think Jeff, as he discusses whole home electrification, probably you know a minority of those homes that are going through some form of electrification. I I would say most customers are maybe starting with the adoption of an EV, right. And so through that process, they're working with an electrical contractor. 

00:06:08 Curtis Bonn 

To have that EV charger installed at the home so they can have a really good EV ownership experience and a good level. 

00:06:14 Curtis Bonn 

Charge, which, which is likely required for that and so that contractor is going to say, hey, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, it turns out you only have 100 amps flowing into your home. We're, you know, through the different HVAC and other electric loads in your home. We're already accounting for, you know, 60 to 70% of the capacity that your main panel can can handle. Ultimately, you need to have an upgrade. 

00:06:35 Curtis Bonn 

If you want a level 2 charger for your EV, and really that's that's kind of a a classic use case example where the homeowner and the electrician have those two options. Like we mentioned before, either you pick up the phone for your utility. 

00:06:49 Curtis Bonn 

And you get that service upgrade or you look for an alternative solution like spam that can avoid the utility service upgrade using our energy management tools and software to make sure that the homeowner has a really great experience. 

00:07:02 Jeff McAulay 

Great. 

00:07:04 Jeff McAulay 

Curt, tell us what the smart electrical panel is actually doing to stay within that, let's say 100 amp limit. Is it turning things on and off? It seems like if you're just limiting power to certain appliances that might not, you know that might, does that hurt the appliances at all? How do you do that? 

00:07:24 Jeff McAulay 

Load balancing. 

00:07:26 Curtis Bonn 

Yeah, all the magic behind the box, right? Yeah. Let's get into that a little bit. It's a it's a really great question and one thing to to share right away is that 100 amps for the vast majority of US homes is actually a lot of electrical headroom. So we go back to the 60s, seventies, even mid 80s, homes were still being built with 100 amp service because it was truly adequate. 

00:07:46 Curtis Bonn 

Level of electric service and and frankly today if you're not electrifying it still is today. 

00:07:50 Curtis Bonn 

The challenge becomes we have a very conservative electrical code here in the United States, which again from a safety first mentality is a really good thing. We never want concurrent loads stacking up above 80%. So in the case of your home, Jeff, we never want to go above 80 amps, but that's likely going to happen as soon as you add an EV to your home load and you're running. 

00:08:10 Curtis Bonn 

Air conditioning in the in the summertime or heat in in the in the winter time, right, we're going to see those concurrent loads go above 8080 amps or 80% for the National Electric code. 

00:08:21 Curtis Bonn 

And that's really what that is the catalyst for that, that upgrade or for a solution like SPAN. And so ultimately what we do is we're we're constantly sensing how much current is flowing into the home into the panel and then down to the circuit level as well. And So what we can see is that, hey, if if just home is starting to approach that 80% rule. 

00:08:41 Curtis Bonn 

What we're going to do, we're going to use the preferences that Jeff has set within the SPAN experience. The SPAN home app that is, we're going to start to either pause or shift loads. So that again, the total level of current through the entire home never exceeds 80%. 

00:08:57 Curtis Bonn 

Keeping in line with the National Electric Code and so. 

00:09:00 Curtis Bonn 

We use a. 

00:09:01 Curtis Bonn 

UL916 EMS or Energy management system to make all of that magic happen behind the scenes, so that again it's all automated. It's like that old George Foreman set it and forget it commercial if you guys remember that it's really that simple. So through the installation process, the spam installer is going to help you as the homeowner. 

00:09:19 Curtis Bonn 

Choose which electric loads are good candidates for being paused or for being shifted into a later point in the day again so those loads always stay within a safe level, and so to that point. Jack. Yeah, we have. 

00:09:31 Curtis Bonn 

Trolls down to the circuit level, we're constantly measuring and what's great too, is that our controls are anti certified and so we can ultimately be a great measurement and validation tool for utility programs and to give really, really great and accurate insights and energy saving tips for homeowners as well. 

00:09:49 Chris Sass 

When you're talking the 100 amp limit and I guess I'm lucky because I I have double that in my home for some reason, I've got multiple panels and lines coming. 

00:09:56 Chris Sass 

And but I would think as we get more energy efficient that we try to live within the means of what the pipe is rather than make a bigger pipe, right. So aren't our appliances getting more efficient and you know we we. 

00:10:08 Chris Sass 

Less electricity than we did? Or is it simply that we're just adding more and more devices? What? 

