Transcript:

Ronna (00:04.193)

Welcome to the Future of Power podcast. I’m your guest host, Ronna Davis, the chief revenue officer at Volt Server and a digital electricity evangelist. If you’re new to the podcast, Volt Server is the inventor of digital electricity, also known as fault-managed power. We deliver high density power safely and intelligently. More specifically, we transmit electricity as discrete, monitored energy packets over standard cabling infrastructure.

We’re continuously assessing the line for faults, and we instantly halt power delivery if an unsafe condition arises. This innovation draws from the principle of our patented Packetized Energy Transfer, or PET. Rather than delivering bulk current continuously, digital electricity breaks power into hundreds of pulses per second, analyzing each pulse for anomalies. The result is a power delivery method that combines the granularity and controllability of digital data transmission with the raw capability of high-power electrical systems. This digital safety protocol removes requirements for conduits, breakers, arc flash protections, and other safety apparatus, which all require significantly more materials, space, and labor to deploy. Hashtag safe power changes everything.

You can follow Volt Server on LinkedIn, YouTube, through our website at www.voltserver.com. And of course, please like and subscribe to the Future of Power podcast. In a moment, we’ll be joined by our guest. But first, I want to talk about an exciting recent development at Volt Server. We have launched the first fault managed power partner program in the industry, the Volt Server Solution Partner Program.

The Solution Partner Program allows manufacturers to incorporate VoltServer’s digital electricity technology directly into their product portfolios via technology embedding and reselling. This is a win-win for the manufacturers and for our customers. By expanding the availability and product offerings and providing comprehensive end-to-end solutions with service and support models, more customers will have more options globally

Ronna (02:25.741)

to utilize digital electricity in their enterprises. And that brings us to our special guest today, Dave Schell. He’s the author of Grit to Gratitude, and he’s the founder of DC Packet, a Volt Server Solution Partner. Dave, welcome to the Future of Power Podcast.

Dave Schell (02:43.911)

Thank you, Rana. Glad to be here. Excited.

Ronna (02:47.415)

Fantastic, Dave, I read your book, Grit to Gratitude. Now, we’ve known each other for a couple years now, and I have to say the book gave me some insights about how you approach life, including business. And honestly, you live your beliefs. The process of working with you, Dave, and the DC Packet team over the past couple years has been an absolute pleasure and DC packet, you know, is a new company, but it comes day one with decades of experience and really strong partnerships that you’ve developed. But I actually think it’s more than that. It comes with you, Dave, and your passion for I’m to I’m taking this directly from from your book enthusiastically pursuing our potential together. And I’m hoping maybe you can give us some cliff notes on how you came from the dirt, literally, to DC Packet, where we are today.

Dave Schell (03:51.432)

thank you, Ronna. Yeah, the analogy from the dirt is when I was young, eight, nine years old, was a little Tom Sawyer kind of with my gang of kids running around the Albuquerque, New Mexico area and trying to escape the heat. We went into an Arroia and dug a little notch back into the wall and proceeded to actually have a full cave in that created some interesting challenges for me and my family when I was young. And at one point in time, fully buried and then ultimately worried about being paralyzed from the hip, from the legs down or the waist down. So it was an interesting experience as a child. So that’s the dirt analogy. But as you know, I went on to play college and then professional football.

Ronna (04:38.211)

Thanks.

Dave Schell (04:49.267)

And so not paralyzed, thank goodness. But I’ve learned a lot of things along the road. And one of the most important things is from Del, Carnegie to, you know, when we’re enthusiastic, that makes a big difference. And then one of my biggest mentors today, a gentleman named Dave Meltzer, it really promotes pursuing our potential is the core to happiness and finding a lot of things in life rewarding. So we enthusiastically pursue our potential together here at DC Packet.

Ronna (05:28.535)

Well, so far, so good. Like I said, it’s been a great experience working with you and the team. I want to talk some more about DC packet and I thought it’d be fun to start talking about data centers. You know, obviously it’s a hot topic right now and you have built this platform called Titan and one of the elements of it is a pay as you grow model. Can you talk us through Titan?

