Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to Business Forward. I'm Joe Reyes and today we're talking about how smart decisions and clear numbers can drive real business growth. You're watching now Media television.
Okay. Welcome to Business Forward. I'm Joe Reyes, your host. On this show, we dive into the strategies and solutions helping businesses stay strong in a rapidly changing world.
Today, I'm joined by a remarkable guest, Andrew McCain, founder of McCain Power Systems. After a successful career with Mustang Cat in electric power generation, Andrew launched his own company in 2020.
With certifications from EGSA and deep expertise across industries like standby power, marine gas, compression, and more, he's built MPS into a fast growing company that's now entering its sixth year.
Andrew knows firsthand the challenges that businesses face when the power goes out and how energy security can mean the difference between shutting down and staying open.
Which brings us to our first discussion, keeping the lights on when everything around you goes dark. So, Andrew, welcome to the show.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Thanks for having me, Joe. I appreciate it.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: It's a pleasure. It's one of my favorite topics.
So let me start with this.
So when businesses lose power during storms or outages, why does it grind everything to a halt?
[00:01:26] Speaker B: I mean, without power, there's, there's, you know, there's really, you know, you don't have Internet, you don't have ways to communicate. The cell towers are down. So, you know, without utility power, you need some sort of either bridge to utility, having some sort of, you know, different way of getting continuous power, or you need backup power generation and typically, you know, natural gas or diesel generators for, for the backup power. And then there's also, you know, wind and solar options as well.
And then battery, battery power is one of the, the new ways that people are putting in to have uninterrupted power supplies. UPS's to kind of bridge that, that, that power outage.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: So can you talk more a little bit about battery?
[00:02:14] Speaker B: Yeah, sure.
[00:02:15] Speaker A: How that works out?
[00:02:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
So, you know, a lot of it is, is how do you store power? Right. You can't really make, making power is, is, is easy. Storing power is not easy. And you continually, when you're talking about utility power, you continually need to make power to produce it to end users. And we're the consumer, so we, whether or not it's a business or your household, we are consuming energy all the time and that power is very hard to store. And so what guys like Elon Musk and other, there's a lot of manufacturers that are building these battery banks to be able to store power.
So when you lose power. You can substitute using a DC to AC inverter and invert that power back to be able to use it for, you know, turning your lights on.
You know, if you have a manufacturing plant and you need machinery never to turn off because it takes 20, 30 minutes for it to revamp, you're going to have that battery that you can't store a lot of power there, but you can store enough to keep you up. And that's why they're called UPS is uninterrupted power supplies, but in data centers, making sure that you never lose power so that you never go without, you know, WI fi or any kind of power supply that you can't lose people's data.
It's pretty important to have those batteries that can store, you know, it's a limited amount of power, but it can store that power to produce for backup. And then you have something outside of that, another generator or solar or something that as soon as that power is used from the battery, those are getting recharged, just like if you would use batteries in a toy for your kid. And, you know, you can take that Energizer, little triple A or double a battery, put it in a recharge, you can actually recharge that battery. So guys like, and just like your Tesla cars, right, you're going to put a little plug in there, recharge it.
You have to have some sort of power to then recharge those batteries so that the next power outage you can, you can use that stored power as well. So that, that the different manufacturers and the, what's the word I'm looking for, the way in which we're getting, we're getting better at that, at storing power with those batteries. Those, those are, those manufacturers are getting better.
You know, we're kind of in an early phase, you know, phase one. And so we're going to see these batteries being able to be charged longer, they're going to be able to be charged more often and have more life cy, because one of the things that we talk about is sustainability and for clean energy. But what about when those batteries can't be charged anymore? You know, you have lead and all these different materials that now we have to dispose of. How are we going to do that and solve that problem to, you know, that's down the road.
[00:05:12] Speaker A: So it's a forever conversation.
And you know, a lot of people, a lot of business owners don't really think about the, the cost of being down if the power goes out.
So what are some of the Hidden costs that you think are out there that maybe a layman like myself may not be thinking about by not having a battery backup or some power backup.
What, what do you come across that business owners should be thinking about? Them. They may not be thinking about.
[00:05:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean we'll start simple. Like if you're, if you work out of your house and you do, you have your own company and you do sales or Amazon store out of your house and you lose power for a week because of a storm. Especially here in Houston now we get hurricanes all the time Barrel last year I think people were at a. Without power for between 10 days to full two weeks. You know that could put a huge damper on your business. And you know a lot of small businesses are cash flow businesses. So having a plan and having you know a backup power generator for your house, that is a business plan, right. That's a tax write off. There's things that you can do, you can depreciate that asset. So that's, that's kind of the simplest format for businesses and individuals working out of their house. And then you go to let's say a grocery store, right. A grocery store has millions of dollars of frozen food and product that they bring in if they do not have power backup power generation for when they do lose power, which they will and they don't have any kind of redundancy within I don't know, three, four hours, all of your stuff is going to be, you know, thought out and you're going to be without millions of dollars of product that you can then resell. So you know the impact small up for your household but could be big for that small business owner too. You know, you have a grocery store chain that loses power and doesn't have backup or redundancy plan.
