Age of Adoption

This episode of Raising Your Antenna was recorded live in Salt Lake City at the Solar Power International podcast center. On this episode, we are lucky to have one of the visionaries of the distributed energy movement, Dan Nordloh. Dan is General Manager of DCentrIQ, a newly formed division of Faith Technologies. DCentrIQ is providing distributed energy technology and capabilities for a sustainable future through innovative distributed energy resource systems and Internet of Energy (IoE) control platforms.

Dan shares his expertise with us about the DER revolution, both the opportunities and challenges, how it will force utilities to change their business model, and how battery technology is the next frontier in widespread DER adoption.

Tune in as we discuss:

-Distributed Energy Resources (DER)

Learn more about https://www.dcentriq.com/

Special thanks to Jim Spano and RadiantREIT for sponsoring the SPI podcast center

Today on RYA, we host Henry Gordon-Smith the Founder and Managing Director of Agritecture Consulting. Henry has a lot to say about the current AgTech scene, both the business and moral imperative driving the industry and where we are, as a society, both making strides and falling short.

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NYC AgTech Week is 9/21 - 9/26.

On this episode of Raising Your Antenna, we are lucky enough to feature ZenCity and its CEO Eyal Feder-Levy. ZenCity perfectly fits the model of a company that uses data, as captured through “social listening” and other publicly available platforms, to enhance our everyday lives. As Eyal will explain, ZenCity’s algorithms capture anonymous conversations and feedback and transform it into actionable items for elected officials and municipal bureaucrats who can then respond and govern accordingly. To take one of the innumerable examples, a city official may decide to change the garbage pickup from Tuesday to Wednesday. The driver of the decision may be cost or some other consideration but either way, the municipal department in charge of waste is eager to understand the impact and consequences of the change. Until ZenCity, there was no real real-time feedback mechanism to analyze the success or failure of the program. Today, municipalities that have signed up with ZenCity (as of this taping there were already 50 clients) can get this feedback and act on it in an efficient and expeditious manner.

Eyal will discuss this, as well as provide some advice, and motivation, for early-stage companies that are hoping to sell their products and services to the public sector.

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Learn more about ZenCity on their website here: https://zencity.io/

Your energy bill is made up of several charges, including the cost of transmission and distribution of the energy. But only the energy portion of the bill is competitively priced. The wires and pipes that bring electricity and natural gas to your home, business or factory are still owned by the traditional utility company, and the transmission and distribution charges are still set by regulators. But the energy is competitively priced and provided by suppliers, called ESCOs, competing for the customer’s business, which helps lower electricity rates. The utility will provide one consolidated bill, which helps keep shopping for energy uncomplicated.

The bottom line is in certain states, a part of your utility bill is competitively priced, if you opt-in.

This market, called the retail energy market, is the subject of today's episode of Raising Your Antenna. Joining us to demystify the retail energy markets and address the challenges and opportunities in today’s retail energy market are Jack Doueck and Larry Leiken, co-founders of the Energy Marketing Conferences. EMC is the largest gathering of retail energy executives in North America and it takes place twice a year: Houston, Texas in the Spring and New York City in the Fall. This year's conference in NYC will be September 12 at the Midtown Hilton Hotel.

Complex problems demand complex solutions. While we would all love to have the silver bullet to solve a marital crisis, business challenges, Middle East peace or climate change, the reality is that the solutions to these types of problems are usually multifarious but related and attack the problem from different directions. On today’s episode of Raising Your Antenna, we are going to address the threat of climate change but from a non-binary, non-zero sum game and a non-linear perspective.

Guiding us on this journey is Shanna Rappaport, Vice President and Executive Director of Verge at Green Biz Group. For those of you who are not familiar, VERGE is the leading platform for accelerating the clean economy, convening the world’s largest companies, public sector leaders, utilities and technology innovators to foster a diverse ecosystem of influencers advancing solutions at the intersection of technology and sustainability. Shana has been evangelizing on behalf of the clean economy for more than a decade and has been spearheading Verge’s efforts to reverse climate change since 2013.