00:10:13 Chris Sass 

What? What's? It seems counterintuitive. It seems like we're trying to reduce and we've been for years. You're changing LED light bulbs and and and trying to be Energy Star appliances trying to reduce the load and now you're saying, well, we're going to upgrade it or manage it differently. 

00:10:28 Curtis Bonn 

Yeah. I think, Chris, I think it's a little bit of both. I think collectively we're doing a really great job, the DOE Energy Star. We are collectively as kind of a broader energy ecosystem, doing a really good job of making new appliances, much more energy efficient. However, we just can't overcome the level of new electric loads that are hitting the house and at the pace at which they are. 

00:10:50 Curtis Bonn 

Right. So let's just take a level 2 charge for an EV as an example here. Potentially 48 amps of electricity are going to flow to that EV charger. But again, in the case of 100 amp. 

00:11:02 Curtis Bonn 

Home as much as we can make that refrigerator and Jeffs home efficient and the new washing machine electric dryer efficient. We're just adding so much electric load for these, you know, quote UN quote all electric homes or even homes that are beginning their electrification to become all electric that we really need to take action and thinking through a system like SPAN to help a home. 

00:11:22 Curtis Bonn 

Manage all of that new load. 

00:11:24 Chris Sass 

Do I need smart appliances to take advantage of this SPAN or can you do it with the legacy appliances in the house? 

00:11:30 Curtis Bonn 

That's that's the really nice thing about spam is that even if you have quote UN quote kind of Dom or traditional appliances like my refrigerator in in my home is a good five or six years old, still works great is is Energy Star certified but just doesn't have Wi-Fi or kind of the smarts that you're referring to every single kilowatt ultimately in the home. 

00:11:50 Curtis Bonn 

Will flow through a SPAN panel, right? If if you have a SPAN in your home and because we can control. 

00:11:56 Curtis Bonn 

And measure and turn on or off that circuit anywhere in the world where we have an Internet connection, we make that appliance smart. So if I was to install, excuse me, enroll my refrigerator and into a demand response or VPP program, I could do that without having to replace my fridge because it's routed through the SPAN panel and we have controls again. 

00:12:16 Curtis Bonn 

Down to the circuit level. 

00:12:18 Curtis Bonn 

And that's the neat thing. So we're talking with utilities and different ecosystem partners around really whole home demand response and VP capabilities through SPAN, because we have all those connection points into even traditional kind of demo. 

00:12:33 Curtis Bonn 

Appliances at this point. 

00:12:34 Jeff McAulay 

So couple of questions. First of all got to just talk about units. Our whole conversation has been in amps. I almost never talk in units of amps, even for energy nerds we're talking. 

00:12:47 Jeff McAulay 

Kilowatts for power, kilowatt hours for energy usage, and that's the kilowatt hours are what shows on the electricity bill. Now we're talking amps, so you know, I don't even know how much amperage my refrigerator drive. I don't really think in amps, so it's just wanted to clarify the units. And then second part after done with that is. 

00:13:07 Jeff McAulay 

If you're throttling. 

00:13:09 Jeff McAulay 

Different. That's not going to hurt the refrigerator. It's expecting to get some amount of juice. You're giving it less to load, to balance between different appliances. That's not hurting any of these appliances by doing the the, you know, throttling that you're talking about. 

00:13:28 Curtis Bonn 

Yeah, Jeff, great clarification. So SPAN controls energy in a few different ways. Certainly, as I mentioned, we can we have the ability to turn on or off a circuit using the relays that sit behind the circuit Breakers in our panel and we can do that very confidently with electric resistive loads, I think. 

00:13:45 Curtis Bonn 

Electric pool pump. Think an electric stove? It could be an electric dryer. We have done really rigorous testing with several different manufacturers and loads of different appliances. To suggest we have great confidence that we're not going to disrupt the quality of life or the the quality of the duration or life cycle. 

00:14:06 Curtis Bonn 

Of those electric appliances, so I'll set that aside for a minute. But we also have advanced what you mentioned is throttling capabilities. 

00:14:14 Curtis Bonn 

So SPAN actually also manufacturers an EV charger. It's what we call Dr. We can actually throttle the amount of current from 48 amps all the way down to six amps and 1 amp increments so that as different parts of the home need to borrow. 

00:14:30 Curtis Bonn 

Energy so to. 

00:14:31 Curtis Bonn 

Speak. We can still allow your home to give some sort of charge to your EV. 