It could be devastating. And you know, at the end, at the end of the day, I mean you know us small business owners and also consumers are then paying the, the price increase for stuff like that happening then not having.
[00:07:25] Speaker A: And you would recommend business interruption insurance I assume like makes it's not just battery back energy. It's also like just in case I have business interruption insurance. But it may not cover everything. So it's better to be prepared.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: You know where your home.
[00:07:40] Speaker A: Right. So what, what about short term fixes and any long term energy security there anything that you can recommend that it's a short term fix that can get somebody a small business, let's say over like a large supermarket is a different story. That good luck with that. Right.
[00:07:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: But Short term fixes maybe if something hits and you're not ready.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, so our company has an entire team of rental. So there's McCain Power Rentals, but there's, you know, you have United, you have Sunbelt, you have all these different rental companies that you could contact. I'd be happy to. For us to call us and I'll lead you to one of our sales team members for npr. There are rental options for small business where maybe you don't have capex this year to expend to this, but you have operational costs where you could say, hey, during hurricane season or even during the wintertime, we have a lot of ice storms here that knock out power.
We would like to put a, you know, for a small monthly rate and maybe, you know, we would come out and size it and know exactly what you need so that if you do lose power, this unit is either on our yard or hooked up to yours as a temporary power.
It's a mobile, mobile generator you can put out there for.
And that'd be the quickest way to do it. And you could do it on a contingency where it never leaves our yard or you could actually go put it on your yard hooked up. So when you lose power it is.
[00:09:09] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:09:09] Speaker B: You know, you manually would have to get somebody out there.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: That's awesome. Yeah, I never thought of that. So, so when would. So let's say a business owner and I think what applies to a business owner applies to a homeowner, right? Yeah, it's actually more important for the homeowner if you got a family that you want to protect. But so when would. So obviously the best time to get the battery or the solar Pro or whatever generator you're going to get is before something happens. So is it that people will. Business owners will like, hurricane season is coming, let me go rent for the next five months.
A system. Is that the way that works? Right?
[00:09:46] Speaker B: Yes, sir.
Yeah. I mean, so yeah, I mean we do it all the time.
It depends on, you know, first for a small business versus a household. Household, a quick fix would be just, you know, a couple hundred. I mean, less than a thousand dollars. You can get a generator that runs off of gasoline that you can hook up. You know, the stuff at your house that is necessity, a couple fans, you know, you can, you know, it's not, it's not going to break the bank. But you know, your freezers, your deep freezers, stuff like that that, you know, the necessity so that you can, you know, keep your, your food cold for longer. So that if you're without power for five to six days, yeah, your air condition is nice, but you can survive on, you know, box fans and stuff. Running off of a small pull start generator you can buy at your Home Depot or, or Lowe's or something like that or Grainger, but for, for small businesses. Yeah. I mean that's exactly how it works. And have a plan ahead of time. The worst part, the worst thing you could do is give us or United or somebody a call during the middle of a hurricane right before it because those assets are getting deployed and unless you have something locked in, you know, it's going to be tough finding something.
It happens every time. It happens. Every time a storm even gets close, we get calls, oh, hey, you know, do you have XYZ available?
And most of the time the answer is, you know, see what we can do. But it's really hard to make a plan after the fact.
[00:11:20] Speaker A: So how far in advance should a business owner plan? I mean, they know hurricane season starts, let's say June.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:27] Speaker A: When they should they be contacting you for a rental?
[00:11:30] Speaker B: Q1, beginning of, you know, Q1 to beginning of Q2, you know, quarter one, quarter two, you know, that way you can lock something up. We can have time for somebody to come out in size, you know, depending on the building, depending on, you know, how much amperage that comes in. We're going to need to have the right generator in place so that, that you can have a plan.
[00:11:49] Speaker A: Okay. Right. Yeah, Good. Good stuff. All right, so we're going to, don't go anywhere. We're going to come back and talk about the high cost of doing nothing. Right. And when it comes to energy security, doing nothing is not, is not an option.
And if you wait till the disaster strikes, as Andrew just mentioned, you're going to be out of luck. So we'll be right back.
We'll be right back with more insights, tools and real talk to help you grow your business.
This is Business Forward on NOW Media Television.
And we're back. I'm Joe Reyes and you're watching Business Forward on NOW Media Television. Let's get back into it.
Okay. Welcome back to Business Forward.
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And I'm here with Andrew McCain. We're talking about energy and how it affects businesses. Andrew is the founder of McCain Power Systems, and we're talking about why delaying energy security might be the most expensive mistake a business can make.
So, Andrew, why do business owners hesitate to prepare until disaster strikes?
