EV Club of CT's smart electrical panel discussion featuring SPAN, electrician, & homeowner
Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post or video. Both are intended to highlight the benefits of SPAN by featuring a SPAN representative's technical presentation, two of Connecticut's SPAN customers, and an electrician who installed them.
Presentation (PDF)
Presentation (Google Slides)
Here's the Google Doc version of the presentation, complete with animations. Enjoy!
- Here's the PDF of the presentation, enjoy!
Video
Backstory
My wife and I recently moved into a 33-year-old house, and our two EVs moved with us. We decided to remove the 33-year-old natural gas furnace, choosing to go all in on heat pumps for cooling, heating, and hot water. Between the EVs and the heat pumps, we needed a lot more room for circuit breakers, with hopes to eventually add solar and battery storage/backup. We required a panel ready for all of that, and we found one. This panel was created by a former Tesla Powerwall engineer, and it shows.
We learned a lot in our electrification journey, and this video and presentation will help highlight SPAN's solution to your sustainability goals, featuring the representative from SPAN who was aware of my Connecticut installation, and the electrician who did the work.
Below, you'll find a copy of the emailed event announcement.
Consider also signing up for EV Club of Connecticut's monthly emails by scrolling down here and filling out the simple form. That way you'll automatically get the great event announcements, like this one!
See also the original event announcement in the EV Club of CT's calendar.
Virtual Meeting, January 17th at 7 PM ET
With today’s higher-powered home EV charging and a greener trend toward electrifying everything - heat pump-based heating, cooling, and hot water - there’s a challenge. Typical homes have 200 amps of power available from their dumb panels, with a wire from that utility that can’t handle more than that anyway. How can you add several new high power circuits without worry? What if a smart panel could continuously monitor which circuits are using exactly how much electricity in your home? If you have or plan to get solar and/or battery storage, what if that same smart panel will allow you to easily choose or change which circuits are “Must Have” vs “Nice to Have” using their slick app? The idea is to extract the most value from your investments, maintain your family’s comfort for longer during outages, and provide accurate remaining runtime estimates.
We have Corrigan Harreys, Regional Sales Manager at SPAN, covering the product history and many benefits of the highly-rated SPAN smart panel, along with costs, smart EV charging options, and incentives. Next up will be electrician/SPAN Certified Installer David Houseman, the owner of Pure Energy LLC, who will go over the details of the initial planning visit, the duration of the actual install, and what's to be expected throughout the entire process.
Next up, Paul Braren, a member of the EV Club of Connecticut Leadership Team. Paul recently moved, and had David install a new SPAN panel in his 33 year old home. He can now handle charging both his EVs at up to 48A speeds, along with new, fully electric heat-pump-based HVAC and hot water systems. Paul will kick off the 3 person “Span Panel Panel” (discussion), with each panelist sharing their unique, first-hand experiences and lessons learned. Finally, we’ll open the Zoom up to attendee for Q&A. Prior to this big event, you might enjoy checking out span.io/app where you’ll also find the easy and free to try SPAN Home app! Free registration is required. You may need to paste the link in a browser. The public is welcome. Feel free to share the link.
When: Jan 17, 2023 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
More Video
Photos
See also at TinkerTry
If you want to sign-up for an RSS feed of EV-related articles at TinkerTry, here's the link!
- Rheem heat pump water heater 3-year ownership summary, as featured on Undecided with Matt Ferrell
Jun 15 2022
See also
Transcript
Here's YouTube's auto-generated English transcript of "EV Club of Connecticut's smart electrical panel discussion featuring SPAN, electrician, & homeowner" video:
0:00
tonight we have something a little different we have all three of us here we have a company that makes the panel
0:05
we have my electrician we have me all of us from Connecticut but everything we're talking about here applies to pretty much anyone in North America and uh
0:12
Corrigan I'm going to hand it off to you maybe you do Market to Canada as well all in North America uh right now we are in the U.S Canada
0:19
and Puerto Rico are our next territories that we'll be working to get into and
0:24
it's just great to have you here tonight and that we were able to find a contractor an electrician who was able
0:31
to not just do this but had much experience with both EV charging installation and span panel charging so
0:39
I set the table for you Corrigan take it away thank you again for joining us tonight we really appreciate your time yeah appreciate everyone for for joining
0:46
in tonight um and having me here to go through this with you um as Paul mentioned I'm a Connecticut
0:51
native so I grew up in Essex on the shoreline um moved out of state for a while
0:57
working for a few different architectural lighting companies um and then when I joined span about a
1:02
year ago I was able to pick where I could live so I moved back to Connecticut in the West Hartford area
1:09
um so excited to be here with the home state folks um a little bit of the agenda would all go
1:15
through kind of who is span what is the company Vision the home energy landscape really wide its ban come to exist today
1:24
what does span do who should get span work should consider guts banned and how do you get spanned most importantly if
1:31
interested so company overview span was founded in 2018 by the former head of the Powerball
1:39
team at Tesla our trial um and he brought over a few of the engineers from
1:44
his team so the core team for the first year was about four Engineers really doing grunt work in someone's basement
1:51
right figuring out what to do with the panel um since then we've launched two generations of our panel so we're
1:56
already on our second generation panel and in Q4 of last year we launched our
2:01
compatible companion EV charger um so it's been a great journey for span
2:07
we've grown like crazy it's been really good to see this take off all the way from California through Connecticut and
2:13
Maine and seeing the different Nuance of the regions and how they take on like a product like this
2:18
um but obviously with that in terms of the energy and solar space many companies are startups or young
2:25
companies in the electrical space we are a relatively new company right you think of the typical painting manufacturers if
2:32
you walk down to your basement Eaton Siemens Murray Square D they've been around for a number of years right where
2:39
we're kind of the newer company on the Block um but we have some pretty major investors right we had some
2:45
announcements come out late last year that we met our series B for funding um Big Green Building investment firm
2:52
fifth Wall Wellington Management Amazon Alexa fun to name a few um that just kind of shows the backing
2:58
and those who have believed in the company um if anybody read about CEs or was lucky to go to CES in Vegas last week
3:04
which is the Consumer Electronics Show we were actually in the Amazon Booth which was pretty cool to see how all
3:11
those Integrations work with our panel in terms of those who have purchased our product and done some
3:17
different videos who've we've worked with us friends have spanned providing the panels to them there's a great bit
3:23
of YouTube comment uh content out there um the likes of the what's inside side family is a new one Jonathan Scott from
3:31
HGTV Ben Sullins Matt Farrell Matt Reisinger locally NS Builders
3:37
um he's a local Builder up in the Boston area doing content there they're putting a span panel into one of their projects
3:44
um have kind of taken the product and given their very um open honest opinion on it most of
3:50
it's very good obviously as we grow we take a lot of those nuances to harden areas where we want to grow which is a
3:57
really good thing being a smaller company we take a lot of that feedback very seriously and there's a lot more
4:02
access to us to talk about things that are going on with the panel and areas where we can improve it and so forth and
4:09
then in terms of awards um last year was our first year at the Builder show we won two best dubs which
4:15
is kind of unheard of this year at the Builder show which is actually in two weeks we're up for another two best of
4:20
um with the same product our span panel and our EV charger so it's pretty exciting time as we go to these shows
4:27
and we are a standout product Corrigan before you advance that slide folks should notice um we have other
4:33
people who own this panel like Matt Farrell right on here with us tonight which is an extra special treat for the
4:38
Q a section at the end it's great to have sounds like multiple owners of your product right here tonight so that
4:44
should really help us out later on in the presentation for the span panel panel discussion as well as the open q a
4:49
afterwards of course um so talked a little about what span is
4:54
where we're at today as a company why did span come to be right you look at all the factors going on in the world
5:00
today um it's a dramatic shift in how homeowners are looking at their energy usage what they're doing in and around
5:07
their homes and how to tailor that um I think we're in a pretty unique position in the Northeast I'm sure we've
5:14
all read about National Grid eversource UI 40 rate hikes where you say how do I
5:20
tailor my home so that my bill does not experience that rate hike at such an extreme condition right we get hot humid
5:27
Summers if you have central air that's going to be a big ticket item on your electric bill so what are the things
5:34
going on to to enable better usage of your bill and save you some money if you can over time
5:39
um first off EVS right I don't think there's a car commercial today that is a
5:45
internal combustion engine I think they're all electric vehicles that growth is going to continue and with the
5:51
vehicle 2x what we call it our vehicle to home powering your your home with your car
5:57
we're going to see even bigger growth there um residential solar alone has gonna have big growth
6:03
um I'm sure we've all seen solar trucks in our neighborhoods right there have been a number of solar sales reps through all
6:09
the neighborhoods in West Hartford where I live um I personally am getting solar this spring which I'm pretty excited about to
6:15
kind of curtail that that energy bill and we're going to see that continue to grow and as the battery manufacturers
6:21
kind of stabilize their supply chain and like we said that that new Nuance of car
6:28
batteries powering home that growth is going to continue to grow and span is
6:33
there to enable better usage of all of these things right today everything goes back to an analog piece of equipment
