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36 minute read
A contractor put a 400 amp panel in a house. Then he pulled the meter data and found the home had never drawn more than 59 amps.
Jake Marin hears versions of that story constantly. He spent a decade running HVAC programs at Efficiency Vermont, built the state's first heat pump program in 2014, and ran it past 60,000 installs before leaving to start TrueLoad. His argument is narrow and worth taking seriously: a lot of the electrical service upgrades that kill heat pump jobs were never necessary, and the code already gives you a way to prove it.
The job doesn't die at the design. It dies at the panel.
Jake says he has never met a heat pump installer who hasn't lived this. You did the load calc carefully. You picked the right equipment. The customer is ready. Then you look at the panel and there isn't enough capacity.
Now you need an electrician, and the electrician writes a second quote. Jake puts that number somewhere between five and forty thousand dollars depending on the situation — enough to double the cost of the installation and end the project on the spot.
Cost isn't the only thing that kills it. As Eric pointed out on the episode, even a customer with the budget can call the utility and be told the service upgrade is six or nine months out. And electricians are scarce right now — one Amply customer is losing them to data center work at two to three times prevailing wage. The money, the timeline, and the coordination all have to line up, and often one of them doesn't.
We estimate electrical load because we couldn't measure it. Now we can.
Here's the part that surprises people: the traditional electrical load calculation starts from square footage. Three volt-amps per square foot, a number set when lighting meant incandescent bulbs. The 2026 code finally dropped it to two.
That method was never dishonest. It was conservative by design, because when you can't measure a building you have to estimate it safely. But conservative estimates compound, and nobody checked them against reality at scale until researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab did. Comparing the traditional calculation against what homes actually drew, they found measured demand roughly 40% lower.
Jake is clear that this isn't his research, and his own reaction is the useful part. He spent years at Efficiency Vermont assuming what most of us assume — that older homes have small services because they were built for a smaller electrical era, and electrification means paying to upgrade them. That assumption shaped how programs got funded. The data changed his mind.
The method is one paragraph. Getting the data was the barrier.
NEC 220.87 has been in the code for years. Take twelve months of interval data from the meter, find the single highest interval, add 25%. That's the entire calculation.
So why has almost nobody used it? Jake spent his career inside the utility world and his answer is blunt: utilities are hard to get data out of. There are real questions about who owns meter data, and access varies utility by utility — not state by state. Vermont has had smart meters for fifteen years. Massachusetts is still mid-rollout. And some places have hourly readings rather than fifteen-minute, which the code permits but which smooths out the peaks you're looking for.
Then there's the inspector. The authority having jurisdiction is usually a municipal position, which means a different person with different habits in every town. Jake is candid that acceptance varies, and that it's mostly an education gap rather than a disagreement about the code. Vermont has a single state electrical inspector who supports the method — that's unusual, and it's probably why it's gone smoothly there. Elsewhere, expect to explain yourself.
What to do with this
The practical version is an escalation ladder, and it works regardless of what your utility offers.
Run the traditional calculation first. It takes five minutes, needs nothing from anyone, and you can do it at the kitchen table. If it passes, you're done — sell the job. If it fails, that's not a verdict. That's the signal to go get the meter data and check what the house actually draws.
And if the measured number still doesn't leave room, there's a step before a service upgrade: load management. Circuit sharing, smart switches, devices that hold off EV charging while the dryer runs. Jake sees that as the next tier, and it's considerably cheaper than a new panel.
The underlying move is simple. Find out what the house can carry before you put a number in front of the customer.
Timestamps
[00:00] - Cold Open
[04:13] - What is TrueLoad?
[05:33] - What happens when the panel can't take the load
[09:21] - Why the traditional calculation starts from square footage
[13:18] - From contractor to Efficiency Vermont
[18:56] - What Berkeley Lab found: 40% lower
[22:41] - NEC 220.87, in one paragraph
[24:19] - Why nobody has been using it
[30:32] - Load management before a panel upgrade
[34:18] - Where smart meter data is available, and where it isn't
[36:33] - 15-minute vs. hourly data
[40:06] - Getting the data from the utility
[46:56] - Gotchas: solar, batteries, and the inspector
[53:18] - Where to find TrueLoad
Follow Jake Marin:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jake-marin-0807b11b/
- Company: https://trueloadapp.com/
Transcript:
00:00:00.000 — 00:00:58.160
I have not talked to a single heat pump installer who has not run into the situation where they have a very enthusiastic customer. They come to the home. They're doing a really conscientious attempt to get a good heat load calculation. They're picking the right equipment, they're designing, getting ready to install, and then they look and realize, oh, actually, there isn't enough electrical capacity in the building. We've got to do a panel and or a service upgrade. And a lot of times if you don't have in-house electrical, you're bringing in an electrician who is going to give a second quote. Now, somewhere in that five to maybe even 20 or even $40,000, depending on your situation, and all of a sudden, that customer that you had right there, ready to go. Excited. You had a great project. You may have just potentially doubled the cost of that installation. And unless they have the means to do it or there's funding somewhere. That project could be dead right out of the DOA.
00:00:01:07– 00:00:03:37
Hey, everyone. We got something different today. We're talking electrical codes because too many heat pump jobs fall apart at the electrical panel. Not because the design was wrong. Because somebody has to bring in an electrician. That electrician writes a second quote, and now the customer is looking at a number.