00:14:36 Curtis Bonn 

While let's say the pool pump runs or while the induction stove kind of goes through its its cycles, or through the HVAC system as it runs its its natural cycles and so more and more, we're actually deploying throttling capabilities. One other example is with Mitsubishi. 

00:14:53 Curtis Bonn 

We recently announced a partnership where we can actually throttle the amount of current that flows to their GS heat pump line up from 100% down to 75% to 50%, so that the homeowner can still get comfort out of their heat pump from Mitsubishi while other parts of the home could be your EV or otherwise. 

00:15:13 Curtis Bonn 

Can have the appropriate. 

00:15:15 Curtis Bonn 

Either kilowatts that it needs or amperage, and to your point, yes, amperage is a rarely used term in these types of conversations. It's it's what I'm trying to to talk about, but the whole point here is that SPAN is is using very sophisticated, but I'll I'll be graceful ways so that we. 

00:15:35 Curtis Bonn 

We are. 

00:15:36 Curtis Bonn 

Pausing, managing, or shifting loads to the right appliances and and not disturbing the the quality of those those appliances. 

00:15:44 Chris Sass 

You you bring up an interesting point. Everything we've talked about so far, it sounds like it's from the homeowners perspective, but demand response is something that the grid would probably look for. And it sounds like you're uniquely positioned to help offer that. So is your service solely focused inward towards the customer or is the utility also working with? 

00:16:04 Chris Sass 

And to do demand response. 

00:16:06 

Yeah. 

00:16:07 Curtis Bonn 

Yeah, it it's really both. So we at SPAN started our our journey and our mission of electrification for homeowners that's that's really where we got our start a few years into our journey. I think utilities started to take note of hey like this is a really interesting product for us to be thinking about. In fact that's how I joined spend a year ago after. 

00:16:27 Curtis Bonn 

Spending seven years at an investor owned utility here in Michigan, I saw the SPAN panel really is a Swiss army knife of of benefits, not just for the homeowner, but for the utility too, because of the fact. 

00:16:39 Curtis Bonn 

That we're preventing a service upgrade, so we're getting more out of that pipe than building a bigger pipe. To your point earlier, Chris. So we're not having to allocate resources to get to the home to allow the homeowner to begin their electrification journey. But we're also connecting all of these important loads in the home and so SPAN. 

00:16:59 Curtis Bonn 

In that sense, Chris, yeah, we're working with utilities. We're working with different aggregators and different energy system providers. 

00:17:07 Curtis Bonn 

To be thinking about how we can help make the loads that are connected to a SPAN panel become part of grid flexible programs. Again, it could be Dr. program, a more appliance focused Dr. program which we typically hear about today or a whole home kind of DRV PPP type type platform or program. 

00:17:26 Curtis Bonn 

That we're hearing more about in, in more advanced conversation. 

00:17:29 Curtis Bonn 

So we're really serving both. It's been especially for myself as I oversee our utility partnerships. It's been a wonderful conversation to have over the last 6 to 12 months to say look, not only are we helping an acute problem getting a homeowner up and running with an EV or other electrified loads, but think about SPANning a more broader contacts as we think about non wires. 

00:17:50 Curtis Bonn 

Alternatives, BPS and beyond. 

00:17:52 Chris Sass 

You also mentioned in your previous answer about. 

00:17:57 Chris Sass 

What you turn off? You talked about turn the air conditioner off, or maybe the refrigerator off and. 

00:18:01 Chris Sass 

And. 

00:18:02 Chris Sass 

Usually the the the house is pretty efficient, right? You can shut the the air conditioner off a little bit and the homeowner is not going to really feel a significant difference or you know, even when the power is out. My refrigerator holds cold long enough that my food doesn't defrost or get cold. Is there logic or a? 

00:18:17 Chris Sass 

The method to your madness of what appliances you choose to shut down in what order? 

00:18:24 Curtis Bonn 

Yeah. So what's what's again through the rigorous testing that we've done and having a world class customer experience really sits at everything we do in terms of decision making on product and feature sets all the way through the installation experience that a homeowner will will go through alongside a certified spam installer and through that. 

00:18:44 Curtis Bonn 

App experience where the installer is going to work with the homeowner just like Jeff. The app is going to recommend appliances that will in a in a priority order be paused or ship. 

