The EDGECELSIOR Show: Stories and Strategies for Scaling Edge Compute

Bill Bubenicek's Electrifying Leap into AI's Power Dynamics

April 30, 2024 Pete Bernard Season 2 Episode 6
Bill Bubenicek's Electrifying Leap into AI's Power Dynamics
The EDGECELSIOR Show: Stories and Strategies for Scaling Edge Compute
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The EDGECELSIOR Show: Stories and Strategies for Scaling Edge Compute
Bill Bubenicek's Electrifying Leap into AI's Power Dynamics
Apr 30, 2024 Season 2 Episode 6
Pete Bernard

Embark on an insightful journey with Bill Bubenicek from Generate Capital as we tackle the electrifying world of edge computing, power, and connectivity. With Bill's extensive background in GSM network buildouts and his groundbreaking work on sustainable energy solutions for off-grid cell towers in Africa, we navigate the complex challenges of the AI economy's infrastructure. Prepare to be enlightened as we trace Bill's remarkable transition to his influential role at Generate Capital, where he's redefining traditional grid markets with a keen eye on the future.

Electricity is the lifeblood of the digital age, and AI's hunger for power is growing at an unprecedented rate. Throughout the episode, we address how major tech firms are racing to innovate amidst surging energy demands. With discussions around hyperscalers potentially establishing their own power plants or seeking symbiotic relationships with existing facilities, we ponder a future where tech behemoths might just become our next energy providers. Join us as we unravel the necessity of a modernized energy infrastructure, championing efficiency and sustainability in an era where power loss is no longer tolerable.

In our final act, we paint a vivid picture of a digital and energy landscape in harmonious convergence, where power and connectivity are inseparable champions of the AI economy. Uncover the potential of virtual power plants and the economic allure of distributed grids, as we contemplate the integration of renewable energy systems and battery storage in ensuring a resilient energy supply for data centers. With Bill's expertise lighting the way, we unveil the transformative possibilities that lie ahead, inspiring listeners to think beyond the status quo and embrace innovation. 

Generate Capital: a leading sustainable infrastructure platform, dedicated entirely to accelerating the infrastructure transition – from building and financing infrastructure assets to incubating, building and financing leading infrastructure companies. The result is an integrated offering – a “one-stop shop” – for capital, innovators, customers, and communities committed to rebuilding the world. They announced another $1.5bn raise in January, bringing the total to $10bn raised to date.  

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240130298422/en/Leading-Global-Institutions-Invest-in-a-Clean-Energy-Future-With-Generate-Capital

Want to scale your edge compute business and learn more? Subscribe here and visit us at https://edgecelsior.com.

Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Embark on an insightful journey with Bill Bubenicek from Generate Capital as we tackle the electrifying world of edge computing, power, and connectivity. With Bill's extensive background in GSM network buildouts and his groundbreaking work on sustainable energy solutions for off-grid cell towers in Africa, we navigate the complex challenges of the AI economy's infrastructure. Prepare to be enlightened as we trace Bill's remarkable transition to his influential role at Generate Capital, where he's redefining traditional grid markets with a keen eye on the future.

Electricity is the lifeblood of the digital age, and AI's hunger for power is growing at an unprecedented rate. Throughout the episode, we address how major tech firms are racing to innovate amidst surging energy demands. With discussions around hyperscalers potentially establishing their own power plants or seeking symbiotic relationships with existing facilities, we ponder a future where tech behemoths might just become our next energy providers. Join us as we unravel the necessity of a modernized energy infrastructure, championing efficiency and sustainability in an era where power loss is no longer tolerable.

In our final act, we paint a vivid picture of a digital and energy landscape in harmonious convergence, where power and connectivity are inseparable champions of the AI economy. Uncover the potential of virtual power plants and the economic allure of distributed grids, as we contemplate the integration of renewable energy systems and battery storage in ensuring a resilient energy supply for data centers. With Bill's expertise lighting the way, we unveil the transformative possibilities that lie ahead, inspiring listeners to think beyond the status quo and embrace innovation. 

