The Nexus Podcast

Latest Episodes:

🎧 #070: Will Cowell de Gruchy on simplifying IoT, core use cases, and founding Infogrid Sep 30, 2021

Show notes

“You need no more evidence than the fact that McKinsey estimates that its largest practice within three years will be sustainability to know that the ESG transformation is the new digital transformation."
-Will Cowell de Gruchy

My Highlights

What is Infogrid (11:30)
The founding story (12:07)
What Infogrid does today and how much traction they have (18:07)
To what Will attributes Infogrid's incredible growth (25:14)
The top 5 use cases Infogrid deploys and a few of the weirdest they've done (38:06)

You can find Will on LinkedIn.
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🎧 #069: Dana Guernsey on building a grid-interaction platform Sep 23, 2021

Show notes

“The system was originally built to adjust supply, to meet demand. Everything about it was built that way, the market design, the physical infrastructure, everything. Now we're evolving it to also adjust demand to meet supply. Supply is becoming more and more intermittent, demand is becoming more and more flexible.
The whole thing is just getting up-ended and for building owners, they can't just close their eyes and not realize that the building is very much part of that."
—Dana Guernsey

My Highlights

What is Voltus? (6:03)
How the product works, the tech stack, etc (13:29)
How it works financially (21:08)
The keys to doing advanced supervisory control (23:22)
The keys to monetizing flexibility in the electricity markets (28:32)
Why should building owners care? (33:07)
Dana's bold predictions on where grid-interaction is headed and one crazy battery stat (35:33)

You can find Dana on LinkedIn.
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🎧 #068: Ben Myers of BXP on decarbonizing 50 million square feet Sep 16, 2021

Show notes

“There's this line in Hamilton,
'Let's have a drink, the four of us. Tomorrow there'll be more of us.'
And when I started out in green buildings, it definitely felt like there were just four of us. Today there are many more of us on this journey."
—Ben Myers

My Highlights

What sustainability means to each stakeholder and how to message it to them (6:54)
Ben's working theory about what it takes to move the market and the 5, 15, 30, 50 rule (15:32)
How BXP tracks their portfolio consumption, emissions, targets, and progress (18:11)
How other cities can improve on NYC's Local Law 97 (20:44)
Keys to success for scaling sustainability in a large portfolio (23:55)
Ben's great take on how to balance competing energy and IAQ goals (32:20)
BXP's lessons learned from building green since 2008 (40:48)
Ben's focus(es) for 2021-22 (51:37)
The ESG reporting, standard, and framework nightmare and Ben's thoughts on improving it (1:07:53)

You can find Ben Myers on LinkedIn.
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🎧 #067 - Trevor Pering on 3 ways Google is enabling Enterprise IoT Sep 09, 2021

Show notes

"When the iPhone came in, the web was already there. With building systems, it's the other way around. You had a lot of technology in buildings, then we bolted the web on afterwards.
That's a different direction, so it's trying to correct that and bring more web concepts in."
—Trevor Pering

My Highlights

Trevor's focus at Google and differentiating the 3 types of IoT (5:56)
Deep dive on DAQ - device automated qualification (13:26)
Deep dive on MUD and the requirements for IoT networking (24:42)
UDMI (Universal Device Management Interface) standard with devicecloud communication (34:58)
Trevor's take on where we are on the disruption curve and how he chooses partners based on whether their business model will hold back innovation (46:54)
Trevor sums up all three projects (55:03)

You can find Trevor Pering on LinkedIn.
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🎧 #066: Cara Carmichael on Our Roadmap to Zero Carbon Buildings Sep 02, 2021

Show notes

"I am hopeful. I feel like we're coming together around this issue in a way that I've never experienced in the past. This is something that's within our power to do something about."
—Cara Carmichael

My Highlights

The three reasons we need to decarbonize buildings (7:09)
How the net-zero definition has changed over time (9:39)
Part one of the roadmap: benchmarking and disclosure (12:38)
Part two of the roadmap: MEPS and/or building energy codes (16:35)
Part 3 of the roadmap: retrofitting 4% of our buildings per year to zero-carbon ready (24:12)
Part 4 of the roadmap: Electrification (28:48)
Part 5 of the roadmap: Building Grid Interaction (32:43)
Part 6 of the roadmap: Solar and storage behind the meter (37:47)

