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KSV Voices of Industry: Featuring Adam Knudsen of Dynapower

Posted by Ashley Nicholls on February 3, 2017 at 9:45 AM

For our second installment in the KSV Voices of Industry series, we're featuring Adam Knudsen, the President of Dynapower.

adam-knudsen-dynapower.jpgDynapower is on the bleeding edge of innovation, in just about every category you could imagine when it comes to energy. 
 
But it's their recent partnership with Samsung, and their energy storage business and how that's changing the way utilities, solar companies, C&I customers will manage their energy in the future that we wanted to focus on today.
 
dynapower-factory.png
 
Adam, thanks so much for contributing your voice and expertise to this.
@AdamKnudsen: No problem. We're always happy to talk about energy storage and how it's changing the future of energy.
 
Great. Let's dive in. Tell me about squirrels.
@AdamKnudsen: You know, when we talk about energy storage, one of the things we focus on is the impact of downtime on C&I businesses. A few statistics to help orient things:
 
Power outages cost $79 to 150 billion annually in the US, they last 49 minutes on average, and 59% of Fortune 500 companies have an average downtime of 1.6 hours per week. 
 
Oh, and our little furry friends, squirrels, are responsible for 137 of those outages each year.
 
And the business impact of these outages is significant.
@AdamKnudsen: Yes. If we do some quick math assuming an average staff of 10,000 employees who are paid an average of $56 per hour (including benefits), the downtime loss in labor alone for a Fortune 500 firm would ring up at $896,000 per week — or more than $46 million annually.
 
Ok, well that's enough to get anyone to pay attention. What is the solution?
@AdamKnudsen: Well, the answer is C&I installations of energy storage being utilized for backup power. But, this is also a problem. Unfortunately, 80 percent of installations are not being used for back up power. In California where  over 80 percent of the installations have been deployed only 75 of the 375 are being used for back up power. 
 
And in many cases the functionality for back up power exists in the inverter but it is not being used despite the costs of deploying back up power with inverters capable of back up power is nominal.
 

Alright. We've got a clear problem with a pretty clear solution. But what is the industry possibility of this? How many businesses are actually in the process of installing energy storage systems?

@AdamKnudsen: Actually, commercial and industrial applications of energy storage are set to skyrocket. GTM forecasts 1.3 GW of commercial and industrial energy storage installations to be deployed by 2020 in the United States. 

The majority of which will be put in the ground here in California.

And Dynapower was recently part of a really big install of advanced energy storage technology, right? For Samsung?

@AdamKnudsen: Yes, it was actually the largest Net Zero Retrofit in the the nation. Our work with Samsung and the Electrical Training Institute of California included an energy storage installation that is being used for back up power as a standalone micro grid in the event of a power outage. 

Fortunately, since its installation this year it has not had to be used for back up power. Unfortunately, this building is an anomaly in commercial and industrial behind-the-meter energy storage installations.

Ok. I'm clear on the benefits and the problems that backup power inverter applications solve (phew, not a sentence I ever thought I'd be able to say!). Do all energy storage systems work this way?

@AdamKnudsen: Actually, this is a really important point. Commercial industrial users can only reap the full advantage of energy savings if they use the right inverter with the right technology.

Not all inverters are capable of being used to provide backup power for energy storage installations. 

And NOT all inverters can provide back up power seamlessly. Some inverters will experience a momentary loss of power during a grid disturbance while transitioning from grid tied to grid forming mode — which can be a costly loss of power as lights will go out, computer and manufacturing systems halted.

I’ll give you an example from my home state of Vermont. 

If the power goes out at a dairy processing facility if only for a few minutes, they will be shut down for upwards of 24 hours while they flush out all the milk and sanitize the systems. This can cost large scale facilities tens of thousands of dollars in lost product and production.

But Dynapower's inverters solve that problem?@AdamKnudsen: Yes. Dynapower employs seamless transition in all our inverters. Which basically means there is no loss of power to critical systems when a power outage occurs. 

The seamless transition between power from the grid and a facility’s energy storage system prevents any loss of productivity, and most importantly dollars during outages lasting less than 2 hours. And as we discussed earlier that covers more than 2/3 of all power outages.

Adam, thanks so much for taking time to get us all smarter about the future of energy storage, and the implications of outages on C&I businesses. 
@AdamKnudsen: My pleasure. We're always happy to talk about the future of energy.

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We'll be talking more about the implications of energy storage on utilities, C&I customers, and energy companies alike, as we continue into 2017. 

In fact, KSV is about to launch our B2B Customer Research Study, focused on decision makers in the C suite at large C&I companies, and how and when they consider energy and sustainability choices, how they make decisions, and motivators and barriers to engagement with energy topics.

Want even more on energy storage with a best in class case study from Adam Knudsen and Dynapower? 

We've got a two page brief on the topics we covered here today that you can download and share with others inside your organization.

Want to be featured in EnergyWire as a Voice of Industry? Reach out to Noelle Palumbo npalumbo@ksvc.com 


 

Topics: Customer-Centric Marketing, Utility Communications, Data and Analytics, Digital Transformation and User Experience, Innovation, Marketing Strategy and Best Practices, Audience Segmentation

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EnergyWire is KSV’s weekly insight into the consumer mindset when it comes to energy. It’s an honest conversation on the reality of their perceptions and motivations, and how energy services companies can use this insight to successfully engage customers.

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