172 Transcript

The following transcript is provided by YouTube. Mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode, click HERE.

[Music]

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welcome to scaling up h2o the podcast

where we scale up on knowledge so we

don’t scale up our systems

i’m trace blackmore i get to host this

awesome podcast and we’re going to talk

about a lot of awesome

things in today’s show one of the

awesome things i want to mention

is how awesome the hang was yesterday

of course 2020 in all of its uniqueness

we have not been able to network and

meet

new people in our industry as easily as

have in past years well the folks at awt

and i got together and we decided

that we were going to try to make that

as easy as possible for you

with creating these hangs so we did our

first ones

at the convention those were extremely

successful

so successful many many many people

reached out to me and said please

keep these going i really felt connected

with the community i got to see people i

normally see throughout the year

and i haven’t had an opportunity to see

them well awt the association of water

technologies said the same exact

thing so my staff here at scaling up h2o

and the staff at awt decided we are

going to make this a regular

thing so our first one was yesterday

it went very well i say the first one it

was the first one

after the convention and folks it was so

good seeing you

the questions were good you meeting

people were good

the things that people are working on

that was awesome as well

so again just awesome stuff going on

in the podcast today thank you for all

of the people that attended yesterday

hopefully you’ll come back if you want

to register for the next one

it will be in january so you can go to

scalinguph2o.com

forward slash hang and we’ll have

information there you can register

once you register you’ll get an email

where you can click

on loading it directly into your

calendar that has all the login

credentials

so we’ll have more information as we get

closer to january so stay tuned for that

and folks if you missed the convention

if you missed yesterday

that’s okay we’re going to do it again

so register by going to scaling up

h2o.com

forward slash hang and you

can get on that very next one you know

all sorts of new things is what we’re

trying to do

coming up next year the hang is an

example of one of the things we’ve done

in 2020

and folks let’s face it we’ve done a lot

of new things because we’ve been forced

in 2020 but they weren’t all bad i mean

they made us think differently

we’re going to carry a lot of that stuff

into

the next year but we’re also thinking

what is some

brand new stuff that we can do that

helps enhance

your experience with this show with

this industry that we all love to be

in and friend of show no stranger to

scaling up h2o you’ve heard it many

times

our friend james mcdonald has an

idea and i would love you to listen

as he shares it with us i’m here with

james mcdonald and james i want to

welcome you to

scaling up h2o and ask how you’re doing

hi there trace i’m doing just fine and

thank you for having me on again

absolutely you’ve been a you’ve been a

great supporter of the show and

i have to tell you i am really motivated

from

your project that you’ve had this past

year

called reading with james i’m hoping you

can tell us a little bit about that and

what successes have come from that

yeah as we started off 2020 or right

before i was trying to think what

what did i want to do personally to

improve myself as an industrial water

treatment professional

for 2020 and um i would say well i need

to read more

so i was like well what what are my

goals i’ll read an article a week

and then i was thinking well if i’m

going to do this myself why don’t i

share this with my colleagues on

on linkedin and see if maybe we can go

on this journey together so i started

posting my memes each week

and the side benefit as well for me for

doing that is it made me accountable

so that would certainly read an article

a week which was my original goal

so i would hunt through the internet

each week find the article

i thought was was worthy and share it

out with a meme

and you know i’ve gotten a lot of

conversation based around

those articles i’ve shared they’ve

they’ve gotten a lot of viewership on

them and i think

i think it’s been a hit it’s been a fun

project well your original goal

was to learn more during these last 52

weeks

do you think you have yes absolutely not

just from the articles but also from the

comments from

my colleagues out there on linkedin who

posted about the articles as well

so it’s it’s it’s a win-win well with

that being such a success

i can’t wait to see what you have in

store next year

well next year i was thinking what can i

do that’s different from

my reading with james but but would

still allow us to grow together and go

on this journey together and i thought

about posting a challenge

each week a challenge may be large maybe

small but something that each of our

industrial water treatment

professionals within our audiences can

maybe do

or even at least think about that will

make them

a better water treatment professional at

the end

of 2021 so i’ve called this james’s

challenge

and so each week on scaling up and also

posted on linkedin as well you will see

james’s challenge and so the first one

starts i believe on january 1st i

believe that that’s a friday

and we’ll we will have 52 of those all

throughout the year

and hopefully by the end of the year

we’ll each be able to look back

at where we were at the beginning of the

year realize that we we have grown in

some way or another and are truly a

better

industrial water treatment professional

and the

topics range from anywhere from our our

water testing

to account management and communication

to our technical knowledge

so um hopefully most of them will apply

to you but even if they don’t apply to

you directly

i challenge you to put some thought into

the topic as well

so um that’s my plan trace james i’m

super excited to add this segment

to our show i know we’re gonna get

better

as a water treater because we’re doing

something

new something different every single

week so that’s 52 chances to become

better

and i can just think that when people

are doing that

sometimes this feels like a lonely job

we’re just in our windshield

driving from account to account and

we’re in the mechanical room

well as we’re doing these challenges we

need to remember we’re

doing them along with somebody else we

are in

a community absolutely and it’s not just

a community

in your state or in the country thanks

to you trace

it is a global community well i think

that is thanks to

all of us but uh i am sure glad to be a

part of it

and i’m really excited about this so

folks

be sure that you tune in on january 1st

to hear

our first james’s challenge and this is

going to be a regular staple

for 2021 so we’re going to get 52

items that are is going to push us to

become

better water treaters each and every

week fantastic

stand up nation that’s right james

mcdonald and i

have teamed up to deliver you james’s

challenge a weekly challenge guaranteed

to help you become

a better water treater one time a week

think about it that’s 52 opportunities

for you to do something

up and above what you are regularly

doing

one of the problems we get in is we get

stuck in our day-to-day whirlwind

and we know we need to do new things we

know we have to get better at things

but if we stay stuck in the day-to-day

it’s hard to get above the day-to-day

so we can get better to help the

day-to-day

so how many times have you been given an

opportunity

that addresses that very thing

and makes it so easy

for you to get 10 percent better

one week at a time that’s right if you

do the math it’s almost

10 if you look at the days that you have

in a year

and you doing these james’s challenges

are going to help you get better so i

urge you to complete the challenges

each and every week but don’t keep them

to yourself

share them with the scamming up nation

we’ll have hashtags out there