6:39
which is really just an on off switch but it should really be the brain of your home and we'll get into that in a little bit further and overall when we
6:47
look at the the nation holistically there's over 50 million homes that need an electrical panel upgrade and this is
6:55
not an item like your nest thermostat that you're touching day in and day out most homeowners don't necessarily understand
7:02
and even from my standpoint I came from the electrical industry on the lighting side I didn't know the nuances with
7:07
electrical panels of what I could and couldn't add and the exact limitations there as you want to
7:12
Electrify um and when we talk about that electrification right electric homes are
7:19
becoming a bigger and bigger Trend even on the Builder side they're trying to remove those natural gas or fossil fuel
7:27
based homes and go all electric we're really there to enable you know the better adoption of that of Mini Splits
7:35
of solar and Battery of electrical vehicle Chargers and we're seeing this grow more and more whether or not you're
7:41
getting it today maybe you're considering it in the future and that's something that's really interesting that
7:46
we're trying to tie into for those homeowners and when we we talk about this band home
7:53
and what that looks like um again we're trying to enable the
7:59
rapid adoption of these things so we look at a home like this that has solar battery maybe generator
8:06
um they're all going to essentially a central Hub of your home right now you have a lot of smart devices in your home
8:12
most likely we want to make a a true smart home versus smart devices right so
8:18
feeding in Lutron devices into your panel your mini splits your Philips Hue
8:23
powered lights back into another smart device to enable these things further whether it's to curtail energy bills get
8:30
insights into your home and just control them holistically and one of the interesting things about this band panel
8:36
is you have to have a UL listing right underwriter's laboratory for electrical
8:41
panels which we have we also have a UL listing for in energy management system
8:47
um that means that we can tie in different Integrations like solar and battery and like
8:52
um like solar and Battery as well as EV charging and do different load sheddings
8:58
so that homeowners have a better experience with these devices as they add them
9:04
so what does span do anyone with their phone out can go and
9:11
scan these QR codes to kind of take a look at the span home demo app if
9:16
anybody hasn't done that today I would definitely recommend kind of following along as I go through the next few slides and we can take a look at what
9:23
those um what that app looks like and how you're really going to have control over your
9:29
app um and your panel as great as our panel looks LED tape lights in there you're
9:36
going to be doing most of the work with span through your phone which is a really interesting use case versus a typical panel today
9:42
so when we look at the home screen you're going to understand if you have solar and Battery right if you just have
9:49
grid you're just going to have that purple middle section where energy is flowing through your home where it's
9:54
coming from and where you're storing it or sending it back to the grid and that's a pretty interesting use case
9:59
because today you'll be able to if you have that really balance it again say um
10:05
your solar Edge or your Tesla solar system to ensure that what you're registering with your with your solar
10:11
utility company is matching what's actually flowing through your through your panel um you can also tap onto the the Sun the
10:18
grid the battery to get those deeper level of insights to understand how much energy you're using what's
10:24
covered by solar down to the Circuit level or in your battery do different load shedding which we'll get into
10:30
into in a little bit but this is a great interface and you can do a simulated home within the App Store and it's a
10:36
pretty interesting way to get a first-hand experience of what it would be like to own a span panel
10:42
when we talk about the circuit level data right so I mentioned that span has an energy management listing so
10:48
we use off-the-shelf Breakers that you would normally have in your traditional panel today we talk at the relay level
10:54
in our panel which essentially means we can determine at the circuit level how much energy using down to the watt
11:01
kilowatt hour percentage in your home so we talk about electric bills going up by
11:06
40 percent you're probably going to want to know where you're using the most electricity within your home and maybe tailor usage
11:13
or do different things to automatically shift circuits on and off as needed so
11:19
you get that different level of view that really granular level of you at the circuit level
11:24
day week month year how much energy you're using um so say you go from May to June the
11:32
basement is on you look at it and you say wow I had a huge Spike there well maybe the kids are out of school for the
11:37
summer and the Xbox TV lights haven't turned off in in weeks um it's a pretty good use case there you
11:43
also have on off control tons of different use cases there that as homeowners I'm sure we've all been
11:49
through um like I said live in West Hartford a house built in 1953 my front doorbell
11:54
and my oven are on the same circuit so when I was updating my doorbell it took
11:59
me about 30 minutes to figure out which circuit I needed to flip off in order to hardwire a new doorbell
12:06
um first home second home you don't want certain Outlets or lights to be used by
12:11
renters turn those on and off as needed when you're there or not there so there's a
12:16
lot of different use cases for why you would want to monitor things at the circuit level and then also have control
12:21
of circuits on off at the circuit level and one of the interesting things also that we do is tying in with Amazon Alexa
12:28
you can actually set up routines where you could schedule circuits to turn on
12:33
and off throughout different times during the day so if we think of time of use rates in Connecticut you could have
12:39
certain things shed at certain times through your Amazon Alexa routine settings that's how we do it today we're
12:45
looking at different ways to enable that with a little bit more detail but right now we're utilizing Amazon Alexa just as
12:51
a really good use case uh because there may be other things in the home that are already connected in with that
12:58
and when we talk about backup with span um solar and battery is a growing
13:03
is a growing installation in the Northeast right I'll say that versus California it's still very far behind
13:09
the average number of homes that have that but if you have solar and if you have battery
13:15
your in a way very limited for the investment that you're making
13:20
um so oftentimes when you have a backup battery solution solar Edge energy Bank LG chem battery
13:27
Tesla powerwall you're limited in what you can back up and when most likely you
13:32
will have a critical loads panel that has six or twelve circuits and those are what you're going to have backed up but
13:38
we live in New England we have outages in the winter we have outages in the summer so most likely you're going to
13:44
want different things backed up during those different seasons so rather than a 6 or 12 circuit critical loads
13:50
panel span turns into your virtual critical loads panel so that during an outage you have three buckets that you
13:56
can drop those circuits into must have nice to have not non-essential at any point in time
14:03
during an outage you can move those circuits within those three buckets so you can see here on the screen in this
14:08
little video caption we have here you can see the day the hour the minutes
14:13
changing As you move circuits right so not only is it an insane level of detail for how much time you have left on your
14:19
battery but also you have ultimate flexibility as things change family changes house changes of what you want
14:26
backed up and when and span will also do automatic load shedding so we'll always shed the non-essential circuits for you
14:32
that 50 battery life we will shed the nice to have circuits for you and when you're doing your installation
14:38
if there's certain circuits you never want shed say your your kids also have access to this your installer can tag
14:44
things um as non-sheddable the same as you can tag them as sheddable so that you have
14:49
an extra level of security as you see fit um and for us in the Northeast like I mentioned solar and battery is is
14:56
growing this is something we're looking to add in with whole home generators as well today you can do automatic you can
15:03
do manual load shedding in your home app if you have a whole home generator we're working to build in some of that
15:09
software it's just a little bit different um the computer or the Gateway of a battery
15:15
versus the technology that is in a generator um but we have some different test
15:21
studies that we've done that we essentially can extend your battery life by about 40 percent which also means if
15:26
you're looking at multiple batteries maybe you need two instead of three one instead of two which is a huge cost
15:32
savings um so there's there's a lot of different areas within the solar and Battery World where span is a big investment but it's
15:39
actually in some cases a smaller investment what you would have to do to right size or get the best use out of
15:46
your your battery backup solution and in the case of generators you can really right size your whole home generator
15:51
maybe you don't need that really big generator you can get a smaller size that's a little bit less costly
15:57
foreign but probably something you guys are all interested in as this is the the EV Club
16:03
of Connecticut span and EV Chargers um so we do a few different things in terms of EV charging today
16:11
if you have a span panel no matter if it's a Tesla wall connector a juice box charger a span EV charger
16:19
anyone gets a full level to charge and what I mean by that is today to get a full level to charge you would need a 60
16:25
amp breaker for your 48 amp level 2 car charger if you have 100 amp service if
16:31
you have 200 amp service you may not have room for that full 60 amp breaker to go in which means you've just
16:37
invested in some cases high dollar values for your EV but you have to derate your charger or
16:44
use a 240 Volt Plug-In which can take depending on your scenario up to three
16:50
days you charge your car which is not the experience you want after you've invested a nice chunk of change into your EV
16:57
um so how do we do this because we're an energy management system the 60 amp breaker does not need to be taken into
17:04
account during load calcs per the NEC code you don't have to count 60 amps in
17:10
your total load calc for the 80 rule um with span as an energy management
17:15
system your installer will tag the EV charging breaker as shattable and we'll shed the breaker for you as needed if
17:22
your home is going to go over its Max Capacity so simple on off if it's a span and a
