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THE FRONTIER LINE
Hosts Wayne Aston and David Murray explore the critical global pillars of infrastructure development and energy production, from traditional methods to future-forward advancements. The Frontier Line covers the latest industry news, energy innovations, and sustainability trends that are shaping the future. Through expert interviews with industry leaders in renewable energy, utility-scale battery storage, and waste-to-energy technologies, the podcast provides insights into the evolving landscape of energy efficiency and sustainable infrastructure. By focusing on the intersection of innovation and the politics of energy, The Frontier Line highlights transformative ideas and technologies poised to deliver cost-efficient, resilient, and sustainable solutions for global industries.
THE FRONTIER LINE
Brady Jenkins- Founder of GCP Energy
welcome back to the show, friends. We're very excited to be back in studio. Dave and I have been planning on this next interview here with a good friend of ours, mr brady jenkins with gcp energy solutions. Brady, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1:Hello brady, hello brady hey guys we've had the unique opportunity to work with brady uh over, god man, I think we're coming up on a year, almost. Um, brady is a really smart dude, he. He has a deep background in as an electrical engineer and I'm not going to attempt to provide a bio for you guys. We're just going to kind of dive in here so Brady can tell you, the listeners, what we already know about him and how great he is. But, brady, do you mind just sharing a little bit about your professional background in the energy sector, including your experience with high-voltage cables, distribution systems, substations and what led you to actually becoming a founding partner of GCP Energy Solutions?
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks. You know I started in this industry just over 25 years ago as a part-time meter reader for a small municipality in northern Utah and I was going to be an architect, uh. But that changed my mind when I started learning about energy and and kind of uh, the inner workings of that kind of uh worked my way into a planner position and then a journeyman sub station technician that allowed to work very high voltages, over a hundred thousand volts, um, and I I was a sub tech for over 10 years, love doing that, read a lot about you know, generation, transmission, distribution, obviously substations. That really got me going, you know, into an engineering degree and eventually an engineering manager and then into lots of different things that piqued my interest, working for a very large corporation after that ABB, hubble, a couple overseas international companies, so I've got a lot of experience.
Speaker 2:I tried to incorporate that in making it working knowledge and kind of spread things that I know and have learned and always learning, and I'm very passionate about this particular topic. Obviously I've made it my passion and so when I left my last company, I created GCP Energy with my best friend, favad Janjua, and he's out of our Texas office and a very similar background to mine. He's very hands-on and so I kind of created a team of engineers that's very capable. So we have this small kind of VPC out of Utah and Texas where you know we do some inside engineering procurement all around the world and then you know line up construction jobs and projects for energy companies all around the world and then you know line up construction jobs and projects for energy companies all around the world.
Speaker 1:And you're still alive to tell the stories because we're kicking off these high voltage transmission lines and transformers and switch gear and substations.
Speaker 2:man, that's a dangerous job, yeah it is is you got to learn to respect? You know, uh, the craft it's, it's a, it's an amazing industry and an opportunity that I had as a very young, uh, you know, 22 year old, learning something very complex and intricate to our everyday lives. And, yeah, I'll tell you, you know switching over 100 000 volts with your hands, your bare hands, you know, wake you up pulling. You know a nine, 12 foot arc in the middle of Murray city. Power, you know, does does a true. That, you know it sobers you up real quick.
Speaker 3:Well, how, you know how dangerous is dangerous Because I think for the, you know, for the average listener out there, average, you know, consumer of this. What does it mean? You know there's the stuff we're used to in our homes, but then this is a magnitude much greater. You know what's walk me through dangerous.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's a good question, because actually even your house power could be dangerous and really it's not about the voltage but about the current and amperage that actually you can induce on yourself, you know, and become part of that circuit. So you know, from small voltages to the highest voltages you know I've worked up to a thousand KVA projects, so very large you have to respect the smallest of the largest large, you have to respect the policy of the large If you treat it as the same. You know, wearing those core principles and what I tell young engineers and young technicians and journeyman linemen and things like that is, as you're learning these things, just learn the principles and fundamentals to respect the things you're about to, you know, embark on, because those basic fundamentals are everything.
Speaker 3:So yeah, crazy, craziest electrical story from your days of doing that.
Speaker 2:I have a lot, you know, I have some sad stories. I've had a lot of friends, you know have some very horrible accidents, but I've also had some crazy ones where, you know, I had an alarm once up at the Echo Hydro plant of, uh, anybody knows of, uh, you know, weber Canyon up there. Uh, just one of those great hydros. Um, we got an intrusion alarm and I thought maybe we're getting broken into. So I drove up there over the weekend, um, and luckily I took the upper entrance up by the dam, opened up that door and there was 30 feet of water just covering all of the turbines and what had happened is we had a penstock burst and actually filled the entire control room, shut down the turbines.
