Energy by MarketScale

Fibrebond is looking to fill a project manager role based in their Minden Louisiana office.

A Fibrebond Project Manager is Responsible for managing multiple projects associated with power or other related industries from point of sale to delivery. This role is the customer’s single in-house contact, who oversees all project-related tasks, and directs production from estimation to engineering, and will be expected to manage projects with a strong independent judgment.

Fibrebond builds innovative and reliable structures that protect people and mission-critical equipment. Additionally, Fibrebond works with transparency and a customer-focused approach while striving to create a culture that is honest, rewarding and fun.

If this job sounds like a fit for you or someone you know, visit marketscale.com/industries/careers to apply.

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Omeed Badkoobeh, co-founder and CEO of Yotta Energy, began his career in the solar energy with a spark of curiosity. He saw a luxury real estate property that was completely off the grid and powered by solar, a concept pretty novel at the time in the early 2000s.

"I started thinking how mankind has always revolved around using the sun for advancing society and here we are with technology that can power our homes and businesses," Badkoobeh said.

While the solar's growth has been well-documented by analysts in this industry, Badkoobeh finds it fascinating that solar evolved from very counterculture roots.

"The interesting thing is the solar industry, which began 50 years ago for powering satellites and remote power for gas drilling, really got its boost with the hippie movement as a way to power camps," Badkoobeh said. "It became powered even more by the marijuana industry in California."

His curiosity evolved into a solution for the long-standing issue of solar power storage. Unlike other large stationary storage systems, Yotta's solution is mounted behind the solar panel using the panel's own ballast racking system to balance, saving space in often tight quarters such as commercial building rooftops.

Yotta uses lithium-iron-phosphate technology as a safe way to integrate storage, as there is no risk of a cascading thermal runaway.

A hearty steak, an icy smoothie, a chef’s special; we enjoy some of our favorite foods, meals, and conveniences thanks to the cold chain—the use of commercial and industrial facilities that store and ship refrigerated and frozen food. But keeping these cold foods at your neighborhood grocer or restaurant is a costly process. Large refrigerators and cold warehouses strain power grids and tax the environment because of their constant demand for energy.

Using Thermal Energy Storage, Viking Cold combines intelligent controls (cloud-based software, algorithms and sensors) and unique phase change materials to lower the overall cost of power needed to run an industrial freezer.

“We use phase change material, otherwise known as PCM,” Bell said. Capable of storing and releasing large amounts of energy, PCM allows businesses to draw energy during low cost periods of the day, store this energy, and circumnavigate costly peak demand power charges. What's more, Thermal Energy Storage is a lifesaver during power loss. Be it a natural disaster or a grid failure, Viking Cold technology provides the temperature stability that can save food from spoiling and prevent enormous loss.

“Ultimately it’s about economics...quality, and it’s also about sustainability and the environment,” Bell said. The net benefits of cold chain technology trickle into all aspects of a business, from protecting the product, decreasing the demand for energy, and building resiliency by reducing reliance on the grid.

Hurricane Dorian is pummeling the east coast of the United States after wreaking havoc on the Bahamas. On the September 4th episode of Business Casual, Daniel Litwin and Tyler Kern talked to Tim Snyder, the President of Matador Economics and a noted oil and gas industry expert. 

They discussed the impact of the storm on gas prices along the east coast and the stability of the infrastructure to withstand hurricanes and violent storms. Snyder also elaborated on the way that the oil and gas market responds to storms like Hurricane Dorian.

"Markets don't like things that are not predictable," said Snyder. "So, when we get into a situation where we have storms like this coming up right now...we add a layer of risk on the prices."

For more, listen to the full interview from Business Casual. 

Tune in to Business Casual, MarketScale’s live radio broadcast, every Wednesday and Friday at 8 a.m. CST.

In this episode of the Energy Podcast, host Sean Heath sat down with Jonathan Azarcon, executive vice president of marketing and customer solutions at iS5 Communications, to discuss the delicate balance of security versus functionality in the communications and power utility industries.

iS5 Communications, Inc. is a global provider of integrated services and solutions, and manufacturer of intelligent industrial ethernet products. Their products are designed to meet demand requirements of utility sub-stations, transportation, and industrial applications.

In the past decade, there’s been a rise in cyber threats on critical infrastructure, including power utilities, nuclear power, and wastewater utilities, Azarcon explained. “These all impact daily lives,” he said. “So it’s a narrow tightrope that we continuously walk on to ensure we don’t impact reliability and accessibility to the systems.”

Challenges often exist at the intersection of new technology processes and legacy infrastructure or systems. Automation helps mitigate these challenges, but shouldn’t be a completely hands-off solution.

“There’s a lot of degree of thought required to implement a proper system,” Azarcon said. “If you look at power utility customers, they do a lot of proof of concept before putting something into the production network. At the same time, there is technology that can help customers to automate better, but that’s not to say that you shouldn’t still do a proof of concept to ensure that the reliability is guaranteed to perform the way customers expect it to.”

Vendor-neutral consulting is an integral facet of any pipeline system utilizing SCADA systems. This form of consulting effectively employs customer-specific standards to fit the needs of any industry, whether oil and gas, electric utility, or traction power.

Duane Clementson, vice president of operations at UTSI International, possesses extensive experience managing SCADA systems thanks to his work under four different SCADA companies. Mr. Clementson has worked with six different SCADA packages and collaborated with a telecommunications networking company, all while encompassing a variety of energy-related fields.

On today's Energy Podcast, Mr. Clementson explains why SCADA’s application is changing to moderate costs, both in the number of vendors and overall size. “It used to be that there were many more smaller SCADA companies...focused on very narrow niches in the industry,” he said. “Also, those systems tended to be quite small because of the expensive computing power and the slow and expensive communication links.”