Nobody planned for a timeline that's way longer. Jake Marin's argument is that a lot of those panel upgrades were never necessary. Jake built Vermont's first heat pump program back in the mid 20 tens, and ran it past 60,000 installs. He just left to start to load. He points to research out of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab that compared what the traditional electrical code calculation predicts against what homes actually drew.
And that research came back saying that measured demand came in about 40% lower. Not 5%, not 10%, 40% lower. The method for proving that has been sitting in the electrical code for years. Jake has a blunt explanation for why almost nobody uses it. If an electrical panel upgrade has ever cost you a sale, this one's for you.
And Jake has set up a code for our listeners. Amply. Five. Zero. All one word. Amply. The number five and number zero. That's 50% off. True load for three months. That code is in the show notes. Head over to Jake's website to use it. All right, a couple more things before we start. Our friends at Southern California Edison, the big utility, are hosting two free webinars with us.
And they're open to anyone, anywhere, even if you don't live in California. On November 12th, I'm teaching how to build a heat pump sales and marketing motion from your website and advertising all the way through delivering the quote and getting to yes on November 19th. Eric is going deep on designing heat pump retrofits that won't come back to haunt you, Daniel J.
Manual ask duct evaluation and the things that go beyond manual S. Two separate registration links, both in the show notes and amplify hiring again. We're looking for a senior iOS engineer and we're growing the software team. Beyond that, if you know an excellent software engineer who nerds out on heat pumps, home electrification, the stuff we love.
Point them towards the posting in our show notes. We'd love to hear from them. And last, if you get something out of this episode, leave us five stars. And wherever you listen to us, it does a huge amount for our show. Okay, on to our episode with Jake Marin.
00:00:03:41– 00:19:44.450
Hi and welcome to the Heat Pump podcast. I'm Ed Smith and I'm Eric Fitz. We are co-founders of Amply Energy. All right. Today we have Jake Marin. Jake, we've been getting to know you a couple of years now. Yeah. Yeah, probably. At least that. Yeah, yeah. And so we're excited to have you on to talk about your new venture.
We were just chatting before we started recording. You're doing the bootstrapped software for contractors founder thing. God bless you on this wild entrepreneurial journey. Let's start. So folks have the context. Tell us about TrueLoad. Give us the two minute version. We'll unpack it a lot from there.
But what's the high level summary of it. Yeah. So thanks for it's really great to be here talking with you guys. Great opportunity. I feel like I'm joining a long lineage of incredible guests that you guys have had. So an honor to be here too. Yeah. So TrueLoad. I would say we are the other lode calculation tool unlike amply, which of course, as everyone knows, is doing heat load calculations.
We're doing the electrical load calculations that really should be done before you're touching the panel or adding any loads to an existing building. And I think what makes TrueLoad special or different from other electrical load calculations is that we are using AMI interval data to actually measure how the building is performing in reality, and not just building up from the bottom up an estimated model, which is the way it's traditionally done.
So that's really what TrueLoad is. An AMI is advanced metering infrastructure basically smart meters, right? Yes. Thank you. It's hard not to get caught up in our own little internal language here, but yes, AMI advanced metering infrastructure, the smart meters that are deployed really across the most of the US at this point.
It's a great framing. It's very helpful to clarify the difference between manual j load calculations and electrical load calculations. We're obviously going to get further into the solution that you have, but I want to hear more about the problem specifically. We come from the space of heat pumps and think a lot about what happens when a contractor is thinking about installing a heat pump.
It could be a heat pump, it could be a new EV charger. But they're walking into a home that has only 100 amp service. It's got a 100 amp breaker on that main panel, and they want to put in this new device that's going to pull a bunch of power. What actually happens today. Typically that is the $10 million question right.
And I think the answer is it really depends. And there's what is code required. There's how our various contractors actually handling that situation. But I will say that whenever you're adding a load to a building and in most places, it is required that you're doing a load calculation to determine whether or not that load really can be added safely to that home.
And sometimes that's done with a very rule of thumb. Sometimes that is being done by doing a traditional load calculation, and it is effectively almost never being done by looking at what the actual measured demand of that building is. So from a heat pump, I'm sure for your listeners, for heat pump installers, I have not talked to a single heat pump installer who has not run into the situation where they have a very enthusiastic customer.
They come to the home, they're doing a maybe using a tool like amply. They're doing a really conscientious like attempt to get a good heat load calculation. They're picking the right equipment, they're designing, getting ready to install, and then they look and realize, oh, actually, there isn't enough electrical capacity in the building.
We've got to do a panel and or a service upgrade, and we can tease those apart if we're interested, but okay, what is that going to run? And now you're bringing in A lot of times if you don't have in-house electrical, you're bringing in an electrician who is going to give a second quote. Now, somewhere in that five to maybe even 20 or even $40,000, depending on your situation, and all of a sudden, that customer that you had right there ready to go.
Excited. You had a great project. You may have just doubled, potentially doubled the cost of that installation. And unless they have the means to do it or there's funding somewhere, that project could be dead right out of the door. And it's really unfortunate, because what we're finding is that when a lot of those panel upgrade triggers are happening, it turns out that they're not always really actually needed.