please use social media so we can

continue to stay connected we can

continue to motivate each other

and we can see that we are all

raising the bar together now speaking of

raising the bar there are so many

things that you have to pay for in

our lives and there’s so many things

that we have to buy

that help run our lives better

and if we had better information when we

bought these items like lights

vehicles all these different devices

that help

us do our day-to-day life

we could potentially save a tremendous

amount of money

when it comes to the operating cost of

all of these things we just need more

information

so we can make better choices and that

is exactly

what our guest is here to do to help us

with today my lab partner today is

ron cayman ron how are you today

outstanding trace how are you sir

doing very well very much looking

forward to this interview

i’ve done a lot of things or some things

i would say that

i want to talk to you about and you are

the expert but before we get

into that i would love for you to tell

the scaling up nation

a bit about yourself sure well i’m a

clean energy guy i’ve been in clean

energy ever since getting out of college

believe firmly that we

are making a transition to clean energy

for a number of reasons

both environmental and climate and

breathability and livability

but even more so because energy is a big

cost

and when you can figure out a way

of saving energy and going clean

you save green in two ways it’s the

environmental savings but it’s also in

the dollars and the pocketbook savings

and

the only way to be truly sustainable is

when that energy savings that energy

impact becomes

affordable and saves us money so i’ve

done that all my career for past 30

years i’ve worked in clean energy

helping people figure out ways to

save money and reduce their carbon

impact and leave a legacy

and it’s been really fun it’s uh i’ve

worked in the water sector with water

treatment plants on the public side

but also on the private side with

businesses and non-profits and all sorts

of institutions large and small

people who pay too much for electricity

heating and cooling or transportation

want to save money and have a positive

impact

well i think you’re going to fit in

perfectly here

and in addition to all of that you also

have your own podcast can you tell us

about that

sure so when covet hit as mo

my clients uh kind of went into hiding

for a while to figure out how to survive

on the commercial side i had for a long

time wanted to reach out

one to many and uh colleague coach

actually suggested that i set up a

podcast to reach out to the masses

and so awesome earthkind is that podcast

and it’s about the

awesome forces of nature the four

elements that are us the air

water earth and sun so awes

forces that or us owes us and then the

last letters of awesome

is m e and you and me and seven

billion of us on this planet all women

and mankind

all earth kind and the fact is we’re a

fifth element now we

are a force of nature some would argue

that we became a force of nature when we

dropped that first nuclear bomb on

august 6 1945

with atomic energy but the reality is

now there’s so many people on this

planet we’re all consuming

so much and having so much of an

environmental impact on the air

water and on this planet in general so

we are a force of nature

so now we’ve joined the other four

forces of nature and

we can either have a negative impact

which you can see around us in various

different ways

or we can take this next step to

move to clean energy which is 90 of the

greenhouse gases we emit

by moving to clean energy we can not

only have a positive environmental

impact

but we can save money and we can create

a much more prosperous

and fairer economy which is something

that is

near and dear to my heart so the podcast

awesome earthkind podcast

helps people understand the opportunity

know about the technology

see how we not only have a thousand

times more energy

surrounding us from the forces of nature

but how our technology now can

capture is capturing those forces of

nature and

turning that into applied electricity

heating and cooling and transportation

and how doing that saves us money and

creates jobs

so that’s what the podcast is all about

we interview some leading

people in the field we interview

homeowners who are doing it in their

homes

and then all sorts of businesses and

non-profits and everyone along the

spectrum

of clean energy some people who are just

taking their first step with things like

led lighting others who are much more

involved like you trace i understand

with doing solar

and doing electric vehicles and doing

clean heating and cooling as well

that’s an awesome setup and and i got to

tell you having the

acronym built in and awesome that itself

is awesome so

i i think that’s very impressive

uh you know i was surprised that no one

had come up with it before it’s just

one of those silly things i guess kind

of like peanut butter and chocolate or

something i

i don’t know but uh but yeah when you

take a look at the forces of nature

you know the air water earth and sun are

just astonishing and

that power is unbelievable we’re always

i mean every tornado every hurricane

every drought every flood every

all the burning that’s going on now the

wildfires i mean we

are just blown away by these powers that

are

so incredible um so yeah it’s you know

it’s awesome forces that are out there

and we are awesome ourselves you know

human beings are incredible we can do

so much in a very positive way we can do

so much in a negative way but my piece

is to help other people understand that

you all of us we are all forces of

nature and we can have a dramatic impact

and

my goal and my hope is to help inspire

folks to take their next step

and to do be really awesome well you

said

in the top of the show that we’ve got

two camps i

say this on other shows and those camps

are

we have people that want to reduce the

resources that they use

and make sure that whatever burden

they’re putting on the planet

is as small as possible and then we have

other people that when they think about

this stuff

they just think about saving money and i

think either camp is fine

but with that what are some things we

should be thinking about when it comes

to green energy yeah so um i agree with

you

it’s this folks go clean save green has

that double entendre

save green in the environment save green

in dollars

and one of my guests actually was a

conservative who

has been a conservative all his life and

found that going down this route was a

tremendous opportunity for him

for his business and for his pocketbook

and steve malink actually has a

has a book out that’s written

specifically for conservatives about how

to take this next step

fusion capitalism just came out next

this last month and it’s an

awesome book for those are on the

conservative side but i’ll tell you you

know

it’s it’s everyone is uh somewhere on

this clean energy

spectrum and one of the things i i

always advocate for is look don’t go

throwing stones about how you’re better

or worse than somebody else that is

somewhere along the spectrum

we’re all on the spectrum all of us that

you can’t live in this society and be

100

perfect with clean energy because we’re

all living in this

in this civilization and until our

civilization makes the shift

we’re all just somewhere less than

perfect so

don’t go throwing stones find out for

yourself where you are

and take that next step and by taking

that next step

save yourself money have a positive

impact

and yeah i mean if you care about the

future and you think that this stuff is

gonna have a positive impact for your

kids and grandkids

leave a legacy for them so some of the

things that we can do

for instance um lighting led lighting

lighting

everybody knows about lighting to some

extent we all have lights it’s what

keeps us going and you know

clearly we enjoy lighting inside our

buildings and outside as well

when you have a standard incandescent

light bulb 90

of the energy that’s in that light bulb

is producing heat

that’s why when you touch a standard