[00:13:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's kind of out of sight, out of mind, right? I mean, a lot of times you don't think the worst case can happen until it happens. And then all of a sudden, you know, you're upside down and you're like, well, I wish I would have made, made a plan. So, you know, I think that, you know, most, most guys, they're not.
Power is something that I think more and more people are coming in, tuned about, right? With all this AI coming out, all these data centers that are needing power. You have more power than you have supply, demand, right? So you have. The demand is super high. Supply is not.
People are working more from home now. So the way that the utility grids in some of these major cities, they're having to revamp how they're doing things. And Those things take 5, 10, 15 years for utility to catch up, you know, to provide power to the end users the way that it should be. So, you know, I think that now this is becoming more of a topic for people to make a plan. But it's still, I mean, it catches all kinds of people. I mean, your local, your random Exxon gas station, we got a call that a guy that owns like five or six of them, middle of the storm, he needed, he needed for a week. I mean, he had groceries there. He had all the kinds of stuff. He needed seven different generators to run seven of his different stores. And he didn't call us till the middle of the storm. So most guys don't think. And now we have a contingency plan with them. And that happened last year. So, you know, there's, there's certain things that people don't really think might happen. And so it doesn't, they don't make those plans. They kind of get stuck in quicksand a little bit, and then all of a sudden they're sinking and they're like, let me grab onto some branches. So, you know, we like to help solve those problems for customers ahead of time and, and make sure that, you know, we make that plan together and we're, you know, in touch with what their budget is and what, you know, what they're looking for. You know, is it something that's a quick response or something that's there full time?
You know, we can kind of do any of that kind of stuff.
[00:15:41] Speaker A: So you do consulting work first and obviously you consult with them and out.
[00:15:45] Speaker B: Yeah. It's all about trust. Right. You got to, if you're just going out there trying to just put a generator on there and sell something, somebody, people can read right through that. So we're here to solve problems. You know, if somebody's out there just saying, oh, yeah, this is what you need. You need to, you know, you know, there's probably a better way and there's probably a different way. Right. So I would, I would assume even with us, you know, get, get, you know, several opinions on what, what needs to happen to make the best plan for your business.
[00:16:13] Speaker A: Yeah, good stuff. And obviously the financial risks of ignoring energy security could be huge. And you could be living someplace where you're there for decades and nothing has ever happened and you start to get complacent and you're thinking, nothing's going to happen. Why should I spend thousands of dollars on a system? And then all of a sudden, you know, you were not prepared and something hit and that can put you out of business. Right?
[00:16:37] Speaker B: 100 pretty much, yes, sir.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: So how do you calculate the, the cost of downtime? I mean, it's, there's obviously, like you said, food costs, you know, if mess, you know, bad food, it goes, rots or whatever.
But it's more than just product. Right.
There's other things that affect the cost of being down and they're kind of invisible costs. And what have you seen, like, in that regard?
[00:17:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, there's, there's operational costs day to day, whether you're on a refinery and you're producing a product for end users. You're, you pretty much know, every single day we pump out $300,000 worth of, of crude or whatever it is. I'm just using that as an example. But.
[00:17:21] Speaker A: Right, yeah, sure.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: You know, those are easy things to calculate. But again, if you're running a successful Amazon store out of your house and you can't, you don't have any Internet and you're doing, you know, 100,000amonth through, through a household deal. I mean, that's, what is that? I mean, that's, that's, that's a, that's a lot of money every single week. That you know, that's $25,000 a week. That okay for your house. I mean, you could spend 15 grand and have a, you know, have a full house, backup generator and off to the races.
So, you know, there's, there's, I think it differs from customer to customer and business to business.
[00:18:02] Speaker A: But yeah, so for knowing that, I'm sorry, for home based business then.
I mean, what, you know, it's a small budget, a small business working from, maybe you're a consultant working from home. Right. And yeah, it's just a computer and you. Right.
And you want to keep the fridge operating, you know, in the winter. I know you guys don't have winters in Houston. In the northeast, we have winters. And you want to keep the heater going.
What can a small company, a homeowner, what, what can they expect to spend? Because that's always a big question because there's so many opportunities for getting ripped off in this industry.
And so I would love for people to hear what it costs in reality to take care of a home and a small business.
[00:18:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think for most homeowners, if you wanted a, hey, lights go off, utility shuts off without even, I mean, within 10 seconds our house is back running and lights flicker a little bit and everything's back on.
You can budget about $15,000 fully installed a home generator that's going to provide power for your whole house. That's everything. That's your pool, that's your AC during the summer, that's your heater. And so, you know, that's a lot of money for an individual, for a company, you know, there's a couple different benefits here. You can use that as a tax deduction and you get to depreciate that asset as a fixed asset over a period of time. So there's some really good benefits. But as a homeowner, there's a lot more efficient. I mean, you can spend less than $1,000 and pull and get a 5,000 watt, you know, for 350 bucks from home Depot, pull start generator. That is going to keep your necessities alive. Now is that going to run, you know, all your wall outlets and everything for, for your WI fi? No. And if, and if the local, you know, if there's no power running in for, you know, if you have fiber Internet, you're not going to have WI fi anyway, even if you do have power provided. So there's some, you know, there's, there's some complications there for running a business out of your house and having you Know, having Internet versus, you know, just having power on inside.