And it's not that anyone is doing anything wrong or trying to squeeze customers, it's just that the way we've been doing load calculations is outdated and it's overestimating what the current load is. And that was really the basis for what we were seeing from talking to contractors and even in electricians and what we were seeing.
And there was really no great solution other than to run this alternative load calculation and the reason why people haven't been doing it, and I'm sure we can unpack this in a lot more detail, is although it is a very simple calculation, in essence, it gets into a range where a lot of folks, particularly contractors who are not used to managing data files, just weren't comfortable and didn't really know how to get started with it.
So TrueLoad was really built up to make that super easy push of a button to make that happen and make it really easy to do. Got it. The conventional method is where you're looking at the electrical panel, and you're basically adding up the amperage on each breaker. And there's some math about utilization rate or some threshold that's required depending on the type of breaker.
So it was like this. Very simple. Put it in a spreadsheet. Add up these numbers. And if the number is too big that's what would traditionally trigger oh we need to upgrade the panel. And or we need to upgrade the electrical service to the home. And it sounds like you've got something that's way beyond that process.
Yeah. So the traditional load calculation and I'm sure your listeners are really. Most of them are familiar with this in some level, is more or less exactly the way you laid it out. It's based on primarily on a square footage number, three volt amps per square foot. And then on top of that you're looking at essentially any fixed loads.
So anything that has a dedicated breaker, there's a square footage approach for electrical loads. Yeah. That's crazy. Yes. And that's really supposed to cover lighting primarily lighting and basic plug loads, but that seems even crazier than a square footage method for BTUs. That is. Yes. I'm sure Eric knew this, but I did not know that.
That is wild. Yeah. And it's. They've been arguing over what that number should be, because three was the number that has been in place for many iterations of all of this stuff is defined in the National Electrical Code. And like all a lot of codes, there's a three year release period. And so there was a 2017, a 2020, a 2023.
And now some places have adopted the 2026 code. 2026 actually dropped down to two volt amps per square foot. Right. Because they're acknowledging that the efficiency of lighting is actually not the same as it was, say, 30 years ago when a lot of these numbers were put in place. So there are some improvements, and there's a lot of great work that's being done really all over to try to bring some of these methodologies, even the traditional methodology, up to more modern standards.
Right. Because they really are rooted in some very, very outdated assumptions and just the basis of how we tend to operate our homes. The types of equipment that we have in our homes really has changed dramatically since the codes were written. And I also want to make sure that I don't Pooh Pooh the traditional, as it's a horrible way to do it.
Nobody should do it that way. Everybody should be using smart meters. The truth of the matter is, not every building has a smart meter, and I'm sure we'll get into that a little bit further on. But as soon as you start talking about smart meter data, now you're bringing in the utility. There is a third party.
You have to get access to that data. There's some authorization and sign off. We've made it as easy as we can possibly make it at this point with TrueLoad. But what I will say is that we also built the traditional methodology into the tool. So for a lot of contractors, it may be the easiest process for them.
Maybe. Hey, let's just run the traditional method first. It's right there. You don't need to ask anybody for any information. You could do it while you're at the dinner table. You could get that done right then and there. Once you're running your heat load calculation, you run that calculation. It takes five minutes.
If it passes, great, you're all set. No worries. Move along. Sell the job. If you run into troubles, you start in. It fails. Now you've got a second tier, a second approach that you can take right there, which is to trigger. Let's get the data. Let's verify this before we start taking any measures to start bringing in electricians and changing out your service.
So that's a way we've been thinking about it. That's the way some contractors are using it. Very helpful. We got deep into it, which was awesome. I almost feel bad pulling us back for a second. Introduce yourself to the listeners. Who are you? You built Vermont's first heat pump program in 2014, and they got a great one.
Before that, you were a contractor. Give us the Jake Marin story a bit. Jake Marin's story. Thanks for. I do have a tendency to go deep. Go fast. So let's step it back. The passion comes through. Step it back. So, as you said. And I was before starting to load, I was at the VEIC working with Efficiency Vermont primarily, and for a big chunk of that time running the HVAC programs and built really the first program for Efficiency Vermont in 2014, which has grown to be an incredibly successful program.
And during the time I was there, we were one of the earliest that was doing the midstream approach. It really started to build out a lot of the best practices on utility program delivery, and we had done over 60,000 heat pumps by the time I had by the time I left Efficiency Vermont, so very successful. And I was also heat pump water heaters as well as a bunch of other different pieces of equipment.
Other electrification I did want to mention though that before, and you did just mention it yourself, and that I was a contractor before I started at VEIC. So for ten years before I started there, I ran my own construction company and that was really where my entrepreneurial journey began, I would say. And in some ways, VEIC was a little bit of a side trip off of that, just to slight divergence to really dig deep and what an incredible opportunity I had while I was there.
I learned so much and met so many incredible people, including you guys, as well as really folks all over the industry who are doing such incredible work. And it really helped crystallize my passion for clean energy and particularly electrification. That's where my heart has been for a long time, and I continue to push as I move into this space.
And what really motivated me in my time at the VEIC was the high cost associated with a lot of electrification was driving especially for lower and moderate income customers, was that there was no movement in that market, but really very difficult to address. That part of the demographic. And what we were finding, at least from a utility perspective, is that to make those projects move, we just had to fund them at a much higher level.
