Revolutionizing Energy Efficiency: Thomas Clardy on Snowmelt Technology and the Future of Smart Grids | S2:E69

0:05Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Founder Story. Today, we have Thomas Clardy, CEO of Powderwats. We were just having a really, really interesting conversation about energy. I know you've created something that is revolutionary. You're taking in a very old industry and you're bringing it up to speed into 2024. And I can't wait to hear about that. So let's begin, Tom, with what inspired you to launch PowderWatts and what is the problem that you're solving? Well, thanks. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. And happy fall time. So it's a good time to bring me on here because everyone's thinking about the snow.

0:42So we've got a really interesting energy company that was founded really out of a need. And so sometimes you hear founders talk about, I made this so I could use it myself. And this was almost that kind of instance. I really made it because no one had, I'd searched for a solution for this funny problem. I'll start with sort of the tactical of what it is. in the snow areas, particularly in mountain towns, and then all throughout Minnesota and New England, in order to protect people's homes, they put these hot wires on their roof. And the hot wires cut through snow and ice that accumulates on the edge of the roof.

1:20And they've been doing that since the 70s, really. And it works great. But in the 70s, no one was really thinking about how much energy these things take. And the interesting part, fast forward to 2022, is that these systems mostly just run all winter long because they're sitting up on your roof and it's pretty difficult to figure out when should they be on, when should they be off, and also having somebody do that. And so it wouldn't be a very interesting story and it wouldn't be a very interesting company if these existing what they call snowmelt systems like heat cable, heat tape, if they didn't consume such massive amounts of energy.

1:59So in 2022, we sort of, with Ernest, we've been doing research for quite a while, with Ernest kicked off sort of the founding of our company. We had a fantastic team that we preformed at the time to sort of bring this to market. And what we did was we took this always on super boring, except extremely expensive and extremely energy intensive process of rooftop snowmelt. And we applied some modern principles to it. So we're using rooftop monitors that actually look at the snow melt and say, hmm, is it free and clear? If so, I should go into standby mode. Or, you know, is there lots of snow and ice covering everything?

2:36In which case, I better kick on. And sometimes the first question people have is, well, what happens if this rooftop monitor gets covered in snow? And the answer, of course, is, well, you kick on the system until you can see. And it turned out to be a really interesting business to launch what turned out to really be at exactly the right time because it was the confluence of people caring about green energy. That was a big push. People caring about the cost of what it takes to run. Now fast forward a few years, just really energy constraints on the grid and grid operators wondering where am I going to get that next gigawatt of capacity they need to bring online.

3:13And as far as how we actually pulled this off as a team, we're using a lot of different technologies, all of which have kind of come into their heyday right as we needed them. So Internet of Things technology, automatic switching technology, computer vision technology, computer vision training, all of these really interesting things that we put together into an awesome system that no one had done before. And yeah, addressing what turns out to be the largest unregulated load left on the U.S. grids and unregulated meaning no smarts, no switches, no automation. Imagine your furnace that just runs all the time, regardless of whether or not, you know, your house is already nice and warm, just keeps running.

3:52So that's sort of what these old systems are and applied some innovation there. So as far as what inspired me to kick it off, it was really the fact that no one had addressed this market since the 80s. And so we just had to do it. Looked around and there's no one else there doing it. We had a great team and assembled a really fun team to work with. That was our inspiration moment. So growing up in New England, I can relate to what you're saying, it's a big issue and it caused a lot of issues if you don't have something, you know, affecting the roof and other things as well. So when it comes to you assembled the team and then you had to create the product and then you had to bring the product to market, how were those processes for you?

4:36Well, we had spent, we had a little bit of a leg out because Because pre-COVID, if you think way back in 2020, we had started even before there in investigating, okay, we see that people have these rooftop snowmobiles. Like, how common is this? This has got to be a niche, right? And it turns out, no. I mean, there's about 20 to 27 million structures in the U.S. that are covered with these. So that was sort of the first thing is before we really launched to start making our product, we did a lot of market investigation. And we talked to electricians to find out, hey, are there any good solutions?

5:09and yeah then we talked to the power companies like how much do you see this on your grid and that was uh in fact the power companies gave us a quote uh heat cable is the bane of our existence because it's this large resistive heating load that just runs 24 7 and sometimes people will even forget to turn it off into the summer and so in preparation before we actually launched you know making the product assembling the team we had done quite a bit of market research to find out okay how big of a problem is this how widespread is it and then of course the real golden question is since no one actually done this before we're not coming in with like a more efficient or better way to do something we're coming in with a completely new product category so and some people draw it like into like the nest thermostat how the nest thermostat revolutionized you know home heating like no one's ever going back to mercury thermostats again so you know with the what the little dial you just leave always on.

6:02So we had to figure out, first thing we had to figure out was like, how are we actually going to apply? How are we going to solve this problem? And we looked at all the market, everything people had done in the past. And, you know, people had tried silly things like, you know, moisture sensors or temperature sensors, or none of those things actually tell you what you want to know. They're all proxies of what you really want to know. What you really want to know is, or have my heat cables done all the melting they can possibly do. And is everything free and clear? If so, great. I should go in standby mode or not.