[00:20:13] Speaker A: So, so it could go anywhere from $1,000 to $15,000, let's say. I know I have a solar generator with a, it's a battery backup with the solar panels and it's fully charged, is ready to go. And I'm thinking of getting another one, you know, and I got that for like 2500 bucks years ago. And it's, you know, pretty solid equipment. And I don't care about the L, you know, like, you know, all we care about is staying alive, staying warm in the winter or whatever and being fed. So for, so anywhere from 1,000 to $15,000 is really quite reasonable. Especially like you said, it's a bit. If you have a business, today's bonus appreciation is 100%. That's a, that's a big deal.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: How long does something like the system that you have, how long does that keep you sustained? You know, and that could be a great option for people, right?
[00:21:03] Speaker A: I mean, I don't know.
[00:21:04] Speaker B: Yeah, because you never, you never experienced it. I mean, that's, that's one thing with solar, with solar and battery backup, there is a window there, obviously there's a window with diesel or natural gas as well. But you know, like, if you have a propane or natural gas, you can actually say, okay, in the middle of a storm, I have a 500 gallon propane tank and my generator is going to run at 1.2 gallons an hour.
I mean, that's, that's, that's crazy. I mean, that's a month long of running. You know, the possibility of you being more than three to five days without power, that's, that's. I mean, we've had several in the last eight years. We've had last year Barrel, then we had Hurricane Harvey back in 2017. We had a winter storm two or three years ago. But I mean, I think the most people were without power 7 to 10 days unless they got completely flooded out and then they're out of their homes anyway. Right. So they got bigger, bigger problems than five.
[00:21:57] Speaker A: Right? Sure.
[00:21:58] Speaker B: You know, I think, I think the biggest thing, to answer your question is like having a plan and having somebody kind of speak through the pros and cons of what you're putting in the budget that you have and then, and then working within those two to make the best plan for you as either an individual or a business owner. That's really it.
[00:22:16] Speaker A: So, so if you, if you get like earlier you mentioned, you know, a unit where you can plug everything into it, you know, to keep you going. So, like a gasoline generator. Yeah, right.
That obviously the gasoline generator has to be placed outside the home, I assume.
[00:22:31] Speaker B: Yes, right, yes. And.
[00:22:32] Speaker A: And this. And so the generator has, like, outlets where you can just run extension cords into it. Is that the way that works?
[00:22:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, there's some operating, you know, processes that, that I would advise doing some research and running. But, you know, every, every one of those ones that you'll buy from the store, you basically, you put it outside. You do not want to run it in the garage or in your house. It produces carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, a lot of other things you can't see or smell. You're breathing it, you will die. It will, you know, there's. There's multiple people that have ran them in their garages thinking that was safe. Those, those gases go in. You can't see, smell, taste it, and all of a sudden you're passed out and you can't do anything. So obviously outside, you have to think about this, too. You're going to be putting a generator that's producing electricity outside in the rain when it's storming. So you need to have it properly grounded. You need to make sure you read the electricity is not something even 240, 123 single phase for a household. You don't want to mess with that. That can still kill you.
You know, electricity is not something to mess around with. So making sure you read, you know, and make. And, and if you're choosing that option, read, do your research.
And if you have any questions, I mean, call professionals, call.
[00:23:48] Speaker A: You know, that's what I would do. Yeah, that. That's the recommendation I would give, you know, because you don't know what you don't know.
[00:23:53] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: Right. So you may not think of something like what you just said about carbon monoxide. So for Andrew. Andrew. So for those watching the show and want to learn more about you, your business, what you do, how can they reach out to you and find you?
[00:24:07] Speaker B: Yeah, just go to Google, type in McCain Power.com or go to our website, McCain Power.com all of our contact information is on there.
You can give us a call, you can email us, inquire about it. You know, we do sales, service, rental, packaging, pretty much everything that you can possibly think of on the power system side. So happy to help any of you guys with our services.
[00:24:33] Speaker A: All right, well, stick around, everyone. Coming up next, we're going to be exploring how to balance energy costs while still planning for growth. You won't want to miss it. We'll be right back.
We'll be right back with more insights, tools and real talk to help you grow your business.
This is Business Forward on NOW Media Television.
And we're back. I'm Joe Reyes and you're watching Business Forward on NOW Media Television.
Let's get back into it.
Welcome Back to Business Forward. I'm Joseph Reyes and I'm joined by Andrew McCain. In this segment, we'll be talking about the challenge every business owner understands, and that is the rising utility costs that make their profits feel like they're draining away into just covering energy.