And that's what was happening really everywhere. There was nothing you could say. There was nothing you could really do. You just had to pony up more money to make those projects happen. And that's just the reality of it. So it became a game of like, where do you get the money to fund the level of scale that we needed, that we wanted to see?
And so I think what frustrates me about that way of looking at the market is that it's very difficult to scale when you just cannot infinitely scale. By always needing more money to do this. And so looking for became like a call it a passion, if not an obsession, which was to find ways to maintain the high level of quality and the standards that we've all come to expect that are going to help make this an industry that is truly successful in the long term.
But at the same time, to do that in a way where we could significantly drive down costs and one cost that seemed to keep coming up over and over that I had built in as an assumption was that, hey, we've got these older buildings, which is where lower and moderate income customers tend to live, and lower income older homes tend to have smaller electrical panels, smaller electrical service coming into them.
And the thinking was, oh, these homes just weren't built for it was from an old and older era. They were not built to sustain the level of electrification that we are now pushing for in this clean energy environment, not just heat pumps, but electric vehicles and heat pump water heaters and everything, it's significantly burdening these homes from an electrical perspective in a way that it just wasn't anticipated when these homes were built.
So we got to pay to upgrade them. And that was where my head, as well as I think most people's thoughts have been in this industry. And it wasn't until I started connecting with some of the folks at LBNL, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who were doing research in this area, and I started having my mind blown that when they actually looked at the data.
And a lot of this data was data that I supplied through some of our work at the VEIC to the labs. When they started looking at the data, it turns out that people are not using anywhere near the amount of power that we've been assuming that they do. And again, those assumptions come from those traditional load calculations.
And they're just models. They are not based on any reality other than a bunch of conservative assumptions with safety in mind. And when you don't have a way to measure, you got to come up with a way to estimate a conservative estimate that makes you people safe or keeps people safe. So now that we can measure, why do we continue to estimate?
And that's really as soon as I found that out. Just to throw some numbers out there. And this is not my own research. This is research that came out of LBNL. They found that when they compared over a large population of homes using the traditional load calculation versus the measured approach, which is what TrueLoad’s doing, they were finding 40% lower demand on that home, 40%.
So that's about half right. So we're not talking peanuts here. This is not a 5% difference. This is a substantial difference in what a building is actually using for power. And I hear now, of course, now that I'm building this tool and I'm talking to people, I hear story after story of people who say, oh, I ran this calculation.
I got my data and I looked at it. I couldn't believe it. After I put in a 400 amp panel. And then I found out that my peak was actually 59 amps. And so these are the you hear story after story of this. And so clearly I'm pretty passionate about it. And I think we should not be letting something as simple as this create any barrier to installing heat pumps electric vehicles, heat pump, water heaters.
Right. This should be the absolute first thing that we do before we start putting quotes in front of customers, as we should be, knowing what is that house actually capable of, right? So that we know what we can sell them, and that maybe one heat pump at maybe two. It may be a heat pump and an EV, but yeah, run that TrueLoad calculation before you get too far out ahead with the customer, because that could be a lot of saved time and a lot of saved heartache.
Let's get into this calculation aspect. Before we get there, I just wanted to emphasize actually one other piece that you mentioned. So the cost barrier is a huge one. You only touched lightly on the sort of like this hassle or complexity aspect of it, because depending on where you are in the country, even let's say you're like, okay, I've got the budget, I'm willing to spend the five grand for the panel upgrade and the service upgrade.
Then you go turn to your local utility and they're like, okay, we can do that, but it's going to take six months or nine months for us to get out there. And so all of a sudden your timeline is just totally blown up. And it's both it's the cost and this complexity and timeline that it just makes these problems so challenging.
Let's not forget the line from one of our favorite and earliest customers, Eric, where they said, what electricians are the prima donnas of the contracting world? If you got to do this, you got to get an electrician there. They're the most in demand right now, right? Especially with data centers going out.
We just heard from another one of our biggest customers that they're losing a bunch of electricians to these data center jobs because they're getting paid 2 or 3 weeks prevailing wage or even higher. It's like a wild situation. So yeah, the complexity is it's a great point, Eric. Yeah. Thank you for bringing that up.
I can find myself glazing over that, but I can be a deal killer too, right? Even if the money is there that just pushed you your timeline back. Like you said, sometimes six months or more. That can be a huge problem for workflow, for retaining the customer. It can be a huge problem. So yeah, absolutely. That and just the coordination how that just coordinating that it can be a real nightmare.
It's a mess. That's a total mess. Let's get into this calculation. So the National Electric code section is so excited right now. I am so excited
00:19:44.450 — 00:23:17.180
because this is in the early days of amply. This is something we spent a lot of time coming up against, and it's been a little while since we've talked about it. It's oh man, this is I love these details and it's so exciting when you discover that there's actually there's been opportunities around this for some time, but nobody's been taking advantage of it.
So NEC 220.87 it's been used. It's been there for a long time. Why has it been so underused? And tell us more about the process. What does it actually define. What's the protocol itself. Yeah. So to start with the first part of the question, maybe I'll start with the second part of the question, because I think that will provide more context for the first part rather.
So what actually, it's so simple that it's almost a little bit embarrassing that not only we have not been doing this, but that it took someone like myself to develop a whole piece of software around it because it really is incredibly simple. All we are doing and the. To be clear, this section of the electrical code that you mentioned, 220.87, it's a paragraph that's literally what we were talking about.
