Addressing the Climate Crisis – Olin Lagon and Damien Buie, Shifted Energy and AWS

This is texturing TV. I'm Bonnie Schneider with tech strong TV and we are talking about AWS accelerator in clean energy joining me. Now.

We have Damien Bui and Olin Lagan and I thank you both gentlemen for joining me first if we could talk a little bit about the AWS clean energy accelerator Damian if you'd like to talk a little bit about that, that would be great. Sure, personally, it's very nice to meet you Bonnie. Thanks very much for having us on I really appreciate it.

The AWS clean energy accelerator is an accelerator that was created in 2021 to be able to support mature startups that are addressing decarbonization at scale across the energy sector as with most things within AWS. We like to work backwards from the customer and over the years. We've been hearing the same thing from two very distinct customer classes one was our large energy players that were looking for solutions to be able to go after some of the harder challenges that they had and the other one was from our startup community that wanted more access to Market through our large energy engagements.

And so we thought there was an incredible opportunity for us to pair those two areas together. We launched the first cohort of 12 startups in 2021. We follow that up in 2022 with an additional 12 startups in Lisbon shifted energy was one of the startups that was within our cohort.

And then it cop 27 last year. 0 which was an expansion of the programs we'd have on the previous years that was going to have two cohorts this year in 2023. And we were going to focus in on sort of six key areas within this clean energy space around advancement materials energy storage hydrogen grid modernization energy security and resilience and ccus and to be able to further support the industry as a whole.

Wonderful program and Olin. I know that you're participating in it with shifted energy. Can you talk about what this experience has been like so far and really what is what is your feeling about just even being one of the companies the few companies that were selected to be part of the exciting program?

Yeah, thanks for having us on Bonnie is really humbling for us. We're based in Hawaii where we have some of the hardest problems to solve were Island grids. And so from from that perspective, we're grateful because we actually need the help.

We're far ahead of many other communities with the amount of Renewables that we bring on and the amount of complexity that we have to solve for. And so we this is really truly an accelerator. So it's a jam-packed program.

We were put into the the realm sort of to talk to corporates and see what their needs are really on getting closer to developing and deploying at scale at commercial then it was like for example just going through pilots. And so this program really helped us accelerate our path to commercialization and the other thing that we got from Amazon was help on the tech side as well too because when you want to deploy at scale, you have to have an unlimited amount of capacity to develop and deliver these Solutions and so we got that with Amazon and I'm proud to announce that since we develop we have landed a few large customers as a result of this program. That's really Good news and Damien.

How did you decide on which company? I mean, you probably had some incredible applicants. How did you narrow it down?

Yeah, but we look at a couple of key criteria, you know, we want mature startups. So we're looking for a startups in this space that have either gone through or going through at least around a so they've got funding in place themselves. We're looking for them to have at least a One Secured customer.

So they've got some Revenue coming into they've got a capabilities to scale from and then within that really we're looking at the Dynamics of customers that would really have the capabilities to leverage this experience to really be able to support our customers a whole. That's interesting. So when it came to shifted energy all in you mentioned about the technology how partnering having this being part of this accelerator has been so helpful.

Can you kind of give us some details on that? Where have you been able to get that support from at this program? Yeah.

Sure. So we use Advanced machine learning and so the ability to work directly with Amazon support to tweak our systems to tweak how we can scale it even more some of these processes take a lot of computing power and so the ability to trim that down so we went from about a six-fold increase and efficiency in our algorithms working with the team. And so that just results in US allowing our services to be cheaper to our utilities that purchase these machine learning based systems.

That's great. And and for this the clean energy accelerator are things in your opinion Damon going on schedule. Would you what are you looking for at you know as we go into this new year new expectations ahead.

We're really excited. 0 as I mentioned in call 27 and we've just closed the first the round of that. So we're expanded that we're gonna have two cohorts this year.

We close the applications on the 9th of January. So just just early in January and we're going to announce the finalists of that group around about the sixth of March. So in time for Sarah week, we're gonna launch the first cohorts of that group in May in Seattle, and then we're going to finish it actually with an innovation showcase at cop 28 in Dubai to be able to bring that together in front of the larger customer class.

So yeah, it's incredibly on track. We've got incredible management both internally within AWS and within you need to move it forward and we're continuing to be excited by it. That's great.

And Olin. Can you explain a little bit more about what you're talking about being based in Hawaii and the challenges that that you face there with energy and a little more about your company and what your goals are. Yeah, sure.

So we're the most energy independent. Sorry. We're the most energy dependent state in the country.

So we import almost all of our fossil fuels like in the last 10 years. We imported a third of our oil from Russia for example, and so we do rely a lot on fossil fuels and so we're transitioning. We're the first state in the country to commit to 100% clean energy future.