17:27
Tesla charger for example if you have the full span system a span and a span EV charger rather than a one for one
17:34
load shed which is not always the best case for for your situation it will actually power throttle so it's a
17:40
dynamic charger it'll move from four amps all the way up to 48 amps depending on what's going on in your home but if
17:47
you're at an in a situation where maybe it's only 20 amps that puts you over your 80 rule you'll have a full
17:54
Dynamic charge versus just losing your entire EV charger so it's a little bit more of a flexible solution when your
18:01
service size is constrained but as EV charging grow EV
18:06
installations grow as EV cars grow and you have two of those you may want two
18:13
charges for your home this is really going to come into play so that you don't have to do an expensive service upgrade which can again be costly or can
18:21
just be time consuming depending on how the utility company is and how long they can take to get out to your home so when
18:27
you have EV charging um installation coming up think about span depending on your situation it may make
18:34
it a little bit more flexible quicker install and in some cases um a less expensive install if you if
18:40
you're talking service upgrades as well so really flexible solution and truthfully for a lot of the homeowners
18:45
that we do business with um in the Northeast this is one of the most common problems we're solving and
18:51
why homeowners are getting spanned versus the solar and Battery setup just in terms of you know more homeowners are
18:58
getting EVS today than they are solar and battery will that change in the future most likely but that's the Nuance
19:04
of the Northeast versus say California Arizona Florida even
19:12
and when we recap a little bit of of span right we're really making our panel
19:17
to get better use out of your electrification upgrades and your renewable upgrades
19:23
um so you want to make a smarter more energy efficient home we want to give you the the monitoring solution that you
19:29
want as electric bills and rates rise we want to give you that Insight so you can make the correct decisions for your home
19:35
and we want to give you that control also for your home rather than having six different smart devices we want to
19:40
give you an entire smart home with everything tying into our system and as we grow as a company as we do more
19:47
software updates everything we do is an over-the-air update so our panel is extremely over built so that as we come
19:53
out with Solutions this year next year the year after even our generation one panel can do everything Our Generation
19:59
two panel and we consider that kind of core to our belief system to make sure that Hardware is one thing we want all
20:06
of our software to be backwards compatible and as you make these updates to backup
20:11
systems whether it's battery or generator you should really get the best use out of it because they are expensive
20:17
installations they're expensive products that you're putting in you should have the most flexible solution possible
20:23
um EV charging right you invest in an EV you should be able to charge it faster cleaner smarter and
20:30
future with us during an outage so that you can utilize what you're storing with your battery and again all of this kind of tied into
20:37
one app rather than having four or five different apps um certain ones we can bring in right so
20:43
solar Battery regenerator Systems EV charging all into one app we know we're not covering maybe your Google home app
20:51
uh your Lutron app your SimpliSafe app but we're working to build in as as much
20:57
as we can into our system and looking into different apis for whole home systems as as folks realize that they
21:04
want to bring you know the 10 apps in their phone you know into one app so those are some of the things that we look for
21:11
and who should who should get span right so we say anyone updating their updating or upgrading their panel it's a Once in
21:17
a Lifetime up update you're most likely going to do it once in your life hopefully uh unless you move homes and
21:22
you run into the situation again I say anyone upgrading their panel but really I mean anyone should look at this
21:29
and consider it as they update their panel if EV is not an interest to you if solar battery is not an interest to you
21:36
it may not be the right solution for the cost but in order to get the most out of your EV charging solution to get the
21:43
most out of your solar and Battery span is a very good solution to enable
21:48
um just really the most flexibility the most data the most control out of those items and there are in those scenarios
21:56
cost benefits to using span versus um critical loads panel versus derating
22:02
a Charger versus doing a full service upgrade to enable full level to charging
22:07
and we'll look at further things down the road like qualifying events we have at the bottom there hot water heaters
22:12
heat pumps pool saunas how can we tie into those those different items
22:18
talked about EV charging so I won't go into this too much but I think it's pertinent for you guys is look at your
22:24
panel understanding what's available for you to charge at home how much amperage
22:30
you have available and if not take a look at span and see if that can help enable the full level to charge
22:36
um we get a lot of homeowners that purchase the car first and this is holistically across the U.S they get
22:41
home they have 100 amp service they have 10 amps of availability to put a charger not a great experience to have
22:47
essentially three days to charge your car not what you want after investing that in an Eevee
22:52
and maximizing your your solar and Battery investment right as that becomes more prominent they're great solutions
22:59
to curtail your electric bill um they're also just great for the environment right but optimize it the
23:05
best you can um and this is where span can take the place of things like critical loads panels to make it more flexible and for
23:12
us it's really important right summer outages versus winter outages you don't want something tied that's a winter
23:18
outage item in the summer or vice versa get the best experience the most flexible experience so that as things in
23:25
your home change family changes you're set for those um I hate to call them natural disasters
23:30
but that's that's what they are with these extreme snowstorms um the Hurricanes that come this will
23:36
really enable a flexible solution where you're comfortable with what's going to happen during an outage um I lost power Christmas Eve wasn't fun
23:44
wish I had had a backup solution right um would have saved a little bit of food there for the family the next day
23:52
um and we talk about the inflation reduction act you guys talked about at the beginning this is something we're
23:57
we're excited about um but I'll say from the span side this is what we've at a very high level
24:03
digested always talk to your tax professional your installer about how to
24:10
um get the right paperwork to do this but then also what you qualify for so these are very high level but this is
24:16
what we've digested which is pretty exciting for you guys um the 30 tax credit that you'd have
24:22
with uh solar you can now include a span panel in that which is great because most likely it's going to be over 25 to
24:29
30 years so that 4 500 panel cost can get put over that that lifespan with a
24:35
30 tax credit back which is great if you already have solar and you're adding
24:40
battery maybe you want to add a span panel in conjunction with that same deal 30 tax credit put over the lifetime of
24:47
of what your Solar Company is financing with you really great solution to get extra tax credit back for that
24:53
investment if you're just doing a Spam panel and this is really cool because rewired America had a big hand in
24:59
writing the bill um very interesting website also to to just take a look at holistically if you're interested in this stuff you can
25:06
get up to a 600 tax credit for your span panel um which every penny count this
25:11
because it is an investment without a doubt so it's great that now this is being put in for those Investments you
25:18
can get some sort of tax credit back um some of the other ones we see and this is tagging as low to moderate
25:25
income so one of the things with this portion right this is all federal low to moderate income worse
25:32
understanding that that's going to be at the state level so the state can choose to do it or not to do it they can choose
25:39
to ramp it down or they can choose to add more to this but what the initial bill States is that a low to moderate
25:45
income which is varied across state region
25:50
County you could get up to four thousand dollars for a rebate for a panel which
25:56
covers all about 500 of the material cost and then twenty five hundred dollars for installation so in on
26:03
average that can cover almost all of your spam panel cost and installation cost
26:08
um so that's a great one again we have to see how the states activate that and how quickly that that money is used up
26:14
but it's a very interesting one to definitely take a look at um and then the the EV charging at home
26:20
one thousand dollar tax credit um that's a really great one there's a lot of different incentives out there as you
26:27
add your own EV charger for us it's banned in Connecticut in particular we just
26:34
um got energy STAR certified which is great to have in general for Ev charger our next step is to work with the likes
26:40
of eversource UI um if there's anyone from Massachusetts National Grid to have it
26:47
on their approved list so that there's another incentive there but Energy Star Wars our first box we had to check which
26:53
has some lead times to it so that's been done our next step is to look at it at the more local level with those
26:59
different um utility companies so we can add again another rebate or incentive for you to
27:05
add um to get back I should say as you add span and span driver recharger and we
27:10
have a little custom calculator here that you can look at online this is readily available on the inflation
27:16
reduction act or rewiring America site I'll say it's It's relatively accurate
27:22
um but always check with your tax professional on what you're truly eligible for but it
27:28
gives you a good ballpark number but we've seen in certain areas that it's it's not
27:34
hyper accurate um so we say take a look at it play around with it and then check with your tax professional but overall
27:40
it's really exciting to see these ITC investment tax credits the high efficiency electric home rebates added
27:47
into items like span smart panels EV Chargers um holistically to so that these are
27:53
expensive upgrades it's good to have either rebate or incentive back and we see that as something very valuable and
27:59
we saw a number of homeowners kind of waiting for 2023 to tackle these projects because of these extra
28:04
incentives that are available and how to get span right
28:10
um if you go on our website you'll see a get quote button a ton of other news
28:15