It's one paragraph in the electric code that says, oh, you can do all these really complicated calculations with lookup tables and demand factors and square footage adjustments and all of these things. Or if you do have 12 months of interval data, you just take the biggest interval in 12 months, right?
What's the highest amount of power that building has drawn through that meter in the last 12 months? Add a little safety factor of. It's a 25% add on top. Just to make sure this wasn't a weird year or something. And that's it. That is literally the entirety of the calculation. It is not complicated. It's extremely simple.
And so why have people not been doing this right? If it's that easy, why has no one been doing this? So without getting too snarky, I do come from the utility world, right? I spent a good chunk of my career there, and I will tell you, as a utility insider, utilities can be extremely difficult to work with, right?
They are regulated entities. They are regulated monopolies. And a lot of places there are considerations around who owns your data. Right. So that data may have come from your meter, but that meter isn't owned by you. It's owned by the utility. So who owns the data that comes out of that? How do you access that data?
Right. We'll probably get into green button and other portals for accessing data, but let's just say it hasn't been a simple process to get access to that data. And I'll also say that even if there was a smooth, clear process, it's a different world than what electricians and heat pump installers are used to living in.
Right. They're used to living in homes, the needs of contractors, equipment specifications, heat load calculations, not dealing with utility bureaucracy, and getting access to obscure data files with tens of thousands of rows of numbers that may or may not mean anything to them. Right. And so
00:23:18.780 — 00:31:29.720
there have been energy wonks, people in the energy space who, of course, have been utilizing this and looking at this for over a decade, but it has not reached regular people trying to just do their jobs and do quality work. And I think part of the reason, really the main reason for that is it just feels real complicated.
It's like, how do you start with this? Who do you call? And then you get a file, like what do you do with that information? Where do you put that number? And it just I think has felt very much out of the reach of the average person. And there are a handful of well-meaning people who've put together some Excel files that attempt to do this, to be that make it easier for people.
But at the end of the day, all these Excel files have a field that says, what's your peak demand? So you're still that still makes the assumption that somebody's getting this data file. They're opening it up, they're sorting it. They're picking the biggest number that and they're putting it in. And I don't know who your listeners exactly what their experience is with Excel.
Yes, I lived in Excel in my role at the VEIC, but I don't. My sense is that a lot of contractors are not spending their time in Excel and really comfortable with even things like filtering. So if you have to sort through, roll through 35,000 rows, which is what you get for 12 months of 15 minute interval data, there's just a lot of room for human error.
And so that was all taken out by the development of TrueLoad. It's a very slick UI user interface where you're just dropping the data file and you don't ever have to open it. It automatically parses, right? The software goes through it, identifies the correct fields, makes sure that the quality of the data is adequate to run this calculation.
So you don't have to know where the parameters are on that. It finds the largest value. And then of course, it has a bunch of additional bells and whistles to show you how much of a outlier maybe was this peak event? Was this really? Distinct. And or is it even throughout the year, are you really more dominantly winter peaking or dominantly summer peaking?
And so it gives you a little additional information about the home and even about the day when that peak happened. And then really, the most valuable thing that the tool ultimately does, TrueLoad kicks out a report that is designed specifically for AHJ, the authority having jurisdiction, the inspector.
Do you just staple that right to your permit application or another use for that report? Actually, I think for a lot of your listeners is going to be to provide a proof that they've assessed the electrical capacity. So even if it's not for getting that permit, it can be really valuable if they're competing against other contractors who might say they need a service upgrade, they can say, no, you don't.
Here's the proof. I have everything, all the math and all the methodology laid out right here. And this is a pass. So I think that's a huge value proposition as well. Totally. Yeah. And if homeowners, they have questions about it and they've heard other things, this is like a it's a diagnostic tool. It's a way to show with process with the data.
Hey this is what we're seeing. It's on an open question about we're going to get surprised on this electrical issue. It's very likely that there's going to be a problem here. That's so great. From whether it's the logistics piece of getting that electrician involved or about just making that sale and then figuring out how to coordinate the different trades that need to come in and help actually make the project happen.
Exactly. No surprises. Yeah. Love it. And I'm curious. So what I'm hearing is it's a single paragraph in the electrical code. And really, if you were to imagine someone's annual electricity usage, it's going up and down on a little roller coaster throughout the year, and your software is just picking where's that peak moment in a 15 minute interval and then can make the assessment from there.
It's awesome. Yep. I know there was one other area that was interesting in the early days of amply that we came across. It's the NEC 625.42. There's a whole other section about, if you don't know what the electrical loads are over a 12 month period, if you can demonstrate that you've got some device that can manage the load on the home, is that an aspect that you're getting into it all is this.
Are you aware of this? Is this another area that you're working on? Yeah. So great question. I spent the last, say five years of my time at the VEIC, very focused on demand management. Right. So thinking about how we actually when and where we're using electricity to optimize primarily with grid performance in mind, but It that can also be optimized at a building level, which is essentially what you're talking about.
And there's all sorts of great products now that are starting to come out that are designed to do exactly what we're talking about here, right? It can be anything from circuit sharing. So you can have things like an EV charger and an electric dryer on the same circuit with essentially a smart switch that says, hey, if you're drying clothes, hold off on the EV charging before you start to actually charge the car.