Generate Capital: a leading sustainable infrastructure platform, dedicated entirely to accelerating the infrastructure transition – from building and financing infrastructure assets to incubating, building and financing leading infrastructure companies. The result is an integrated offering – a “one-stop shop” – for capital, innovators, customers, and communities committed to rebuilding the world. They announced another $1.5bn raise in January, bringing the total to $10bn raised to date.  

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240130298422/en/Leading-Global-Institutions-Invest-in-a-Clean-Energy-Future-With-Generate-Capital

Want to scale your edge compute business and learn more? Subscribe here and visit us at https://edgecelsior.com.

Pete:

So we are here and I want to welcome Bill Bubenicek from Generate Capital here to our studios, into your headphones or into your cars or wherever you're listening to this, and before we get into Bill's origin story, so just to kind of set the stage here. So Bill and I know each other. We've done some work in the past. Stage here. So Bill and I know each other. We've done some work in the past. He is a resident, as I am, in Cape Cod, assachusetts, although he lives there full time, so we can talk about that, but Bill's had an interesting background in power and we were.

Pete:

You know, before we hit the record button. You know, if you look at Brad Smith's talk at MWC on AI economy, which I thought was a really good one to go look up, he talked about the kind of the foundations of the AI economy and there's kind of two pieces to the foundation One is connectivity and the other is power, and power as in electricity. And so quite often when you get in discussions around edge computing, the issue of power, power cost, I mean, certainly there's power discussions. When you get into low power systems that are, you know, battery powered, but even you know, data centers, edge data centers, things like that, there's just this, you know, kind of an existential I wouldn't say crisis, but you know, an existential challenge about power. And so, bill, I want to welcome you to the show to talk about this stuff. Why don't you give folks kind of your intro, your origin story, let people know who you are?

Bill:

Sure, thanks for having me Pete. Yeah, so I started out really in GSM network buildouts, which in other words cell phone, which in other words cell phone infrastructure, primarily in emerging markets kind of where I started. So I spent a lot of time in the Middle East, africa, parts of Latin America, and while doing those build outs and selling the equipment there I came across the cell towers that were in most of those markets running on diesel generators 24-7. And it was around 2006, 2007, and we called it clean tech then. But the clean tech thing was kind of happening and I got into that and I was pretty excited about a more sustainable energy future and I thought, well, here's a good place to start already, already in the cell tower business, and they're all running on diesel generators 24 seven. So what can we do? So we implemented some of the first we called hybrid systems, which is just battery cycling with generator. Eventually that turned into battery plus solar plus generator and I launched a company called clean power Systems in 2010, co-founded that and brought those solutions into the African continent.

Bill:

Mostly Uganda, Kenya and Ghana were our primary markets. And then, sort of fast forward, I got a crash course in project finance when I realized, hey, there might be a better way, as opposed to selling these things on a CapEx basis, right, can we sell it as a service? And so you know, I don't have a proper finance or analyst background or anything like that, so it was really learning through osmosis and we launched our next company then that was focused on converting our solutions into a as a service model or like an SQL model, and so we did that in East Africa and in India and that was a lot of fun, a lot of good experience, but mostly an off grid environment, right. So my, my power experience started started kind of, you know, in the off grid sector or the call it grid sector, where it was like really intermittent power. So, anyway, got a lot of good experience there. In fact, that's where I first met Jigar Shah, who's a co-founder of Generate. We tried to do a few deals in Uganda at the time and kind of kicked around a lot of ideas and he had a lot of kind of good advice for me as an entrepreneur trying to make it in this space.

Bill:

And when I finally came back to the States and was kind of looking at a change, say like, how do I make a much bigger, broader impact, right, like this was a great business and we a lot of lessons learned. But it's really hard operating in these other markets, operating in these other markets. And I came back and I was in Boston at the time and reached out to Jigar, amongst others, and he called me back I think within 30 seconds of the email and said hey, what's your thesis for all things related to digital and kind of how that intersects with energy? And I said, well, I got to work on that thesis, right, it's been a while. I've got the off-grid side, but let me have a look. And he kind of pitched me on Generate and what they were doing and really found that interesting and exciting. And so I kind of started looking around like what's the thesis here? What's the play more in the US, or it could be Europe as well? What's the thesis here? Like, what's the play more in the US, or it could be Europe as well, but in the traditional grid markets.