um videos on our website but really you'll click the get quote and you'll have a consultation with
28:21
um in the Northeast we will connect you with a span installer to do your consultation set up a site visit and do
28:27
your installation day we do sell direct to consumers in four states none of which are in the Northeast so we rely
28:34
very heavily on our network of licensed and certified electricians one of which we have on the call to go through and
28:40
really you come to us we'll match you with the proper installer so that they're not two hours away from you which a little
28:46
bit impossible in Connecticut pending traffic I'll say um and they can really set up the next
28:52
steps for consultation site visit installation day and you'll fill out a really simple online form on our website
28:58
that looks like that go through the items you want the items you have um and we're turning that around I'll
29:05
say within one to two weeks to get you set up sometimes it's a day just depending on demand but I'll say we've
29:11
seen such an increase that we have kind of a rework in our organization I have
29:16
one person solely focused on connecting homeowners that come through our system with their installers to make sure that
29:21
we're keeping up with that demand so we really value the homeowners coming to us even though it's a very unique item and
29:28
getting them set up with the contractors respectively quickly with contractors we trust that we know will do really good
29:34
work and I know I went through a lot there but it sounds like we'll leave questions
29:40
to the end so appreciate everyone's time thus far
29:45
thank you so much Corrigan yeah one question quick question came in about a thousand dollar incentive if someone already has an EV charger so before we
29:51
go over to David if you could just maybe knock off that one question there for Marion go back what slide if you could or two slides I think
29:58
yeah there it is bottom right yeah so what we've understood from this thus far
30:03
and this would have to be a little bit vetted is that because these are new for 2023 you can go back as long as it
30:09
hasn't happened in 2023. um so with many of these incentives
30:15
mainly this one as we've talked to some like full service HVAC companies is that you could do an install 2023 and get a
30:23
rebate and as long as you do another one in 2024 you can actually get the rebate again um so they just have to be separated by
30:29
a full calendar year but if you didn't do an installation in 2023 you could go to another one and get that tax credit
30:36
if I'm answering that question correctly yeah I think so and Marion you're in the right-hand column there it says there
30:42
also be income restrictions before you gather right Corrigan yeah um and and folks I'm going through all
30:48
of this right now with my tax prepared trying to figure out what on Earth do I do with a lot of HVAC equipment installation upgrades and Eevee
30:55
equipment and span install all last year 2022 for me uh it will be interesting to do my tax return this year to say the
31:01
least yeah yeah and I would say that that inflation reduction act has a lot in it
31:06
um so it's it's worth a read if you really want to dig through there's things like Windows installation like you mentioned that are covered in there
31:13
um so it's pretty cool but it's worth doing the digging to see what what you may be able to get
31:18
um tax credit or or rebate for holistically okay and John has a question about who installs it but let's cut it over to
31:25
David to explain that but yeah there's partners of span that handle the install this is not a direct sale thing like you
31:30
said before the Northeast someone's asking if they can um insult themselves if they're comfortable well you kind of
31:36
mentioned that in our state you can't even buy it directly anyway so I think that questions you need electrician here right okay so yeah David is my
31:43
electrician who um I got connected to through span and again
31:49
um David off to you for giving the experiment experience from an electrician point of view and then I'll
31:55
give the experience from a customer point of view and that is this video we were all recording tonight on Zoom is
32:00
exactly what I desperately wanted last summer where I was struggling a little bit to figure out how do I make use of
32:06
having access to a house for only three hours before closing September 1st in the end of July who on Earth do I get
32:12
there to actually pull off hitting the ground running and ripping out electrical and starting right away when I bought that house September 1st it was
32:18
a little crazy a little tight for time um but David pulled it off by coming and seeing the house during that window and
32:24
then arriving as he had promised to do all the work so with that introduction I threw some bullets in here to embarrass
32:30
and annoy David that is he does DC fast charging isolations pretty cool who else would I want to trust with installing my
32:37
evsc my electrical equipment for installing charging my two cars
32:42
you know Sandy Monroe and others have done videos about the dangers of poor wiring or people doing their own Nema 1450 outlets in their garage bad idea if
32:49
you don't tighten it and torque it right I felt a lot more comfortable with someone who does professional DC fast charging installs he deals with
32:56
a thick gauge cable at the public charging networks you guys are familiar with also span certified of course
33:01
residential electrical he also did for me a whole lot of outlets Lutron we went with a whole lot of loot track I said
33:07
over Wi-Fi so smart lighting he was amazing at it he turned four-way switches into three-way automated it on
33:13
my Wi-Fi boom he's ready to next switch you know 10-15 minutes later I had so many switches in my 33 year old has to
33:18
replace so I suspect a lot of you are in the same boat and then finally he's got a rivena in order so with that David off
33:24
to you thanks Paul thanks everyone and uh yeah thanks for having me
33:30
um so the first initial visit um once you do get a hold of span they
33:36
uh contact me and then I contact the homeowner and
33:42
um I get you know we meet up and go through the initial the visit and fill
33:49
out the site survey and take a lot of pictures of the panel and what you have
33:54
for the service um and any future loads that you may be
33:59
adding um would be very helpful as well
34:04
um and uh basically tell you what to expect and kind of go over all that and get it
34:12
priced together and hopefully come back to install
34:17
um so yeah so the pictures here is from the
34:23
older panel that I took out of a house in Colchester
34:29
um and it was a mess basically um it's a hundred year old technology
34:36
that's getting updated to the 21st century basically
34:41
um so there's a lot of work that's required in there um it looks like a mess but it can
34:47
definitely get much neater than that so um
34:52
yeah um basically the panel itself is
34:58
about 75 pounds and it gets mounted on Plywood And normally
35:06
that back plywood may have to be beefed up a bit to accept that panel
35:13
and uh you know screwed up on there and then all the Knockouts have to be drilled
35:20
into that box since it's a heavy steel I don't know about three mil thick
35:26
um so it's a really nice nicely built panel um David that's outdoor rated it's a
35:33
part of why it's so thick because this thing go outdoors in some climates yes it has a Nema 3r
35:39
enclosure and uh you can mount it outside in the basement on a panel
35:45
surface mount or they make a trim kit so you can flush mount it into a wall
35:52
um so you can hide all those wires if you have just the first floor Cape but no basement you can put it in there as
35:58
well so um the integration from all the older circuits into the panel is very easy and
36:06
it takes um numerous amounts of Breakers so I
36:11
believe Siemens Square D Eaton um there might be one more there and it
36:19
takes an arc fault as well um and also one thing that I'd like to
36:26
mention too is that it's 32 circuits that are controllable so you if you do
36:31
have 42 or 44 circuits you can tandem those down into one single breaker but
36:39
you will only see and measure um those two circuits combined it won't
36:45
measure both circuits so basically what I like to do is put all the lighting at
36:50
the bottom and I could group up those lighting because you know you're not going to really need to measure all your
36:58
different you know lighting loads so um basically to the uh connection
37:06
um there's a wireless um connection point and there's also a
37:12
hardwired connection point and then there's uh a um cellular network that it connects
37:19
with but the preferred method is to do a hardwired ethernet which would be
37:25
shielded because there's a lot of noise inside that panel so a shielded cable
37:32
does the job um yeah um on the next slide too
37:39
um there we go Corrigan showing on the next slide there where David's photos and Colchester notice the internet's
37:44
right there and you're going to see something similar in my house um yeah and David's not kidding I didn't
37:49
use shielded wiring at first and boy oh boy um packet loss it was acting pretty squarely
37:55
it was just it doesn't have to be right next to it we can always run a wire to wherever it is but it shouldn't be
38:03
shielded yeah so yep and giving my house we're just moving in right and also disabling internet and pulling power I
38:09
want to make sure you're able to provision it and that wasn't actually that big a deal but for new construction whatever it's something to consider uh
38:15
you're going to want some sort of Internet while your electrician is there right to get the thing brought up just
38:20
something to ponder if you hadn't thought of that already I mean normally if you have cable internet or Fiber it normally comes in where the service is
38:26
coming in anyways so you could always put a switch there and jump off and you know keep going down the line
38:33
yeah so that I mean the LED light inside is really uh nice and trick
38:39
um and uh when I do the final setup
38:45
there's an app that I just scan the QR code and it brings me right into the
38:51
installer app so I can label all the breakers inside there so when I send you an email you can open the app and all
38:58
your Breakers will be labeled ready to go for you and you could make changes there as well and then the PDF is just
39:06
emailed to you so you can just print it out and slide it in the little sheath in the panel cover there
39:13
um so it's a really great panel um I really like installing them
39:19
and they integrate great with uh Tesla powerwall and all that stuff so
39:27
um yeah um duration too uh basically it all depends
39:35
on if you need an upgrade or the quality of the meter socket outside and your
39:41
drop I mean if you have 200 amps already um the load side of the meter socket may
39:47
you know the wire may need to get changed out but you can basically leave all that there if it's in good condition
39:53
and just change the panel out which I did here in Colchester um
39:59