Dave Schell (05:57.17)

Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that’s been very exciting for us is we’ve been really focusing on the AI data center, the data center space that’s coming to the marketplace is some of the things that we can do differently than has ever been done in the past through our modular approach with digital electricity. So the exciting part about of the pay as you grow model is there’s a lot of data centers that are being built and that data center process can take 18 to 36 months to build. in traditional AI data center or in traditional data center deployment, you have to put all of that infrastructure in day one and that asset could be sitting there for months or even years before it’s starting to make money. So what’s really exciting about our platform is that we can put the base infrastructure in, which is about 20 % of the overall cost. And we put that in when the rest of the infrastructure is being built into the building. But then the rest of it, 80 % of that infrastructure, doesn’t have to be added to the data center until you’re actually ready to bring on the load, the compute. So that can actually give you the use of capital for years potentially, which is pretty significant in the marketplace. And a differentiator, I don’t know of anybody else that could do that. If we wanted to put a four or five megawatt UPS in for place, you you got to buy a five megawatt UPS all up front. Can’t buy it in parts.

Ronna (07:46.072)

Yeah, so that modular approach combined, which is, I think enabled in part by digital electricity, the technology itself. And can you talk to us about that specifically about how digital electricity as the power transmission portion of the solution makes that type of a model, this pay as you grow, this modular approach possible?

Dave Schell (08:16.179)

Yeah, so what’s exciting about it is that each one of these modules are PDUs, the digital electricity PDUs that are putting out 67 kW of power. That kind of becomes our building blocks. And if you do an M plus one at a 50 kW or you do an M plus two at a 33 and a half, 34 kW type module, then that becomes our building blocks. Originally, when we started looking at it, I thought that wouldn’t work from a footprint perspective. I thought it would just be too crazy. But through all of our engineering and design and things that we’ve done here at DC Packet, we’ve realized that the consumption in the gray space is almost exactly the same as it would be for large monolithic deployments.

Ronna (08:56.119)

Mm-hmm.

Dave Schell (09:13.571)

And the exciting thing is we’re taking absolutely no white space. So we’re not actually having to do power distribution for remote PDUs, power panels, all those types of things. So that whole white space becomes available to the compute.

Ronna (09:33.762)

Yeah, which is really, really important for AI because they want to get those GPUs clustered together as, you know, as close as, as possible. need a really zero latency, data transmission between those GPUs. So that that’s really exciting. And, and Dave, when you and I were working on these different models, I thought also that we would end up utilizing more space in the gray space, because we’re adding transmitters, right? So I thought, which I guess for, for the audience, the transmitters would be equivalent kind of to a floor PDU, that would possibly sit in the white space in a traditional data center line app. So I thought by having the transmitters in the gray space, that it would actually be a bigger footprint. But what was interesting, what we found is actually breaking it up in these smaller chunks and of power and going with this modular approach, I think there’s a little bit of there’s even actually a little bit of space savings within the gray space. But then to your point, it really clears out all of that electrical infrastructure that you typically would see in the white space. And that was a development I really wasn’t expecting was that the that we would take the same or less of a footprint in the gray space.

Dave Schell (11:02.117)

Yeah, exactly. I wasn’t either. that once we started actually seeing that this really started to become a game changer from my perspective. And then the other thing too that we’re not talking about yet, but happens with the transmitters is we’re actually able to do in plus one or in plus two, which I’ve referenced real quickly, which, you know, in traditional architecture, you got to do that as a two in. And I know I’m throwing letters and numbers around and people may not understand that, but twice the cost is a lot more than N plus one or N plus two. And so if we can get that type of, you know, five, six, nines type of experience within plus one or N plus two, we save a lot of money. And I think that’s only available from a power distribution point of view through digital electricity. So really exciting there too.

Ronna (12:00.388)

Yeah, the N plus one, I think is a unique advantage for the power distribution portion of the lineup that really the only other option is to build a whole other second system. And one of the reasons that we can do N plus one is we’re actually a point to point architecture so that just in itself, if you think about a point to point type of architecture, that is going to minimize the risk, right? And reduce the incidence of any sort of a catastrophic failure because you’re losing a circuit or you’re losing a channel or you’re losing a single transmitter card. And so I think that being able to isolate your failures also is an improvement in resiliency. What do you say?

Dave Schell (13:01.689)

absolutely. And then when I found out that your mean time to failure is somewhere between 550,000 to 600,000 hours on that card you’re talking about, that becomes crazy when you think about how resilient this system really is. So to your point, the failure is very, very small in a module. The likelihood of a failure is very remote. After all of your years in the telecommunication space, you’ve proven that these things are extremely resilient, the model just becomes very compelling from a security and capabilities aspect as well.