I don't really care when my car charges, right? It just has to be charged when I wake up in the morning. And it doesn't have to happen at this exact time. And if you really need it to go turn off your dryer if you actually think that's more important. But what that avoids is having to go out and put in a $10,000 electric panel.
So I'm highly aware of all of this, and I think that this is a tremendous opportunity to avoid expensive panel upgrades. I see it essentially as a series of steps like escalation. The first step, as I mentioned earlier, run the traditional load calculation. It takes five minutes. It's super easy. You can do it all right there in the home without bringing in any additional information.
If you have a problem, go and run the next 220.87 right. That 220.87 calculation can show you potentially like half or even three quarter reduction in your load, and you may have enough headroom that you don't have to do anything from there. I have not built TrueLoad to do this yet, but in our future roadmap is to figure out, okay, let's say that you still need to get a service upgrade because it's just the reality is you've got two electric cars and you've got four condensing units and you just have an older panel and it needs it just needs to be upgraded.
Maybe it doesn't actually right. Maybe there is a step that happens before that, which is to look at things like load sharing. Yes, there's different devices that can meter your main legs, and you can set different parameters around what you want to ramp up and ramp down. So you could keep your heat pump running, but say run it at 75% or run it at 50%.
And there are lots of great products that are coming out. Help do that. And that could be a much less expensive way to get you to where you still get your heat pump. Get your second EV charger without having to do the panel upgrade. So that is on our roadmap going forward. But right now we're just trying to get people at that through that first tier, right.
Like just assess the building to see what you actually can do right now for zero cost, right before you go and start investing in all of this additional infrastructure, potentially you don't have to do anything. And that's what we want to prove out. Jake, that was an excellent answer to what was really just a self-serving question.
So Eric could show that he knows how to quote the electrical code chapter and verse. That's really all he wanted to do. I couldn't have come up with that number. So you got me there.
00:31:31.560 — 00:35:02.360
It was a good question, Eric. All right, I love this. Thanks for making fun of me. I'll figure out how to get back to you on the next episode. Here. That's what I'm here for. So the million dollar question is, which states have large levels of deployment of this of smart meters? How do you get access to this 15 minute interval data?
How widely available is it across the country? Yeah. So as I mentioned earlier, getting access to the data has long been the challenge. And I'm not going to sugarcoat this and say that we've solved it all. But what I will say is that it is a bit of a patchwork. But keep in mind, over 125 million homes in the United States have smart meters.
So this is not a nascent technology or something. We're just starting on deployment. This has been in place in many places. So I'm from Vermont. We've had our smart meters in place for 15 years now, and we're now at the stage. Did you say 120,000,125 million? Yeah. So have smart meters. Have smart meters.
So most of the US is fully deployed. Surrounding states. New Hampshire and Maine have a lot of the smart meters are installed in the northeast Massachusetts. Unfortunately, I think where you guys are based out of is has been slow on rollout. I think between I just got mine yeah between Eversource. They're in the middle of deployment right now.
National grid is about half done last I looked, and Eversource is about a third to 40% deployed. And I may have said this, but I just want to highlight the other important pieces. Not just that you have a smart meter, but that you actually also have 12 months of existing data, right? So we have to not only have those meters deployed, but we have to have them deployed and logging for 12 months.
But there are places like California that have had are now over 20 years of smart meter data. So they really have deployed in most of the US. There are just some pockets where you can't get access to that. Now it's worth pointing out as well. We've talked about 15 minute data. And just to be really clear for everybody, what we're talking about is that every 15 minutes, the gold standard in AMI world is every 15 minutes there's a reading taken that's essentially the power average for that, or sometimes peak, but usually power average for that previous 15 minute period.
That is what most of Vermont has. That is what Eversource and National Grid will have in Massachusetts. There are a lot of places who do have what would still be termed a smart meter, but they're only getting an hourly data every 60 minutes. So that does, without getting too much off of answering the question.
That also does beg a little bit. The question around what does that mean? If we have hourly data, not 15 minute data, is that adequate? And so NEC, the National Electrical Code methodology for 220.87 that we've been talking about, actually doesn't specify a time or an interval. So
00:35:03.560 — 00:40:02.669
technically you could even run it if you had out daily data. Now I would not recommend that. And no one in the industry I think would recommend that. And an AHJ would probably second guess you for sure if you tried to do that. But hourly data seems to be within the industry, an acceptable amount of data. We're still talking about 8700 readings across a year's time.
It's all Bal, which I've talked about as part of their research. They did a really interesting process where they looked at where they actually did have 15 minute data. They looked at the 15 minute data and then they converted it. What if it had been an hourly average and they compared the two to see how different were they.
And they built out a I think everybody could guess that if you blurred out that 15 minute peak with some lower time, lower draws during that hour, you're going to lower your apparent peak. Right. So what they did was actually came up with some adjustment factors. So the code does not require this. This is something just that academics have been discussing.
I can tell you that we're doing work on the 2029 version of the code right now, there will not be. I shouldn't say that, I know, but it's highly unlikely from what we've seen, that they're going to institute any adjustment factors. So 60 minute data is fine. TrueLoad probably will at some point at least provide not on the report but for the user what that adjusted number would look like.