and he was happy with that install there so and that probably took about six hours I
40:08
believe the install so he was out without power for about six hours so it wasn't too bad
40:16
similar in my house right from the day you actually cut over you've done a lot of prep work maybe four hours yeah I did
40:24
quite a bit of prep work for your your house there
40:29
um and the way my desk sharing is a little weird Corey and if you can go back to page 20 that'd be cool and David's got that bullet list there right
40:35
David one thing um so now we're kind of doing the span panel panel discussion the three of us
40:40
and then we'll open it up to everybody for questions so my question or comment to add to what David pointed out was
40:45
part of the install process and arranging with David uh the visit I'm not sure how all electricians do it so
40:51
I'll ask this question for both David and Corgan and that is how do people handle the money part of it you know
40:57
purchasing this panel I don't think a lot of electricians would want a front you know uh four thousand five hundred
41:03
dollars right that's the number you guys saw earlier in the deck there um that's you know a significant investment
41:08
now what if the project falls through or you end up not installing it with an electrician has the spam panel on your hands right so do all electrics handle
41:15
that the same do you leave it up to them Corrigan and you know with David and in my case we I paid up front right that
41:20
just made sense typically you're paying a contractor about 50 up front 50 when they're done is everyone different on
41:26
that core again or do you have any kind of Rules from your perspective from company perspective yeah so as we were I
41:32
wouldn't say early days but right typical in the typical electrical world you work with electrical distributors
41:39
who are housing inventory for you for electricians to go pick up same day if needed next day however they
41:46
see fit um mid last year we were selling direct so
41:52
yeah it was kind of nuanced and difficult to work with for for homeowners and its dollars because of the dollar value of our product
41:58
um now what's great for us in Connecticut is that we work with um a large distributor in Rexel
42:05
who stocks this product so rather than pre-ordering it two-week lead time
42:10
paying up front um now it's stocked in local warehouses where it's a little bit easier for for
42:16
David to go pick up a panel and also potentially just the way of payment
42:21
there is is easier than upfront payment for everybody just because it is a high cost
42:28
um so that's made it much more flexible for all installers in terms of intelligent homeowners in terms of
42:34
payments but then also lead times um so that structure is has changed even since you went through to your process
42:40
Paul um which has helped us a lot just in terms of of growing the business in an
42:45
easier way of working okay and then a related question is lead times um that question for you be for both of
42:51
you so for span you have no trouble with keeping inventory a supply chain all all that good thankfully for us knock on
42:58
wood we have not been hit with any um inventory issues or supply chain issues we really beefed up in kind of over
43:05
forecasted but like I said now that we work with local distribution houses to stock the product
43:11
um they're transferred in from a central warehouse to in Connecticut they come next day essentially um so if David were
43:18
to go to a Rexel and and request one if they didn't have one in stock it's a day for them to transfer it
43:24
um so our lead times are are very very good things to be turned around very quickly
43:29
okay and David how's your lead time as an electrician these days for trying to do a Spam panel installs it typically
43:34
from first Contact to install it like at least two weeks two months I don't know just throwing it at you uh well
43:41
depending on my schedule um but exactly yeah so I would say uh from the initial visit to fitting me in
43:49
would probably be about two weeks um and and then you know I would just
43:54
take the price of the panel alone and then Rexel is about 10 minutes down the
44:00
road from me so I can have one next day and then you know be on site ready to go
44:07
all right and then I'm gonna uh my last question is kind of a nerdy one and that goes back to
44:14
um Power and EVS so in my previous house which is in my same neighborhood I had two model threes My Town inspector and
44:22
the sub the electrician basically said yeah the most you can do is 100 amp some panel 250 amp Breakers 40 amp Max so
44:28
they do rated a little bit exactly what Corrigan was talking about right didn't really have a choice that's what was getting improved by my inspector that's
44:35
what I rolled with moving to the other house that was one of the appeals of spam panel like oh I can do
44:41
60 breakers for both cars because I don't know what I'm going to own 5 10 15 20 years from now I would like 48 amps
44:46
please right so I knew I eventually went solar and some sort of battery storage check check right this product's ready
44:52
for that um and then in the next part of the deck you'll see took it even further David did a great job you know prepping the
44:57
house getting ready for those next steps assuming and hopefully they can approve of fingers crossed so in my background
45:03
you'll see two cars with the glowing green they're both charging at once they need to worry about it but my nerdy question for both you would be
45:10
I don't have battery backup I don't have solar yet so really the app the span app it's awesome it has a lot of features
45:16
but it doesn't let me say something like what happens if I overload my house right I charge both both cars turn on
45:21
the oven throw on the washing machine uh the dryer that's a little crazy we can easily go into 30 000 Watts at once
45:28
right here um so Corey and you're not in your head what happens in that circumstance right I haven't done any prioritization of
45:34
circuits inside what's necessary at right now it's just all lit up you said the laws are
45:39
it's no problem it'll pass inspection you can do 60m breakers for each car cool but what actually happens if I do
45:46
that I think I know the answer is just the breakers just good old-fashioned Breakers do their thing it's got nothing to do with the relays that are in the
45:52
span panel and I don't know if that word relay came up but that's how you do your thing in software I click on relays to
45:57
turn off circuits it doesn't physically move the knob on the breaker just so everyone intending understands that Nuance there yep and that's correct so
46:04
we do not physically if you turn off a circuit from your home from your from your home app the breaker will not flip
46:10
off that's for uh from a safety perspective we don't want to do that in
46:16
case anything ever got stuck on or off and someone was doing work so when you when you turn off a circuit
46:21
in your home app one you'll get a notification saying we please go flip your breaker off if you're doing
46:26
electrical work but that is US essentially stopping power flowing from your your Romex or your
46:32
your wiring through your home to that to that breaker um but in the case of your EV charging
46:38
right so NEC is the National Electric Code that I mentioned earlier um rules and regulations of what can and
46:45
can't be done within a home because of our Energy Management listing they state that the breakers within your
46:52
panel so the 60 amp Breakers don't have to be taken into the load calculations
46:59
um so you can do 80 of 200 amps um during installation so when David is
47:05
is going through in his Installer app you would tag the EV Chargers as shattable items so like you're saying
47:11
Paul It's Five O'Clock TVs are going laundry's going cooking's going span will actually sense the amount of amps
47:18
running through the panel and shed the EV Chargers if it deems it's going to go over it's 80 of 200 amps you will get a
47:25
notification on your phone saying that Stan has Shad your EV Chargers and once the home calms down your EV chart you'll
47:33
get a notification that your EV charger has come back online um David could probably speak to a
47:38
little bit better how often your home is really fully loaded because it may really never hit that threshold
47:44
depending on what's happening within your house but it's meant you know out of an abundance of caution that you do
47:50
not overload your home or your panel and brown anything out yeah and the good
47:55
old-fashioned 200 amp breaker will trip if I really overdo it right I mean it's the same protection you always have it's okay yeah and that's brand diagnostic as
48:03
David mentioned it's many brands of Breakers cool because I think different towns that inspector might have preference of Breakers there's all these
48:08
different things where you live right but this handles all of them so that's cool thank you uh and Corey if you could jump to my part of the deck we have
48:14
people itching ass questions like four or five queued up that's awesome my section will be pretty quick here so
48:20
um yeah that's me many of you already know me but uh the stuff I blog about PC zv's Home Tech efficiency those are
48:27
sustainable themes right people are moving uh not just computers but dealing with the stuff in their home and make it
48:32
more efficient so things like hot hot water um Water Systems right going electric so
48:38
when I said I ripped out gas I met oh I guess I need to ask the HVAC crew for a 30 amp breaker for that water heater
48:45
that you see there in the left that I'm talking about in the middle picture and then finally nerdy things like uh tires for your EV and stuff for it but things
48:52
I enjoy talking about so moving into this 33 year old home you've all heard the story already getting ready let's go
48:58
to um also the one topic I didn't cover just improve power management during outages that's key like how many
49:04
batteries or how much capacity do I buy during a backup well in my old house I had eight Breakers I had to pre-allocate
49:10
and set aside for my manual switch over to my uh gas power generator we let to
49:16
the backyard and run in a pinch right and Corrigan who lived near me in West Hartford I'm in Wethersfield we've had some long ones especially men here to go
49:22
that October storm uh between six and eight days right that really is a wake-up call this house it's like oh
49:28
wouldn't it be awesome if in software I just take out the span app and go right ahead and reprogram it right there and
49:34
that's really cool changing what circuit is important to me just like Corrigan said and you know here's what the app
49:40
looks like and uh whoops it's a little weird with the blame there you go all my circuits labeled I can easily
49:45
move that around during an outage and manage The house's power that is a big plus right there and the wiring was so
49:51
nasty in my other house so let's move advance to the next deck you'll see the before and after in the wiring okay this
49:56
one actually shows some of those Breakers I was talking about and this is one of the big lessons I learned putting in two heat pumps could require
