Welcome to Power the Network.
I'm your host Tim Locker, vice president of Broadband for CBM.
Today we've got CBM's very own Chris Kurtz.
He comes to us from the power utility industry.
Been with us about a year now.
He kind of came around the desk, was a customer, now works for us in the sales team.
He's got thirty eight years of experience at the utility.
One of the smartest guys that we have on the payroll.
And I can't wait to get into this conversation with Chris.
Chris, thank you so much for joining us today.
I'm happy to have a fellow CBM around the podcast.
So this is this is gonna be great.
You've been with us for about a year now, retired out of the power utility space.
You know, I looked over your resume, very impressive.
So you've got you know, BS degree in electrical engineering, right, certified PE correct, NBA Finance right.
I mean, we're absolutely excited to have you on board.
We appreciate it, glad to be here.
You know, it looks like you were in several different management roles, you know, in the latter half of your career.
What thirty eight years at our company.
Right, where did it all start for you?
What led you down that path?
So I wanted to come back to my hometown, and so left long enough to get my engineering degree, came back fortunate enough to get a job with the local utility, and started out in that utility and the engineering group, in the substation design group.
And so I remember that first day.
It was my boss at the time came to me and said, your first job is going to be the most important job in the substation, right, And I'm a little concerned about that because it's my first day at work and nothing like a little pressure.
Yeah, right, I said, So what am I going to be doing?
He said, You're going to be working on batteries.
Batteries the most important thing in a substation because nothing works without them.
And so that's where I got first time I ever heard of Teresis, the battery company, and so been involved with them ever since.
But started in that design role, did that for a little while, and then moved to the operation side, which at electric utility is twenty four to seven, And so did that for the remainder of my career, in various roles, whether it was over engineering or wherever it was.
Yeah, Oh that's awesome, do you think.
So, you know a lot of people now I've got, you know, some some of my son's buddies are going into the linement schools and going through those programs.
You know, what's your thoughts Is it better to have that education first before you enter into that or you know, is it still a good option for a kid starting out to go through that program?
Yeah, I think it's changed dramatically.
Back when I started, it was the era where you had to have a degree to do most anything at a utility, in a leadership role especially, but then your war suits to work every day back then too, So things have changed, right, Yeah.
And so I tell you is when I left the utility, I was senior director of substation CNM, but the other senior director, who was over all of the distribution operations, all the linemen and everybody, he also left at the same time to take another job.
And he started out as an apprentice on a contract line crew and work through that, worked up through his career and ended up being a senior director at that company.
Another example, one of the best vice presidents we ever had at that company.
She was a teacher and she came to that company and came into an HR role to start with, and then got interested in the operation side, in the line side, and she ended up being a vice president over that area and did a great job.
So today, what we're finding is that utilities are not encouraging degrees amongst many of the people that start there.
What's more important is their abilities and their experience what they've done in the past.
So certainly in the line realm, there is no pushing people into the degree program.
But even the IT group at the company I left, they're moving away from requiring degrees or really focusing on what people's abilities are, what they can do for the company, and and and then use that to determine if they come to the company and where they fit.
So what you're saying is now there's not necessarily an upside to the education versus working your weab through the utility industry is getting a lot of visibility right now.
Obviously there's a lot of talk in the news about you know, going green, renewable energy, different sources, whether it be a wind or solar, et cetera.
You know, what's your take on all this, is this actually a sustainable sustainable way to go, you know in the future.
Well, I don't think there's an electric utility in the United States that I'm aware that believes that carbon isn't a problem.
And carbon you get carbon when you burn coal and as a byproduct, and carbon is bad for the environment.
Everybody believes that, certainly the vast majority of people in the electric utility industry.
So something needs to be done about it.
The question is, how do you get from point A to point B right?
How do you put into place the measures that you need to deal with carbon?
And you can't just immediately shut down all your coal fire power plants and move to wind, or move to solar or biomass or battery storage or any of those sources, because those technologies are still, many of them in their infancy.
They're still at a point where they're not very efficient, they're certainly not economical, and without government support, you couldn't do them today.
Now give it another ten twenty years, that technology will become economical and we'll get to that point.
I think the best example of this is that about ten years ago there was a big push from the government to get rid of carbon, get carbon out and close all the coal fire power plants, and the president at that time said we were going to do all that by twenty twenty five.