So if they opt to be more conservative than the code, they'll have access to that information. But it's really adequate to use 60 minute data. I would not encourage anyone to ever use anything more than that. If you have daily data at that point, I think you're really should be using the traditional load calculation until you have access to better information.
Makes sense. Okay, so it's patchwork dependent on the state, even on the utility within your state. But there are places of the country where there's a long standing deployment with mostly 15 minute interval data. And so depending on where you are you might have this might be a bit in place for a very long time.
You mentioned the kind of user side or the homeowner perspective. What does it look like. Okay. So all these things are in place. You know, you're within a utility service area in a state, in a town that you see the homeowner has a smart meter. What's the next step? How does the data get from the utility into your app?
Yep. So to be clear, users of TrueLoad or contractors never or almost never end users or consumers, this is a professional services tool, and that can be a heat pump contractor that you do not have to have an electrician's license to use this tool. But we also do have electricians that are using it as well.
They're the ones who have a licensed based requirement to do this. They're often the ones on the hook from a permitting perspective to prove out that adequacy. So with that said the user, the contractor who's running this project through, it's about five minutes of time to fill out the project in the tool.
Some very basic information about the customer and location, who their utility is, what service is it, single phase or three phase power. And then based on the utility that is selected, the tool has some sophisticated knowledge about those. All the utilities in the United States and how you can get access.
It is a patchwork, right? So for example, in Vermont, I have agreements with the utilities here so that when if a contractor wants data file from one of the utilities, they push one button that says get data from say Green Mountain power is our largest utility here. Get data from Green Mountain Power and the an automated authorization request goes out to the customer.
So that contractor's customer receives an email. Right now. We will activate SMS text at some point in the future, but right now it's an email. The email just says, hey, your contractor is looking to access your utility data in order to run a calculation for your project. Do you authorize its release? Yes or no?
You hit yes. Then a message goes to the utility that basically says, hey, customer X is we need their utility data to run this load calculation. We already have agreements in place. They know they're expecting this. Then turn around a standardized format which gets emailed to the back to the contractor user.
Usually that day, sometimes the next day or a couple days later. So
00:40:03.750 — 00:49:20.879
from the contractor's perspective, the user's perspective, they're filling out some really basic information about the customer. They hit get data and then a file shows up, they drag and drop it on and it kicks out a report. That's it. So that's the best case scenario right now in a lot of places that have access to the data, we don't have those agreements with the utilities yet.
So what happens is there's essentially a screen that comes up for the customer that leads them through the process of logging on to get their own data, and then essentially dropping it into the tool for the contractor user. So that's the primary alternative technique that we're using in the long term roadmap where we're really hoping to get.
And again, just to put this in, I think it's this is also important is there are about 3000 utilities in the United States alone. And they all are different. They have different rules, different processes, different structures, different requirements. But we're going to systematically be going through one after the other and establishing APIs.
And so for users that aren't used to this terminology, this all that really means is that we would create a data connection between TrueLoad and the utility data systems, so that when a data request goes in, it's just system talking to system. And that is pulled in automatically. Right. So there are no files being transferred.
The customer would still, at the end of the day have to authorize. And this is because of privacy and security issues so that you don't have random third parties getting access to people's personal information without their authorization. So that piece is going to have to happen no matter what in some form.
It's just making that as painless and smooth as possible. Got it. And so the idea it sounds like if it takes maybe a day, it's a couple. You fill out a form. It goes back and forth. File comes back. It could be a day. It could be less than that. Is the idea that when a customer says, hey, contractor, I'm interested in getting a heat pump installed before they even go on site.
Is this a process that gets initiated before you even? Like where does your tool start coming into play in the whole sales process? Yeah. So I think each user is going to have a slightly different workflow as far as this goes in an ideal world. It would be great to have that before you even start measuring up.
And it's good to know. At the very least, you definitely want to have this before you provide your quote. Wherever it happens in your process, you want it to happen before you've provided your quote. And I think that's intuitive to everyone anyway, right? Because you can't tell someone how much something's going to cost until what it's going to take to make that project happen.
And so I would say the earlier the better. A lot of people are doing that. If you are using the system that I just said, where the customer is actually going on, logging on and getting their data file, that can make this all happen as part of that dinner table conversation. It doesn't have to be days later. It can happen all in the part of the process.
They come in, they run their heat load calculation. They talk to the customer about what their goals are for the project, what their budget is for the project. And oh, by the way, here I'm going to send you a link, log in and go through this process to get your data file. Yep. We can do that. All right. Now it takes a couple of minutes to do that and I will help you through it.
And then you have it. So I think that's probably ideal. But again none of this is dictated. It really just depends on what your workflow is like and how and when you want to sit down and do that. Maybe you don't want to have a screen between you and your customer when you're at the dinner table, and this is so helpful.
I'm curious, as you've been building this out, what are there any gotchas that you've come up against? I think about if someone has on site solar, for example, other things like that may obscure some of the data that's going on or any other gotchas like that. Yeah. So there's a lot of misunderstanding around the role of solar or they say onsite generation.
So it could be wind. I don't know how many people have on site wind in their homes, but maybe more as we get some of these vertical axis turbines and such. But so the way that the code, at least the 2023 version of the code, which is where a lot of places are on 2023 right now, I believe that Massachusetts just adopted 2026, but anything that's 2023 or later, the way that's written is fully acceptable.