You can find Cara Carmichael on LinkedIn.
Watch on YouTube or read on the web.
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🎧 #065: Troy Harvey on the Quantum Digital Twin Standard and enabling fully autonomous buildings Aug 26, 2021

Show notes

“There's never really been an API for buildings. And this is an impediment to every single corporation, every startup, every investor, the whole industry."
—Troy Harvey

My Highlights

An update on PassiveLogic (1:43)
Where we need to go and how Quantum helps get us there (9:29)
What is the Quantum Digital Twin Standard? (13:43)
Why Quantum was needed when we have Haystack, Brick, etc (19:00)
What it means to embed Quantum into devices (25:16)
The new concepts Quantum brings to the ontology effort (29:05)
Revisiting the levels of autonomy and how Quantum helps (35:52)
Deep, nerdy, over-my-head explanation of what "Typed AI" is (39:57)

You can find Troy Harvey on LinkedIn.
Watch on YouTube or read on the web.
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🎧 #064: James McGinniss on DER technology and the future of electricity consumption Aug 19, 2021

Show notes

“The grid is starting to look a lot like the internet. These IOT devices are distributed, digital, user owned and operated nodes. They can buy from the grid, they can sell from the grid, they can respond dynamically.
These nodes are increasing ten, a hundred, a thousand fold over the next decade, which has really interesting implications for how we'll operate the grid going forward."
—James McGinniss

My Highlights

What are DERs? (8:59)
How DERs are changing the electric grid (10:11)
David Energy's founding story (12:47)
The three pillars of David Energy: the REP, the DR provider, and the supervisory control software platform (15:25)
What are retail electricity providers? (17:34)
The value of bundling efficiency with grid benefits (31:09)
How the bundling allows David Energy to handle risk better than other REPs (37:31)
Their innovative smart thermostat program (42:44)

You can find James McGinniss on LinkedIn.
Watch on YouTube or read on the web.
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🎧 #063: Ryan Morris and Marti Ogram on Turntide's Technology for Sustainable Operations Aug 12, 2021

Show notes

“The issue with energy efficiency is that while it may be civilization's largest collective problem, for any individual business it's like their 12th biggest problem."
—Ryan Morris

My Highlights

How Turntide was founded as Software Motor Company (7:25)
How the Turntide motor tech differs from what's in buildings today (11:09)
Ryan's concept of engineering clu-de-sacs (16:55)
The story of Riptide's founding out of Cisco in the early 2010s and why it improved upon the legacy BMS (18:01)
Where Turntide is headed with recent acquisitions and funding rounds (27:47)

You can find Ryan Morris and Marti Ogram on LinkedIn.
Watch on YouTube or read on the web.
Get full access to Nexus.

🎧 #062: Jon Clarke on leading Dexus' smart buildings program Aug 05, 2021

Show notes

“I see of lot of people buying apps before they bought the smart phone. So our smart building strategy is to first build the smartphone foundation."
—Jon Clarke

My Highlights

Jon's experience as a contractor, consultant, and customer; how they're different and can work together (12:45)
How and why the industry will shift from technology getting pushed on owners to owners doing the pushing. (21:33)
Dexus' smart building strategy (26:01)
What they've learned from 5+ years of FDD and where they're headed with it (29:33)
3 places the industry needs to innovate in the FDD process (39:47)
Jon's experience setting up an entire touchless office building BEFORE the pandemic (45:32)
Jon's strategy he calls convergence of projects (53:55)
The state of the smart buildings industry as Jon sees it (57:19)

You can find Jon Clarke on LinkedIn.
Watch on YouTube or read on the web.
Get full access to Nexus.

🎧 #061: Why technology in buildings is decades behind Jul 29, 2021

Show notes

“You built a building 25 years ago, and the stuff you put in there, it’s still there.” -Keith Berkoben of Google"For consumer facing technology, you know, people talk about the market working in all kinds of mysterious ways, but if you don't have a feedback path, the market doesn't work.”
- Andrew Rodgers of ACE IoT
“So you have this fundamental difference of perspective, where the people who ran the companies saw technology is a risk and a cost. And then you had the markets saying, well, I'm not going to go into that market and develop anything technological, because I can't get enough uptake. And between that and the .com bust…”
-Joe Gaspardone of Montgomery Technologiesr
“So you need this IT/OT hybrid skillset that really a lot of organizations just don’t have today.”
-Kyle Tooke of ThoughtWire