And after rolling around the floor laughing at utilities, you know when that kind of thing, because it was just incredible to think that that could happen.
It couldn't.
Then here just a couple of years ago, we had that winter var text that came through the company where everything and what happened was that a lot of people saw that you can't depend on when and you can't depend on solar to take the place of those base fire power plants, those coal fire power plants during times like that, and that's why they had rolling blackouts in Texas.
We even had rolling brownouts in the area that we're serving or that we were serving at the time.
And so it's got to be a stepped approach.
You've got to let the technology get to the point where it becomes economical to implement those things or what you try to do.
If you force it down, first it doesn't work, and secondly, you raise everybody's rates dramatically and nobody likes that.
Sure, so you take the political agenda side, and realistically there's a stepped approach or even an overall combination.
You may never get rid of coal fire together.
Oh you will, maybe it's a certain part of it.
Now.
I think you'll get rid of coal eventually because as the other sources become more efficient and become more reliable, become more cost effective.
It's just a natural transition, and it's not just to win.
There's numerous sources that are out there.
I mean, one of these days we're gonna have cars that are feeding back in electric vehicles that are feeding back into the system.
You have biomass out there as an alternative.
You have gas plants that are out there, and I think that's what you're seeing as we in the short term is as people move away from coal, they're moving the gas fire generation and putting in large gas plants.
That creates issues of its own, because the whole thing with fracking and all the you know the things that are seeing negative around gas natural gas, but water quality concerns, no doubt.
But it's still there, and it's it's growing dramatically these days.
So I think we'll get away from coal, but I think it's probably going to be closer to twenty forty twenty fifty before we Okay, Okay, what about I mean it's a it's a bad word.
What about nuclear?
What nuclear is?
Great?
Nuclear?
There's new technology around nuclear that that they're actually creating smaller footprint nuclear plants and which makes them less cost less costly to build, and they're more efficient.
You can put them closer to the load centers, to the you know, where the customers are.
And so I think you're going to see a new generation of nuclear plants that are not like the big two mile island plants and the large plants that are out there that cost billions of billions of dollars to build.
But that technology is still that small scale nuclear is still developing.
They're starting using in Europe and it will it will come over into the United States eventually.
And so I think there's definitely a place for nuclear in the future.
Okay, great still not a dirty word.
No, it's okay to say, Well, if you're in the utility industry, it's definitely not a dirty word because it's really it's a lot cheaper power than burning coal or doing anything else.
Yeah, just strikes a political nerves, it does, and then you got to figure out what you do with that nuclear waste, right, right, now they're burning it in caves in Arizona, and that's not going to last forever.
Yeah, they have a great idea a few years ago to shoot it into space, you know, not great for our space.
Let's not just ruin the environment.
Let's just go for the ruin the universe space, all right, real quick, let me tell you a little bit about what we do here at CBM.
So, we're a manufacturers rep located here in the Midwest.
We work in three different vertical markets, utility space, we work in communications, and also commercial industrial markets.
We've been in business since nineteen sixty been an employee owned esop since nineteen eighty eight.
We really value that employee ownership in our organization and I think it brings a lot to value our manufacturers as well.
We can be of any service to you and help you in your next project or if you're a manufacturer looking for expert representation, feel free to reach out to us here at CBM at cbmrep dot com.
What's your take on electric vehicles?
Can it?
I mean, I'm not educated well enough on it myself, but like I don't feel like, you know, the grid could handle everybody in the country driving an electric vehicle, right, and I agree with you completely.
I think nuclear vehicles, let's not do that.
But electric vehicles they're happening, so politically it's the great thing to push.
It makes sense from the fact that a lot of the carbon that goes into the atmosphere doesn't come from power plants.
It comes from cars, and so you get to get away from those those combust combustible engines and move to electric vehicles makes a lot of sense.
So it's coming and it'll be here.
The challenge is, well, the challenge is actually twofold one.
The systems that we have in place to deliver electricity today have always been forever a one way system.
You generate power someplace, you transmit it over transmission lines, substations, distribution lines, and multiply to the home or to the business to get it to the customer.
When you have electric vehicles now, you're going to have them plugging in at night, and the extra electricity they have will go backwards into that system, much like home solar will and home wind turbines and those types of things.