Speaker 2:I think we lost like a year and a half, 18 months, something like that, on that hydro. But, you know, going in and there's still some lights on a couple sparks going on and it's a spooky thing. You got a pretty big, you know, big transformer, big turbines, things like that, uh, but like anything, there's some spooky things that go on. Especially with doing this this long and being in charge of some of these really uh, neat projects, you're gonna see some things. Uh, that'll, you know, definitely wake you some things that'll definitely wake you up. So that was definitely one.
Speaker 3:Wow, you touched on one thing and I'll jump in. You touched on one thing that I a question I wanted to ask you because I think it hits to a point. You're shut down for 18 months, 12, 18 months, one problem 18 months. How would you equate that? I, you've been on that. You, you've been at the ground level of energy in the us. Walk me through, walk me and wade through what you see right now, or some of our critical infrastructure issues.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's one of the reasons. What led me to you guys over a year ago now was this issue of there's a few issues going on in the US and one of them supply chain procurement of equipment, material, labor services and overall just taking care of critical infrastructure. You guys have mentioned this many times on your podcast that we have a definite issue with this problem. The reason why that took so long is because that was during a time when GE was kind of getting out of the power business. These were GE machines trying to find labor guys that could come out. Engineers that have the technical prowess to actually handle a job like this took a long time and it really got me thinking like man, I'm in for wrong business. I need to figure out, maybe, services, how to figure out how to service this industry better. But I was just a young technician and I still had a lot to learn.
Speaker 2:But seeing those holes very and this was 20 years ago but seeing those holes early on, just being like man, we are just ignoring this. And then he starts seeing the outages in New York, the outages in, uh, you know, canada, florida, these big outages happening in the early two thousands. And then NERC comes on and says, hey, we have some ideas of how to fix this and you know they kind of gave these. You know these standards that I was a part of, you know the SPIP, the PRC standards that are supposed to be for maintenance and testing. But really that was like a day saying, hey, we're in a farm with you guys if you don't do something about this, but not really giving you know much guidance and recommendations.
Speaker 2:We try to help each other in this community this, but not really giving much guidance and recommendations. We try to help each other in this community and we had a lot of different conferences when it surrounded this and it's like a lot of things, like a golf tip. Everybody has opinions on how to handle the grid and consolidating all those ideas into a central, actuatinguating, progressive movement is difficult because you do have opinions across the board. Just look at the clear energy that's happening now green energy, going back and doing some of our fossil fuels again. You know there's a reason why all these things get talked about and it's all energy and it all can be used in a responsible, correct manner. We just have to agree on some things and get to work on it.
Speaker 1:It seems like Brady, one of the things I learned fast in meeting you was identifying some of the causes of outages, and you were representing a pretty substantial company out of China, Jiangsu Shimar Electric, and I learned about the makeup, the material makeup of insulators in these conversations with you and I was absolutely shocked to know that our grid, our US grid, which is over 100 years old, is still, even on new grid projects, we're still using glass or porcelain insulators when there's technology out there using these composites, these alternative materials and the difference in performance you know. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if memory serves, you were telling me in the very first few weeks we met about how you know, a warranty on one of these porcelain insulators might be six months or a year in the US, whereas some of these new technologies overseas are coming with 20 or 30 year warranties. It feels axiomatic in the US that we would have the best of the best and we'd be building this hardened, resilient grid, but that is not what's gone on. Can you just speak to that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, looking around projects and how things are done around the world. I learned this out of China and a lot of people think, oh, wow, why is he working for the enemy? Well, it's not really that sort of a thing. When you learn about supply chain, you learn about sourcing and raw material and how these things actually work. You know, eventually you're going to find your way to China, or close to it. So just understanding that we do have partners, or close to it. So just understanding that we do have partners. We all have partners, even our American companies, the very large ones that do build infrastructure for us. We have world arc around the world.
Speaker 2:But what you'll find is, you know, and I call it you know, kind of this permitting death now, where you know the way that we do permitting in the United States, there's such a process where just things do not get done very quickly and so where it might take me, you know the same amount of time to get a large transformer to California or Texas. Large transformer to California or Texas. You know one of our you know, overseas countries over there has just completed a very large scale power plant At the same amount of time it takes to produce a transformer, they're doing power plants, and so you know there's a lot of things that we have to work through. We have a lot of motivations right now in this country to do what everybody's talking about and that is to build a more reliable grid, to create more energy, to find better ways of, you know, serving each other and serving our communities, and you know a lot of that has to do with just understanding how difficult some of these processes are and how some of these processes are and how some of these processes stop the progress of these things even taking place. So a lot of time, very frustrating, and when you finally, you know, if you look at the permitting process of the last 20 large scale power plants in the last, you know, decade or so, it's usually a permitting problem. You know there's a funding issue, but there's usually a permitting problem and not understanding that process well enough, and I know you guys understand that. I mean we work with many consulting firms that just help us with permitting, so it's a very complex problem, the same things you're talking about.