But what if there's a smarter way to plan for growth without breaking the bank? And that's kind of what we're going to talk a little about today because, you know, cash flow is the blood of the lifeblood of a business.
So, Andrew, energy is expensive nowadays and it's getting, it seems like it's getting more and more expensive.
What's going on?
[00:25:40] Speaker B: Yeah, kind of like we talked about, I think in the first segment of supply and demand. Right.
The demand, especially like here in Houston, it's a growing economy.
You have several different utility companies that are producing power. And more and more businesses, more and more people are moving into the city or moving around the city and that, that, that, you know, is getting bigger and bigger and people are needing power in locations that they're now not producing. So you got an excess of demand and not enough supply, and that's around the United States.
So energy costs are obviously going to drive up and it takes utility to catch up, you know, 10, 15, 20 years. So.
[00:26:25] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:26:25] Speaker B: Yeah. I think that we're going to see a continued rise on that.
And there are a couple things our team is doing and looking at to try to mitigate some of that stuff for businesses.
[00:26:37] Speaker A: Tell us about it.
[00:26:38] Speaker B: Yeah. So we have recently become the OXA distributor, which is just like Caterpillar Cummins.
It is a manufacturer from Turkey and they actually have their manufacturing facilities now here up in Conroe, so really close to us, about an hour north of us that we can interact well with.
We are partnering with them and we are actually going to businesses and doing, working with ERCOT to do a replacement. So you put your backup power, either a new natural gas generator on your site or if you have an old diesel or old natural gas, replace it with new.
And we set you up directly with ercot and there's a system that we put you on and you will actually get paid for your having that generator come offline. Right. And run on generator power from utility. So the utility will pay businesses an agreed upon amount based off the fact that you are agreeing to go offline and go on, on your generator power and go off of utility during peak demand times.
You could never lose that power, right? Or you could, it could be up to, I can't remember the exact number our sales team has that info, but I think up to 500 hours or so a year. And I may be wrong on the, on the hour side, but you have to agree to that up front that whenever utility wants they could take you offline, but doesn't really matter, you're on backup power at that point. So it's a pretty cool little program that we're rolling out to, to customers and they can call us directly or work with their, you know, we're working with a lot of electrical contractors here in Houston to really go to these end users and say, look man, you know, if you got capex to spend, this is a product that now you're going to make money on. It used to be just a, just an insurance policy, right? If you lose, you might lose it. Well now every single year, every single year, year after year you're getting paid to have a backup power generator on your site. That, that asset now that you get to buy, you get the capital expenditure, you get a fixed asset to write off, you get to depreciate it, but now you're making money off of it. So it's almost like a rental asset as well where you're getting paid by ercot, you're getting paid by the, by the utility company every single year. And it's not chump change, it's, it's a, it's a good lick. You could probably make up in the first two to three years what you paid and start making actual money on your investment.
[00:29:11] Speaker A: That's pretty slick stuff.
[00:29:14] Speaker B: What my idea, I wish I thought it up, but we're definitely taking advantage of it.
[00:29:19] Speaker A: Well, cool. All right, well, I know we talked about this a little bit about solar, so I was talking about a solar battery. You know, it's about this big, not very large. But what about solar like on rooftops for homeowners and businesses?
Is solar practical way to go for smaller businesses?
[00:29:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I think that as long as you have sun, you'll have power.
And it kind of goes back to getting with companies and we do not do solar. I honestly don't really have many contacts in that area but if we did, we'll pass it on but do some research there and See, you know, how much savings that you could actually have putting them, you know, on your house versus and there may be some tax incentives there. I've seen stuff as like, all right, you install it and obviously you're paying for it, but maybe the tax breaks that you get on the back end for taking that power off the utility and that demand off the utility, you may have the tax incentives as an individual or a business owner that outweigh the cost of the actual, you know, solar, solar panels that you're putting on your house or your business. So I would definitely do some research there.
You know, we've seen it more and more. We've seen a lot more solar farms, wind farms, stuff like that, and people trying to get off the grid a little bit more.
But it kind of comes down to, okay, if you put an X amount on your house, how long can your house actually sustain and run?
And like here having a lot of storms, a lot of clouds, how much is that actually getting? You know, those are things, those are the questions that I would ask as a consumer to see, you know, how much, how much power am I getting? How long will this last me? If I put these all over my roof at my business is going to run the whole day or run a week or if we don't have any sun, you know, for a couple days, if we got a storm coming in, am I getting any power? You know, those are just kind of the questions that I would ask, but could be a very good beneficial thing and it could end up being favorable with tax incentives.
[00:31:32] Speaker A: Do you ever see any. Anybody like have redundancies going on? They do solar, plus they have another generator. Does that make sense?
[00:31:40] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah.
Same thing with battery and generators.