Mr. Clementson added that many of today’s major pipeline operating companies have adopted new, large-scale systems with “one or two major control centers controlling a wide array of pipelines.”

According to Mr. Clementson, the stability of SCADA systems is incumbent upon a company’s ability to disperse its data effectively. This can require additional IT systems, communication routes, and offshore facilities.

“As you bring up more and more data, it becomes more important that you offload that data to other systems,” he said.

Mr. Clementson said that frequent verification is essential to any customer’s SCADA network.

“You need a qualified staff and vendor to monitor its health,” Mr. Clementson said.

"Digital transformation" might sound like a vapid buzzword, but make no mistake: when you get down to brass tacks, the digitization of long-held industry processes is providing actionable information from massive amounts of data. On this episode of the Energy Podcast brought to you by MarketScale, we’ll discuss machine learning’s critical impact on oil and gas industry control rooms with Dan Nagala, president and CEO of UTSI International Corporation.

Texas-based UTSI is a vendor-independent consulting and engineering services company that focuses on Industrial Control Systems (ICS) for oil and gas pipelines and related critical infrastructure facilities. Nagala has been leading the company’s initiatives as CEO for an astonishing 30 years and has seen machine learning and artificial intelligence in its earliest iterations.

“AI and machine learning had a rocky start,” Nagala said, explaining how AI has finally come into its own in the last decade.

Nagala shared four types of analytics that are taking hold of critical infrastructure control rooms.

“If you can predict failure before it happens, you can get in there to schedule a maintenance run and avoid a failure that’ll require more time to repair and cost more money,” Nagala said.

The recent discovery of a massive reservoir of oil in the Permian Basin has led to a modern-day gold rush.

The discovery in West Texas helped the United States briefly become a net-exporter of oil for the first time in decades. Although that status may have been short-lived, the boom has brought jobs and economic prosperity to a region and provided a previously unthinkable boost to the American energy sector.

The sudden surge has also resulted extreme economic volatility in the short term. As oil companies and their workers flood the region, prices on the most basic of items react accordingly, making everything from hotel rooms to haircuts fluctuate in cost with every new successful well.

Ed Hirs, Fellow for Natural Resources at BDO, and Energy Fellow at the University of Houston, explained to MarketScale what the Permian’s renaissance means for American consumers, and when the region might see more economic stability.

As more pipeline is laid to take oil to market faster, this boomtown may return to a more stable economic climate, but in the meantime the Permian Basin continues to where a barrel of oil tells a larger story than its sale price.

The oil and gas industry is still as strong as ever, with the Permian Basin right in America's backyard being one of the central locations for this boom. The large sedimentary basin in the southwest area of the U.S. is one of the most prolific oil and natural gas geologic basins in the U.S, and it’s having a significant impact on the global energy market.

We sat down with expert Eric Quinnelly, Regional Manager over the Permian Basin for Advanced Industrial Devices USA to talk to us about what’s happening in the market, how this boom is affecting tangential markets, and how his company is supporting the industry. AID delivers engineering, automation solutions, motors, and more for the energy industry.

“It’s been a record year for the company, and much of that has to do with the Permian Basin. There’s a constant influx of new players in the region; it’s an ever-changing landscape that we are working hard to support," Quinnelly said.

To ensure that those players in the field have what they need to process the oil and gas, AID has focused on being a true partner to companies. Oil rigging takes high quality and reliable equipment, so engineers and manufacturers feel the ups and downs of the industry as much as the riggers themselves. That personal stake makes partnerships more important.

“We’re not your average panel and motor shop. First, we consider ourselves agnostic, offering multiple brands and solutions based on what customers need. We want to partner, collaborate, and grow together. Ultimately, we want to provide the highest quality product,” Quinnelly said.

Because the company is, at its core, a motor shop, and has a rich history in engineering, they can create custom turnkey solutions. “Our engineering experience and motor shop set us apart from others. We’re providing motors, automation, and controls, so it’s a one-stop-shop. We also have a service team that can maintain equipment in the field,” he said.

Quinnelly also talked about a new impressive motor that’s being used in the Permian Basin. “The new TorqueMasterXD is designed for H pumps and has many unique features. It has strong, internal winding, low vibration, and holds a surge of up to 3600 volts. It’s the best motor on the market, in my opinion,” he said.

Automation has become the core of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and this emphasis on efficiency is no where more apparent than in the world of energy, specifically the oil industry. Automation is evolving the industry, offering new opportunities and structurally changing how professionals approach their day-to-day work. Dan Allford, President of ARC Specialties, joined the podcast today to explain why he thinks this is one of the most positive evolutions the industry has seen in a long time.

“It’s an exciting time in the oil industry. What once was impossible or too hazardous is now feasible through automation and robotics. For example, automation is facilitating fracking, creating profitable wells that would have never been before,” Allford said.

ARC has been busy devising new products to empower the oil and gas industry, mostly around the equipment needed out in the field. “Robotics is becoming essential in the industry. First, they improve safety, often removing workers from danger. Collaborative robots can actually work together with professionals to do more,” Allford said.

He also recounts his and the company’s experience at the recently concluded OTC (Offshore Technology Conference), where they introduced a new AI-powered product. “Welding is one of the most challenging parts of developing equipment, it's dependent on highly skilled welders. Lots of variations can occur, which the welder must account for and use their experience to configure correctly. Well, we’ve taken the knowledge that welders have along with data collected from a 2D laser to create a program that can compensate for these variations. Data and AI combine for a new technological solution,” Allford said.

OTC also gave a perfect representation of automation at work, focusing conversation on the impact that these efficiency-driven solutions will have on oil rigging for years to come. Listen to Allford give his insights on the industry, the future of technology, and on additional takeaways from the show.