Ronna (13:40.258)

Yeah, and so just kind of to remind the audience, when we’re able to remove in the power distribution system, we’re able to remove all of those traditional safety encumbrances, the conduits and the protections that we put around the electrical circuits so that people can operate and work around these systems. They take up a ton of space. And because we’re using a digital technology to provide that safety on the system, all of those additional encumbrances aren’t required anymore. So that just makes the power format so much more dense, right? We just don’t require as much space to distribute power.

Dave Schell (14:30.599)

There was a slide, sorry to interrupt there Ronna, but there was a slide that Stephen, your CEO, Stephen, he’s shared with me to where he was showing 93 % of the mass in traditional electricity is there because of safety, to your point. And so I’ve been using that as an example when I’m talking to non-technical people, I’m like even diminish that to 80%.

Ronna (14:50.305)

Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Schell (14:59.057)

Since our safety is now in the technology, not in all of these layers of conduit and wrapping and all these things, now we do it in the technology. So even if we diminish that to 80%, it becomes real easy to see if we’re taking up 20 inches in a rack to give you 400kW, which I think that’s right, right? About 20 inches for 400kW in the rack.

Then just multiply that times four if you want to do traditional AC infrastructure. So you go, okay Well now, you know 80 inches, you know, like well, wait a minute. Isn’t the rack 80 inches? You’re like, yeah is So we no longer can put any compute in that rack. So when I when I Share it like that with non-technical people. They’re like, wow 80 inches would have to be there. That’s the whole rack just to be secure. So anyway

Ronna (15:38.369)

Yeah. Yeah.

Ronna (15:54.948)

I know we’re trying to get a ton of power into each individual rack, but what you also gain with digital electricity is you’re going to lower the embodied carbon of your data center because all of that stuff is all of the stuff we use to protect traditional electrical systems all uses mined non-renewable materials. And so all of that goes away.

So you’re also going to have a reduction in your embodied carbon for your data center as well.

Dave Schell (16:30.547)

Yeah, what is that? That number is pretty big, like about 40, 45%. Ronna, I forgot.

Ronna (16:34.827)

Yeah, it’s yeah, it is significantly obviously depends on you know what the initial design was of your data center and if you were using WIPs or if you’re using busway, but yeah, it is it’s actually a pretty significant impact. The other thing is the method at which we send our transmit power, it actually enables us to use slightly smaller copper conductor. So we also use a little less copper as well. So there’s that, but then think of all of the different metals and materials that are used just to protect power systems today.

Dave Schell (17:13.011)

Yeah, while we’re talking about the efficiency, I mean, we might as well go ahead and bring in to, you know, about the carbon offset, but also the efficiency is a big deal about that too. I, when I shared that recently with a CFO of a data center operator and explained to him that, you know, we’re 97 % efficient, that was going to translate to about $6,000 a day in savings. But if even outside of the just cash savings, that’s electrical savings, right? So it’s just much more efficient with our energy consumption as a whole. anyway.

Ronna (18:02.561)

Yeah. And then more that we can allow our customers to get those GPUs closer together, because now we have a denser power format, right? It’s not going to take up as much space. So they can stack their GPUs up and down and side to side. It means they’re going to reach their peak compute efficiency as well, which I think is, you know, when you think about a data center, you know, we measure data centers typically, you know, we’re measuring them in the size of by power, but the reality is a data center exists for data output, right, for those tokens. And so being able to reduce the footprint of power, allowing those GPUs to get closer together is going to improve the actual compute output of your data center. I think that’s really, really exciting, especially when we’re looking at AI and the productivity of these.

Now they’re calling them AI factories, right? They really are, right? They’re producing something and what they’re producing is that data token. So, yeah, I think that’s interesting. I do want to go back because I have been, you know, thinking about this, the pay as you grow model or this idea that you can put in some base infrastructure in your data center. And then, as you had stated as your tenants, you know, fill up your space or as you start.

Dave Schell (19:03.155)

Right.

Ronna (19:28.771)

to deploy new technologies into that space. And there’s a lot of things like lead times on servers and GPUs, right? But there’s also an element of the utility because we all know that our grid can’t support the power demands today, right? So a lot of people are getting the footprint of their data center built, but they may not have all that power available to them today from the utility or from their generator or from, you know, in the future SMRs. And so that pay as you grow model could also be very helpful for those data center campuses or data center facilities that can’t get the power from the utility right off the bat, right? When they, when they open up.