And the equipment itself that's in the electric grid today was never designed for two way power flow.
Even the transformer that hangs on the poll out behind your house or the pad mount in front of your house.
They've done studies now to determine that when power goes backwards through it, it's less efficient and so you don't get as much out of it that way.
So just that concept of how you transmit electricity is changing dramatically, and evs electric vehicles will push that even faster and farther.
But the bigger concern is, and you brought this up as you were talking about it, the system was never designed for that much load at somebody's house.
The system was put into place, and it was the current systems we have were putting, many of them put in forty years ago, and they were put in assuming everybody would have an air conditioner one day, you know, and maybe not the big ones they have, but the air conditioner, it was designed.
Everybody would have a fridge, everybody would have, you know, warsher and dryer, that kind of thing.
But you take the power that it takes to especially fast charge an electric vehicle at that house, it dwarfs all other all that other load.
And the challenge is everybody is going to be charging their vehicles at basically the same time, which is the middle of the night car which is great in the fact that you're not doing it when you're w wasshing dishes and the dishwasher and all that, but when everybody's doing it at the same time, you're actually creating a new electric peak.
And utilities hate peaks.
Peaks occur right now in the heat of the summer when everybody has their air conditioner on, and the peak of the winter in some areas of the country where everybody has their heat pumps going to provide heat for their house.
Now you're going to create a new one which occurs every night, right and so electric utilities they determine how many power plants they need, what size they are, based on that peak that occurs.
Because when you flip that switch or plug your car in, everybody expects power to be there at that moment, and that power had to be generated that instant right before that in order for it to be available at your house.
So it's going to require a major upgrade to the distribution systems that we have across this country.
And you're already seeing that where evs are taking hold in Europe, they're having issues with providing reliable power to the customers in those areas, and they're having to rebuild those systems, and so you're going to see a lot of that over the next thirty years in the United States, where they're tearing down distribution lines and building new ones with larger wire on them and bigger conductors to take the power.
Yeah, you know, in my opinion, I guess my thought process has always been, you know, the the utility space is you know, a little bit archaic if you will.
You know, you said a lot of this stuff was designed forty years ago.
Is that a fair assessment or is the electric utility you know, super technical, technological, you know space right now?
I think there's a lot of new stuff coming, but where where are we at on that?
So I think we're in a transition right now.
Let me put it this way.
One very common phrase that through my thirty eight years I heard and I said multiple times about electric utilities is I'd say to people that electric utilities are extremely good at bringing new technology in, right, that they're they're great on advances.
And the saying always goes, electric utility will try anything new as long as it's been proven for one hundred years, right, And so that that was the mentality that existed in electric utilities for a long time.
What we're seeing now is that generation, which is really my general in the one before me, we're moving out of the electric utilities and the next generation is moving in.
And so you've got you've got people moving into roles now, leadership roles that not only understand technology, but love it and want it and want to put it in.
So the common phrase you hear these days and electric utilities is we don't want to be on the bleeding edge, but we want to be on the leading edge of technology.
And so I'm very I'm very positive that it's going to continue to get better and you're going to see them be more innovative as we go on down the road even than they've been in the past.
And you know, obviously for the utility space, you know, safety is huge, So you know that makes sense.
It's still got to be proven, right, but let's let's move in the right directions moving forward, you know.
So I think one thing with electric vehicles too, is is that's going to be a whole change in society.
You know, for me personally, you know, I drive a pickup, I pull a boat, I go on long trips, you know, so I travel a lot.
You know, that's going to change your habits and your traveling, et cetera.
So what do we need to do?
You know, obviously we've got to get a little bit closer to what our habits are now with ev before.
I think you're going to see a lot of people just jump.
But so how do we make that change?
And then you know, what kind of investments do we need to make into that technology to make it all work well?
And I think there's multiple answers to that.
From a manufacturing perspective, the big issue with evs is batteries.
Right that their batteries are heavy, they're big, they're very costly, and they have the same real issue as nuclear fuel spent nuclear or fuel.
What do you do with them when you're done with them?
You can't just recycle them today the way the batteries are being made and honestly, depending on what they're made out of, no doubt about it, no doubt about it.
But a lot of the batteries that are out there today do not lend themselves to that.
So from an investment perspective in the manufacturing realm, it's the next generation batteries.
