 From the JSA Podcast Studio, presenting Data Movers, showcasing the leaders behind the headlines in the telecom and data center infrastructure industry. Hey guys, welcome welcome to our podcast series, Data Movers. I'm your host, Jamie Scotto-Cutaya, founder and CEO of JSA. Along with my very fabulous co-host, top B2B social influencer, you know him as well as I do, Mr. Evan Christel. Hey Ev. Hey everyone. Hey Jamie, welcome to Data Movers. Whereas always we sit down with the most influential men and women in today's leading telco and data center world supporting all of these crazy requirements out there. But first, I don't know about you, Jamie, but I'm kind of dragging today. Got a low energy. How about you? Yeah, you need an energy drink? A little cat. You know, I need energy. I need a little bit of solar. I need some wind, some hydro. I need some oils and maybe even some gas. Are all those available? Or do I need to go find a new source for my body? I love your creative way of thinking about energy and some renewable resources that are out there. And you know what? It is a time. These days we all, especially in the data center marketplace, we have our ESG goals, our sustainability goals that were hot on our list. And we're coming up with the right team, the right partners to really drive down, hopefully get to net carbon zero by 2030, 2035, as so many people have signed up on that I-Masons Accord. So the sustainability top of mind and that brings us to our fabulous guest today. So, yeah, kind of a perfect segue. Okay. We have with us today, Jeff Barber, Vice President of Global Data Centers at Bloom Energy. Welcome, Jeff. Hi, I don't know how I'm gonna follow that intro, it was shockingly good. Oh, good, thanks. I feel my energy being lifted as we speak, which is what you're all about at Bloom Energy. And I understand you're relatively new to Bloom Energy, but you're not new to the critical IT and data center world. So give us a little peak, how are you settling in at Bloom Energy? And explain to the viewers how Bloom Energy fits into not just the sustainability and resilience landscape with the data center world in particular. Yeah, absolutely. Starting with how it's going so far, I wish there was an emoji or a background of me with a giant fire hose stuck in my mouth, but that's what it feels like right now. The company is unbelievably busy. As you guys know, power is the hottest topic in the industry. So it's been it's going very, very well. So Bloom decided that it was going to verticalize particular businesses and they began with data centers for reasons that will become obvious here. The why data centers on the vertical, why the focus, time to power, power availability, power sustainability, power reliability is at the forefront of every data center developer's mind and the tenant's minds, right? So Bloom addresses all of those issues with a microgrid that's on-site power generation through solid oxide fuel cells, right? So that's why the focus, and we were able to put resilient power on-site in a matter of months versus many years in the case of a consolidated grid, or we are, like I said, we're distributed, we're on-site behind the meter power in your critical infrastructure. Okay, you just said so much. I'm gonna rewind you just a bit, unpack it for our audience, for those of us who don't have a wonderful opportunity to speak with you as often as we do. You said solid oxide fuel cell technology, tell us more. Yes, absolutely. So Bloom is, like I mentioned, solid oxide fuel cell where we essentially, we take molecules from multiple sources. It can be natural gas or biogas or hydrogen or a blend of those things. We, through an electrochemical process, a lot of intellectual property and magic, we take those molecules and we turn them into electrons. So we put boxes on-site that are approximately one meter by one meter in footprint, and each of those produces 55 kilowatts with no moving parts and no combustion, no particulates, none of that. So it's the perfect answer right now, certainly from an ESG perspective, but also from a supply and demand perspective. Oh, super interesting. I'm actually on your website at Bloom Energy and you have a kind of history of innovation at Bloom Energy from going back to the 60s. And I see here the first hydrogen fuel cell was built by Bloom co-founder Jim McElroy as part of the NASA Gemini program. So this is literally rocket science, which is fantastic. So tell us about this journey from the 60s to today and the sort of the technology behind Bloom. Yeah, absolutely. The fuel cells themselves, let me grab a little sample here. They look like this. They're little squares like a drink coaster. On each side of that cell is printed, actually a cathode and an anode, although we're not a battery. There's an electrolytic substance in between those things or again, a lot of intellectual property there. And those molecules travel through the electrolyte and become electrons. How did this come from NASA? Well, it was originally invented by our CEO, K.R. Shridhar for a mission to Mars that has since been canceled. And it was intended to produce breathable oxygen on Mars. If you simply reverse that project, I say simply, it's not simple, but reversing that project instead of converting electrons to molecules, we now convert molecules to electrons. So we do that, like I said, right on site, right next to your critical facility. So what's been fantastic, when I first looked at Bloom on the beginning of this journey, I thought to myself, I'm familiar with them. The densities aren't there, the expense is too high, but boy, over the last five to 10 years, they've had a very consistent track record of increasing densities. So now currently at 55 kilowatts per box. And along with that, we've gained the economies of scale so that the pricing is now, in most cases, on par with utility. So very compelling solution. Those boxes can be all attached to a common busway and we can aggregate that output into the tens of megawatts very easily. And talk about this being such a great time to get this message out there. Power failures accounting for what? 36% of the biggest global public service outages tracked by Uptime Institute since 2016. And so obviously capacity constraints growing, Bloom, the answer. Absolutely, on multiple fronts. So we'll start with reliability, Buffy, as you mentioned with outages. We leverage a pipeline of either natural gas or hydrogen if available or biogas. Those are always much more resilient than a centralized grid. There's no aerial wires. There's no substations to be damaged in a hurricane or flood or whatever. These devices are in hardened, ruggedized containers. For lack of a better term, they're beautiful. They look like a big, beautiful refrigerator almost outside your building there. So the gas supply is much more resilient against those types of failures. As I mentioned, aside from a few fans for air circulation, there are no moving parts in this box. This is an electrochemical process. So breakdowns are