You know, I mean, even generators are mechanical, they will fail. I mean, you could go do a PM and preventative maintenance and oil change everything.
And for some reason, you know, the batteries die or the charging alternator doesn't turn on, it's not charging the batteries and it dies or the unit runs out of fuel. So there are fail, you know, things that fail mechanically. Like generators are not 100%.
Even if you do all the right things, it's a mechanical piece, it could break.
You know, we've had brand new units that come off the line, factory tested and then, you know, during startup and commissioning break, that's a, you know, warrantied item that needs to be swapped out. So having redundancy, having, you know, multiple streams of backup power kind of depends again, what's your budget? You know, what are you looking for, you know, for your company, does it make sense?
You know, are there green, you know, energy, you know, deals that I can. I can for my company and take advantage of there. There could be some really good opportunities there. But redundancy is never a bad thing.
If. If you're really worried about losing power and you're like, man, we will lose X amount of dollars if we're without a power for an hour. I mean, just bite the bullet. You know, it's just one of those things you have to do and, you know, maybe get in touch with us and see how this program could work on the. On the ERCOT deal. You know, it may be that. Okay, yeah, it makes sense. Like, we could bite the bullet now, but in three years, we're printing money. Every single year, we get a check in the mail. So, you know, that's something that could be a good option for guys that are looking for. All right. You know, we do need to spend some money, but, you know, you're making money back on your investment.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: Oh, so that's very cool.
Didn't think people did that. And you're. I'm an accountant. I don't think along the same terms you do. And I'm like, oh, yeah, machines do break down. You know, you may think that that generator, battery backup you have in your house, I'll plug it in, and it just fails. And you're like, you have a angry wife staring at you.
[00:33:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I thought, this working.
Yeah.
Or you plug too many things in, it gets overloaded. You know, you can overload the generator, it shuts down, you need to know how to start it back up. Yeah. There's all. I mean, anything can happen for sure.
[00:34:10] Speaker A: Yeah. I got to rethink what I'm doing because I just. Just this morning, I was thinking about water. Like, you know, some backup water we had leaked, and, you know, it's no longer any good. I'm like, okay, chat. GPT.
What. What should I buy so that it doesn't. The bottles don't break apart or whatever. And I'm very much into, you know.
You know, survival, you know, And I would say one thing is maybe become a bushcrafter a little bit and learn how to make a fire from, you know, wet wood. You know, it might serve you well, but I do like to think along those terms.
So what quick change can, let's say business owners make to cut energy waste, you know, and be more efficient with their energy, because that's a big deal, too.
[00:34:52] Speaker B: For sure.
[00:34:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:53] Speaker B: I mean, simple things. I've actually talked about this a couple other shows is just shut the lights off, right? One, put LEDs up in your shops, in your houses. LEDs are so much more efficient.
You're way more efficient. You're going to be, you know, consuming way less energy. So your bills are going to be way lower. And your demand on the, you know, you're helping out everybody else that's consuming energy as well.
I would say, you know, if you can, during the day or during nighttime, you know, it's a little bit cooler outside. You know, don't sleep with it at 68 degrees, 72 degrees, kick it up and you know, maybe sleep with a lighter cover on, turn the fans off during the day if you're not in certain rooms. I mean, it really is just basic stuff where you're, where you're just saving power either at your house or at business. I walk through my, when I leave every single day from the. We have a big office building that we office out of and I'm like walking through, just shutting off lights, just shutting off lights, making sure our ACs are, you know, they're on a schedule to say, hey, well, we're not here. You know, why, why do I have this down at 72 degrees? Let's bump it up to 75, 76. So it'll save you money, but also saves, you know, power that's being, you know, distributed to you. Waste spread.
[00:36:12] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it adds up. I mean, even something as simple as turning off the lights, you. A lot of people think, well, that's no big deal, it's just light bulb, you know. But it does add up, does it not?
[00:36:22] Speaker B: You get charged on kilowatt hours. I mean, you get charged a fixed rate no matter if you use this much. I mean, that's how most, most of your power bills. Nobody ever pays attention. All right, you just sign up for it and you know, you're paying 11 cents per kit, whatever it is, and. But you have a minimum that you're going to get charged whether or not you use no power or you use that much. And then everything over that, they're going to be charging you, you know, X dollars per or X cents per kilowatt hour. So, yeah, those lights do add up. And if you have 50 light bulbs on and they're not LEDs, those are consuming a lot of wattage and that watts. Yeah, that's what you're getting charged on.
[00:36:59] Speaker A: I, I got, I got to talk to my family because everybody leaves the lights on constantly.
[00:37:03] Speaker B: And every morning I got kid who
[00:37:06] Speaker A: he has got a room, air conditioner. He runs at 61 degrees nonstop. He can't take the heat, you know, so. Right. Good conversation here, Andrew. Thank you.