Dave Schell (20:19.975)

Yeah, exactly. It gives a ton of flexibility. was talking to that same CFO that I mentioned a minute ago and talking about the pay as a grow program. And he says, well, Dave, if I, if I put your infrastructure in and then my tenant, he has a tenant that I under India, I can’t share, but, he’s like, if my tenant doesn’t sign in, I think it’s about 18 months is what they’re looking at. what happens with that other 80 %? And I’m like, well, it sounds like you might’ve just saved yourself $100 million. So he’s like, well, what does that mean to you? I’m like, it sounds like I just saved you $100 million. So it sounds like we both win, right? So he’s like, man, that’s just crazy. That’s exciting. yeah.

Ronna (20:52.387)

Ha

Not good.

Ronna (21:10.285)

Yeah, that is, I think it’s a really compelling story that you just, it just really isn’t possible with traditional power systems because you have to put, you really do have to build out that infrastructure for the most part to what your pretty close to max data center potential is gonna be. so,

Dave Schell (21:36.744)

Total field of dreams, right?

Ronna (21:38.391)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. Absolutely. So for the Titan platform, do you think that you have a best customer fit or is there a type of data center customer that you think is the best fit for the Titan solution?

Dave Schell (21:57.222)

Yeah, I’m finding like the gentleman I keep on referring to that that operator builder operator that’s looking for all of these gains and rapid deployments and how do I get into the marketplace right right now today? So it’s hard for me to say small right because these guys are building a multi billion dollar data center.

But in the marketplace, that’s kind of a small one, right? Or smaller. So it’s those types of data centers that I think we really meet. Even in my base model, I use a four megawatt data center, which in today’s world, that’s pretty really small. Yeah. And then honestly, I just had a conversation this morning about building a little 500kW data center.

Ronna (22:45.868)

Chris, Mom.

Dave Schell (22:56.593)

So I think that would be a great application too. So any of those kind of smaller to bigger ones, I don’t see us any time really reaching in and building something for Google or Meta or any of those guys. I don’t think that that’s in our business plan. If you’re listening, if you want to have us build one for you, please call. But I don’t think that’s our model.

Ronna (23:12.547)

Mm-hmm.

Ronna (23:20.833)

Yeah

Ronna (23:24.611)

Now I, um, I do think that there’s, you know, they’re referred to as the fab seven. don’t know if they agreed to that name, but the industry is all decided. We’re going to call them the fab seven. And, uh, so what’s interesting though, I think about the opportunity for, for Titan and for digital electricity, uh, is that because we’re taking this modular approach and we’re using, uh, smaller components.

Dave Schell (23:31.469)

Right. Exactly.

Ronna (23:53.956)

you know, blocks of UPS and our transmitters have a smaller block of power, 36 kilowatt, 40 kilowatt, that actually may be really beneficial to that mid-market space because of the capacity constraints that the traditional electrical industry has right now just supporting the Fab7, right? Like all, you know, there’s a lot of capacity going towards the Fab7. And so it does feel like this could be a great solution to be able to get capacity into that small to mid-tier data center space.

Dave Schell (24:36.701)

So I’m glad you kind of went back to this, right, and the modularity because it actually helps with the build as a grow where we focus. But the support you’re talking about is huge too because one of the things that we can actually do with this is have a, because of this modularity, we can actually have a two hour SLA service level agreement to replace anything in this chain, in our entire chain within two hours.

So the mean time to resolution for us is sub two hours for the customers that want that type of a support agreement with us. And you and I and Stephen kind of really got into this and kind of started, it’s kind of what brought all this together. So that also is a reason why it becomes interesting for the smaller data center is not only do we have a really quick mean time to resolution. But we also have the ability to, as you indicated, scale easily without a highly educated electrical marketplace. mean, the other thing that we’re finding with a lot of our customers is like, they’re in West Texas, they’re buying farmland that’s really out there.

You know, it’s not like out in the middle of West Texas, there’s just a bunch of electrical gurus running around, right? Electrical contractors. So our technology enables us to actually take the talent that’s in the marketplace and provide that extreme service, which is exciting.

Ronna (26:09.911)

Yeah. Yeah.