Bill:

And I ended up spending some time I had a lot of time with the IFC and World Bank when I was in my previous life and so I called up my friends and colleagues everywhere. I was trying to kind of looking around like where's the right thesis? And credit to my old friend, eric Crabtree at the IFC, who said you've got to look at data centers, right. Everything is moving. You're in the cell tower. We call that ICT sector. I think TMT was another term they used in the World Bank. But anyway, he says look towards data centers, right. And so I already kind of brushed into the data center sector. I had experience with fiber just because I was already in the telco sector and all those things converge so I started kind of calling it digital infrastructure. That term started happening around.

Bill:

That point, after a bunch of work and really looking into data centers, was there's going to be a convergence or an inflection point, let's say, where the grid is simply unable to keep up with the power demands of the digital infrastructure sector. Right, at the end of the day, that was the thesis at its core that I brought to Generate in 2018, 2019. And they said let's give you a chance, right, welcome aboard. And I came on as a consultant under what they called a developer in residence program at the time and I think that's just maybe a position that Jigar had invented. That said hey, you're an entrepreneur, developer, and we don't really know what label to put on you because you're not a finance person, but can you come in and kind of try to put deals together, etc. And it really ended up being, I guess, what you call an origination role.

Bill:

I later learned in finance that's the term right, go out and originate deals and bring them through um. So again, the thesis was fundamentally on power, right, and the lack of power, let's say, the lack of supply or the ability of the grid to keep up with the demand from the digital side. And I guess it was last year 2022, 2023, when the AI boom took off, right. And then suddenly the thesis was like right now Before that it was kind of in the future let's prepare, let's think about what we can do to solve this. But all of a sudden the explosion happened and here we are now with, I think, everyone talking about this.

Pete:

Yeah.

Bill:

Power is the problem.

Pete:

Yeah, I mean, if you look at the latest, like the NVIDIA GTC announcements with Blackwell, you know, I mean each one of those chips is, you know, peaks at about 1200 Watts, and so you start to get a building full of those things you know and you know. Just as a comparison, I mean you have um, think about like packet core switching and things like that in sort of the telco world you know, running on Intel, you know Xeons and stuff, and it's all good, but it's not, uh, it's not pushing the power envelope as much as you would if you're stuffing that field with, you know, nvidia H200s or Blackwells. I mean that's a whole other order of magnitude, frankly. Oh yeah, more power, right, and you know, people who read the newspaper know that. You know just, public grids in general are struggling with keeping up with power requirements right in Texas and other places and rolling brownouts.

Pete:

So you start adding in these data centers filled with AI chips and then all of a sudden there's a gap. Maybe not all of a sudden, but I think it's kind of an obvious, you know gap that people are trying to fill. So that's, I think you know. Like you said, it started out as it's a good thesis and now it's really becoming a reality, because the demand for AI workloads is so high and folks are struggling. So how are hyperscalers and other folks figuring this out? I mean, how are they trying to close the gap between, you know, ai factories and electricity?

Bill:

Yeah, so, yeah, so, a few different ways, and this was kind of core to the thesis as well. It's like, all right, there's a thesis, great, but what's going to happen, right, as a result of this Play this forward? And the theory was well, if power is so important as we know, it is to the growth of digital, and we're really talking about, when you say hyperscalers, we're talking about the biggest of the big companies in the world, the biggest balance sheets, etc. Are they really going to let the grid's inability to keep up stop them from deploying? Probably not. I don't think so. Let my bet with you know, I know so.

Bill:

So the way I saw it was well, they're going to figure out. Either they're going to start building their own power plants or they're going to figure out how to maybe co-locate next to existing power power plants, to unlock capacity that might otherwise not be available due to, you know, transmission, distribution issues or what have you Right? And so I think that those two themes kind of come out of this. It's going to be one of one of those two, and if you really want to fast forward long term, I think there's a really good chance that the digital infrastructure folks are going to become energy companies themselves out of necessity, right, there's like a forcing function here and again we're going to bet on somebody. Is it going to be that highly innovative, like largest companies in the world, that's going to do that, or is it going to be the kind of utilities that are going to figure out how to suddenly get super innovative and keep up? Both are going to happen in a way, but I think my money is on the big guys here.