incandescent light bulb you burn your

hands because 90 percent of the energy

is wasted is heat

when you have more efficient lighting

light emitting diodes

or leds now most of that energy

is producing light so less heat

same amount of light better quality

light really

and what you have is an improved

performance reduced cost

more efficiency and a step in the

direction and not only do you

wind up with all of that but yeah you

pay a little bit extra for that led

light bulb

up front compared to an incandescent but

instead of

lasting as long as an incandescent last

an led lasts 10 to 20 times longer so

when you take a look at how much money

you’re going to spend on

purchasing light bulbs you wind up

saving money over the long term

you have less energy costs so that has a

payback

in months usually and then in addition

you have less hassle of having to change

out those light bulbs all the time

so that’s one simple easy example that

we use and you can go into the next

level

of for instance on a place that’s close

to water quality which is air quality

and filters and air filters and most

people don’t even realize that they have

air filters in their homes and in their

heat

in their air conditioning systems and

those filters are very important from a

number of ways

one they take out various different

nasty substances which

are very important especially in these

days of covert and other

airborne pathogens so those filters are

important to keeping that

health there but when those filters

aren’t changed regularly they build up

that buildup creates the opportunity for

a lot of

nasty things to live on those filters

and then get spewed into the air

and it also starts backing up our

cooling and heating systems

and by backing it up that creates more

pressure that pressure means your system

has to work

harder when it works harder it uses more

energy

and cost you more and in an hvac system

what happens is

on the cooling side is that pressure

then will also have an impact on the

coils

and can cause your system to break down

earlier

so you have increased energy costs

initially

you have the potential failure now of

pushing your system to

fail and then you have pathogens that

are coming out in the environment

so all those reasons are efficiency

measures that are health measures

they’re ways of saving you money up

front and that’s another

efficiency measure to take a look at

looking at your hvac

system and i know you’ve done a lot of

work trace right with hvac and the fact

that when your water system is scaling

and getting

impurities as everyone does in the water

if you don’t clean that water

your system is working harder and then

costing you much more and having

potential breakdowns

i believe that’s true in your system

right in your world absolutely i always

say

insulation is great in your attic but

you don’t want it in your pipes where

we’re doing the heat transfer

and that’s what all that dirt and debris

tends to become

yeah so it breaks down the heat transfer

and i i understand that you look at

yourself as a heat transfer efficiency

manager right hey you’ve been listening

to the show

so that that heat transfer is key right

and making

the the heat go where you want it to go

and not

stop and be stuck by impurities and

build up

and all that bad water stuff you know

that’s a key component of things so

so on the on the efficiency side that’s

two real simple a couple of easy

examples of where you can save money

and do yourself well and help reduce

some of your hassles over the long term

too

you mentioned led light bulbs and we

moved into our

current building about eight years ago

and i put fluorescence in

and fluorescence eventually that

phosphorus coating they put on the tubes

breaks down

and as those lights started dying i

started replacing those

with leds and i could not be more

amazed at the better quality light

those things put out so i can’t wait for

the rest of them to burn out now

yeah and you know there is an argument

to be made on a cost-benefit analysis

that if you change them out

before they burned out you might

actually save some money and and be able

to have a long-term benefit even sooner

i mean clearly it’s great when it burns

out to replace them with leds but

there’s there’s a whole business out

there billions of dollars worth of clean

energy

investments just in lighting because the

cost benefit of doing it sooner than

later

makes so much sense so actually we’ve

worked i’ve worked with a lot of

organizations that took a look at that

and there’s even third party financing

so if you’re a commercial institution

and you haven’t changed out your light

yet

and you want to take a look at the

energy savings

there’s the opportunities to do that

either have a great return on your

investment because you’re looking at

returns of

probably 20 or better on your investment

but if for whatever reason you don’t

have the capital

or you’re a non-profit let’s say you

can’t take advantage of some of the tax

benefits

there’s third parties that’ll come in

and do a performance contract they’ll

put it in

won’t cost you a dime and what happens

is they get paid back out of the energy

savings so it’s a

win-win-win situation for you

no capital outlay save some money the

company that puts up that gets repaid

out of your savings so you’re saving

money but you’re paying

some of that savings to the company that

put it in and meanwhile you gain the

benefits of having reduced cost

and over time the your company will be

paid off

and you’ll have 100 of the savings and

again

improve quality of light improve

performance reduce the energy cost

positive environmental impact less

hassle and less maintenance

boy who could ask for more there you go

well obviously if you’re working with

one of those companies they’re going to

figure out roi

for you because that’s how they’re

getting paid but for somebody that

doesn’t use one of those companies and

they’re trying to figure out roi

what are some of the things you

mentioned a couple already but what are

some of the key things

they should be looking for and then with

you working with your clients

what’s that point in time that people

say wow that’s a quick

roi payoff or that’s just too long i

don’t think it makes sense to do it

yeah so um so everybody has the

different hurdle rates about their

investment you know

and most business people would say that

if they had a 10

return on their investment that’s pretty

good um when you get up into the 15 and

20 and 25

returns which is what you usually look

at with lighting

boy it becomes really almost a

no-brainer right

so part of it is in terms of what you’re

looking at

you’re looking at how much energy do

your particular lights use so how many

watts

are they rated at how many hours are

they

on and if you’re on a long the longer

your lights are on

the more and faster your payback so the

more it’s costing you and the faster

your payback is when you change them out

and then the third factor is the cost of

electricity and how much you’re paying

for your particular

kilowatt hours in your particular

locality

and in addition to the kilowatt hours

there’s also kilowatt demand and i don’t

know if your audience is familiar with

that kilowatt demand on commercial

charges

absolutely they are okay great so

kilowatt demand is how much energy you

use usually in any 15 minute period

during a month

some utility habits so any 15 minute

peak during the year is what you charge

for

but you want to keep that peak down and

by taking out the

lighting piece and reducing that

lighting load

you’re reducing that peak demand as well

as your energy usage over time so those

are the two the two

cost factors you’re looking at your kw

demand reduction

from reducing that wattage down with led

lights

and the kilowatt hours of time usage

and then multiplying that times your

rate your utility rates

will give you what your cost is and then

what your savings opportunity is

and then the question becomes on your

labor side how are you paying to have

these replacements some people have a

contract with a lighting company