00:18:55 Curtis Bonn 

Did based on what we know to be a really great customer experience, so we're likely not going to recommend that Jeff's new induction stove be the first to be paused. 

00:19:04 Curtis Bonn 

Mrs. McCauley may not be so pleased if we pause that induction stove on Thanksgiving or Christmas, right? So it's those types of experiences that we want to avoid. 

00:19:13 Curtis Bonn 

The first electric load that we typically recommend being pause is the EV. Why? Because what we know is that if there are concurrent loads that approach that 80% limit like we talked about earlier in the conversation. 

00:19:26 Curtis Bonn 

We only need to maybe pause that EV for five or 10 minutes before the kind of the home cools off and kind of gets back to a normal state through thousands of of panels and and research and analysis of the the data that we have across all the different SPAN panels that we've deployed so far. That's exactly what our analysis. 

00:19:45 Curtis Bonn 

Is recommended that typically these events happen for maybe 5 or 10 minutes before kind of a natural usage pattern of the home kind of starts to. 

00:19:55 Curtis Bonn 

Get out again. And so you know to that point in the AV, it could be an electric dryer. It could be a pool pump. So maybe a electric appliance that we don't need right away to make sure that our our convenience within a home experience continues to be great. We'll look at those appliances 1st and what's great about SPAN however. 

00:20:15 Curtis Bonn 

Is that the homeowner is always in control, so even if we preset in a priority order, which appliances should be paused, Jeff or any other spam, homeowner always has control and they can make sure that in an event where we are. 

00:20:28 Curtis Bonn 

Using loads. Let's say I'm pausing my EV, but I have to take the kids to soccer. I need a full charge. You can move that EV over to a must have circuit and you can allow a second or third electric appliance to be positive shifted as needed. 

00:20:44 Jeff McAulay 

Could this also would work as an emergency circuit if the power goes out? So if I've got a home battery, plus maybe home solar, it's really important. It's not about the utility service, it's about. I've got a limited amount of juice in a battery. Which things do I want to run in the home? So that's useful for backup too. 

00:21:05 Curtis Bonn 

100% what's great about SPAN is again through loads of testing that we've done also with ESS systems and we do have integrations with the leading 5 battery manufacturers, Tesla Algy and beyond is that we can actually increase a batteries capacity or battery life, if you will, by about 40% through our automatic load shedding. 

00:21:25 Curtis Bonn 

So the idea that a battery once a SPAN panel is installed no longer has to power the entire. 

00:21:31 Curtis Bonn 

Your home, right? So if you have a traditional load center today and you and you in a current outage, that battery is going to want to power the entire home, right with the SPAN panel, you can actually choose which circuits are being powered by your battery and which ones are not. And you no longer have to run around the house turning light switches off on or on right SPAN is going to do that gracefully and automatically on your behalf. 

00:21:52 Curtis Bonn 

And through that testing, we've seen that we can actually increase again the capacity that your home is battery by about 40%. 

00:21:59 Curtis Bonn 

And so maybe you don't need to purchase a second power wall or a third power wall. Maybe one power wall plus SPAN is going to be is going to be good enough for you. Plus a really fantastic experience ultimately saving you dollars at the end of the day. 

00:22:14 Jeff McAulay 

You're you're reading my mind, which is getting to the the dollars, which is really important because I'm listening for OK, in, in this journey. It sounds like just about every time. 

00:22:23 Jeff McAulay 

I'm as a as a homeowner. I'm running into an extra cost that I didn't know I needed, which is. I know I got the EV. I know I need a charger. Oops. Wait, I also need this panel upgrade or I'm going to have to wait 12 months or whatever it is for the utility service upgrade. What you've highlighted now is a case where I want. 

00:22:43 Jeff McAulay 

A backup battery instead of a generator. I have no idea how long that battery will last, so I'm looking at maybe 1-2 or three. 

00:22:52 Jeff McAulay 

The power walls, or whoever it is and what you're saying is by investing in a in a panel I could avoid purchasing or oversizing the battery backup, so that's that's important. And then just before you answer, there's a lot of incentives out there. So I'm assuming whether that's a tax or a rebate or a utility. So what is that? 

00:23:12 Jeff McAulay 

Expense range and then how is that offset through various incentives? 

00:23:17 Curtis Bonn 

Yeah, great question. So that there's, I'll unpack that question, set a little bit, Jeff. So first and foremost, let's talk about the cost of a traditional utility upgrade. Generally what we hear and this is in data points from utilities West Coast, East Coast and then in Midwest and beyond, typically minimum cost that the homeowner would save around $3000. 