Speaker 2:When I was working with Shamar, you got to understand that there are certain things that they're able to do because either the government or their industry, where they are at, allows for certain things to get done a little quicker, a little bit more efficient, because there is an end goal in mind and we just can't get in the way of being perfect, even though that's the goal. But we actually do have to serve our communities. And right now, you know, as we see, there's outages going on right now in New York City All over. We have brownouts, blackouts all summer long and that's not going away anytime soon. It's a lot of infrastructure that needs to be, you know, rebuilt and some of this new stuff being built for the future, uh, has to be done. It's just not being done quick enough.
Speaker 2:Um, you know a lot of times we're just getting in our own way, essentially.
Speaker 3:You know some things starting to thaw out as far as perhaps you know taking, you know moving out of the way some of these obstacles and you know streamlining some permitting processes. Do you see innovations coming?
Speaker 2:that might help solve some of these issues. I do totally. I think we are in a US manufacturing rebirth. I think, for the first time, we're taking it very serious to bring back manufacturing to the United States. The goal is, um, and everybody wants to do business, everybody wants to do it correctly, um, so I do see trends changing there. Yes, I see there's still some geopolitical pressures, ira, certain things that get in your way, um, but co-locating power generation, green hydrogen, uh, incentives, vertical integrated utility services that's things I'm very passionate about and these are kind of new ideas. But we have to think differently how to serve this integrated grid.
Speaker 2:We have so many exciting things with technology, things that try to change in our industry. You know, the power industry and the electrical utility business has not changed much. We have so many exciting things with technology, things that try to change in our industry. You know, the power industry and the electrical utility business has not changed much If you look over the last 50 years. It takes a lot to make things change, policy or technology, but the things that do are technology and policy. Those are the things that do change this industry. Those are the things that do change this industry and usually that comes with, you know, typically reliability, certain things that just need to meet change and better. You know better material. So, like you mentioned, wayne, the composites, the different things that are coming out, the micro grids, the things that are needed for today's day and age All these things are new tech. We're seeing new cable, new wire, the composite cable. We're seeing just a lot of new innovation that I feel, like you said, shouldn't go from a one-year, five-year warranty, like we should really back this stuff. If we have a product we're going to install, if we're going to build a new grid, well then you've got to put your money where your app is, give a good, decent warranty on all these products, back your product, maintain that product once you've installed it and have some sort of an integrated service that goes on with all this. So it's actually someone's taking responsibility, taking care of it and has the manpower to actually do it, and we see those types of issues all the time.
Speaker 2:But that's another resurgence I see is bringing some of these kind of the tech jobs back to the US as well. We've seen such a dip in engineers and technicians. I get excited for some of these new tech schools that are popping up training electrical workers, right. So that's my passion.
Speaker 2:I was a professor at Weber State. I taught power and motors, because nobody teaches this stuff anywhere in the country. There's a couple of schools Oklahoma has actually a really good school for this but there's not too many schools that talk, you know, utility power, electrical business. They don't talk this, and so I caught that at Weber State for a few years and it's just my passion to teach these younger people what it means to be responsible. You know our human, you know existence now is pushing us to a new tech age. We've kind of made the decision yeah, we're going to go this route. Well, if we're going to support AI and all this new data and all this new infrastructure, we have to do it responsible and we need to figure out how to do it on a large scale. This is all scalability, but still we're seeing so many different bottlenecks with certain issues and that's why we're talking about all this stuff.
Speaker 3:I think you're hitting on what I was going to say Can we call you Professor Jenkins from now on?
Speaker 1:Oh, I don't mind. I really appreciate you bringing up the, the skilled workforce that's needing to be educated today, because I'd really like our listeners to make this connection that the things we're talking about have never been done before. By and large, okay, if we look at Utah, the last major plant that was built you know, I just think of the IPP is like 45 years ago and the technology we're talking about it from that coal plant getting built 40 something years ago to today, advanced. You know catalytic, you know conversion systems on natural gas. We talk about water consumption dramatic reductions. We talk about emissions dramatic reductions. We talk about emissions uh, dramatic reductions. But we're talking about energy power systems, power generation systems that have never been deployed before. And now we're talking about nuclear being deployed, like advanced new nuclear technology.