50:02
as many as six circuit breakers now in my case after talking to my HVAC crew it looks like I might be able to cut back
50:08
to four and Dave and I will talk about that but your house may vary it will vary your electrician talking to your
50:14
HVAC crew is important and I mentioned that already let's go to the next slide but that shows basically my circuit
50:19
breaker okay this one I talked about a little and Corrigan you asked you know a little product feedback uh well here's
50:26
how I moved some of my electric equipment and when having the conversation with David let's cover bullet one how I move some of my
50:31
equipment old house with the left Large Garage newer old house that's 33 years old then the right tight garage
50:38
so um Tesla power walls we're down to 300 400 and now they're down to 350 actually
50:43
since then instead of putting in a Nema 1450 which you see in the left hand picture on the wall there gets a little
50:48
cluttered and a little and it's just another point of failure and another thing that can heat up in the long term you're better off at this point if you
50:55
can just get a wall charger for whatever brand of car just have it hardwired and home run right to your circuit breaker panel and that's what David did here now
51:02
Cory and you're wondering why it's not a span Drive Unit on my walls it's partly because it's so narrow between my two
51:08
cars there that I'd be walking into that model 3 charging the gray model 3 on the left the j1772 connector sticks out a
51:14
bit um sounds like a small nitpicky thing but I actually hang my wires from the ceiling this is a little older picture
51:20
so it's a subtle thing Corrigan but yeah if it was more of a right angle and the j1772 connector you use then I'd happily
51:26
use that in my garage because then like Corgan said I could say hey when I get solar hopefully someday just charge my
51:32
car from sunbeams please when I try to visit my kids in New York or Boston from here in Central Connecticut that is a
51:38
cool goal now for now it'll be manual right I'll need to tell my test is going to charge so I know they're actually getting power from eventual solar
51:46
um and that's about it uh so yeah any yeah thank you perfect
51:52
um a lot of outlets to change boy was it handy be able to turn off circuits without running back and forth in my
51:57
basement even though it's a one level house I'm now on it's in the far corner of the basement and it was really handy
52:02
now Corrigan you might be cringing thinking yeah you're really supposed to turn off the physical breaker the span amp warns you that he's nodding his head
52:08
these are not high voltage circuits not a big deal but I had a tester as David knows I can test the circuit see my
52:14
little light go off as soon as I flick it off in the amp and it's as easy as tapping the little switch switch slider
52:21
right there you tap it boom it goes off my tester in my hand would stop beeping and glowing I'm now safe but again
52:27
technically you're supposed to run to the basement and flip off all the breakers all right next I already drive this point home your
52:33
HVAC person bullet two there has to contact us to talk to your electrician that's a careful coordinated uh effort
52:39
between the two of them uh David knows why I'm saying this we have some challenges there
52:45
um heat pumps all that stuff um this is something about oxy too so yeah
52:51
your system might need 10 or 50 you might need one or two resistive heating elements
52:57
depending upon your HVAC design that plays into what an electrician like David uh would have to do and how many
53:03
wires they have to run to the panel and copper is expensive so you want to get all that right in advance next
53:10
um I already covered that in the previous Slide the following one is Leviton holes surge suppressor right you saw that in
53:15
cold Chester you saw that in my house David is Leviton a popular brand or do you have customers asking for all different search suppressors and then
53:22
core Corey got a follow-on question would you ever build a search suppressor into your product or you'd rather not
53:27
because that means you now have to replace the unit when lightning hits nearby right um so maybe you prefer that to be
53:33
outside your box I guess that question's for both of you I believe the the Leviton surge
53:41
suppressors are really good unit um I've used it several times uh also
53:46
Eaton makes a really good designed one as well as most of the breaker
53:52
manufacturers also make a clip in one that will just clip right into the bust of the the panel and that's a really
53:59
good option as well okay so and I had the same year it lasted 20 years with the green light
54:04
still glowing for my old house so Corrigan um that's not something you probably put in your product or I don't
54:09
know if you can speak for a span on that yeah nothing we have in it today mostly because from Connecticut to Florida to
54:16
California you can imagine differences in weather differences in requirements for surge protection so one size fits
54:23
all solution is actually pretty tricky um were in early stages of development
54:29
of our next Generation panel something we're actively looking at it because it does come up often but it's one of those
54:35
Solutions of how do you tackle multiple regions with multiple codes and local requirements
54:41
um so tricky but we're gonna do a best effort to look into it and see what we can do there
54:46
yeah no thank you and it's just something I brought up as a bullet here for people to think about that I had forgotten to think about until last
54:52
minute and that is you're putting in many thousands of dollars of heat pumps that are going to be cooling and heating your house if you're going all electric
54:57
like me and you kind of want to protect her to have some sort of ability to do an insurance claim maybe beyond your homeowners because if that stuff Gets
55:04
Zapped be pretty pricey if you have a high copay like I tend to keep on my homeowners all right and then finally
55:09
voltage attacks I know some other people right here in Connecticut that have similar issues in the rural part of Connecticut I'm not
55:16
rural at all but I still have voltage tax so that happens when a neighborhood gets built up the Transformer never gets
55:21
um upgraded necessarily and and Dave is actually working with me on some new
55:26
wiring that's uh working with eversource on that so just something to be aware of that if someone like David or
55:32
electricians come in your house maybe have them look at your meter socket David dealt with that for my older house
55:37
and your wiring that goes across the street have a look at all of it so you're less surprised when you actually move into the house and the electrical
55:42
work begins all right next slide uh tips yeah networking shielding we
55:48
talked about that and um having a nearby is kind of Handy but not necessary as David mentioned and then finally
55:55
um be sure to label those circuits as you do electrical work so I had 27 Outlets that were back wired in my house
56:01
so as that work was proceeding I made sure to label circuits like NorthEast Southwest corner of a bedroom whatever I
56:08
kind of went a little nuts on that but it sure makes it awesome that I kind of finally have pretty grainier level of
56:13
knowing how to turn off particular Outlet next slide here come the pictures there we go so I do have 200 amp service not
56:21
the kind of a blurry picture on the right but this is my 33 year old home an alarm system shown on the left I need to
56:26
rip that panel off and get that out of David's way um coax cable rip that off off the bottom I
56:33
prepared the whole area and steel coat of the whole wall on the right you will see a 200 amp breaker at the top right but boy that's not nearly enough breaker
56:39
spots span had more breaker spots but not a lot more but we'll talk about that in the next pictures so next slide
56:47
here we go David doing his thing got a spaghetti uh working on the left he's in the middle of it and he's actually got
56:53
the span on the wall there and then finally I'll play a little can you play button briefly it's just a 10 second
56:58
video so there's me prepping the site right just getting the stuff out of David's way so that he's ready to put
57:05
the four by eight uh panel up and he starts with studs that are pressure treated in a while there's me seal
57:10
coating the wall for my wife um you got the wall seal coated and boom there's his nice quality wood that he's
57:16
gonna silver paint um ready with the old panel so that last slide showed everything that went into
57:22
getting ready for this now David had some coordination with the HVAC crew like how do we light up heat pumps if
57:28
the spam panel is not ready there was definitely some back and forth in Creative scheduling and that's again a
57:33
consideration might be really hard to get both your HVAC crew and your electrician perfectly schedule the line
57:38
aligned if you're trying to do what we're doing and that is moving the house in three weeks it was really tight I would say we only
57:44
owned the two homes for three weeks nearby each other and it was difficult we moved in without heater air conditioning the first three nights but
57:50
we we pulled it off and it was October and that was quite bearable next slide just things to consider you might not
57:56
have thought about oops playing back again and we're coming to the home stretch there so here's the foot go back again I
58:03
just skipped one no okay oh never mind there we go there we go so in the middle of doing the work you'll
58:08
see some wires are going to come up short so David you have no choice but to do a few splices but very minimal in my
58:14
case um you you pulled out extra slack where you could you mounted it fairly high on the wall it worked out beautifully my
58:21
old house had so many spices from 27 years of history of adding circuits this thing is gorgeous
58:27
notice in the photo in the right that large thick Loop David can you take that on and explain if I get some sort of
58:34
product from a third-party company that does solar electric you left that Loop there for whatever I get so that they
58:40
don't have to pull a new wire for my spam panel to the brand new meter socket you installed correct yes so in this uh
58:47
circumstance yeah there's going to be a Gateway out by the meter socket outside so
58:53
um I made Provisions with a big loop so the solar company that does come to do
58:59
the potential install won't have to go into the span panel and rack up my nice neat work in there so
59:06
they'll be able to pull that Loop out to get it to the Gateway without having to go into the span panel so it's just a
59:14
little provision for you know keeping everything neat thank you so much for covering that and
59:20
you'll see I had foam insulation at the end of those joists there you get a lot of leakage in an older home eventually
59:25
I'll probably insulate but even handle that and then I got a battery temporarily running my stuff until I get full battery backup that's running my
59:31