or a maintenance company who comes in

and changes it out and that costs them

so much per

fixture or so much per hour if you’re

doing it

internally that’s a cost of your own

labor to then change out those lights

and when you take a look at these leds

you’re looking at long lasting lights

that have tens of thousands or hundreds

of thousands of hours worth of usage out

of them depending upon the brand that

you’re using

so we actually did a uh a show an

awesome

earthkind podcast show with a guy who

just re-lit

the oculus which is the world trade

center right across from the freedom

tower in new york city so it’s a

multi-billion dollar facility

and actually they just had for veterans

day they just had

those led lights turned red white and

blue and they

they honored veterans with this red

white and blue lighting

and they were able to do that

specifically because they had these new

led light controls so you gain some

additional control benefits

not only with quality but also with

being able to change colors to do

various different things if you want or

in the seasons

and yesterday in the oculus they turned

on this multi-million dollar project

which was just beautiful and incredible

to honor veterans

so there’s a lot of different things you

can do with this and on the show on

on the show with bernie erickson of fsg

which is a national company that does

led lightings all across the country

they talk about some of the quality

things to look for

and how to choose the right led you want

to choose one and if you’re doing that

in your home you want to choose a long

lasting bulb

not one that’s uh you know that’s rated

for a few thousand hours what you want

to do is go for the longer lasting one

you probably want to choose one of the

major manufacturers who are now in the

field that have

a very high quality standards and good

warranties in back of those so there’s a

number of factors that you would look at

with lighting

and again one of our shows is on

specifically on led lighting so if you

want to know more

listen to awesome earthkind then fsg and

bernie erickson on led

lighting there you go and we’ll make

sure to put a link to that directly from

our show notes page

you know you were talking about

monitoring kilowatt hours and that’s

pretty much how we

sell our water treatment wares as we say

mr customer this is what you’re spending

now because we don’t have the right

equipment

to keep things efficiently flowing when

it comes to heat transfer management

if we do these things we can actually

make our program save

uh you money over time and and perhaps

even pay for itself so i think we

are spot on with how we’re looking

at either how we sell or how we upgrade

so we can get some of these better

lightings better equipment

overall less cost to run these equipment

and less impactful on the planet

exactly you know it reminds me of a

story that i told a couple

of i don’t even know when i told it it

might have been a year or so ago i was

working with one of my clients

and the chiller mechanic we were of

course treating the water inside the

chiller

but the chiller mechanic came in and

they were going to

clean it and they were going to clean it

in such a way that

they put that chiller back online at

about 4 p.m

during the peak demand during the summer

hours

and i pointed out if they did that they

were going to be at the top

tier charge of all the electricity

that they could consume during that day

and this was a pretty big

office building they were pretty darn

close to exceeding

what they were allowed before all of

their electricity was graduated to a

higher cost tier

nobody ever considered that but because

we had that conversation they were able

to redo their schedule

and they didn’t have that impact now i

actually learned that with working with

the client

years ago where that exact same thing

happened

and they did go over how much they were

paying electricity because they didn’t

give a thought to

when those things were coming online

especially when you have this huge

demand coming on in the peak time

during the summer and they had to suffer

those costs for an

entire year until it reset

yeah that’s one of the challenges with

different utility structures

is boy they really nail you on those

peak charges and you know there’s a

reason behind that because if you recall

when we used to have a lot of blackouts

the reason for those blackouts is when

everybody needs the power and we call

for the power

which is usually in this country during

the summer during the peak peak times of

the summer the

hottest times of the summer when all our

air conditionings are going but people

are still in the office so the lights

are all on

and we’ve got all this equipment going

during those peak times

if they can’t deliver the power that’s

when you have the blackouts

so those peak demand charges came about

to avoid that so that people would pay

attention to when their peaks were and

not bringing

all the equipment on all at the same

time so i kind of understand it but boy

you can

really suffer in some utilities it’s a

monthly thing so you get knocked into

those rates and that’s your

peak for any 15 minute that whatever

that 15-minute peak was that’s what

you’re paying for the month

but in other utilities like the one you

just said it’s for the year

and boy yeah that is a really costly

costly

decision that people don’t even realize

that they’re making so

keeping an eye on those peaks is really

important doing things with your hvac

system and staging them and having that

run efficiently is really important and

then again lighting is also really

important because

with your lighting system if you’re

reducing from let’s say 100 watts down

to 20 watts

you’ve just knocked your peak down by

dramatically in your lighting system and

lighting is somewhere depending on the

office somewhere between

20 and 80 percent of your electricity

cost is for lighting depending upon your

setup and how much other equipment you

have etc so

can be a substantial impact not to

mention it’s taking that heat demand off

of the systems that many

of our listeners are treating meaning

that they don’t have to upgrade to a new

chiller

they can they can get by on what they

have it is so cool when you understand

all the energy that goes into things

when you

look at the new technology you can

change the older technology out for

newer technology

and then make the budget that they don’t

have the money the funds to purchase

new equipment they do have the funds

like a chiller they do have the funds to

purchase

these light bulbs or they can work with

a company it’s just

really excites me when people in my

industry

work in that manner as an advocate

because a lot of people just think we’re

delivering chemicals to

a location what good are we are the

chemicals doing their job

what are we doing if the chemicals are

doing their job and that just

shows what a value we can be when we’re

working properly with our customers

yeah no doubt about it your your work is

really critical and

having the ability to transfer

heat effectively and then also you know

led lights

as you said they reduce the amount of

heat load so that reduces the impact on

your air conditioning system which makes

everything much more

efficient and affordable well i have

been

dying to talk to you about this because

this year has been

my year of research on how we could

bring our operating costs down in the

building that we own

and then also figure out how we could be

less

impactful on the environment and i have

really been

researching solar this year and

i wanted to do it 10 years ago when we

moved into the building

and i thought oh wow i just wasted 10

years but oh my gosh the little bit of

research that i did 10 years ago versus

all the research that i did this year i

wouldn’t have wanted that technology

back then the technology is so

amazing smaller footprints more power

so all that being said i have put solar

on our office building and we don’t have

it connected yet

we are waiting for georgia power to come

out and say the system’s okay

but the great thing about georgia power