So before for our next segment, Stay with us. We're going to dive into the connection between power, reliability and customer trust. And what, what does that do to your customer service operations and your reputation? We'll be right back.
We'll be right back with more insights, tools and real talk to help you grow your business.
This is Business Forward on NOW Media Television.
And we're back. I'm Joe Reyes and you're watching Business Forward on NOW Media Television. Let's get back into it.
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So welcome back to Business Forward for this final segment. I'm here again with Andrew McCain, and we're talking about the truth that every business leader knows deep down inside. And that is when your power fails, your customer trust also fails.
So let's explore why reliability is just as important as price in today's market.
So, Andrew, how do auditors affect a business's customer loyalty program, do you think?
[00:39:00] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, today's world is all about speed, right? Speed to market.
Everybody wants everything right now on their smartphone, right? So if they're without power or if you're without power and you're providing a service to them, whatever it is, people are real impatient. You know, I think that's a cultural thing. That's a selfish, very American thing that we do. We all do it, right. I call it first world problems. With my wife, I'm like, we got first world problems, babe. But, you know, I think that it does affect the bottom line when you're not able to respond in a way that's, that's quick and efficient. And if you don't have power and you don't have a plan, you know, you got to think about what are the, what is that telling my customer? Are they not important enough for me to put into that plan? And that may not be true. It may not be something that ever went through your mind. But when you put yourself in the customer's position, you put yourself, you start thinking like the consumer. It's like, man, they don't care enough to have a backup power. So I guarantee you, Walmart does, Costco does, Sam's Club does, Heb does.
You know who else? I mean, everybody. That.
And they have a backup power plan. Buc EE's does. Right. Buc EE's here in Texas is huge. And they have, they're going to be running 24, 7. They have backup power generators because they know when power goes out and everybody else is without power, where's everybody going? Everybody's going there to get food, to get supplies, to get whatever. And they know that, you know, they've invested in that because they care about the consumer. So, you know, I think that, you know, when you start thinking about and putting yourself in the position of them, I think you can really start to understand why that fast response is important. And being able to, you know, to have power when. When others don't definitely puts you ahead of the curve.
[00:40:55] Speaker A: Yeah. It talks a lot about you as a business owner. Right. And you know, customer service and what you think, like you said, about people and talks about management, you know, management skills. And if you mess that up, what else are you messing up? You know, I mean, this, this is critical stuff that you got to be on top of. So I could see how, you know. Yeah. The pricing of your product and your service is important, obviously, and keeping your cost down is important also. But you want to keep the doors open. And if your customers come to rely upon you and they, they all of a sudden cannot simply because you neglected to take care of business that you should have taken care of. That speaks a lot about you as a, as a business owner.
So tell us, give us some examples of industries that cannot afford downtime. And I know we already talked about the restaurant, the store that has a frozen food section. But other than something like that, what other things are we not thinking about? That, you know, it's critical for them to not have any downtime.
[00:41:56] Speaker B: Yeah. So there's a, there's a company. I'll give them a shout out. Del Sol Food Company. They make those Brianna salad dressings.
Excellent. They, they have a manufacturing spot up in Brenham and they did not have a backup generator. And so their production line runs through and is constantly making, you know, that, that, that salad dressing.
If they're not producing, obviously they're not making money. But if they lose power for a certain amount of time. They have huge to make the salad dressing. They have huge bins that have freezers with all of their, their fresh produce and fresh things that they go into the making of their salad dressings. If they lose power for eight to 12 hours, those, all those freezers are completely gone. They've lost millions of dollars. And so without them investing in that, they can't produce great salad dressing. And then they're losing products. So not only did they lose production time, which is, you know, one, one aspect of making money for a business, but you're losing money because you just lost out on a million, $2 million worth of stuff that got frozen, right? You also don't think about, you know, all of everything that we do on a day to day basis relies on petroleum products, right?
So all the refineries that are here on the Gulf coast, all of those refineries cannot and will not lose power. I mean from everything from your, from your shoes to your clothing to obviously the gasoline and the refined diesel that go in your cars and trucks that run all of that.
I mean, it is in, it is in your smartphones. We are shipping these overseas. The supply chain worldwide for those refineries is massive. So when you think about losing power, those guys have redundancy. On redundancy. You think about AI and data center stuff. You don't even think about it on a daily basis. How much, how often are we all on social media? That is all stuff that is being produced and stored and so you can recall it at any time. If you Google something and then all of a sudden it's not there. You're like, what the heck is going on?
Those companies, they're storing your data from your credit card company to your banks. All of that information is stored and is stored in these data centers and they're confidential. But if those data centers lose power, what's.
How are people retrieving that data? They're not. So I mean, all those are critical infrastructures that need not only sustained power from utility, but, but backup and redundancy as well, which all of them do.
But yeah, all those, all those guys. And I could, I could keep, keep going.