Tune in as we discuss:

-The carbon tech industry

VERGE 19 will be held October 22 - 24 at the Oakland Convention Center.

The range of transportation options at the fingertips of contemporary urban commuters is both astonishing and at times, overwhelming. For the Luddites, filling up your car with petroleum, sitting in a car for an hour and a half to complete a 15-mile trip and then spending a week's worth of salary on parking is still an option. For those that don't want to drive into the office, there is the option of public transportation, a mode of transport that depending on the city can range from clean and convenient to inefficient and unsafe. For the technophiles, there are ride sharing and micro-mobility solutions that have dramatically changed the urban landscape: dockless e-scooters and e-bikes, traditional bikes, and Ubers and Lyfts. Depending on the weather, your athletic profile and risk tolerance, there is an option to help you navigate our cities in a fashion that is often better for the environment, reduces congestion and can be economically more affordable.

So who is managing all of this and is there a way to have all of the different options on one easy to use interface that compares and contrasts by price, modality, accessibility and even environmental impact as measured by fuel type?

On this episode of Raising Your Antenna, we speak with Scott Shepard, Chief Commercial Officer of Free2Move, a Berlin-based company that has developed a solution to managing the puzzle that is the new urban transportation environment. In addition to discussing the consumer-facing app, Scott and I will delve into the role of cities in facilitating the transformation of their streets and highways and how Free2Move is partnering with said cities to deliver the data to manage the demand, trip patterns and utilization of these emerging transportation options.

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On this episode, we are fortunate to have Raj Pannu as our guest. Raj is a deep thinker who, in his current position as Co-Founder of Smart Cities NY, has a platform from which he can bring together the key stakeholders who are in a position to impact the future of our cities through technological, economic and social innovation. Raj is non-ideological in his approach to helping to shape the future of our cities. He is open to all ideas and welcoming to people from all political persuasion and his conference embodies that ethos.

Smart Cities NY is North America's leading global conference for innovators and decision-makers who are improving life in the cities of tomorrow. The conference convenes innovators and decision-makers who are improving life in the cities of tomorrow including: city leaders, CEOs, and startups. Raj and his team take a holistic look at the innovations in technology and infrastructure that are making cities more livable, equitable, and sustainable.

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Don’t miss Smart Cities NY on May 13 - May 15! Learn more and register at https://smartcitiesny.com/

How does a country with the population and size that is slightly larger than the state of New Jersey create an ecosystem that has successfully emerged as a hub for smart mobility innovation?

On this episode, we chat with Orlie Dahan, Executive Director of Ecomotion, a week long event in Tel Aviv that brings together innovators, entrepreneurs, engineers, OEM c-suite, investors and public sectors officials that are all moving the smart mobility industry forward. EcoMotion is a JV of the Israel Innovation Institute (private NGO) together with the Government, the Fuel Choices & Smart Mobility Initiative (under the PMO) and the Ministry of Economy. Orlie’s insights into the nature of Israel’s smart mobility ecosystem as well as the drivers of its growth is worth a listen.

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Learn more about Ecomotion and register for Ecomotion Week 2019 here https://www.ecomotionweek.com/

We're excited to have Omer Keilaf, CEO and Co-Founder of Innoviz Technologies. Innoviz is a leading manufacturer of high-performance, solid-state LiDAR sensors and perception software that enable the mass-production of autonomous vehicles. Innoviz has announced two major pieces of news. First, Innoviz became the first LiDAR manufacturer to ink a major OEM deal when it was selected by BMW for its InnovizOne LiDAR and computer vision software for series production of vehicles beginning in 2021. Second, Innoviz recently announced the completion of a $132 million Series C Round.

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Learn more at https://innoviz.tech/

On this episode, we're lucky to have Mark DeSantis, CEO of RoadBotics, an exciting startup housed in Carnegie Mellon’s acclaimed AV lab, that promises to address our country’s road infrastructure problem, thereby paving the way for a future of economic bounty, mobility transformation and logistical nirvana. RoadBotics uses artificial intelligence and smartphones to help governments and engineering firms make data-driven decisions with objective road assessments.

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