Speaker 1:It's exciting because the, with the advent of the independent power producer, there's a transition that's been driven by AI and data centers, these hyperload consumers, where our traditional utility companies are not going to be able to muster the capital resources, the workforce, certainly not the technological advancement or the policy that could embrace new technological advancement fast enough to come anywhere near meeting this demand. And that's where the private sector gets to really step up. This is where I see and recognize one of these opportunities of a lifetime to step up as an independent power producer, design next-gen systems that have never been built before. And what does it take to do that? It takes building an orchestra of industry leaders, and that's where Invictus Sovereign, I think, is really just to toot our own horns. But we've taken years to bring the best in breed.
Speaker 1:You know, like companies like Floor and Gensler and Schneider Electric and Westinghouse. These are companies many of them are over 100 years old, but they continue to be some of the largest, most reputable authorities in certain sectors, and by leaning into their expertise we get to lean into their technological advancements and we get to also kind of work with the next-gen operators that are learning how to operate the new system that's never been built before, built before. So it takes a lot of pressure off of us. That maybe wasn't the same conversation 20 or 30 years ago, when you've got lenders saying, well, have you ever developed something like this before? Have you ever done this before? No, no one has done this before. How do you feel about this idea that we're doing something that's never been done before?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and that's how you'd have to think. It's like well, if we keep doing what we're doing, what you're going to get it's going to be the same result. So you have to think differently. You got to find partners that think differently. I think one thing that the US could immediately start working on and I think we see this, in fact, I see it in Utah, in our own hometown is some of these pop-up modular prefab type companies that see how important modular type building products for these projects is so essential because it becomes more of a plug and play right. So, like our modular substations, that's a kind of a new, kind of a new hawk thing that's happening Just a lot of plug and play.
Speaker 2:The problem we've always had when we're designing transformers or substations or power plants, generation, whatever, is that we are making everything so custom. We're amazing In the US. We're smart, we're hard workers, we want to innovate, we want to do the things right, but sometimes we make these things so complex that we make every job a custom job. Everything is just complete and what happens there is your design, your drawings, all those things just go out further and further. Costs go up and up. So what I like about this new prefab idea with modular substations, skid-mounted switchgear, plug-and-play battery systems. You know all that stuff. You know we used to look at it like every project was a snowflake project. You know we have to customize everything. Now it's just like plug-and-play get the job done. We know how to do these things really well. We can build substations really well. We can build transformers really well. Now let's just do it at a different pace, kind of like our neighbors do, and just learning what that takes and then building the infrastructure so you can support that.
Speaker 2:And I do think that is kind of a new way for thinking. I know we don't think that way, but way we got to talk about a year ago when I first heard your first podcast with you guys, you were talking about it and this is why I was like and I told that you know our, our friend and you know Capitol grill. I said, yes, I want to meet these guys because you said some very key points that really got a lot of you know wheels churning in my head was you know we need to make things more simple, more available and make more sense, and I think with that you standardize. You standardize on system and it's not just standardizing on a substation, but we're talking complete distribution systems, transmission substation, and even though everybody has their own ideas about components in these things, I think there should be a standard. So when things are built, when they need to be replaced, it's not this complex issue. It's not a complex design trying to integrate with an old design.
Speaker 2:We are really talking about plug and play products going forward. It's kind of like your Apple phone talking to an Apple port. You know whatever you got to do. Now they all talk on the same cord. You know, thank goodness we all have that universal cord now. But that's where we want to get to. On power systems, we have to make it simple, we have to make it available. Um, you know, it starts with raw materials all the way to the install, to the end user and then maintaining that system. But I think there is a better way of doing that and thinking about it. A lot of times it's political and a money thing, obviously, because competition and different tech. But if we're really talking about reliability and sustaining the grid and doing good to our community and moving on to the next technology, you know, let's make sure this is solid, let's make sure just this infrastructure is solid, so we can do the greater things down the road.
Speaker 3:You mentioned sustaining the grid. What do you think, what do we need to be doing for sustaining the grid? I mean, you mentioned that. You also mentioned co-locating power. I know we have a philosophy and you know, I guess the more we've been in the space, we understand transferring power over a long distance, you lose a lot of power. There's a lot of inefficiency in that system. There's a lot of maybe originally, you know, 100 years ago, 75 years ago, having interconnectivity did certain really good things, but there's also arguably a downside to that and you know, where do you see that and where do you see that and where do you see this going stability of the grid and what needs to be done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a really good question and there's quite a bit that probably needs to be done on a lot of different levels. I think one thing is understanding where our weaknesses is, understanding where our weaknesses is. The one thing that I like about your guys' vision with Invictus Sovereign, is you're not holding tight to one technology. You understand that sourcing of energy has to be. You know, it's kind of like everything is needed and we see where we look at these sites for power plants. Every state, every territory has its own resources and things that can benefit or not benefit a project. So you're going to have to work with it Now. With that, you still need auctions to fill the gaps of whatever you're missing.