i just mentioned how they

keep track of how much energy you’re

using and they will charge you if you go

over peak demands

and in their case for an entire year

that rate

but something great they do is they

offer net metering

so at the end of the month they see how

much we produce versus how much

we actually use and whatever

stays within our grid they give us full

price for it and that made our roi

six years when you added in the tax

credits

it was just a no-brainer to do yeah it’s

an amazing thing tracy and you’re

absolutely right

so you know on the one hand as they say

the best time to plant the tree was 10

or 20 years ago

the second best time is now and that’s

true with solar um so on the one hand

yep

you know you could have done it and

there were benefits then for folks who

did do it

but now the benefits are even more

amazing in terms of return on investment

ability to get more out of the system to

have an even bigger

impact and between the tax credits which

you got into

this year which means that you’re at a

certain federal tax

level compared to next year when the

levels drop and the year after when it’s

going to drop even more

so anybody that’s thinking about solar

now is absolutely a critical time to do

the price has come down so dramatically

so just like

the smartphones that we have that 10

years ago were super computers costing

millions of dollars

and taking in a taking a whole room um

those little iphone smartphones that we

have now have come down at cost

the same is true with solar is that the

costs have come down so dramatically

and the benefits are there and with net

metering in your particular locality

not everybody has it but many do the

majority of states and majority of

utilities have a net metering program

it just makes things so incredibly

wonderful

in terms of an roi is your saying of uh

boy

what’s six years it’s uh 15 return on

your investment

not bad right exactly it didn’t take me

long to write those checks

and again you know the fascinating thing

with solar and with just about all these

technologies is that there are third

parties that’ll put up the capital so if

for some reason you can’t you don’t have

the capital

you don’t have the check you can’t write

the check or you can’t borrow the money

from one of your preferred lenders

or you don’t want to take advantage of

some of the leasing programs that are

out there

there’s third parties that’ll put it in

under what’s called a power

purchase agreement and under those power

purchase agreements they put in the

system

it costs you nothing they do it all out

of their pocket

they take all the tax benefits and all

the other benefits but then you just

start saving money from day one

and for certain people and a number of

non-profits or especially in that where

they develop a public

private partnership where somebody else

puts up the capital

takes the tax benefits they just then

get the savings so there’s a split of

the savings

part of what happens is that you’re now

paying only for performance

so just as you pay the utility for so

much energy that you’re using

do you pay the solar company for so much

energy that they’re delivering instead

and depending upon the utility and the

deal that you strike you can save

usually at least 10

many times 20 or more in your case

you’re going to save some money over six

years

you’ll pay back your investment and then

100

of the savings is yours so that’s always

the best is to own

the next best is to get a longer-term

and if you can put it into a mortgage

type of structure which keep those loan

rates

down so on a as a homeowner the best

thing is to put it into your mortgage

and just have a long-term mortgage at

the lowest interest rate possible

if you can’t do that as a homeowner do a

home equity loan which

gives you some of the same benefits in

terms of lower cost and longer term

and reduce cash per month and that gives

you

cash flow positive from day one but

under any of those ownership once you’re

done paying off however you put up the

money

100 of the savings is yours so over the

long term

it’s always better to own but if you

can’t for whatever reason

next best is the lease third best is a

power purchase agreement

under any scenario you save money you

have a positive impact and you gain all

those additional

benefits that you’re speaking about

that’s great advice in fact we did that

exact

thing that you’re advising on my home

residence we’ve been here for about 10

years and

we were paying 4.75

well folks the rates i think the rate we

have now is

2.55 i mean it was just dramatically

lower

and we rolled in the cost of doing a

solar

array here at our house and with all of

that

our payment is still lower and we are

actually able to get a 15-year loan

making that you know we’re paying less

over time

for a shorter time period again didn’t

have to think long

in order to do all that right and you

know what you want to do

is just be systematic about it as

clearly you are trace

and just do your analysis you know and

figure out well if i put up the capital

this happens if i borrow the money from

and put it into a mortgage this is how

it looks or a second mortgage this is

how it looks

if i borrow the money at a low interest

rate here’s how it looks some utilities

have low interest rates

some states have low interest rate

programs for you to do it that way

and then there’s leasing options and

then again that’s the last option which

still saves you money

there’s a power purchase agreement where

you pay for the energy as it’s delivered

to you

by the solar company who puts up the

capital so there’s lots of ways to do it

all of them save you money all of them

have pros and cons depending upon your

particular tax situation

and your cash situation but they’re all

worth looking at and doing

no matter where you are really anywhere

in the country now

when you take a look at this world um 90

of the new generation over 200 gigawatts

or 200 000

megawatts an incredible amount of power

of that is now going to be solar and

wind this year according to the

international energy agency

so across the world people are doing

this and they’re doing it

yeah they want to do the right thing but

they’re doing it because it’s now become

the least

cost option the solar and the last bids

for

some larger solar projects out in the

west um have been the lowest cost power

ever ever seen in terms of cost of cost

and power agreements

um under three cents a kilowatt hour on

on a large scale basis so this stuff is

happening

it’s happening faster it’s happening

bigger it’s happening

better and there’s ways to save money

when you’re doing it whether it’s you

as an individual in your home or in your

office or in your non-profit whatever

building you have

if you’re paying electricity there’s a

way of doing this now that makes sense

financially

i totally agree and as you mentioned i

enjoy

looking at the numbers i’m a an excel an

roi a dashboard

kpi kind of guy and i installed both

at my home and are building this device

called the sense and you hook it up to

your electrical service and it finds

everything that is taking power from

your panel and it creates a little game

out of it i had no idea

that our little section of our building

when everybody was home and there

shouldn’t really have been

anything running all of these little

chargers and things that people

keep plugged in was costing me

over two kilowatts just for these little

chargers

so with that i mean that’s every single

day

imagine that savings yeah so those are

called

vampire vampire loads right because they

just keep sucking

energy even though you’re not using it

so that’s one of the efficiency measures

that we

highly recommend for people so if you’ve

got

anything plugged in whether it’s even a

power strip

or your iphone charger your smartphone

charger that you’re not currently using

or it’s your tv or it’s your stereo or

it’s a lot of devices even though you’re

not using it

when it’s plugged in there’s still a

little bit of power that’s going

and it’s sucking that energy out of your

system and