It doesn't matter whether you have PV, you can still use this calculation. The dot h7 calculation. It gets very confusing. And this gets a maybe really in the weeds. But there is a sub condition to the H7 calculation which says hey, if you can't get access to the 12 months of interval data, there is an alternative.
And that alternative is to put a meter on the mains in the home for 30 days, come back, download that data and then use the peak from that. If you go that route, the in situ meter route, you are not allowed to use that. If the project has PV or demand management of any sort, which is also on that list. So very few people are doing that.
And the older versions of the code, the way that it was structured, like where the the indent was and all sorts of arguments over these sorts of things. It appeared that in prior versions of the code you could not run the H7 calculation if there was PV. Now you could understand why that would be the case, right?
Because as you said, it could mask if you had, say, your peak happened on a hot summer day, which is a very common scenario, right? If your peak happened during that time period and you have PV, you may also be generating enough power to essentially cancel that out in terms of what's what the meter is showing.
So you still have all that power coming through the panel, but it gets masked. So it is allowable. But there are considerations. And so the way that we have built the tool is to look at essentially the gross consumption and not the net value which is essentially running through the meter. Now, how do we do that?
Most solar production is happening on a net metered basis. And so if there's a net metering, then you have to have either two meters or a multi-channel meter that separately measures how much you're using and how much you're producing. And so the way that's presented in the data file, like we are down a deep rabbit hole here now of data files.
But this is the stuff that the tool really masks for the users. Right. And this is these are the kinds of things that really got people stuck. How am I supposed to deal with this? What do I do? Right. And so all that happens behind the scenes. The tool looks for any production it takes out okay. Sometimes it needs to add something in.
Sometimes it needs to take something out. But it essentially is. What it's doing is it's calculating the gross consumption, which is essentially like what you were actually using, forgetting or setting aside how much you may have been producing at the time. Other things that can mask are back in home.
Battery storage, load management can, to a certain extent artificially tweak the apparent peak. But again, that's the point, right? That is the point of a load management program or load management equipment is to lower peak. So as long as you continue to utilize those things and you're not changing anything dramatically, it should still be a really safe and adequate way to do the test.
So there's really no major gotchas. I would say the biggest gotcha for all of this and the biggest wild card, if I'm being honest, is the as the inspector, we're definitely not developing this in a vacuum. We're talking with AHJ, but a lot of AHJ occur in most places are at a municipal level. So you're dealing with literally every town, and every city has a different inspector.
And it will be no surprise to any of your listeners that these guys, they're a bit of. They play God a little bit, right? They can do whatever they want. They can choose which parts of code to follow and which parts of code not to follow, and can be incredibly challenging to navigate. So the code is clear, and
00:49:21.880 — 00:52:25.600
in my opinion, every age should accept what the National Electrical Code says. Do they all? I cannot promise that they do. I have spoken with. I've gotten varying responses from different has. I can say that the Vermont, interestingly enough, has a state electrical inspector, which is an incredible thing and he is highly supportive, thinks it's great, it's more accurate, it's better representation of how buildings actually operate than a modeled estimate.
So is every single H.J. going to respond that way? Not necessarily. Not until they understand it better. Right. Because they don't have that education either. So that's probably the biggest one. And it's definitely something that I would love the opportunity to work with anyone who is talking to an H.J. and having any issues.
I'd love to be part of those conversations to help educate, to help move people through this, because it is a superior way of determining the load in our buildings. It helps us meet both a really safe standard while at the same time allowing for all this additional momentum and electrification that we're all working toward.
That is an excellent point. I think, to ask our final question, which is if folks want to find you, find TrueLoad, test it out. Where should they go? What should they do? Love it. Yes, I do want to start and say, as I've been so thrilled to have the opportunity to be on this podcast and as I said, such incredible listeners and participants in the pod, I put together a coupon for anyone who wants to try this out for a few months to get 50% off, so it's special for just amply listeners.
It's AMPLY50. I will put that, I think, in the show notes as well, but to get to it, you can check out the website its TrueLoad app. So TrueLoad app, TrueLoad app. And that will have explains how it works with the pricing structures R and some links to head over to the tool. And so for anyone, even non-family or should say people who are not yet amply podcast listeners can still access, you get one free project so you can sign up.
Doesn't require a credit card to sign up. You can sign up, you can try it out, play around with it, kick the tires, and run one free project all the way through from soup to nuts just to see how it feels. You won't be charged anything. And then if you want to get a subscription again for amply listeners, AMPLY50 will get you 50% off for three months.
Awesome. Jake, thank you for that very generous offer. We appreciate it. Thank you for coming on the Heat Pump podcast. Loved it. This is a topic that's near and dear to our hearts. Good luck and Godspeed, man. Been fine guys. Thanks, Jake. All right.
00:52:28.640 — 00:52:55.120
Thanks for listening to the Heat Pump Podcast. It is a production of Amply Energy and just a reminder that the opinions voice were those of our guests or us, depending on who was talking. If you like what you've heard and haven't subscribed, please subscribe in your favorite podcast platform. We'd love to hear from you, so feel free to reach out! You can reach us once again at hello@amply.energy. No .com just energy. Thanks a lot.