Speaker 2:Again, I think that modular can work in this realm as well. As you move these things around, you kind of have an idea of all these different sources of energy what's going to play well here, what's going to price well for my investors, what's going to be good ROI, and then what's going to serve the community well and what's going to make sense. So for us, we're all Utah boys. We're homegrown, lived our all lives. We care about this community. So when we're going into a project for Utah, we are thinking community first. We're thinking how do we serve these people and how do we do it correctly? So, dave, it's like we're doing it in a new you know, kind of in a vast, on a hyperscale, where we're creating something new for a new community to serve us, a new future community.
Speaker 2:So these new power plants, they really have to really pave the way for what's going to happen next.
Speaker 2:So you know, building something this large, if you go on two gigawatts, four gigawatts, six gigawatts, you know there's going to be other things involved substations, distribution, transmission so you become.
Speaker 2:You know you're doing more and more and more, but that allows you to do the right things for each of those systems and, I think, being a big player in that, being a leader in that, we have to step up and say listen, this is how we feel that we can serve this community the best and it really worked out and we need to spread that message. We need a lot of different partners to do it. So I think it starts with the source of your energy and taking to the end user, but being responsible for all the material and there's lots of material that we can be using that is a lot more sustaining than what we've used in the past. And some of it's composites, some of it's a lot of different things, but you know cost is a thing, but I think you know reliability of the grid if you don't have an outage for 50 years, that's a pretty decent ROI.
Speaker 1:So I think that should be the goal. You know, really, with these types of things, brady, you know, you know intimately what we're up to. You know with Valley Forge here in central Utah, and I want to touch on the value in your mind of a unique energy mix, multiple modalities of power generation. This is a total divergence from traditional generation. I mean, when we talk about IPP or any power plant, bonanza, anything in Utah, you're talking about a single source where either it's coal or traditional gas or hydro or you know you name whatever we've got out there in the mix, nuclear, even some of the old nuclear, but those typically every single power project is a single modality power generation source.
Speaker 1:And it's occurred to us that, given the demand, the only way that we're going to reasonably meet these demands at the pace they need to be met is by coming up with a very unique strategy bringing multiple modalities onto the same site that can all kind of push those electrons into a control center and through the substation and push it back out. You know, in a fully conditioned and highly managed distribution model, very large gas plant, we're talking about over four gigawatts of gas, but then we're also talking about nearly two gigawatts of nuclear and we've toyed around with some other modalities. But there's a lot of things that go into play with this unique energy mix thing, because when you start to factor emissions you know if we want to build eight gigawatts, you're not going to ever be able to accomplish that with gas because you're going to throw off too much of the things that we can't have. So you kind of build as much as you can of what's available and what technology is accessible gas, advanced gas and then augment that with this nuclear. That's more of a phase two and three.
Speaker 1:It's a future generation. We we know that if we go with the most aggressive possibility, you know we might be standing up a reactor in five or six years. But, gal, if we're, if we're holding out for smrs or micro reactors, we could be still 10, 12 years out. But but what's years out? But how do you feel about the unique energy mix plan?
Speaker 2:I think it's essential. I think it's exactly how people need to think. I think you need to be adaptable to your environment, do what makes sense for the resources you have. So, like in Utah yeah, we sit right on the Kern River pipeline Makes a lot of sense. Let's use gas as a base in our max. But then also, what else can we do to support that? And then, what byproduct of other generation can we do? Is there steam that comes off these? So hydrogen a lot of different things.
Speaker 2:But yeah, some of these things you touched on is one thing is a technology thing. Like take hydrogen, like, yes, we can create hydrogen power. Is it very efficient now? Maybe not, but will it Most likely? Yes, along with all these different technologies. Nuclear it's expensive but it's coming down. We're just, you know, we're figuring it out and we're doing better. And so fossil fuels still, there's a definite need for that. You know we still can do a lot with fossil fuels and make it fairly clean. But it makes sense to keeping some of the old ways while we bring in some of the new, especially when we're talking about the amount of loads that we're talking about with a data center, you know you bring it in at one data center. One gigawatt of power, holy cow, what does that do to? You know a balancing authority in your territory. You know utilities, just don't know how to handle that much. So a lot of those things have to be looked at and and respected. So that that's really how I I do see that um for the future.