So by law, we're going to get to 100% clean energy and what I like about this program is that Amazon is really open to considering Equity. So in our company, what we do is there's a lot of programs for single family homeowners, like renters aren't able to change their appliances or get an EV for EV charging or put solar and so we support these underserved communities by putting these like non-traditional programs together. So a really great that Amazon recognize that and we're and helping us scale in these underserved communities to bring these programs out to not just families that can afford it and own a home but to renters or people who live in an apartment building for example, Do you think Damien was that something that?

Accelerator program was sort of looking for for companies that were addressing equity. Not at all. It's not really not a requirement.

You know, there's no requirement for actually Amazon to be able to commit Equity. There's also not a requirement for this decisions and platforms to be running on AWS at all. What we're really looking at doing is to be able to identify technologies that meet and addressable need for our customers and then bring in that level of support to be able to allow these customers to scale, you know all and mentioned a couple of key aspects of this program in itself.

It's an intensive program. So it typically runs, you know in person and virtually over a 12-week program. We bring in Industry experts, you know that have real experience within the energy space, you know around digital Transformations investment public policy Innovation at scale as I mentioned as well.

We bring in some of our Cloud experts if you're building on AWS, we can show you what you need to do to be able to scale that and keep the costs under control as well. And then what we also do is to be able to provide clear metrics so that you become easier integrator into some of these large energy customers as well. It's an end experience that we're very proud of and we're getting some really good success out of it as well.

The sounds great and Ellen as you look towards that the this year we were talking about, you know, some of the goals that you're facing climate Tech in general is just getting so much talk in the news and everyone is looking for Reliable renewable energy sources. Where do you think that shifted energy sort of comes into the the focus when we're talking about the global efforts that are going on right now to shift to renewable energy. That's a really good point Bonnie.

So for example, if you bring in a lot of solar and it the solar energy is available from 10 AM to 2 PM only in your community. What do you do with the excess? How do you add more solar?

So that's where we come in. So we're able to shift a lot of that Solar Usage to later on when there are no available solar capacity. And so that's a huge advantage to communities that you need to have a quiver of tools to get to 100% clean energy.

And so we're just one of those tools. So we do a lot of these clean energy shifts. That's interesting Damian for for the AWS clean energy accelerator.

Why is it important for AWS to be specifically targeting clean energy. What is the the initiative behind that right? So I work within a dedicated business group that just focuses on the energy industry as a whole, you know within that business group.

We look at traditional oil and gas we look at Power and utilities and we focus on the energy transition, which is the part of the business that I lead. And what we're really looking at doing is to be able to help our customers scale into that space and address critical challenges that they have across their business. We know that all of our customers can't do this alone.

We need to be able to create an ecosystem of Partners to come along with that and the clean energy accelerator is one of our mechanisms one of many mechanisms. Actually that we have at AWS and Amazon to be able to support and accelerate into this space. So when it comes to technology and the challenges that you've had to face Olin, can you talk a little bit more about what as long as you had this company going?

What if you faced in recent times with the challenges and how is the AWS helped? You meet that? Yeah, that's a good question.

So cybersecurity is a huge issue. And so one huge benefit we get is Amazon has some of the best cybersecurity policies and and Technologies and stacks out there and it starts with our devices or devices can be secured all the way to the end user accessing our systems. And so that is one benefit and we can do this in country too.

So we're in Australia and we can use Amazon for example to put our systems in Australia to meet those strict cyber security laws that are in in ever-present and growing. So that's one advantage we have has challenges though that you've been facing as well that you mentioned cybersecurity. What about the in terms of getting the the supplies that you're mentioning about the solar energy?

Some people will say well, you know, you only have Sun from a certain amount of time. We also do climate change have more extreme weather events. That's affecting our cloud coverage and things like that.

So, how are you accommodating those other concerns? That's a good question. So our company doesn't produce the renewable energy.

So we manage it and there's more than enough for us to manage. So that is not one of our challenge fronts, but we do face the challenge of just getting our costs down. So in every country cost is a major consideration and so the ability to use cloud infrastructure and the ability to use that correctly and the right tools is a is is a requirement in this space and we find that bunny very consistent across the industry as well.

So many of the customers that we're working with a really looking at taking these problems at scale many of them have done demonstration or proof of concept to be able to address some of the critical issues that you'd mentioned with regard to having, you know, limited amounts of energy available from solar or from wind or from storage or complement of assets. We're looking at Building Solutions, then building the capabilities to be able to scale those Solutions out globally so that they can meet you know, the broader environmental challenges that are being Facebook most of our organizations today. Combination coming together to fight the climate crisis and create this new opportunities and clean energy gentlemen.

Thank you so much for joining me on techstrong TV. I wish you both best and we'll be following the progress through 2023. Thank you.

Thanks very much buddy much appreciated. Thanks stay with us. We'll be right back.