the department of energy has found that

in a home actually that can be the

majority of energy that you’re using is

these vampire loads

from the appliances that are just

sitting there plugged in and

not even doing anything at the time so

that’s a really good point and uh

i hadn’t heard about this sense meter

that’s great yeah i’ve actually got an

affiliate link for that

it’s uh scaling up h2o.com forward slash

sense i’m so enamored with this product

several people have told about have have

bought those and said they’ve had

similar experiences but it really does

make a game out of it in fact

it taught us that our it policies that

we thought we had

weren’t really happening so when people

are off their machines and then

especially after

work hours they’re supposed to go to

sleep well half of them

weren’t and that was causing us to use

more power when nobody was using

their workstations then we had to i

don’t remember how many kilowatts we

saved on that

but when you look at all these things

and you can see exactly

what’s pulling the energy demand and you

can say well do i need this can i make

adjustment to it and because of that i

have now started all those fluorescent

lights that i told you about in the very

beginning

because of i can see the load we’re now

changing

the most used areas so we do have leds

in our most used areas and we can see

immediately

on this sense device exactly what the

impact was it’s really made it a game

how cool is that huh just amazing

additionally it will measure solar so as

soon as we get our solar online

it’s going to be another source for us

to see

the inverters that are creating the

power from the solar panels they have

their software

and then of course georgia power is

paying us on what they say that

we are selling them and what we’re using

well now we have this other device that

makes sure that those two pieces are

communicating together

metering and monitoring right so

wonderful thing

so i also want to talk about electric

vehicles and i think a great segue to

this

is i drive a tesla and my favorite tesla

shirt

says because there’s only so much rotten

dinosaur to go around

i haven’t seen that one that’s great

trace but i tell you the reason

i bought the tesla is i’m a car guy

and i love that motor sound

but a friend of mine is he’s had several

teslas throughout the year

i’ve always been interested in electric

cars in fact uh back in 2005

i bought a used prius and i bought a kit

online and i turned it into a completely

electric car

had something like a 90 horsepower

engine it was not impressive at all

but i took it to high schools uh georgia

tech has an earth day

i featured it in that in that earth day

fair that they’ve had

and i got a lot of people thinking about

what are some of the things that we can

whether you think it’s something we

should do from responsibility of being

inhabitants on this planet what i was

trying to do was say this stuff is

cool you know i was able to take this

and do this myself

and look how cool it looks and that’s

what i was trying to sell people to do

but with all that the reason i bought

the

model s tesla is because that guy will

0 to 60 in 2.3

seconds and i don’t know of very many

normal cars normal souped-up cars

that can even hold a candle to that it’s

amazing right so

the quote that i’ve heard is you get the

performance of a porsche

for the price of a buick well in this

case maybe it’s ford since i don’t know

is are there any more buicks any left

anymore i’m not even sure

i think they’re still in buicks but but

good question yeah

yeah so anyway the performance of a

porsche for the price of a low-end car

right so

that’s amazing it’s just incredible the

performance and the opportunity

and here’s here’s the thing is that

tesla absolutely

led this new wave with electric vehicles

they are

by far out there if it wasn’t for them i

think we would be way way far

behind where we are now but the

fascinating thing to me

is that it’s not just tesla anymore

every manufacturer of

automobiles now has an electric vehicle

model

and most states you can get incentives

in my state of new york there’s 50

different vehicles that are incentivized

by new york state

50 different models of electric vehicles

where you get cash incentives to buy

them

because that helps you understand that

this

is a tremendous opportunity and in terms

of the sound so

for instance most people who love cars

like that mustang

and this year coming out is the mustang

which is a crossover mustang it’s really

cool

it’s all electric it gets amazing

performance and it

reduces everything that you’d want to

think about

and you will also have the opportunity

to have your own custom

sound so you can get that room sound

with your

mustang e which is kind of fun and

interesting

a couple things with electric vehicles

so first the costs have been coming down

as you’ve noted they’re coming down to

become much more competitive and with

incentives now you can get an electric

vehicle

at the same or less price that you can

get a comparable gas vehicle so first

if you think that it’s going to cost you

a tremendous amount more

not always the case and if you look at

electric vehicles in the secondary

market used electric vehicles

you can often get a tremendous deal on

them from people who have turned in

their leases

so first the costs are coming down and

with the incentives in many parts of the

country

you can get an electric vehicle buy it

cheaper than you can

a gas vehicle and that’s going to happen

over the next couple of years without

incentives that’s going to happen

because the

main piece of an electric vehicle is

that battery and those battery costs are

coming down

it’s solid state technology just like

solar prices have come down

just like smartphone technologies have

come down the costs have come down and

computer costs have come down

we’re getting that same cost reduction

curve happening with electric vehicles

so on the capital cost

right now you can get it the same or

cheaper with incentives

than a couple years that’s going to be

the most cost effective option in terms

of a capital purchase

and again you have all these

opportunities now it’s not just tesla

every manufacturer of ford is investing

10 billion dollars volvo is going to 100

all electric within the next four years

every manufacturer has an electric

vehicles whether you’re at the high end

with the porsche and the bmws and the

mercedes or the mid-size or down on the

lower end the nissan leafs and the chevy

bolts

and assorted other opportunities there

the hyundais etc

so there’s a lot of opportunities out

there why are people going so first

here’s an interesting statistic people

are worried usually with an electric

vehicle about

charging the fascinating part to me is

of most people’s trips in this country

are less than 50 miles so if you think

about how far do you go on an average

day

98 of us 98 of the time

go less than 50 miles if you go even 100

miles

round trip an electric vehicle is an

opportunity for you because

you can just go home plug it into your

garage in a regular 110 120 volt socket

and that gives you enough charge to go

out and do it again every day

so plug it into an electric socket a

regular electric socket is all you need

if you go a step up and you have a 220

volts which is what your electric dryer

or your electric stove uses if you put

in a 220 volt charger now you can go

twice as fast in terms of charging but

if you just charge out your home

that’s good for 98 of your trips yes you

got to be concerned if you go longer

than that there’s opportunities and

options there that we can talk about in

a moment but first

people don’t realize that especially if

you have two cars

easily one for all your local trips

could be an electric

and by doing that your cost of fuel

is in many cases half to two-thirds less

per mile because electricity is so much

cheaper than gasoline

so you save on fuel and then there’s all

the maintenance costs

you save on oil there’s no oil to change

there’s no transmission fluids to change

instead of 2 000 moving parts there’s

less than 20.