Speaker 3:In that conversation, one of the things I we've brought up and said multiple times. I don't know, wayne, if we ever really explained it, but we have the expert on. We should have him explain it. Can you explain, brady? Uh, baselo load power and what that means in this world and why base load power is important for costing and stability and and what. What that? Because we talk about all the time. We say we need base load power and gas provides base load power, so do some of these other sources like solar. Doesn't that kind of a hook?
Speaker 1:any. Your bigger problem, depending on what state you're in, it's the base versus three doables and a lot of you have to kind of make decisions right.
Speaker 2:So again, it's your environment, it's it, it's your, your geography of uh as well. Uh, what makes sense for the most efficient energy in your area? Oh yes, for us it's gas. Others, you know, have hydro, that hydro that have free. You know, like, if you take Hydro Quebec Up in, you know, up in Toronto, that's their base Load power, hydroelectric. I love hydro power, it's one of my favorite, but not everybody can get hydro, obviously. So Whatever your most, I would say, cost effective, cleanest way Of having a, the best base load of power just meaning you have consistent power for your, your most of your needs and loads, that you do have uh, you, you take for most of your, your smaller powers.
Speaker 2:A lot of them are just on the market and they're buying power from other places to take up their base loads and sometimes they play it like the stock market where they're buying it months or years in advance and so it's tricky for them. So sometimes they'll bring on different generation. In Utah, gas generation is very popular because our gas is fairly cheap and the technology is solid. So we see quite a bit of gas turbines for either high peak summer hours, but they're based low. They're still going to come out from the larger power plants, servicing even those smaller communities and co-ops and things like that. But that's pretty much what we mean by base power. And then you know, from that base tower just getting those different loads and byproducts and things that you can do for those peak hours, because you know, as we're seeing, and that's where it costs a little bit more money to get those types of technologies. But solar wind it's just not, it's not sustainable, for you know a base load type, just because it's not always there, essentially is what it is.
Speaker 3:Well, one of the things changing that for that. But in general and we've talked about it, as you know, know, we've talking to westinghouse and long duration energy storage. How do you see that, you know, from your perspective? You know, hey, if I can, if I can, if I can play the battery game and I've got a, I've got a, let's just say, giant battery and I can offload and avoid some of these things, then I can charge it when rates are cheaper. That kind of a yeah, that kind of an approach. I I mean, how do you see the best systems playing a role in the future of energy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so currently, if you look around the world and you see most of the power plants that are being built now or recently, they have a mix. You'll see solar and wind on their site. A lot of them still do. Diesel Diesel is very so a dual fuel type generation around the world is still and then batteries so you mentioned the long-term battery. Now the storage is. That's the future. You know that is really the future with good tech and we know these folks. We've been talking to them about some of this storage systems and that is so. It's such an integral part. So that is where solar and wind can really help us out and can fill some of those voids. But still having a good battery system, having a good base load, having a mix of all those things, is essential to large energy production. I'm excited for nuclear to get a little bit more affordable and as that technology gets better, just sustaining power for what we really need to do, we're going to have to be looking at those technologies in the future for major scale upscaling.
Speaker 1:For this, you know, for all this energy load we're looking at you know, for all this energy load we're looking at, so brady, you're bringing up a, a thought, just I'm I'm thinking of a couple articles that dave and I have covered recently, and I want to talk about transmission for a second here. You know we're talking about developing new transmission lines and that comes part and parcel with new distribution lines. But you know we're designing 500 kV lines for Utah, backbone for Utah. Now there are some small kVA segments in Utah and I think the largest in the US from a voltage perspective is like a 700 kV. Is that right, yeah?
Speaker 2:765.
Speaker 1:765. Okay, but we know in China they go all the way up over 1,000 KV lines. These are huge lines. Here's the curveball question for you. It's like, okay, at like 3 million a mile to develop this type of transmission line. How much mileage do we get before the technology reaches us?
Speaker 1:Where we're beaming technology, the, the nikola tesla beaming transmission, because we read an article about you know they had a tester just a few weeks ago, successfully, you know, beamed I don't know how many may. A lot of megawatts. Um, it's coming. But what's funny is the media kind of they want to kind of stick to this scintillating, exciting new stuff, which is why you hear, you're hearing so much about smrs right now. The media, if you just listen to the news, it's all about smrs. Like smrs are going to be here tomorrow, yeah, but can you speak to that like public, public perception, new technology how long does it actually take to like bring stuff on? And why would we be spending hundreds of millions of dollars on proven technology like gas or like our transmission lines right now, instead of trying to wait for, you know, beaming technologies?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a good question. Right off the get I would say we're still a ways from that, only because regulations permitting for something like that, doing airspace. You know, I don't know if there's FAA and there's gonna be a lot of things involved like wires. Wires are nice because I like hardwired things, because I know they work. I'm a technician at heart so I like seeing one wire go A to C and I know how to fix it. We all have Bluetooth devices. We know how interruption I couldn't even go into the system protection of a wireless system and I'm a system protection engineer, so that's my background. So it's complex. It's very interesting and I think we should continue to work towards this great technology.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't shy anybody away from building new transmission right now Transmission, ownership and operation of a transmission, building transmission so critical. And I know, even for now, epcs, large EPCs, a lot of investor-owned new utility track companies. They want to own these transmission systems, um, because they're so critical and um, and there's a good roi on transmission systems. But having ownership of a transmission system really should put a lot of responsibility on that company and that's what I want people to understand. Is they, as they do take these systems over to be responsible with them, to use best tech, make sure that line's going to stay, because that is the backbone of all of this, and so as new technologies come.