They're actually doing some pilots in England right now on the next generation battery, which is more moving away from a chemical battery to more of a capacity which is another technology type of battery.
And with the testing that they've done that I've read about lately, they're able to get over five hundred and fifty miles out of a single charge with these newer type of bass's almost double to what were and now.
But the phenomenal part is they can completely recharge it in less than fifteen minutes.
And so see that's going to help a bum, Well, that's going to help a ton And so now you're not sitting around waiting thirty minutes on a fast charger or something like that.
So when now let me ask you there, so, if you're able to recharge it that fast, how does that affect the grid?
So actually, when you look at where that leads you is they also use and it doesn't work very well today, the fact that every time that you go to an idle motor or you're you're slowing down, it actually charges your battery a little bit.
They believe that that as that technology that recharge inside the car or vehicle continues to improve.
Every time you're slowing down, it'll put enough charge back in the battery.
You don't have to stop it all.
It'll recharge it and keep it charging on the new generation of batteries that we're talking about.
But that's the big thing for manufacturing is trying to get to that point.
And the other thing about that type of battery is doesn't require as much power to recharge it.
And so it gets to our next side of the other side of this, which is the grid itself, the electrical grid.
Right now, the investments have to be made in the infrastructure that feeds the neighborhoods.
And so when you look at how an electric grid is made up, it starts a generation transmission substation.
Ultimately it gets out to the distribution main line that goes down into a neighborhood or into a business section and then taps off of there and what they call laterals that go over into the customers and those lines, those main lines are the ones that aren't big enough to handle all the eclectric vehicles.
A lot of the sub lines are probably in pretty good shape.
So the investment from an electric utility perspective really needs to be in replacing those main lines with larger wire to allow more power to flow through them.
And by focusing on that one section, it certainly won't fix everything, but it will get you a long way down the road to be able to provide the power you need to charge the vehicles and the homes.
But that's obviously a huge investment, you know, just on the distribution side.
Any think of every home, every business, yep, and you've got to you know, swap those laterals out.
That's that's obviously it's big in terms of cost.
But also time.
I mean, that's not a quick, quick thing to get right.
And you bring up a valid point about time.
Time is related to the labor force to do that right, to have the linemen and the people to do that.
The challenge these days is being alignment is not as popular as it was twenty years ago.
And there's a lot of a lot of the kids these days, they don't grow up outside at home.
They grow up inside in front of a game console.
And so the concept of going out and climbing a poll or working, yeah in the winter time, I'm not going to do that.
Don't need to do that.
And so utilities are struggling to find that workforce of today and the future in order to do the kind of work that needs to be done and in the time frame it needs.
So from an are they investing in those types of programs?
They are, They are in many places and and here locally, they're they're working with the community colleges and they're actually developing alignment schools in the community colleges so that you can actually get a degree if you wanted it, or certifications as alignment from your local community college.
The other thing that many utilities are doing is they're not waiting till college.
They're actually going down into the junior high, middle school to high school, and they're actually starting to go into the schools at that level and make presentations about work at a utility and the advantages and the security and and and you pretty good pay when you're aligned at a utility.
And so yeah, they're actually starting in a much lower age than they have historically to educate kids about the advantages of going into electric utility.
Yeah.
Well, and historically, you know, guys who work for the utility, the lineman you said, you know, it's pretty good pay and it's been a pretty good job.
Is that still the case.
You think it's going to continue to be the case.
Oh yeah, or is that going to dwindle?
I guess no, No, it is going to continue to be the case.
If you're alignment, you could get a job anywhere in this country any day you wanted to.
There is enough demand for linemen today and will continue to be in the future because the spending that's going into the electrical grid is not going away anytime soon.
And what you're seeing is the government, whether it's at a state level or whether it's at a federal level, or putting more and more incentives in front of electric utilities to spend to improve their systems, make them newer, and provide that.
You're going to need linemen and other support to do that on an ongoing basis on down the road.
So it's a great profession and we'll continue to be in my mind for the foreseeable future.
That's awesome.
That's awesome.
We truly are fortunate to have Chris on our team.
He's a gem in the rough for sure.
If you've got any questions for us here at CBM, reach out to us cbmrep dot com.
On our next episode, we're going to follow up and finish our conversation with Chris, and for now thank you for joining power of the network.