00:23:38 Curtis Bonn 

And the the utility themselves would bear around 10 to $12,000. So think about $15,000 of overall cost that has to get divvied up between the homeowner and the utility. 

00:23:49 Curtis Bonn 

Very important point here. The cost that the utility bears in some cases is going to flow right back into rates. That's exactly what we don't want to do is we think about the this broader journey of electrification and decarbonization that that we're taking. Utilities are taking state agencies are taking the DOE's taking, we don't want rates. 

00:24:08 Curtis Bonn 

To increase just because we're trying to become a greener world in a in a better place. 

00:24:12 Curtis Bonn 

To live. And that's that's what's happening in some jurisdictions. So getting back to those costs, if you do call for a service upgrade like you mentioned could be $3000. That's if you have overhead service, if you are one of the lucky individuals that has underground service like I do at my home here in Michigan, the trenching. 

00:24:33 Curtis Bonn 

And all of the work that it's going to take for an underground service upgrade. 

00:24:37 Curtis Bonn 

Can raise very, very quickly, and it's not uncommon to hear about quotes from the utility of like 20-30 forty, maybe even $50,000. We had one SPAN customers that's in California get a quote from from their local utility for $70,000 because of the the length of the line that had to be ran. 

00:24:57 Curtis Bonn 

From the local transform. 

00:24:58 Curtis Bonn 

Summer and that, of course, that's an anomaly, right? We're not hearing about those types of costs all the time, but we are hearing about them enough to mention them, at least on this conversation. And so that's certainly a part of it as the homeowner thinks or what is the most efficient way for electrification. So you know, we'll we'll talk about that and let's talk about the SPAN side of things. 

00:25:18 Curtis Bonn 

We retail for $3500. That right and we installed just like a traditional load center would. 

00:25:24 Curtis Bonn 

So between the cost of our panel and likely 2 to $3000 that you're going to have with the contractor to install the SPAN panel and upgrade any wiring we see ourselves as a very competitive solution for the need like your home, Jeff, where we have to figure out a solution either upgrading the utility service. 

00:25:44 Curtis Bonn 

Or going to a technology like SPAN. And of course. So we enable electrification for the home, but then we bring all of those great features through the SPAN home app to the homeowner. 

00:25:54 Curtis Bonn 

We're seeing and hearing of our customers saving up to 15% on their monthly energy bill, right, because the different insights and trend and information that we're giving to the homeowner, the ability to turn on or off circuits, the ability to control and schedule circuits, it could be based on the time of use rate or just the fact that you want to turn on your outdoor security lights at a certain time of day. 

00:26:14 Curtis Bonn 

And not run, not running the entire evening. Different methodologies like that, but All in all, we see ourselves as a very competitive solution and one that our customers are extremely pleased with once once they install. 

00:26:25 Chris Sass 

When when you're talking so far, it sounds like. 

00:26:27 Curtis Bonn 

I may have. I may or may not have covered all of what you had talked about. Please interrupt if you know if I missed anything. 

00:26:33 Jeff McAulay 

There that I want to make sure you include if it's true. Is there a specific rebate for electrical panel upgrade? I think there is under the IRA. 

00:26:45 Jeff McAulay 

Looking at rewiring America on their portal, and I think they mentioned you specifically. 

00:26:50 Curtis Bonn 

There is. Thanks for thanks for prompting me on that 25 C is the tax credit that would apply to the actual installation of a technology like like SPAN and our our spam panel. So look into that if you are considering a solution like SPAN 25 C is is a great resource for all all customers, all homeowners specifically for. 

00:27:11 Curtis Bonn 

The federal rebate dollars that are starting to flow through the IRA and more specifically the home energy and appliance rebate program are what we call here. This is a really tremendous, I would say, once in a generational type opportunity to help low and middle income customers. 

00:27:28 Curtis Bonn 

Help create efficiency with their homes. Deploy different technologies like SPAN, light energy, efficient heat pumps specifically for smart panels like SPAN, an income qualified customer can see up to $6500 in rebates between the panel itself and the electrical wiring that would go with it. So again, just a tremendous opportunity for homeowners. 

00:27:48 Curtis Bonn 

Of all customer classes to look at adopting technologies like SPAN. 

00:27:53 Chris Sass 

Now you. 

