 Hello, everyone. Welcome back to JSA TV and JSA podcast. We are here live from PTC 24 and very sunny and beautiful on a Lulu Hawaii. We are on the last official day of the conference Wednesday here. How's how's the conference been for you so far, though? Conference is amazing. This is my second year here. And great, great content, great partners that we're meeting and great meetings that we've had. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent. So we are here with Bill Thomas, senior vice president of energy and power contracting for Clean Arc data centers. I'm going to chat a little bit for Bill's first time on JSA TV. So we're going to get a little bit of insight from him about Clean Arc, why the company was founded actually last year at PTC, right? So it's this is officially the one year mark anniversary. Yeah. So and then get into some 2024 trends ahead for Clean Arc as well. So we can just go ahead and dive in here, Bill. So first of all, we would love for our audience to learn a little bit more more about Clean Arc before we jump in too deeply. So you all are pretty new on the data center scene, like, like we were saying, you launched last year at PTC 23. So can you just tell us your elevator pitch around Clean Arc? Like, how do you describe the company? Yeah, it might be might be an extended building that we're riding in. But let me try and give you the abbreviated version of it. Clean Arc was founded as a really a greenfield utility scale developer of data center. And when I say when I say utility scale, our prototype for our buildings is 67.2 megawatts. So pretty significant, a pretty significant dimension for volumes. And we envision having four to six of these buildings per campus. And so when you kind of get into that, and you think about what the energy consumption is associated with that, it's somewhere in the area of like four and a half terawatt hours annually. So a massive, massive energy footprint. Our ambition is really to develop for the hyperscale community. I mean, that's that's where that's where this scale is going. We feel like we're meeting the hyperscalers where they are, they all have internal mandates to manage their GHG mitigation, greenhouse gas mitigation. And they have ambitions to power their facilities by clean energy and carbon free energy in various timeframes 2030 for some 2035 for others. And so we're trying to meet them where they are, which is to say, we're bundling clean energy solutions, along with the digital infrastructure that we're bringing to them. So we're excited to be able to present what we think is a really differentiated product in the space where where we actually use the clean energy solutions set to drive our siting. And so we're really excited about about what we're doing where we're going. You know, the the capacity piece is critical for the hyperscalers. But the energy offset piece is is becoming equally important. And so we're really trying to focus on that and trying to create structures, power, power contracting structures that give them some benefits of clean energy procurement and allow us to pass through some of the wholesale pricing benefits to them. Excellent, excellent. So kind of in short helping hyperscalers with their clean energy transition over time, right? Excellent. So filling, filling an amazing kind of gap there in the industry over the past year, and very exciting things ahead for you all, as a new company in the space. So you talked a little bit about some of the challenges that you're you're solving for hyperscalers. Is there anything else you want to add on that front? Yeah, well, I mean, I think, you know, our director of engineering says it the best, which is the data center of the future has not been built yet. And so we really focus on that. And we really try and align our our design and our execution with what the future is bringing. And one thing that we know the future needs is scale. And so we're really focused on the scale piece. As I mentioned, I mean, we're talking about 67.2 megawatt buildings, you know, maybe five to seven campuses nationwide. So we're really trying to get to the scale that the hyperscalers are looking for. In addition, you know, we're trying to accelerate our speed to market with those facilities, a lot of problems. And I'm sure you've heard it all throughout the week, regarding power availability in all of the geographies across certainly across North America. And so we do a lot of analysis that that we think allows us to get to to get to delivery as quickly as possible. And again, you know, I always use the analogy of the barbell. The physical power is one plate on one side of the bar, and the renewable energy offset is the other plate on the other side of the bar. And they kind of have to be even or you get a weird workout. Yeah. And so so that's one of the things that we're seeing. Meeting the hourly carbon free energy piece that the hyperscalers are kind of insisting on is another element that we're trying to bring. We do a lot of analysis that allows us to create portfolios of renewable energy projects that really get to very high levels of hourly renewable or clean energy content for the hyperscalers and the operations right within the grids that they're operating. Got it. Excellent. Excellent. Yeah, that's a really great overview of how you all are helping hyperscalers out. And so we wanted to chat a little bit about project that you all have going on. So I'm looking down to make sure I get this right. So you launched an RFP for renewable energy products, and you received a ton of proposals, more than 40 companies. So can you tell us a little bit about that and the excitement around it clearly? Yeah, there's no question. You know, the renewable energy developers, that's the world that I come from. I'm a recovering renewable energy developer. But they're always looking for viable channels to sell their wares. And, you know, in my travels as a renewable energy developer and energy contract originator, it was pretty apparent and quickly became obvious that the ICT space was procuring the 90% of what was being procured in the voluntary renewable energy markets. And even more specifically, it was the hyperscalers that were doing it. So we know that there's a nexus there between what the renewable energy developers need to get their projects moving forward, get contracted and financed, and what the hyperscalers are really demanding. And so as I said, our ambition is to go out and bundle this product and make sure that we have a viable energy solution, clean energy solution for the hyperscalers a priori. And to accomplish that, we ran an RFP this summer. We did, we received three gigawatts of projects from over 40 developers across PJM and ERCOT. We're still going through the evaluation. We ran into a little bit of a hurdle with PJM projects because of some systemic things that are going on with grid reform in PJM that are not allowing renewable energy developers to really get their projects online as quickly as we would like. But we're trying to get there and we're hopeful that things are starting to free up a little bit and we should have viable projects to serve our ambition of being online in 2027. Excellent. Excellent. You heard it here first. That's great progress on the initiative that you all have laid out. So as you all continue to gain momentum then leading into your second year of being around in the market, what would you say about the horizon for 2024? What's ahead for Clean Arc? Well, we're really excited about 2024. We were hopeful that we would have an announcement that we could share with you live on YouTube TV. Sadly, we're not quite there yet, but we're really close and we expect to make a pretty significant announcement on our first facility in the coming week or two or four. And we hope that we'll be moving forward with our first project in earnest. We've received some really encouraging news from the utility that we're working with and we look forward to really advancing that project and also advancing the rest of the portfolio. Excellent. So definitely keep an eye on the space on Clean Arc. Go to Clean Arc website, check them out on LinkedIn. There's a lot of excitement coming in 2024 and thank you so much, Bill. And if you're a renewable developer, feel free to send me some of your project information. We're always looking. Yeah, connect with Bill Thomas on LinkedIn, connect with Clean Arc and follow them and make sure you watch that space. So thank you so much, Bill, for joining us on JSA TV today. Thanks, Candice. Thank you and thank you viewers for hanging out with us here live from PTC24. Happy networking.