Pete:

Well, so like, instead of Microsoft having an Xbox subsidiary that's doing gaming, maybe they'll have a power subsidiary. Then you buy your power. It's part of your M365 subscription, you know.

Bill:

I think something like that is already in the works. I mean, look at the press AWS just announced recently the deal with the nuclear facility in Pennsylvania, for example, right, right. So we're kind of already seeing things moving. There's plenty of different data centers that have adopted on-site power, like Bloom Energy, fuel cell technology, right. So I think we're seeing both of those play out now in real time. It's starting to actually happen and I think we're going to see more and more of that, right. Yeah it's really interesting.

Pete:

It's almost like when Apple, you know, years ago Apple got big investments in like mining companies to get the rare metals that they needed to build iPhones and iPads right. They just kind of went straight in the supply chain and, you know, you're seeing maybe something similar like that with power and some of these hyperscalers.

Bill:

Yeah, I would. And, by the way, are you talking supply chain? I would love to see them get into the transformer supply chain right, which is is another major problem in bottleneck.

Pete:

Yeah, that's true, that's the. Those are the um, the boxes that you see on the poles right that go from the basically transmit.

Bill:

Yeah, exactly, it makes the voltage usable for the user.

Pete:

Yeah, yeah, and there's a whole supply chain issue around transformers and that's one of the big shortages. I know Elon Musk has talked about that too. Yeah.

Pete:

It's one thing to generate the power, then you've got to move the power through the grid. One thing to generate the power, then you got to move the power through the grid. And you know maybe people don't realize this a lot of the infrastructure that you see, especially in the US, is 50 or 60 years old, right these transformers and these power lines, and there's huge inefficiency. So you may be dropping, you know, a third or more of the power by the time it goes from the generator, whatever it is to, to your plug. You know you could be losing a huge percentage of power just through those transmission lines too, which is not good. In a world where there isn't enough power, the last thing you want to do is kind of squander it on kind of these inefficient old transmission lines, right. So that's another challenge.

Bill:

It's another one. There's no doubt about it, right, but again right. Who better to step in, perhaps, and make a difference here? You know, when it comes to the players that could do this, again, we're talking about the biggest balance sheets in the world.

Pete:

Yeah, yeah, no, that's really interesting, yeah, and so like and you talked a little about nuclear, I mean. So typically it's interesting. The other paradox I guess with power is there's not enough power to power kind of AI factories. So that's the working hypothesis. I think it's probably pretty well established at this point. And at the same time there's also a move to move to more greener and renewable energy right.

Pete:

So wind and solar and things like that. So you have, these things are almost, I wouldn't say competing, but they are sort of both pulling in slightly different directions, right, yeah.

Bill:

Yeah, I think again you're going with the AWS, is the Microsoft's, the Google's videos? These guys are all making really big commitments to clean energy, right, and I mean, yeah, across the board. And you know, making really big commitments to clean energy, is that right? Yeah, that's the board and, regardless of that acronym, like they're making commitments to a more sustainable future and they have the balance sheet to actually do it, to sort of push innovation forward and also be the anchor customer, let's say, on cleaner, more sustainable builds for power plants, right. So I think we're already aligned in that sense Right, in that they want the cleanest power. However, the lack of power altogether right now kind of puts them in a conundrum too. Right? Hey, if there's power available already here at this gas plant, are they going to take it? Do right, hey, if there's power available already here at this gas plant, are they going to take it? Or are they going to not spin up their latest data center and sort of wait for a source? I don't know how that's going to play out. What?

Bill:

I can say, is that where we sit? Certainly, and what I represent on the Generate side is we are representing for the cleanest sources that are financeable and sustainable today, the degree to which we can influence the market towards more sustainable. We're going to do that, but I think you already largely have a pretty big commitment from everybody there to do that anyway. So I think, you're kind of already well aligned in that sense.