internet but as David pointed out this thing is smart this fan panel will cut over from wired ethernet which it's got
59:38
right there with a shielded cable it'll cover the Wi-Fi if need be for some reason my switch on the right there that's glowing green died and then it'll
59:44
cover to Cellular if all fails pretty cool I'm a little unclear on Corrigan I guess you guys are just uh some sort of
59:52
4G connection for life that I don't need to worry about I mean someone's paying for a little bit of data there and I
59:57
guess that's built into the cost right yeah built into the product cost think of it as a Fail-Safe if you were to lose
1:00:04
Internet so Comcast Verizon whoever your internet providers goes out but your
1:00:09
power's still on you have that at T 5G cellular to continue data logging and
1:00:14
act as your Internet Ad interim so a little Fail-Safe no subscription fee just built
1:00:20
into the overall product cost perfect I figured someone would about to ask that right is there a monthly bill to have a Spam panel the answer is no
1:00:26
yeah and then the last slide I think the last slide here coming up here we go before after and then the
1:00:33
prettier shot in the right so that shot on the right has the panel cover on that's what it looks like and it
1:00:39
actually alerts me when the panel is left open and you've got the lights illuminated and the pretty managed wires next slide
1:00:47
here's the app so if we do take a moment to share my desk if time permits maybe I'll leave my
1:00:52
phone running during the Q a uh we'll share my desk I've got a way to
1:00:57
basically mirror my phone to my desktop and then we'll share out my desk on Zoom let me just set that up as we open it up
1:01:03
to questions so now's a good time for people to unmute as needed but actually well actually you're not rated on me yeah we
1:01:09
got to go through the questions queued up Corrigan most these questions are for you sure if you could scroll back about a page or two in the chat let's start
1:01:16
with Paul stansel who is not sure to be worth it because he already has solar so
1:01:22
he's trying to see uh if this would be worth it maybe if we could ask Paul stancila pointed question or two about
1:01:28
what he has and see if there's value added to trying to retrofit what he already has
1:01:33
yeah you see that that was at 7 31 pm he asked that
1:01:39
that'll help find it in the chat there while you're doing that I'm setting up the screen sharing here
1:01:45
and you guys can have a live look at how many tap on stuff in the span app not just the simulator which is awesome that
1:01:52
Gorgon mentioned but also um you know my actual house and what's happening live
1:01:58
there we go there's Miami you did ask at 7 59 if you could
1:02:03
um put his 100 amp Ford Lightning charger into the span panel oh nice
1:02:09
which is a good question and comes up often um today our our our Branch Breakers uh
1:02:16
have a 90 AMP Max rating so for 100 amp charger we're going to be a little bit
1:02:22
shy there um so that will have to be slightly derated but again
1:02:27
during the most you know integral portions of development 60 amp breaker needed for a charger was the max that we
1:02:33
see on the market today as we see things like the Ford Lightning charger come out again batteries powering houses uh our
1:02:40
generation three panel is something we'll look at to accept things like that uh but today that would be slightly
1:02:45
derated just because of our our Max breaker rating of 90ms
1:02:54
awesome thank you and let me uh I'm sharing my screen so I'm having a little difficulty bring up chatting to pop it
1:03:00
out into separate windows so hang on a second there we go I know I haven't I haven't installed the
1:03:06
Ford Lightning charger or the Lucid one but I know that um very rarely does it ever draw 100 amps
1:03:14
entirely um you're making that provision for the chance that it may but most of
1:03:22
the time it's about 80 of the you know yeah so I mean it would be probably 80
1:03:30
amps if you were to measure amperage there but um
1:03:36
okay you still you still can't put the 100 amp breaker in there though only 90 amps
1:03:42
so all right next question uh
1:03:47
Larry Schwartz would love us to cover span sub panels I think you can maybe
1:03:53
both chip in on that because I know David and I talked about that a lot too who wants to take that one first talk about sub panels or buying a second span
1:04:00
versus just getting a done sub handle right yeah I'll talk to just some of the nuances of that quickly and then kind of
1:04:06
have David talk through what what he's done uh because there's a few different ways around it that have
1:04:12
different budgets right so if budget is not a problem right you can actually use two span panels in parallel
1:04:19
one is your main panel and you can use a second span panel as a sub panel either fed off of a branch breaker or using the
1:04:25
feed through lugs if you have two span panels you'll get 64 data points right so
1:04:31
expensive cost but you'll get the most data and control out of that um
1:04:37
typically what we're seeing homeowners do is that that's a very expensive solution so you could run a traditional
1:04:43
sub panel off of a branch breaker and you'll get a single data point for that but you just use low use circuits
1:04:49
unfinished areas of the home Outlets Etc or you could use twin Breakers that have
1:04:55
multiple circuits on it so those are kind of the three that vary in cost
1:05:01
um that we do today but our panel is a flexible solution where you could use it as a sub panel if you wanted to it's
1:05:07
just really a matter of of cost and David probably complexity as well and install cost as well absolutely
1:05:16
um yeah putting in the sub panel is definitely needed and I've done that
1:05:21
um and uh you only get the data points on just the two pole breaker that you put
1:05:28
in that feeds the sub panel but most of the time if you in that sub panel there
1:05:34
are um some critical loads we can always take those out and run them directly to
1:05:39
this sub panel you know the span panel um and if you know the sub panel is
1:05:45
going right next to the span panel then you could just dump in um a bunch of you know non-critical
1:05:53
loads or you know loads that you don't need to control with the span panel
1:05:58
it's a pretty good option to do and it also has those feed through lugs which
1:06:03
are rated um for um you know a bigger wire so you could
1:06:10
put a 40 circuit panel next to that if you wanted to um that would have another breaker in
1:06:16
the sub panel to control that as well yeah and you can see some of that going
1:06:22
on in here let me make this bigger and let's zoom in so let's hear some of what David's
1:06:28
talking about that he uh there's a there's a metal piece holding these 220 amps together for example handle time
1:06:34
yeah handle tie thank you for that right term um
1:06:39
yep so he has a lot of double poles down here where it's just like bedroom one bedroom two doesn't really matter to me
1:06:45
to be able to monitor them separately they're just grouped no big deal but great question Larry Schwartz uh
1:06:52
that was a packed panel that one there yep um so that's the feed product feedback
1:06:58
and I don't even asked that already Corrigan but hopefully your company at some point will come up with one with more units so people don't necessarily
1:07:04
really feel like buying another one they'd rather just buy one with more breaker spots it's 32 right now correct
1:07:09
32 correct 32 yep okay John Day asks
1:07:14
is it a smart breaker or is there a relay in addition to the breaker okay cool I think I anticipated that question
1:07:19
earlier you hear a little relay click from your basement if you're kind of near it it's not very loud but it's
1:07:25
definitely a relay that's behind the breaker that trips when I use software to turn off a circuit
1:07:31
yep the physical breaker the lever stays right where it was it doesn't physically move yeah we use traditional Branch
1:07:38
Breakers uh which is great for supply chain and cost right there's no unique breaker that you have a very specific
1:07:44
item that has to go with span which is nice because you also depending on where you live in your inspector could reuse
1:07:51
some Bridge Breakers if available and you have newer ones and you can also mix and match depending on again what's
1:07:56
what's going on in terms of Brands um but you see in that picture the black area and that panel that is
1:08:03
what we call our Gateway or our computer that's where we're talking at the relay level doing the monitoring in control
1:08:09
um the reason we do that is because from a data accuracy standpoint it's utility grade so utility companies can actually
1:08:16
and in some cases do use our panel to monitor homeowners homes if they give them access but then we can turn them on
1:08:23
and off so with other competitor panels and this is no knock it's just a different use case you could turn a
1:08:29
breaker off but you cannot turn it back on you'd have to physically walk downstairs so by us doing things at the relay level more accurate data easier
1:08:37
supply chain and then you can actually open and close the related
1:08:42
and when you say black Air are you talking about around here that that entire piece yeah we we call that kind
1:08:48
of the back plate internally in our engineering team but really that is the computer of the panel right
1:08:54
okay yeah sorry all right the relays are back here behind right behind their
1:08:59
corresponding breaker but uh they'll cut a mini motherboard I guess would be up here probably right right just yeah
1:09:05
another bit of product feedback too a little tight there with ethernet when you leave slack in these wires gets a little tough there's also a direct
1:09:12
ethernet for folks that are thinking about Tesla solar or similar you get a direct comms cable that connects one
1:09:17
right to the net right to the other Corey and you're not a yes right cable coming out the side and David already
1:09:22
made a hole in that in the span for that at that later date yeah and kind of an interesting mix you talked about it with
1:09:28
the loop earlier um yeah you know solar's down the road are scheduled it is really good and and if
1:09:35
you're getting solar and Battery to put your span panel in first like David said you can intercept that main power and
1:09:41
run uh everything into the gateway which saves you some breaker slots um but then from a commissioning
1:09:46
standpoint it's just much easier to have that that panel installed ahead of time um and our span tech support team can
1:09:52
actually do some of those Integrations from our office if your solar provider is not a span installer
1:09:59
um which is also nice we have the ability to go into the homeowners panel as they give us approval to fix anything
1:10:04
or add anything down the down the road okay looks like the last question before
1:10:10
we uh ask people to unmute and I verbally asked the questions the last typed in question in chat is
1:10:15
Stephen Lyle asking uh when does the newest fan panel hit the market I don't know Futures yeah good question because I did
1:10:22