6:32Is there snow and ice there that needs to be melted? In which case, let's kick them on and let's get it melting. And so in proper, to answer your question, in preparation in 2022, we knew, okay, we need a computer vision system. Thank goodness the National Science Foundation, which is, by the way, the world's largest science funding organization, premier group, came in and saw what we were doing and invited us to apply, which we did. And they gave us an award and some funding. They helped kick off because it's such a fascinating and large problem for the country. They helped kick off this effort to basically stabilize the grid, return energy back to the grid and make a good value for the American taxpayer.

7:09Meaning, you know, hey, I actually can get energy when I want it. And I can actually depend on the grid. And we do something else called demand response. And that is in times a great grid strain. We can provide energy back to the utility companies by saying, okay, we're going to shut off everything for seven, sometimes it's as small as seven minutes or 15 minutes type windows that prevents brownouts or blackouts, which is really neat. So made this rooftop monitor and sensor. And we asked the patent office, hey, patent office, had anybody done anything like this before? And the answer, thank goodness, was no, which gave us the certainty we needed to raise some funding.

7:45Because of course, in order to pull this off, you've got to have capital. And so having a patent in the space was amazing and then we had to do our automatic switching so we found some good partners that could help us make these automatic switching with built-in energy monitoring so we could actually show the customers this is exactly literally to the watt how much energy we managed to save you per month which of course equates to their payback for their system and so in assembling the team right we of course it's all the normal uh there's all the normal c-suites folks rolling in first and and then a whole bunch of folks to really support them.

8:19So everybody had a leading role. And of course in the startup world, one of the fun things, at least for me, is everybody's got a job, everybody's tactical, nobody's just managing, everybody's doing something. And so, you know, the finance guys are building models and the engineers are building product and, you know, the installers, that's another really important part as well, right? Good, nothing will happen if you make this product that some installer is not gonna actually want to go install it, right? Like you got to make, that's what Nest did pretty well. And the first, you know, two, three years of installing Nest thermostat, the Havac folks and the electricians were kind of getting up to speed.

8:55Like, how do I install this? How do I make it work? How do I make sure my customer is happy? How does it interface with the furnace? And, you know, once you figure all that out, which is, you know, what we've been doing as well, then all of a sudden you've got this beautiful system that can really scale and deliver. When you realize you need to hire, it's usually already too late. I've been there wasting weeks waiting for decent candidates. If I had used Indeed, I could have hired way faster. So when it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other job sites.

9:25Indeed Sponsored Jobs help you stand out and hire fast. With Sponsored Jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster. And it makes a huge difference. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45 % more applications than non-sponsored jobs. One thing I love about Indeed, it makes hiring fast because it puts you right in front of the right people without wasting time. Plus, there are no monthly subscriptions, no long-term contracts. You only pay for results. And while I've been talking, 23 hires were made on Indeed worldwide.

10:00There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com slash founders story. Just go to indeed.com slash founders story right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash founders story. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. For a ton of energy. One, savings for the homeowner. or business owner. And then two, as far as utility operators, like this is gold for them because they've all of a sudden not having to produce extremely expensive electricity.

10:44Instead they can incentivize customers to reduce their electric load. So via customer incentives. I think when sometimes we get a product, but we don't realize all of the things that had to go along to get it to that point. Like to get this physically installed at your house, We just see, okay, pay some money. Somebody comes and install it. Now I have this thing. But I don't think we realize that all of the hurdles, the things that you had to go through, you know, years of experience, so many people, patents to testing, to having, you know, regulatory bodies, and you got to work with energy companies, and then you work with - Hey, everyone.

11:22I'm not sure if you've heard, but our show Founder's Story is now available on the iHeartRadio app. So check that out. iHeartRadio online or you grab the app. It's super easy. You can listen to all of our episodes wherever you enjoy your podcast, whether that's iHeartRadio, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and many more. But check it out. Consumers, like there's so much that has to go into this product. It's just amazing. Like you said, the Nest, we just get it. It's installed and then we're happy. But we don't know also the compounding positive effects that it can have. So that's amazing.

11:58how do you see the future of this going in the next let's say five years three years that is kind of the neat part so if you picture like you know technology adoption curves one you got to make it two you got to iterate three you've got to sort of train the workforce as so you know what this is and how to install it and then then comes the golden part where if you've done a good job with all those you get to scale you get to enjoy the satisfaction that comes from actually having positively contributed to the world, which is pretty nice. And so we're working right now, actually, with the Department of Energy on a application for a Title 17 program where we'll be rolling out to 265 ,000 locations as part of this project, actually.

12:44And so, you know, we're part of the way through the application process on this, and we'll see if it comes out the end or if there's a better direction to go or not. But that's one of the most fun things is working. You rarely hear people say, working with government is a joy, right? You rarely hear that. But in this case, the Department of Energy has like the dream team. They're incredible. Same, I have nothing but nice things to say about the utilities as well. Surprising, you hear of utility and you think, ah, slow monopoly. But both the utilities, the National Science Foundation, department, they're all catalyzing growth.