Ronna (26:23.703)

Yeah, that, mean, that I think that’s pretty much unprecedented because I think a key of something to something you just said was mean time to resolution. and so you can get a response time, you know, within a few hours, typically sure to show up and tell you what’s wrong. but you’re saying, no, we’re talking about a couple hours to get the problem resolved because of the modular components, because that you could do easy switch outs, because the system is safe to work with and operate, we can actually get that up and running in a couple hours. that’s a distinction that’s important.

Dave Schell (27:03.507)

Yeah, because all your modules, you know, how do we do that, right? And that brings us back around to digital electricity because every module you have in digital electricity, every module we have powering those digital electricity, the UPS systems, they’re all very, they’re IT technology. So they’re reporting all the characteristics about how they’re living and breathing 24 by seven, 365 days a year.

So the minute we can see any type of predictive failure, we can get way in front of that and solve that problem very quickly to where so much of the technology in traditional AC or DC power deployment is, you you don’t have any predictive methodology to see how that breaker is doing or how things are in that lineup are doing. Your rectifiers, your inverters, your transformers those things, you know, and even if you do see that there’s a potential challenge with, you know, a rectifier doing a four megawatt data center, what are you going to do with that data? That’s still going to have a much longer mean time to resolution than our modular solution will. So yeah, it’s really, really interesting how that totally changes the service delivery model.

Ronna (28:28.619)

Yeah. So I’m going to switch it up because I want to talk about critical power generally and because you don’t just work in data centers, Dave, you’ve been doing this for 15 years. You work the entire critical power spectrum. What, when we look outside of data centers, what is going on in critical power these days? What are your customers most concerned with?

Dave Schell (28:52.977)

Yeah, so especially in the last couple years, it’s really, it’s kind of back to that Fab 7 conversation we’ve had before. So it’s actually having responsiveness and being able to solve problems quickly. So.

Dave Schell (29:13.563)

starting over so that I can, don’t want to have a ring in the background. So it really kind of goes back to that conversation we had earlier about the Fab 7. And what we’re finding is, know, customers want to have kind of a relationship like we did five, six, seven years ago to where when they asked for something, there was a high level of response and capabilities for us to do stuff. So, and that’s across the whole critical infrastructure space. So,

Ronna (29:14.839)

Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Schell (29:43.54)

That’s one of the things we’re really excited about digital electricity enabling us to have more normalized response times to building systems, getting systems out, and deploying systems. So that’s a big part of it. And then of course, everybody, once you actually start talking about digital electricity and they get their mind around what it really is and why it’s different.

It’s amazing how many light bulbs go on and they’re like, hey, we could use it to solve this problem or solve that problem. You know, the casino application that I like to talk about a lot of times outside of the data center, you know, it was never even conceived that we could solve that problem for the casinos. digital electricity was extremely elegant in that solution.

Ronna (30:38.699)

Yeah. there, if especially if we’re talking about Brownfield, which is most of everything that’s out there, the customers that are up against, you know, either grid instability, that they’re adding more devices within their enterprise that need to be on backup power because they’re either so critical to revenue generation or they’re critical to, health and occupant safety.

Right? And so they have to be on backup, but the power infrastructure that’s there wasn’t built to have all of these dedicated circuits on UPS initially. And so what you have to do if you want to have a centralized UPS, which is clearly the, there’s advantages, right? Over distributing UPSs because the…

Dave Schell (31:08.744)

Mm-hmm.

Ronna (31:33.516)

reliability, the maintenance on distributed UPS, it’s really difficult, especially for large enterprises. So if you want to centralize your UPS in a brownfield, can be a pretty significant amount of electrical work that has to be done for cutting into those circuits, rerouting circuits, adding sub panels. And that’s really disruptive to an existing site that’s up and operational, like the Xtino.

For example, you know, they’re typically 24 seven and, and they don’t, know, if they take down part of that, you know, part of the casino floor, that’s going to cost them money. And so I do think that fault managed power has a really elegant way of, distributing power, like as an overlay power system, right? Very non disruptive to install these UTP cables through your ceiling, just like a

Dave Schell (32:24.787)

Mm-hmm.

Ronna (32:30.947)

data cabling, not disrupting any of the current electrical systems that are in play. And then very quickly being able to just switch that area over to the fault-managed power circuit. Now you’re talking about an hour of downtime for one small area versus potentially days or weeks or yikes, months to redo all the power infrastructure. Yeah.