[00:44:41] Speaker A: But yeah, an interesting thing that I found with AI and the data centers and all that good stuff, one of the things that I, you know, that came out, I was, I watched business news like first thing every morning. And when they were talking about data centers and AI and how, you know, the, the power hungers through the roof. And so there are companies that they, they will create like even Little nuclear generate is right on the premises of the data center. And so it seems like. Is that what you're seeing? It seems like energy is starting to get more localized because the build out of the infrastructure, like you said, can take 15 years. And nobody has 15 years nowadays to be competitive.
[00:45:28] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a lot of, in the industry, we call that a bridge to utility. But those bridges can last five years, 10 years. A company called DPS Distributed Power Solutions, they're doing that sustained power for over 125 megawatts over in Virginia. They have, they have backup diesel generators for black starting the turbines. But they have turbines out there running all of the data center stuff and then they have redundancy backup for that. But that's because is right in data center alley right there in Virginia and they're not going to have power out there to sustain 125 megawatts for 10 to 15 years. That's a lot of power. That is a lot of power. And to build that infrastructure, I mean it's not just building the power plant. Right.
You know, we said earlier you can't store power. Well, there's never been a way in which we've been able to do that outside of bat batteries to be able to store and then deliver that cost. So you have these, these, these utility companies that are continuously running, whether it's nuclear or turbines off of steam or coal in the past, or reciprocating engines and turbines that are running off a natural gas or propane.
You know, those things are running 24 7, 365 to provide power. But then with that now you have sustained power. What if that power goes out? What if a big storm hits? All of those data centers are going to have to have backup power on top of that so you can sustain that infrastructure. But you're exactly right. They're doing, they're called micro grids where they're putting up 5 megawatts or 25. And it is more centralized and that's because they cannot get these things online fast enough. And those are all running off of natural gas and diesel.
[00:47:23] Speaker A: I have a stock portfolio that I'm maintaining for myself and my best producing stock is an energy producing company that is putting the generator for industrial use right at the data centers. But my best producing stock and it's utilities, you know, it's not, you know, and it's AI related.
But the AI boom is affecting many different industries. Yes, obviously, including the utility industry. And so this is very cool stuff. I love this conversation. This, this Topic and I guess I know I have to make some moves here. So if somebody has like a single family home is one thing. Right. A small business that has its own storefront is also one thing. But what, what about like townhomes?
What about you know, storefronts that like strip malls that want to have, you know, battery backup and then kind of married to other people that they're attached to. What do you recommend for companies like that and people like that?
[00:48:18] Speaker B: Yeah, there's typically going to be a management team like a CBRO or somebody that's managing that property.
Whether or not it's your townhomes. I would go to them and maybe pitch the idea.
If there's some sort of HOA or something that you all are a part of or even the rest of the strip center that's like man, I mean there was one literally at the front of my street here in Katy where I live that they didn't have power for barrel for two weeks and there was a brand new restaurant in there. That bout went underwater just because of that. And I think that you know, going to those, the owners that you're paying the lease to and say hey, we're all willing to up our lease, you know, a hundred dollars a month or whatever or $50 a month over a seven year lease and it'll pay for itself. But we need this thing now. I think, I think collectively getting together, meeting with some management people, meeting with the CBROs of the world and whoever's managing that property, whether or not a storefront or living in a condo, I think that'd be the best place to start pitching the idea and then putting them in touch with, you know, hey, if you don't know anybody, introduce them to us or you know, we'll be happy to introduce to somebody else or dude you can google, there's a million of them.
Obviously we want all yalls business, business but.
But you know, just that that's where I would start.
[00:49:36] Speaker A: Very cool. Yeah, valuable. This is valuable stuff. Hopefully our listeners will take the oldest to heart and get prepared. You know, I like to tell people the best time to buy a burglar alarm is before you get burglarized, not after you get burglarized. And same thing with energy and backup power. The best time to get it is before you need it because then when you need it it's going to be too late. So.
So Andrew, again where can we, we can our followers and our listeners reach out to you and find out more about you and hopefully talk to you and continue this conversation.
[00:50:08] Speaker B: Yeah, just go to Google, type in McCain Power, MCK A I N Power. Or go to our website, mccainpower.com all of our contact info is on there. You can meet our team.
Whether it's new, used. I mean, we do everything from marine gas compression, frac power generation.
Be happy to help you. And we got the team to help support you.
[00:50:29] Speaker A: Well, you're in a good place. You're in a great business. Andrew, thank you for sharing your expertise. Today. It's clear that power security is more than just a technical issue. It's about providing for livelihoods, keeping your businesses alive, and maintaining customer trust.
To our viewers today, we've learned that preparation isn't optional, it's actually essential. So whether it's protecting your business from the next storm, balancing energy costs for growth, or preserving the trust of your customers, reliable energy is at the heart of resilience. I'm Joseph Reyes. This has been Business Forward. Thank you for watching. And remember, staying ahead means planning ahead. We'll see you next time. Bye. Bye.