Pete:

Yeah, well, yeah, and the demand for power, and then that turning into demand for investments in more green power solutions is beneficial for everybody. So, and then the other trend that I've seen too is that you know that used to be where you'd plop a data center area of compute out in, you know, near a kind of a higher density population area or whatever, to service that area, density population area or whatever to service that area, and then the power would be somewhere way out somewhere else. But now we're seeing you mentioned like, so almost like the co-location of compute and power generation, and so that's a different kind of you. Look at a map of any country where their power stations are, where the power is being generated is kind of probably where the compute is going to be happening, nearby, right, I mean to mitigate some of these transmission issues that we were talking about.

Bill:

Yeah, again, crystal ball would say yes, I think that's where it's trending right. I think that in also with AI I'm sure you know and you've talked about right like the latency is less of an issue than what we've traditionally thought of when it comes to the cloud et cetera. And so you know, I think, locationally you still probably want to be within some reasonable driving radius of a metro area because you need the human resources, the talent, to be able to get there and reasonably be able to either commute or live nearby. But yeah, it does seem that the trend would be the compute is going to move to where the power is more so than perhaps the power moving to the compute.

Pete:

Right, right, yeah, although some days, at some point in the near future maybe not in the near future you'll have these kinds of fuel cells attached to micro data centers, like the edge data centers, right when it's like a little hydrogen fuel cell stuck on the side or on the top of a box, you know, and then then you'll be able to sort of that's like a micro grid architecture right when you would uh, you know more, more, you know power is more distributed to where the compute is. I mean then that, but that's probably like five to 10 years down the road, I would say.

Bill:

Yeah Well, I mean, yes, I want, want to. I would think so too, but when you look at the compounded anal growth estimates for edge, it's astronomically high, right? So you say, like, if that's true, then we're going to have to figure this out pretty quickly, right?

Pete:

to kind of yeah, right because, yeah, because there's now there's like, there's core, there's regional, there's edge, you know, there's, you know, and then there's obviously the, the, the, the devices too that are running AI, and so how to get power to where one of the benefits of kind of thinking around edge computing is around doing the compute, where the data is generated, so in the vehicle, on the robot, in the factory floor, in the retail shop, at the Taco Bell drive-thru itself, and so, as that trend continues to happen, like you said, the growth trend is huge there, like power needs to be there, there needs to be power there, and so I do think we're going to, in addition to seeing the big hyperscaler data centers with all the blackwells in them, will you know, start springing up in co-location with power plants. I think we're also going to see a lot of innovation in bringing microgrid power to the edge. You know, to support some of these more.

Bill:

You know local, hyper local, you know power needs right at the same time I agree right, and and I think it's also important to note that those microgrids need to be able to scale up right and it's modular in as simple, simple way as possible to meet the growing power demand because, again, based on what's being projected, we've ever recently believed that, yes, you're going to need that initial power and then it's going to continue to grow, right.

Bill:

So, just to take a step back on this topic, what I do think is interesting and where my optimism comes in, as I kind of look out five, 10 years to your point on how this happens, we've always talked about I say we, us folks in the energy, clean tech sector, et cetera. We've always kind of theorized about Power folks. Yeah, these power folks like us, right. We theorize about this grid of the future that is going to be highly distributed, right, and it's going to be highly it's called bidirectional, in that a power plant can both give back power as much as it can consume power, et cetera. And I think data centers actually have the architecture and have the ability to be these distributed energy resources or like that, right.

Pete:

And when you start wrapping in what we call virtual power plants or the software to put everything together and get these really interesting balances amongst all of these distributed resources, you could start seeing a case where the digital infrastructure sector could actually underpin the build-out of this distributed grid of the future, which I think is super exciting from that perspective right, right, the VPPs, as they call them and in fact I mean before we hit the record button we were talking about you have this kind of whole solar build-out at the Cape, at your house, and I'm currently speccing out adding solar there too, because, for those that don't know, the New England energy market is quite expensive, and so you know, in as much as you can generate your own power there, that's a good thing for the long term.