very, very rare. Pretty much the only thing will bring us down is lack of molecules and lack of ambient air. So we introduce ambient air to start the reaction. That's what creates the electrons. So that's from a reliability perspective. From an availability perspective, it's no secret. Substation lead times, transformer lead times, over-strain grids, the distribution of transmission lines and the construction of substations. Many times our customers are telling us five to 10 years out. So if you really need capacity online or you have a tenant that's looking for capacity, Bloom can get devices out there in many times months, but certainly under a year depending on the rest of the infrastructure around us. If everything's in place, literally it could be a matter of months to get power on site. That's fantastic. I may need to talk to you offline about getting one of these devices for my garage, but that's a separate conversation. I hope you can give me a discount. It's interesting how sustainability is like top of mind in our industry all the time now and it's not just greenwashing. It really is now a business imperative. I know we talk about it here on data movers and JSA is so committed to this philosophy. I was actually at an MTT event, the big Japanese telco, talking about where the network in the data center is optical networking is going in 10 years and the number one design principle is sustainability of the architecture. So it's so interesting. So what does this mean in terms of the big picture? You know, things like zero carbon, you know, reduced footprint, you know, a greener planet, even climate change. You know, what's the long-term messaging here from Bloom? I see Bapi holding up, or Jamie holding up greener data. My greener data, yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. So as it sits today, Bloom depends on the area. Bloom is typically 20 to 30% less carbon footprint than any utility. Again, that's not from combustion. That's just through having to transform natural gas. When green hydrogen is available and distribution is there, we will be truly carbon-free. We can accept that hydrogen now as a blend. We can accept pure hydrogen when it's available. But today, as a carbon measure, we have the ability to capture our own CO2 output. Again, this is not from combustion. This is just a process of separating the hydrogen from the natural gas. We can capture that today and that can be sequestered. So that's zero carbon. To your point, earlier, the greenwashing, I think has been, has subsided dramatically. Even carbon credits are not seen as adequate. And that's really being driven by the tenants. The landlords are reacting to what the tenants are demanding and they're beginning to absolutely look at Bloom as a way to get carbon free by 2030 for power generation on site. So it's an excellent time to be here, that's for sure. And hey, you've got some big names already paying close attention. Bloom's cells have been deployed by the likes of Nextra, TeleData, CenturyLink, Equinex, and now AWS, maybe in the future for Bloom. So big names, big names. Big names, big names. And what's beautiful is the motivation behind all of those names are different. Across the board, there's obviously the ESG angle. In the case of AWS, it was a time to power. We could get them to market years ahead of the traditional utility. In the case of Equinex, it's all of the above ESG cost savings. Like I mentioned, over the years, the pricing on these devices has been able to come down naturally just through our economies of scale. We are 100% produced in the United States in Delaware and in Fremont, California. We don't experience the same supply chain constraints and issues that much of the other partners in our industry do experience, unfortunately. I love that. So exciting, so exciting. I remember seeing you guys on 60 Minutes so many years ago. And it was probably your early days as a startup and look how far you've come. That's amazing. But let's switch gears. Let's have some fun. Let's learn a little bit about you and try to make you feel a little embarrassed. But question one, so if you could watch any movie on repeat 24 hours straight, what would it be? I know that's not a really carbon friendly way to watch TV. 24 hours for TV. But okay, it's just a thought exercise here. So which movie would you watch? Oh, that's an easy one. That would be Goodfellas. I love the mafia movies. I love Goodfellas. What am I? What am I clown? I'm here to amuse you? I'm here to amuse you. Exactly. Never gets old. Never gets old. Yeah, my husband too. That was very sad. We definitely have the same answer. You guys are so... I was so sad when Ray Leata died. He was too young and he was really so great as an actor. Absolutely. Genius. And that leaves me, that's a nice transition to my next question. What celebrity do people say you look like most? That's an easy one as well. I get it a lot. It's got to be Chris Farley from Tommy Boy. I mean, I was going to try on my little coat. And he said, man, a little coat? No. Yeah, I'll go with Chris Farley. I'm thinking. Buffy... Yeah, another great one. The GSA team was very nice to me, saying Nicholas Cage or some other good looking actor, but I'm going with Chris Farley. Yeah, I would go with, yeah, I like the Nicholas Cage thing. I usually get late Elvis, like 1975 Elvis, you know, right before he kicked the bucket. But anyway, favorite holiday to celebrate. Well, there's a lot of them coming up. You've got Easter, you've got summer ahead. What's your favorite? Well, sticking with the fat theme, it's Thanksgiving because I love to cook too much. So absolutely, family and too much food and just feeling miserable afterwards. And then going to work is just great. It's great. And where's home base? Where are you having Thanksgiving this year? We will have Thanksgiving. I live outside of Sacramento in California, so we'll probably do it in my place. Yeah, it's good. My favorite for sure. Yeah, I love that holiday too. Yeah, absolutely. Jamie's cooking next Thanksgiving for us all. So that's awesome. You would not love food as much as I was going to say. Oh, come on. Just get it catered in and it'll be perfect. That's my love. There you go. Well, thanks for joining us, Deb. Really interesting to get an update on Blue Energy. I really didn't know how far you've come over the last decade. It's really tremendous opportunity for not just you and your customers, but this whole planet. So keep on doing the good work. Yeah, thank you very much. It's great to see you guys again. Thank you, guys. And guys, if you enjoyed today's Data Movers podcast as much as we did, go ahead and check out jsa.net slash podcast for upcoming Data Movers episodes releasing every other Wednesday. So go check us out. And follow us on all the Twitter's, the LinkedIn's, jscotto, Evan Kerstel. And we actually will follow you back. So be there. Yeah, totally. Yeah, especially if you're talking sustainability, like, boom. All right, guys. Stay safe, stay green, and happy networking.