Speaker 2:But, like I said, this industry does not move. It takes a lot for this industry to move and permitting regulation politics you see Washington move, so just things take time. We have proven technology. There's technologies now that will make our transmission systems, I feel, more reliable, more cost effective, safer, all these things that I think that is possible. We have that technology now. It might cost a little bit more for some of these technologies, but what's it worth and what kind of warranties is this giving as opposed to the old stuff? So I think we need to look at what we have and what's coming down and do our due diligence, make sure these things are, you know, going through the proper tests, you know standards and that we can actually work with this stuff. But it's availability, material and just getting the job done right now, I think, is the uh, the name of the game.
Speaker 1:Getting the job, Dave, I'll let you, I'll let you follow up on that Cause I could see you starting.
Speaker 3:Well, I, well, there was, there, was that I was, I was thinking about you, was that I was? I was thinking about you know, uh, but I think I know the answer to it. You know, uh, and I was, I was gonna, I was gonna say, hey, let me ask a stupid question, uh, and I know there there's trade-offs, like with bearing lines versus our lines we have overhead, and I know there's, you know people, I, I know, I think I know the answer to that, but can you explain? I mean, I just that's kind of a random question to tie into infrastructure, but I was thinking about just about how, like you know, we've got them everywhere. We look, our yards and everything else, yeah, but it was like you know, we, we have these storms.
Speaker 3:You know, in here in Utah we talk about earthquake and we talk about, you know, and depending upon where you are in the country, fires have been obviously a big thing in California. We've got fires going on here in Utah right now. Now, last summer I know there was a big fire in Wyoming that took out a bunch of transmission lines. That's always an issue, but my understanding is is those are quicker to get up and replace than having to go into the ground and fix you know lines that you might consider burying. So when we're talking about you know transmission, we're going above the ground because ultimately it's less expensive. It's actually it's easier to fix, quicker to fix than than than you know going. You know it might not aesthetically be as pleasing, but is that, is that accurate?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I I could be. I don't know the actual numbers on this as a planner, but it I think for most things. When you go over a hundred KV, when you want to bury that line, I think you're looking at at least 10 times the cost difference and a lot of the standards, depending on where they do conduit systems and things like that. Now they bury. I've seen 1,000 kV be buried over in China and that's wild, but they have infrastructure to get this done like that. Though, again, it's about our process of how we get things done here that holds us up our supply change, our, our manufacturing, our processing um. That's the difference. You know, I think china's built for manufacturing. It's like they're a machine, and so even things like that um is a process for them that they understand and get done much quicker than we do, and a lot has to do with the red tape and different things that we have.
Speaker 2:But it's possible to go underground, but yeah, it's very, very expensive here to do that, especially if you look at some of our transmission. In Utah it's going over, you know, 12,000 foot peaks and vast deserts and we have very acidic salt areas and we have I don't know if we, anybody has more diverse soil than us, um, and so a lot of that does change. The underground system, um, you can use very heavily jacketed type cables to kind of protect you, but again very expensive. So that's going to be the bottom line for most of that, um, labor intensive, all those things. But you're right, more reliable, yes, if you went underground, yes, encased it in a concrete vault, totally under, yeah, so yeah, we fire, you know lightning. Lightning strikes all the wildlife, all the things that you know that affect our lines would be eliminated by that. So, but cost, depending on how much infrastructure costs, and that's a lot of costs.
Speaker 3:That makes sense, that makes sense, that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Coming up on the top of the hour and maybe we could just touch on one more question and then we'll wrap this up for you. We've been talking a lot about China. You've got deep experience with China and you know We'd be foolish to not pay attention to what China's done and what they're doing, both on the manufacturing side. I think everyone generally knows that China has been the bastion of manufacturing for a long, long time. We're seeing the new administration really make an effort with tariffs and other structures to onshore a lot and reindustrialize American manufacturing.