Pete:

And so then there's this thing called net metering, where, as you're generating power and folks that have solar know this, you know in times when you're generating more power than you're using on your house, you're able to sell that power back to the utility right at whatever the kilowatt rate hour is usually whatever, and so that is kind of essentially like what Bill's talking about. Right, this is kind of like the microgrid idea is that you know, power generation is, could become, will become, hyperlocal to a certain extent through these renewable resources, and that power can then be fed back in to a virtual power plant or some sort of system that then can then feed that power out to those that need more power than they're generating, if that makes sense, right?

Pete:

So, and that could be the Taco Bell drive-thru that's running a bunch of NVIDIA processors to look at like you know how many tacos are in the bag or whatever the AI thing is that they need to do, and so that's a really interesting development because it's sort of mixing what some people are familiar with today, which is creating their own power at their house using solar panels or whatever, and then you know the software and the systems to sort of manage. All that is very, you know, very much in line with a lot of the uh technology that's being developed today for data centers yeah, I'd take it one step further.

Bill:

Like the solar is. Just think of it like a little power plant that's selling back into the grid or offsetting. That's okay, that's like. That's pretty simple. When you get into the battery side or we'll call microgrid solar plus storage and maybe plus a generator of some kind right, you have a fully grid independent system then, which means it could participate in grid services programs like demand response, which is basically the grid says hey, we need power back, you're consuming it. Can you go offline and stop drawing power from the grid? We'll pay you for that right, and because we have an independent system, we can just rely on our battery sort of little microgrid system for as long as they need us offline. This is on a really small scale in my home, of course, it's not going to make much of a dent, but when you're talking about megawatts, gigawatts, et cetera at the data center level, that's very meaningful and very helpful to the grid.

Pete:

Well and, like Massachusetts, is incentivizing people through, you know, 0% interest loans and other things to kind of start generating their own power and selling it back to utilities.

Pete:

So there's a motivation there. It makes the grid more resilient, it can really be an economic benefit to the consumer and then, like you said, we're starting to build out more capabilities on that. The other big part, as you mentioned, was batteries, which we haven't really talked about. But the idea of using batteries to sort of, you know, flatten out the demand curve a little bit. So you know, if I'm generating a bunch of power, I'm not using all of it.

Pete:

That's stored energy somewhere right, could be on-prem or local, and then when there's a need, there's a store, store of stuff. And so, you know, traditional power plants don't operate with batteries. Obviously, they just sort of generate power and you know, and if people need, and if the community needs, more power than the plant is generating, then that's a problem. That's called like a brownout basically, or whatever. So, but with batteries you can actually kind of level that off a little bit, actually kind of level that off a little bit. And we're starting to see batteries being introduced, um, obviously for data centers, but you can, you know, going into these kind of edge compute situations.

Bill:

Batteries are a really important part of that too, to help make sure that there's a good store of energy over time yes, I actually think this is where that more of like the edge AI compute load is really interesting, in that you know there's a lot like it is quite beneficial to be able to participate in these grid services programs, right, especially in ERCOT, kind of famous for this right, where you can do well by going offline for an hour or whatever it may be right.

Bill:

And so to think that these AI loads could be located in distributed basis across the US and across the world really, and be able to participate in these programs, not only is that a grid positive, but from an economic perspective for the owner they can do quite well, and so that becomes really interesting. In having what we call flexible load resources as part of this deployment, and traditionally I think it's been quite hard to get battery adoption. It's still a struggle. We're not anywhere near where we would like to be. Perhaps the growth in digital infrastructure is the catalyst to actually achieve all that we've been sort of pushing for, you know, for the last 15 years, at least in my my career so far 15 years.

Pete:

Yeah, yeah Well, and also what's been happening too, which is helping is, I mean, if you look at going back to the NVIDIA announcements on Blackwell, it's about the thing about 3X more power efficient than the, the hopper um chips. So you know, you're, of course, it's 1200 watts but it's generating a lot more tops or um, you know, teraflops, whatever, but it's more ai horsepower per watt than it used to be quite a bit, and so we're seeing a lot more improvement. And then, of course, you get into more, you know, real edge computing platforms. I mean, look at Qualcomm, snapdragon and what Intel's doing, and then getting down to the NXPs and the STs and everyone else, they're really doing incredible amounts of horsepower with very little electricity. So there's always improvements going on there too.