so instead of explosions happening under

your hood constantly thousands of times

a minute

what you have now is a solid state

technology

fewer moving parts much less things to

go wrong

basically what you have is a vehicle

that you just change the tires

change the windshield wipers change the

windshield wiper fluids

and that’s pretty much all your

maintenance on your electric vehicles

everyone when they take a look at this

total cost of ownership

finds that you look at the cost even if

you do pay extra for an electric vehicle

between the fuel savings and the

maintenance savings your total cost of

ownership is dramatically less

and that’s why we see so many

municipalities and other government

entities starting to move in this

direction because they’ve looked at

their total cost of ownership

and then there’s all the labor costs

that go into that too and maintaining

these vehicles so

tremendous opportunities with electric

vehicles and i’m going to tell you one

more which i found

fascinating in just a moment so first

any any comments or

or feedback on that piece trace well i

will say being a tesla owner and i

hands down i bought it because it is

just a cool car i feel like i’m in a

rocket ship

every time i drive it and it goes 2.3

seconds to get to 60 miles an hour it’s

just incredible

but i know a lot of people have that

range anxiety that you alluded to

sure most people are just driving you

know less than 50 miles to work but they

have this thing well what if i take a

vacation

or i won’t be able to use this car and i

can speak as a tesla owner

tesla has just done a fantastic job with

deploying

this network of superchargers so

for less than an hour you get a full

battery charge and on a full charge

my s will go 340 miles

and i i just got the car just a couple

of months ago so i haven’t taken many

trips on it but the one trip i did take

was

from atlanta to richmond virginia and

the software is just so smart the car is

so smart

it’ll figure out how you’re driving and

tell you

where to stop along the way to

supercharge

and it actually had me stopping at two

different locations

because what happens when you

supercharge it puts

every bit of 150 kilowatts into the

battery at the very beginning

well when it starts getting to about

half full say i’m the optimist half full

then it starts trickling down so it

doesn’t overcharge the battery too

quickly

so what the software knows is you’re on

a trip you don’t want to spend a lot of

time there so it had me stopping

20 minutes in charlotte and then another

20 minutes in hendersonville

and then i was fine i think i made it to

my destination with about uh

19 of the battery left and the cool

thing about where they put those

superchargers

is it’s places you would stop anyway

they’re in places where restaurants that

you’re going to eat you’re going to have

to go to the bathroom so and essentially

uh what happened in my trip was i went

into a firehouse sub

after i plugged in the supercharger and

it took an

hour for them to make my sub me to

finish eating it

and when i got back out it was a hundred

percent charged and i didn’t even need

to take that second stop

so my point is through that

demonstration

if i did have any range anxiety it was

all gone with that and then for fun i

said well can i go to alaska with this

and sure enough i could they had enough

superchargers where i could drive all

the way

to alaska so it’s just amazing what

tesla’s done with the network and then

what all the other companies are

starting to do to lay out infrastructure

as well

yeah you know your point is is very well

taken and tesla again has led the way

and it’s kind of like the apple and pc

difference right so tesla’s system

is available to tesla owners but tesla

owners can use

the other systems as well so if you have

a tesla you can go both ways

on the other side though if you have a

nissan or a

chevy or a porsche or bmw or any of the

other electric vehicles you can use the

public infrastructure

but you can’t use the tesla

infrastructure so that is one of the

one of the differences tesla has its

very proprietary network

that is incredible and it’s there on the

other side though

that public network has been being built

up and part of it there’s a lot of

things that have been happening over the

years

but the the across the country now

it’s not as good as tesla’s but it’s

still there

and what i would say to people is look

at this stage depending upon where you

live and where you travel

and where you’re thinking of traveling

for your vacations or where you need to

travel to see

family or whatever else just take a look

at it

and my belief is that for most people

most

families have in single family residents

usually have more than one car

and if you want to have it make a

difference right away just have one of

them be electric and let that be a local

car

then you still have your other car to

take distance and if you only have one

car

you could choose to have it be an

electric hybrid so

get 50 miles to the electric charge for

of your trips but then you have gas

backups so now you can do the rest of

your time

with the gas or even if you only do a

trip

as most people do longer trips just once

every three months or so for that once

every three months we lay out the

numbers you’ll see between the fuel

savings and the maintenance savings on

the oil and the transmission fluid and

everything else

you’ll have enough savings that you can

just rent the car and still save money

and take

somebody else’s vehicle and do your

trips and use their vehicle for when you

do your long distance trips

so there’s a lot of options and instead

of putting in place the

the the obstacles take a look at how you

can create the opportunity

and i think what people most people will

find is that they can save money

have a positive impact and if you have

an electric vehicle just enjoy

all the performance benefits of these

all torque engines that get

incredible performance so worth thinking

about

well and did i mention i can go zero to

60 in 2.3 seconds

oh no i think i don’t think you maxed

out is it 260 was it 2.3 seconds

that is exactly it so um that’s coolest

car ever folks

so i want to ask you what is the biggest

barrier you think people have to making

some of these green energy choices

the biggest barrier i believe is that we

humans uh

we’re we’re hesitant to change right

it’s it’s so much easier to just keep

doing the same thing that we’ve been

doing over and over again

and we’re almost sometimes it’s

fascinating to me to see

how tough it is to get people to adopt

something new

so i think that’s the biggest thing is

just sort of a mindset about things and

we can’t do it i mean we do it all the

time right i mean

when i was growing up who would have

thunk that my kids would have

a smartphone and that smartphone had

more computer power in it

than all the computing power that took

us to the moon in the apollo rocket

ships

who would have thunk that that would

have been affordable and that all our

kids and

all of us now would have these devices

that aren’t just

phones but their phones and their

cameras

and their internet communication access

devices

and they do all these incredible things

databases of all our friends and

neighbors and we can do all this other

social media things i mean we kind of do

as it it kind of overwhelms us in some

ways the changes that take place and

we’re doing it and we’re adopting it but

i think the first thing is just

look these changes are happening take a

look for

you and your family and your life work

situations

how you can make this transition because

the transition’s coming it’s going to

happen sooner or later

but by looking at it now you can get a

little bit ahead of the curve

you could save money doing it

substantial amount of money doing it

and you can actually help to also

catalyze the change

one of the studies that i was fascinated

by is they took a look at what lets

people adopt solar

and a lot of people were like oh well it

must be if you have a higher income

level

oh it must be if you’re better educated

and it wasn’t either of those things

the main thing that got people to adopt

solar

was whether or not they knew somebody

who had solar

fascinating right so that means that you

traced by you

doing solar at home or in your office

not only did you save yourself money

not only did you have a cool technology

that was out there

but your choice and you’re displaying

that choice to your neighbors

means that other people are also going

to do it

well let me speak to that for a second

if you don’t mind so i was influenced