00:27:53 Curtis Bonn 

Thanks for catching that Jeff. It's an important point. 

00:27:55 Jeff McAulay 

You you keep. 

00:27:55 Chris Sass 

Talking about current homeowners is what are the developers and new home construction is? Is this going into new homes right now? Are you working with developers or the large developers that do these big rows of houses and is that happening? 

00:28:09 Curtis Bonn 

We are, Chris, just a few months ago in the spring of 2024, we announced some national partnership with VoLTE. In fact, so we're starting to work real closely with new home developers like Culty. Like others, these are homes in Maryland for instance. 

00:28:24 Curtis Bonn 

Where they're actually using SPANs smart panels right out of the gate. So rather than installing a traditional load center right as a home goes vertical, why not install a SPAN smart panel, give all the controls to the homeowner, make that entire home, you know, grid Interactive right out of the gate so that we don't have to retrofit. 

00:28:43 Curtis Bonn 

At home down the road, as they add more and more electric appliances, which the trends all suggest will happen, and so new home construction is is one of our fastest growing channels that SPAN to that point. 

00:28:56 Chris Sass 

And what happens when the Internet is down? You said you need an Internet connection for SPAN, so assume that there's the outage in the Internet, which happens from time to time. You may have your cable provider or your Internet provider go down. How does that impact your user? 

00:29:10 Curtis Bonn 

Well, first and foremost a SPAN panel is a safety panel like through and through. And so we bring all the same mechanics all the same safety protocols and certifications of a traditional. 

00:29:20 Curtis Bonn 

Center the Internet connection that a spam panel requires helps bring the energy management experience to life for the homeowner. That's really the key difference. So again, power outage and you don't have any battery backup, your safety panel would would go through the same processes that a traditional load center would. And when the power returns, we're going to function. 

00:29:40 Curtis Bonn 

Just in the same way and have all the same safety mechanics within the panel. 

00:29:45 Curtis Bonn 

But what what the Internet connection does and we do have multiple and redundant communications, Wi-Fi, Ethernet as well as 4G antenna in our in our panels, is that it brings that home energy management experience to life, giving trends, giving real time information to the homeowner. It's that type of information that leads to the energy savings leads to. 

00:30:05 Curtis Bonn 

The ability to enroll either certain circuits or the whole home in the different utility programs, again because of the connection points to the outside world. And so it's it's a really neat kind of holistic set of features that that we bring within the SPAN panel to that end. 

00:30:24 Jeff McAulay 

Curt, just tell us a little bit more about how broadly this is being used. I think you've hinted it at it with with new homes, with existing construction, talk about geographic coverage across the US, are you looking internationally at all? 

00:30:38 Curtis Bonn 

Yeah, great question, Jeff. So what's great about SPAN is that we continue to be on an incredible growth trajectory. We have what we quote UN quote, thousands of panels spread across the the spin universe. At this point, we're installed in all 50 U.S. states. 

00:30:53 Curtis Bonn 

It's and super excited to look beyond just the contiguous US into Canada in other parts of the world as they face and often their burden with even stronger use cases as it relates to electrification, think about islands that encounter different, you know storm and weather patterns could be a Puerto Rico where batteries are just becoming a. 

00:31:16 Curtis Bonn 

A really important part of the of the grid there. But yeah, we we got our start here in the US and excited to continue our growth here locally in the US before we expand into into other parts of the world. 

00:31:31 Jeff McAulay 

Wonderful, Curt again. I really appreciate being able to go through this as it's part of my, my personal home electrification journey. I learned a lot on today's call, really fascinating. So thank you for going into all all of the detail here and I'm sure our our listeners will find it useful as well. So for people who are out there. 

00:31:51 Jeff McAulay 

Talk to your electrical contractor about SPAN in your home electrification journey and current. Thank you so much for being our guide. 

00:31:59 Jeff McAulay 

Hi. 

00:32:00 Curtis Bonn 

Jeff, it's a pleasure. Thanks so much, Chris. Really appreciate it. 

00:32:03 Chris Sass 

Well, it's been a pleasure having heard on the program today. We hope you've enjoyed this conversation as much as we did, making it extremely interesting topic. If you're doing any kind of work at home, adding an end to your stuff SPAN certainly comes across our radar. I know I've seen it in myself. So thank you, Curt, for the program, for our audience. We'll see you again next time on the. 

00:32:20 Chris Sass 

Insider’s Guide to Energy, bye for now.