Speaker 1:American manufacturing it seems like we could sure learn a lot on manufacturing, on transmission, on speed of building you know, dave and I, covering the headlines, we're really concerned about the AI race and how that's directly connected to the energy race and then recognizing that China is beating the pants off of us on how fast they build plants Now they're not playing by the same regulation. You know they're. They can go build new coal plants and they do that all day and so they're not. You know they don't have the same self-imposed Achilles heels that we do. And I think that's another thing our administration's recognizing saying, look, we've got to get NERC to back down a little bit. We've got to get the EPA to loosen up a little bit so we can break loose and unleash American energy and start to catch up, if that's possible, with what China's doing. And start to catch up if that's possible with what China's doing. I think I ran a comparison just a month or two ago and it was like China's producing currently producing like four times the amount of what we produce in the US, considering all modalities. Final thought on that A the energy race between us and China, china. How could we learn from those folks and recognizing that our politicians are, aren't very you know, they're, they're pretty skeptical?
Speaker 1:yeah about warning from. You know, learning from some of them consider an enemy, but you know it is what it is yeah, I.
Speaker 2:For some it could be an ego thing. I think for others they find it fascinating. So you know you got to learn even from. You know, maybe it's a competitor but you can learn something if they're doing something right or accomplishing something. You know, for instance, so for GCP, when we try to think of procurement, we're looking for things that are IEC, ieee, standard, short lead times, competitive pricing, all those things. So that's our first real goal Right now. Even with competitors everybody in a lot of these spaces, the lead times are so ridiculous to get these things done.
Speaker 2:And then when you start like I always try to work problems backwards and when you finally get to where you start solving an issue, it's at the raw material side of things. And if you look at silicone, quartz, the things that China mines or what everybody's trying to mine, really, because you know quartz does everything Microchips, silicone rubbers, does a lot of our, all of our technology. So you know where they're pulling out like thirty, five hundred tons, you know. So they're in four digits, where we're in the double digits of something like that you know. So you think, ok, that's one level. So now maybe we just you know, we're going to have to source some of it from some of these people that get more of this material. So you start that relationship. You can't get away from it. You have to do this unless you're going to open up the mining you know, really start the new infrastructure of creating new raw materials of some of our, our precious new, you know um, different material we have here. But that's not happening anytime soon. So we got to use these partners for sourcing India as part of it as well, and um, and just understanding what's appropriate too. So we want to serve the market. We're not buying, you know, chinese goods or things like this, but we do need the products to help us serve what we're trying to talk about.
Speaker 2:So if that's helping, now I've seen it different ways either bringing a manufacturer here or having support overseas to build a new manufacturer, for instance. That's what we did at g GCP with our insulator line was we took a factory out of Thailand because they had the ownership of the raw material and they could get it to us incredibly fast and they had all the standards and things done. So we were able to kind of see how that would work. So the same way with, I think, sourcing a lot of this stuff is building those relationships. So the same way with, I think, sourcing a lot of this stuff is building those relationships.
Speaker 2:Like what I tell I can kind of close with this, but what I tell, like some of these younger engineers and some of these young procurement guys at these distributors, is, first, when you're doing these communications with people and trying to make this work, just be humble, be fast, never underestimate the power of a relationship, good or bad, you know, don't cut ties because the text always going to be changing. But the trust is and that's what I have found in my career is, if it's an American, chinese, canadian, south Korean, indian, thailand, whatever it is, you have to be adaptable to work. We're all humans, we all want to make things better. But building that trust is huge and I will say that's one of the biggest barriers we face in this sourcing of material and doing all these things we want to do.
Speaker 2:But that's what we're trying to get done and I hope our government could do similar things for us. But I think we're all working in the right direction. I think we know what needs to be done. You know, I think we have a lot of support and we can actually get a lot done right now. I know things lined up pretty good to get some of this accomplished, though I mean that's the goal. I'm hoping it's the case.
Speaker 1:Very insightful, very, very good. Brady, thank you for coming on and sharing with us. We're always learning something new from you. Sharing with our listeners. We're trying to deliver value, both on the philosophical and the technical side of things, and you rounded this out with this episode really well, so thank you.
Speaker 2:I think you think the world of you guys. I think you're doing a great job, so I'd love to be part of this and some of these projects. I think you're doing the right thing, so thank you, keep it going.
Speaker 3:We appreciate that. It's great to have you as a part of our team and to be able to lean on your wide and very much seasoned expertise.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it. I appreciate it, guys, my pleasure.
Speaker 1:We'll wrap it up then, Guys, join us on the next. Hopefully you enjoyed the content today with Brady Jenkins and we hope you'll join us on the next episode.
Speaker 3:Until next time on the Frontier Line.