mention it uh very early stages so sometime in 2024 best case scenario really what we're doing this year is we
1:10:29
know we have a very good Hardware product that has some fixes in terms of breaker slots and overall wiring spacing
1:10:35
but there's so much we can do on the software side that that's going to be our Focus for 2023 is adding things like
1:10:41
anomaly detection um different software like charging when you when you have a span EV charger
1:10:47
charging via solar charging during an outage scheduling is coming soon a little sneak
1:10:52
peek there um so really fine-tuning what we can do from a software perspective because there is so much more we can add in
1:10:59
terms of homeowner value of what they can do within their their home app so that's our big Focus for 2023
1:11:05
okay so yeah folks you can see my app on the left feel free to unmute ask your
1:11:10
question or ask me to tap on something you'd like to see in the app whether it's running live here um stats I find particularly good
1:11:16
there's my HVAC it's you two-thirds of my house is HVAC in January right love that so my circuits are dedicated
1:11:23
for HVAC I know what all my HVAC is air handlers heat pumps all of that is in
1:11:29
that cluster Corrigan I think by telling one of the circuits it's my water heater that's how
1:11:34
you figure out what it what's part of that I'm not really sure if heating including is including my water here in that graph do you happen to know does
1:11:39
your I give a category I tell it here's the circuit and here's what the device is and I pick water heater from your list does that then mean it says okay oh
1:11:47
that's part of his HVAC system or is water heater considered separate no it's it's considered into HVAC and Cooling
1:11:53
and we've built in some of those pre-groups so that you can see like lighting and Outlets because everything in there is you put the high level
1:12:00
circuit data or items within there um or all drop downs right so you can type things in and make up stuff as you
1:12:06
see fit but we've put in enough of those items in there and we have a whole data science team that kind of builds in
1:12:11
those programs and algorithms to know when you tag something what group it should go into
1:12:17
cool and here's the fancy UI you know go to a week or month gets a little more interesting when I say a month because now you can see my UV charging transport
1:12:23
13 there was a couple of Boston New York trips in there right it charged at home pretty cool
1:12:29
um and we go back to last year there's history we can jump to circuits so yeah questions folks anyone have questions
1:12:35
for any of us now's your chance thank you for staying on all the way to the end we appreciate it this is cool
1:12:41
feel free to ask your questions of other attendees too who names you might recommend might
1:12:46
yeah remember right already know here I'm looking at who's still on
1:13:02
so I guess I had a question this is John Day how does the uh sscr or AIC rating
1:13:09
is it affected by that intermediate relay as it feeds the breaker
1:13:24
maybe just repeat that one real quick so I could I could understand a little bit better sure so there's like ants amps
1:13:31
interrupted current or AIC rating on your Breakers right so I think a standard breaker comes in at like 5K or
1:13:38
you know when you get into the two pole that might go up into a 10K rating you mentioned that you had like an UPS
1:13:45
Upstream relay or whatever I was just wondering does that have an effect on the AIC or
1:13:51
sccr ratings no really what we're doing at that relay level
1:13:56
um is opening and closing it essentially if it's closed there's power going to it when we open it there's no power going
1:14:02
to it um so there's no differences in in the breaker Styles going in there
1:14:07
um and what it has in terms of an impact on the relay or vice versa it's just a
1:14:13
switch that's you know before this the circuit that's being protected so it
1:14:19
doesn't know the trip readings on the breaker at all
1:14:24
okay thank you
1:14:36
as you anyone else think of any questions as you're pondering um I'll be publishing a replay of this Zoom I have
1:14:42
a little bit of editing to do um and I'll be publishing the deck very soon like tonight that should be easy
1:14:47
enough I'll throw that on my site um Barry if you could unmute do you plan to have do you have a way to publish it
1:14:52
till you plan to put it somewhere in the EV Club website as well um I mean the zoom is easy enough we'll put
1:14:59
that in the YouTube channel for the club but how about the app actually I I can uh I can the actual deck cool you'll
1:15:04
throw it in there so okay cool yeah I might have to turn it into a PDF but yeah yeah I can send you no problem
1:15:10
it'll be an 18 Meg PDF so a little beefy on the web server I might even think about how I get that to you but
1:15:17
all right okay well the because the pictures are kind of fun I'll figure it out I'll use dropbox or
1:15:24
something yeah because the pictures it's nice to keep them high resolution so people can actually see them rather than blur them all
1:15:30
um any other questions for any of us yes can you hear me yes
1:15:35
Richard Moss excuse me question for our electrician I see at the end he is
1:15:41
buying a ribbian oh yeah yeah I hope that I bought a ruby and
1:15:47
truck in uh 2022 and uh I found that my Sola definitely
1:15:55
does not cover my electric needs now with a EV
1:16:01
would this help me try to monitor uh my usage somehow
1:16:06
absolutely you could well if especially if you go
1:16:12
into the span Drive um you'll be able to ramp it down so you can you know cover with the solar
1:16:19
especially during the day or um you know and then ramp it back down during the night type of thing and it
1:16:27
would just give you better data points so you can see what your consumption is
1:16:32
um so you could shed load in other places to charge your car
1:16:37
and then you know turn those loads back on when you're done all right because like I say I have it
1:16:44
scheduled to start charging after midnight so basically nothing else is running in the house
1:16:52
and it's just over capacity oh way over capacity I for I have what let's see uh
1:16:58
I'll be on eight years solar and four months out of the eight years I had to
1:17:04
pay more than 9.53 now this last bill was 257 dollars
1:17:11
um charging the truck okay and you're charging it at 60 amps
1:17:17
oh well it only 48 right it's 60 amps
1:17:24
okay so other than putting some more solar
1:17:29
panels on the roof which does not look uh practical because of eversource
1:17:35
um that looks the only solution if I was able to do that then I think maybe with
1:17:41
uh this unit I could probably monitor my usage better
1:17:46
yeah you might have some Phantom loaves you know during the night that you're not aware of and the span panel can you
1:17:54
know locate those and let you know what's going on there um okay like I said you know just better data
1:18:01
points on your system all right well good luck with your Arabian okay thank
1:18:07
you okay thank you thank you
1:18:15
let's say there's one more question that came in Paul so I'll just answer that quick it was can the pain will give
1:18:20
access to power companies to qualify for review programs um so we do that with a few different
1:18:25
utility companies one in California um the closest to us is Green Mountain
1:18:30
Power Up in Vermont um Long Island I think has one coming very shortly it may have already started
1:18:37
or it's next month unfortunately eversource UI um again if anyone's like National Grid
1:18:44
up in Massachusetts or Rhode Island don't do anything like that yet um but I'll say we're hopeful that it's
1:18:49
something more utility companies do in the future um again they'll do very similar to what
1:18:54
they do with if you have a Google Nest Thermostat today do some load shedding and control and
1:19:00
you might get a rebate or discount on a panel cost essentially in the form of a rebate
1:19:06
um so definitely things that we're we've started to do hopefully that expands more because I think it's a good use case and opportunity for homeowners to
1:19:12
get rebates from their utility companies um so something very good to do and obviously if you
1:19:18
have solar and Battery you are able to store a little bit more of your excess solar in your battery if those buyback programs aren't available and then
1:19:25
utilize it charge your car with span so so different use cases there but hopefully those programs with utility
1:19:32
companies continue to expand and hopefully we get one in Connecticut soon
1:19:40
yeah it's a great question too um for example hyper Electric
1:19:46
heat pump based water heaters there's a little interface a little Jack in there to Jack in your utility basically and
1:19:53
let them opt in and curtail you at certain peak hours kind of like you can do for cars we talked about that in Prior EV Club phone calls I imagine if
1:20:00
the spam panel could have that sort of capability for a variety of things in the future just a little bit of future proofing so I like that idea and here
1:20:07
the previous person was asking about you know the rivian and here I can see exactly what that car that I park in
1:20:12
that spot is using as I just told it to charge 11 000 Watts right now right um the full 48 uh 48 amps sustained on a
1:20:21
60 amp breaker perfectly safely charging it and I can go back in time and have a look here's what it looks like my energy
1:20:27
use over time for that car get all the stats so that would help me figure out okay that's about how many
1:20:33
kilowatts I charge that car that drives a fair amount back and forth sounds like the person with the rivian drives a fair
1:20:39
amount too right based on what he's saying for kilowatts used but this is this helps you right like this the first step in my house to know
1:20:45
what am I up against if I do get solar and Battery what do I need I I now have three months living here and I'm
1:20:51
starting to get some data thanks to this product right show me Circuit by Circuit what's going on
1:20:56
so I think that was our last question any other questions on the zoom
1:21:03
okay sounds like we're oh there's one question John Day uh for the conversion did you have to
1:21:10
update the breakers to afci dsci or GFCI David uh that's a negative um only if
1:21:18
you're moving the panel six feet or more is when you'd have to install the code
1:21:24
required arc fault breakers um and you know if it's a GFCI protected
1:21:30
uh breaker originally it would stay a GFCI protected breaker uh going forward
1:21:37
um so yeah only six feet or more for those
1:21:43
excellent thank you you're welcome all right looks like with that we're
1:21:49
bringing this evening to a close I'll go ahead and stop the zoom recording at this point and hand it back to you Barry
1:21:57
if you have any parting comments there let me hit stop uh well thanks everyone for uh who hug him for the full duration
1:22:06
um if you have uh follow-on questions that you think of afterward uh please email them to the club
1:22:15
UV Club CT gmail.com and uh and we can follow up and get back to you