Pete:

So we're seeing power as a part of the value prop these days for AI chips. Right, it's not just the horsepower, but it's the power consumption, because, of course, some of them will be running in battery-powered systems, whether it's your phone or a drone or a robot or whatever, but also even when they're on the grid, power is an important part of the value prop because, like you said, it's a scarce resource, it's an expensive resource and I think anyone with an AI. It's a scarce resource, it's an expensive resource and I think anyone with an AI strategy also needs a power strategy. I mean they have to be going hand in hand, right.

Bill:

I think that's right. I mean also, we can point to the you say expensive, we can point to the per kilowatt hour charges at least we've been seeing and the rise in those over the years, right.

Bill:

I don't think we're going to see a time where that really comes down materially. I think that is heading up right and if that assumption is true, it also makes a really good case for some version of these microgrids as well. A lot of them already pencil in high power price markets, like in California, like in much of the Northeast PJM territory, et cetera. Right, these are penciling out, whereas a handful of years ago they didn't pencil as compared to the grid. So now you actually have an opportunity where not only is this more resilient and providing all of the benefits that we just discussed, but it's also less expensive and can be at a fixed price. So we're not going to see this, the escalation you might expect from the traditional True, yeah, and at first you know going back to solar.

Pete:

I mean, the panels are more efficient than they used to be and all that other stuff. So now it's combination of efficiency of the tech and, unfortunately, the cost of the power are now, you know, meeting at a point where it kind of makes a lot of sense to to, to get more into these micro grids and thinking about that.

Pete:

So, that that's yeah, that's part of the equation. And then we also talked about just that. You know the big power stories for some of these hyperscalers and how they're solving that by. You know, leaning into energy resources. Let's put it that way and we'll see how far they lean. Lean in, but they're going to need to. You know, we know the hyperscalers have whole organizations dedicated to power planning and you know all this other stuff right, cause it's a big deal, it's, it's a it's non-trivial stuff. So it'll be really interesting to see how all this stuff plays out over the next five, 10 years. I think if people are looking for, you know, career opportunities, I think the power space is always, it seems like there's a lot of work to do there, right?

Bill:

Especially where it intersects with digital right.

Pete:

I mean.

Bill:

that's the equation Incredible.

Pete:

Yeah, good. Well, bill, it's great having you on the show and you know I do. I have it in my to-do list to go check out your solar, your solar setup at your house.

Bill:

Yes. State of the art.

Bill:

I was going to say I would also say just to the edge side, right, I mean to all of it. As you know, ubiquity is a is a platform company and generates. It's focused traditionally on fiber, but it's really digital infrastructure. They're now in the edge data center business, but we look at that business and and we think about what's the value proposition for the market, right? What we're kind of landing on is you need to be able to provide not just a hosted edge data center, you need to be able to provide the edge data center with the power capacity at a given price.

Bill:

That whole package has to be together, and I think that the industry, the sector, the developers and the, the companies that are focusing on working on this problem, need that as a takeaway. You need to have both. It cannot just be hey, I have a great edge data center pod here. It has to be what's the total solution? Can you deliver me, you know, x megawatts in less than 24 months or less than 36 months? Right, Ready to go at this power price? And this is really where Ubiquity and its edge business anyway, is spending a lot of time. How do we deliver that full package? Right, but I would say that's, the whole sector needs to be thinking along those lines.

Pete:

Yeah Well, kind of going back to the Brad Smith thing I mentioned at the start is, like you know, the two fundamental parts of the AI economy are power and connectivity and they need to be thought of together so you can't obviously have one without the other and still have a business. But, yeah, cool. Well, bill, again thanks, thanks a lot for joining us, and you know we're at the end of another podcast, so hopefully folks learned a little bit and really appreciate it. Thanks for having me All right. Thanks for joining us today on the Edge Celsius Show. Please subscribe and stay tuned for more and check us out online about how you can scale your edge compute business.

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