Dave Schell (32:56.967)

Yeah, right. Right, the casino application I was talking about was 10,000 slots. Put your head around that, so it’s a pretty big casino. And when they were trying to get everything on UPS, the traditional thing was we were like, okay, we’re gonna have to figure out how to shut down this whole section of the casino for a day or two while we do the conversion the disruption inside of that space was going to be significant. And then when we presented the digital electricity option, they’re like, well, what’s our disruption? I’m like, well, 10 slots whenever it’s convenient for you. And they’re like, are you kidding me? And they’re like, that’s kind of the maximum disruption throughout the entire distribution chain. it became very, like I said, very compelling. And then when you look at it and go like, and by the way, it’s probably about…

Ronna (33:43.756)

Yeah.

Dave Schell (33:52.532)

I know it was less than half the cost to do that, which was very, it was a very surprising experience to find out it was gonna cost us half the cost and almost no disruption. So very compelling. And I use the casino application, but to your point, any type of enterprise that is looking for putting UPS into infrastructure without causing a disruption. And then one of our biggest partners actually is using it for government applications that are focused around sustainability and modernization. Since it’s government applications, it’s going into a lot of buildings that are historic buildings, so you can’t go in and do anything to that power. So suddenly being able to put a UTP cable

Ronna (34:44.962)

Yeah.

Dave Schell (34:51.099)

and hide it and do significant power throughout the facility becomes the only way that they can do it.

Ronna (34:59.895)

Yeah, one of the key, I guess, interests in the last, you know, probably year and a half in digital electricity, we have seen a real uptick in customers wanting to centralize UPS and move away from distributed UPS’s and add additional capacity for UPS, so we’ve also seen that trend. so UPS is they can help us through that grid instability, but what about when a real disaster happens, Dave? I know you’ve been looking at using DE and disaster recovery scenarios.

Dave Schell (35:43.846)

Yeah, so one of the things that DC packet is committed to just like Volt Server and UR were passionate about how can we have a give back program as well. And Stephen Eaves created this technology because he saw a way that we could deliver power safely. So, you know, power saves lives, right?

so digital electricity can save lives. And so we are talking to a couple of organizations that are tied closely with in the United States, FEMA, and then internationally with other organizations that are focused on disaster recovery and how do you rebuild after the disaster. And we’re real excited about the momentum we’re getting there and the interest we’re getting there for digital electricity provided through DC packet. So it’s very exciting. One of the examples we have is the US branch that’s focusing. They’ve already asked us to build a solution so the next time that they deploy into a disaster area, that we’ll actually be providing all the power for their headquarters because they want people to understand what are capabilities.

They want people to understand what our capabilities could or could be because you know we could actually deploy life safety to a triage center a mile away within hours to where today that could be that could be days if not weeks or even months so

Ronna (37:30.146)

Yeah.

And the safety element of that. like you said, know, Steve really his vision is really around delivering safe power because safe power means that power is more accessible to more people. And so he, and when you look at globally and you look at all of the countries that are the richest countries, they’re

Dave Schell (37:50.589)

Mm-hmm.

Ronna (38:02.413)

countries that have energy resources and that have power distribution. They have energy, right?

Dave Schell (38:10.129)

Yeah, energy does help communities move out of the dark ages. mean, yeah.

Ronna (38:17.315)

It does. It can change the fate of a nation. And so when we think about the fact that this power can be installed by, it can be installed by nearly anyone, right? because it’s safe. And it can be installed nearly anywhere, right? And so when we think about disaster recovery sites,

Dave Schell (38:42.333)

Mm-hmm.

Ronna (38:45.167)

you know, those environments, oftentimes they’ve got water, they’ve got, you know, there’s a lot of things going on, in disaster recovery sites that make installing power infrastructure, you know, pretty dangerous, the installation of it, but also, I think you’ve used the term the disaster after, but, the safety of it, really does change so much about our energy paradigm. it’s why, like, you my moniker, safe power changes everything. And I think it’s, you know, Steve’s vision, you working with these on disaster recovery, that fits right into what Steve’s vision is for the technology.

Dave Schell (39:31.858)

Yeah, when I presented this to the decision makers through those communities I just talked about, they were excited because they’re the ones that actually told me after the disaster. And then they started quoting all of these stats about how many people died at Katrina from heat exhaustion because they just couldn’t find a place to cool down, To get hydrated and get cool.