13:19And so when you look at, you know, five, 10 years, you know, there are A-class organizations that are working very hard and smartly, not just working hard, but smartly to try to push out smart energy-saving technologies, you know, however they can assist, whatever their forte is. And the Department of Energy, it's, you know, access to capital, right? That's one thing. And then the second is access to expertise, how to plan an excellent project and just as a little little side note here so microsoft you may have seen in the press uh what was that i guess the very very beginning of october late september they announced um hey we're going to restart we're going to make a 20-year power purchase agreement to cause to be restarted uh three mile island nuclear power plant reactor number one i think it is the one that didn't melt down.

14:07And so that brings on about 7 million, 7.3 million megawatt hours of energy onto the grid. This project we're bringing on is about 4.3 million megawatt hours onto the grid each year. And so it's including, if you include transmission line losses, it's about 65 % of that entire nuclear power plant just through this one smart IoT system. And so, and that's just, just scratching the surface on the market. And the nice part is it's a product that's useful that really there's no downside, right? Because it better protects your building because all of a sudden now you have a managed system where you can see what's going on.

14:49And so when I look forward to the future, I think not only will this be like grid stabilization, it's the cheapest energy. We'd like to say the cheapest and greenest and cleanest energy you can make is the energy that you don't burn in the first place or you don't consume in the first place. And so when I look out into the future, like you mentioned, it's not only what PowderWatts is doing, but the other spinoff applications of that, right? So we have a number of different things in the pipeline, not just addressing this, but then, and hopefully we'll have spurred a big innovation pipeline in other areas where people are encouraged to say, what are these large loads that are more or less always running that don't have to be?

15:28You can get the same effect if only, if only, and in our case, it was only you apply smarts and logic and monitoring. So looking out for PowderWatts itself, right, we'll have multiple product categories. We'll have, you know, hundreds of thousands of locations, maybe millions, right, if we do everything right. And then hopefully we'll have a spur of a whole ecosystem where I probably should give credit to, you know, nests and the ring doorbells that were there early on showing what you can do with IOT technology. But then when, you know, how much energy is Nest saving? Well, they say, I think their middle range is about$137 a month.

16:05And for many of our customers, we save them that much in two and a half weeks. So it's just such a large energy load. And that's kind of the reason that, you know, the National Science Foundation was excited. And same thing with Department of Energy and also AWS, another supportive partner when it comes, because you have to have a platform to run all these systems. So AWS has been incredibly supportive and NVIDIA. And that's one of the neatest things as a founder is to see who comes out of the woodwork to support you and to support the mission. When it's a good mission, people can wrap their heads around and understand and they really see, okay, this is going to be a good value and I don't really see a downside.

16:44That's when, as a founder, probably one of the neatest things is the outflowing and support. And in many cases, really unconditional. It's not like they expect something in return other than for you to go and reproduce that favor on your own later on for somebody else. Sort of pass it on, Kevin. I can tell you're positively impacting. You have a passion for that, which is amazing. And your ability to see what the potential is, bringing all these organizations, people. I can see as the helm, you're there bringing everything together. but it is a very fascinating time that you have so many technologies at a certain high level that now those technologies can work together like you said iot cloud like you have all these different things that are at the level where they can now you know communicate with one another be with one another so i mean it's going to be incredible i'm with you like the next five ten years who knows like ai advancing now like there's so many things we don't even know it's going to to happen in the future, but it sounds like Powder Watch is going to do some incredible stuff.

17:49So if people want to get in touch with you, they want to find out more information about the product, how can they do so? Yeah. You know, if it's the website's a great way. Also, we have sort of a general email address, just, you know, info at powderwatch.com is a great way to get ahold of us. And yeah, we'd love, you know, come, come join the effort, right? That's the other thing. We're doing something really meaningful. At the end of the day, you can turn to the next generation and, And, you know, when they're looking at you and saying, hey, what did you do? You're like, well, we did what we could to try to positively impact the globe and the energy sphere.

18:23And, you know, as one of my first mentors said, you know, I dare you to do better. I like that. I dare you to do better. That's really good. You never know, right? Like, you know, people now are sometimes lost and they want to find, like they want impact. Like people aren't always doing something in their life that brings them impact. and they want to be a part of an organization that's doing so. But this has been incredible. Tom, thank you for all that you do at Powder Watts. I can't wait to see what's happening. I'm not in a place that has snow anymore, which is kind of nice. But people that are in that place, they need this.

18:57Growing up, I've seen how this works. But on top of that, it seems like it also will have a positive impact in places that don't have snow, that don't need the ability to have it. but the global impact of energy and power and how that trickles to everyone in the whole entire US or maybe even the world. But Tom, thank you so much for joining us today on Founder's Story. Yeah, thank you, Dan.

19:30Thank you for tuning in to Founder's Story. Keep exploring, keep dreaming, and join us next time for more inspiring entrepreneurial journeys.