by a good friend of mine he was actually

a customer he retired from

a red soda manufacturer here in atlanta

i can’t mention the name

but he was one of the engineers there

and he was really into he was the guy

that was in a tesla’s he was the guy

that was

into solar power and he taught me so

much and he made it

interesting i i just wanted to know more

about the topic and as i learned

more i wanted to do more and

when we put and he was the catalyst for

me getting started

then when i saw what the rois were how

we can help in all the many ways that

we’ve been talking about during this

podcast

i decided okay this is something that i

need to do well when i started

installing the we have a ground mount

array

at our house neighbors started looking

they started coming over

two of my neighbors have entered into

contracts to put

solar now they face at a better distance

so they can put solar up on their roofs

but they’re doing it because

they saw me doing i cannot agree more

with that comment

yeah it’s amazing right so so look you

know i’m a scientist right so i’m a

sister

i went to school i studied accounting

and management so i got the numbers in

back of me and the rois are very

important but also i’m a systems

scientist my graduate work was in system

science

and look everything about us everything

about a civilization is based on science

all the the phones the computers the

buildings the

transportation system the energy system

the electricity the heating the cooling

it’s all science and

you know the one piece that i would say

to people is if you don’t believe the 98

of climate scientists to tell us that

all our seven

billion people are having an impact on

the environment and you don’t believe

that

you’ve seen more extreme weather events

that are happening between the tornadoes

and the hurricanes and the floods and

the fires and

all the biblical events that we’re now

experiencing

if you don’t believe in the science okay

you know

sure then don’t believe and don’t have a

phone and don’t have a computer and

don’t have a house

don’t have a car and don’t have all the

things that science generated but if you

believe in science and you take a look

at where science

is and what it says look we’re having an

impact and you can argue how much of the

impact is there versus because there’s

so many of us having it or not

but one way or another we’re having an

impact and we need to make this

transition

and we will make this transition we have

to make this transition

and because we can save money we are

going to make this transition i have no

doubt it’s just a question of how fast

so wherever you are and whatever you

believe look uh personally i believe in

the science

you may not other people have a

difference of opinions fine

but look at it for yourself from the

perspective of how can you save money

making this transition

how can you now be at the forefront of

your peer group

and adopting something that’s going to

save you money

and gosh you know be healthier and

better for your family too because

all these technologies have dramatically

positive local effects as well as the

global effects

so to me it’s uh i wouldn’t say a

no-brainer but it’s

uh it’s a pretty good easy brain

decision once you start looking at it

i definitely agree with that when i did

the math when i did the research

there was not a lot of heavy lifting in

me making those decisions

and that’s true with all these

technologies now is as you take a look

systematically

at clean electricity at clean heating

and cooling

at clean transportation about doing

things using the forces of nature

what you find is that those forces of

nature because look when the sun shines

the wind blows the water flows

that’s free energy and under our feet as

the ground four feet down has free

energy that

constant temperature so there’s all

these ways that we can

save energy save ourselves money and

have a positive environmental impact

and again it’s just it’s good for

everybody it’s win win win win

i agree well this has been a great

conversation but i’m not done with you

yet i have a few

lightning round questions so are you

prepared for these

i hope so let’s go so if you could go

back to your

first day as a green energy consultant

what advice would you give yourself i

guess

the biggest advice is

to work with my customers to understand

where they’re coming from and what their

particular

sticking points are what’s holding them

back

because everybody has something that’s

holding them back otherwise we all would

have done it right

so i think the biggest thing is to talk

with people about

what are their fears and what are their

concerns so

i think the first thing is to talk to

people and listen really closely

to what their hesitation is because

sometimes

i would think that would be roi right i

would think that look

you know you don’t want to do this

because you think it’s going to cost you

money

and sometimes that’s true and other

times you find that well no

that wasn’t really it i mean even though

i offered them a 25

return on investment the real fear is

that someone else had done that before

and then they had gotten burned

and it wasn’t true so what is it that’s

holding people back

is it what’s their fear and other times

you know you found that they did

something

and yeah the roi was there but then it

was an inferior product and the company

that they chose had a bad warranty

or the company that wasn’t there anymore

so the warranty was useless

so that was their fear so i think the

biggest thing is to talk

to people and listen and find out where

they’re coming from and what their

biggest

hurdle is to overcome and help to

address that particular

piece what are some of your favorite

books that you’ve read

one of my favorite books which uh i i’m

sure a lot of people are familiar with

because it’s been around for a number of

years is think and grow rich

one of my favorites as well if you

recall that one you know

it’s a lot of a lot of really good

insights into how to just look at

yourself

and look at the world and and realize

that you know we can do a lot of

different things with the right attitude

so that was by far one of my favorites

another one which is not necessarily on

this topic but goes a little bit broader

is the four agreements by don miguel

ruiz

also a great book read that one as well

right you know be impeccable with your

word

don’t take it personally don’t make

assumptions and do your best right

i mean so i think that applies to this

topic but applies to

pretty much all topics and me i’m also a

half-full kind of guy

so i look at the future i’m always

oriented towards the future so my

interests have always lied in the

science fiction types of perspective um

because from my view it’s always been

the science fiction that then

opened up the science that then led to

the realities so

i’m uh i have a good interest a strong

interest in science fiction stuff and

one of the things that i’ve always loved

about science fiction was taking a look

in particular at the star trek

types of things and i’m a huge star trek

fan

yeah i i was when i was growing up i

wasn’t into star trek so much watching

it on tv and then later on

um i got into the star trek generations

and then realized that the original star

trek was so

advanced in terms of both its

perspective on how do we work and live

together

i mean that’s one of the things i think

is our biggest challenge right now is

how do we talk to people and reach the

common ground

and find the higher ground that

seemingly diverse perspectives have that

you know you have left and right black

and white and up and down and yin and

yang

you have these two different diverse

perspectives of

uh conservative democrat progressive

okay

great wonderful i mean it’s diversity

that makes the world go round

and what what is amazing to me is that

when you

reach that common ground when you find

that higher ground

we can do anything and one of the things

about star trek i never realized growing

up but i realized later was how

how fascinating it was that they had the

first

russian that was interfacing with other

people aboard this ship

they had the first black woman that was

a key

officer on this ship and the first

interracial kiss

which was amazing and uh you know

groundbreaking

and then they had this alien from uh

from vulcan that was also part of the

crew

and from my perspective it just goes to

show that you know when people come

together and we decide that we can

work together boy we can accomplish

anything well the simple fact is we have

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