And there were a number of lives that were lost just because that was not accessible to them and there’s no reason for that with digital electricity. I totally understand why it happened. My hat’s off to the linemen and the electrical people that are trying to restore power in those environments in a safe manner through traditional means.

Ronna (40:16.545)

Yeah.

Dave Schell (40:24.945)

But we’ve got a partnership that’s developing with a generator, hydrogen generator company that’s talking about actually including our distribution modules, our transmitter modules inside of their system. So to your point, they can actually have a ruggedized eight kilowatt generator either drove up or flown into a spot. And then anybody can take our UTP cables and energize a receiver. Anybody can do that. So we can literally have power lit up anywhere in the field within hours in that model. And that’s a game changer, I think. So the community centers, the triage centers, all those places. And then when you were talking earlier just to

Ronna (41:02.402)

Yeah.

Dave Schell (41:23.591)

Translate trans just really close is is the microgrid community and stuff and so that same group that I’m talking to there is very excited through the same sort of technology about setting up micro grids and really Parts of the world that don’t have any access to power because there’s no power generation so this same sort of model of having like a hydrogen generator and then they can generate, but they were still worried about how do we distribute that power. And if you do it just, you know, traditionally there, you still need electrician or you put people at risk with us, we don’t do that. So you could literally put this into a community that’s never seen power and start providing power to them literally immediately with the resources that they have there in the community.

Ronna (42:16.909)

Yeah, I just think that that is an area that’s gonna be so exciting as that develops, Dave. And I can’t wait to talk in the future more about that specifically. It certainly is something that we at Vault Server, we have a passion around delivering safe power globally. And we’re excited about the impact that.

DC Packet’s gonna have in that space with us being able to pull all those partners together, pull the whole fitted solution as well as the delivery model together is just, it’s fantastic. So.

Dave Schell (42:58.959)

Yeah, and just to put a little pub out there for our friends, think Ronna, you communicated with a community that’s trying to create a lot of, well not create, there’s apparently a lot of momentum around public-private partnerships throughout the world. And I think you were able to actually put something into a document that was gonna really help support digital electricity getting out there in the world through that public-private partnership community opportunity.

Ronna (43:36.29)

Yeah, we did. We did that a few months ago. Actually, I did it through the FMP Alliance, which is the trade organization for the promotion of fault managed power adoption. And I’m the secretary of the FMP Alliance. And so yeah, we did do that and successfully were added into into that document. So those that are looking for those types of deployments were, you know, were in there as an option for power distribution systems. yeah, hopefully that helps kind of move the process along when we’re presented with these opportunities.

Dave Schell (44:17.563)

Yeah, shout out to those guys because they’re really doing a great job to help those communities that are way off grid. They’re very interested in the microgrid deployments and stuff. So thank you for doing that and thank you for the FMP Alliance for supporting that type of initiative.

Ronna (44:34.423)

No, yeah, no, happy to do it, happy to do it. So Dave, our time is up. It was great to talk to you today. The Full Server team is so excited about our partnership with DC Packet. We have a lot of great work ahead of us and we’re gonna have to have you back in a year to talk about your progress.

Dave Schell (44:53.043)

Absolutely, I’m excited to tell you all the great things we’re doing.

Ronna (44:57.793)

All right, Volt Server Solution Partner Program is built to enable partners like DC Packet. At Volt Server, we focus on the core technology, digital electricity. It’s what we do all day, every day. And by partnering with highly qualified organizations like DC Packet, it brings our technology to life. It allows partners to do what they’re good at, building and delivering end-to-end solutions for our customers. And importantly, it will bring safe power to more people globally.

Hashtag Safe Power Changes Everything. If you want to get in touch with Dave, you can connect with him on LinkedIn or visit their website, www.dcpocket.com and check out Dave’s book, Grit to Gratitude. It’s available for Kindle on Amazon. Thank you for listening. Our goal is to create an army of evangelists for digital electricity. Join us in making power safer, more accessible, smarter, and more sustainable. I’m Ronna Davis, connect with me and Volt Server on LinkedIn, check out our YouTube page with educational content and sign up for news on our website. Please like and subscribe the Future of Power podcast. We’ll see you in the future powered by digital electricity.