Below is the text version of the Fuel Cell Technologies Office webinar "Fuel Cells at NASCAR," originally presented on April 17, 2014. In addition to this text version of the audio, you can access the presentation slides.
Ned Stetson:
[Audio begins mid-sentence] First response is, "Why would you want to have a low noise, low vibration generator at a NASCAR race?" Well, first of all, NASCAR has been leading a major effort to develop and implement green, sustainable innovations in the sport of auto racing for a number of years and they actually do use a lot of portable generators at the race events. And also when you think about it, to power a camera, low vibration is important because you want to have a clear image of those cars speeding by around the track. And also, when you have a microphone, you want to make sure that you're hearing the cars race by and not listening to the constant humming of a gasoline or diesel generator. So, these are actually important aspects for portable power with NASCAR and there's a lot of potential advantages that these kind of generators can offer—which includes higher fuel efficiency, low noise, low vibration, remote operation—being able to run for the entire race event without needing to be refueled. So, there's a number of advantages here.
So today, we do have two speakers. The first speaker will be Ms. Catherine Kummer who will talk about NASCAR's initiatives in green, sustainable innovations. And our second speaker will be Dr. Norm Bessette from Acumentrics to talk specifically about the development of the propane fueled solid oxide fuel generators and the demonstration at the Daytona International Speedway this past January/February, including powering some Fox Sports broadcast cameras at the Daytona 500. So, we'll have both speakers give their presentations and then afterwards, as Alli mentioned, we'll have a Q&A.
So, please do submit your questions using the question function that you can find on the right side of your screen and at the end, we'll have as many of those questions to be answered as we can. Since we do have the two speakers, please indicate which speaker you'd like to direct your question to. So, without any further ado, let me introduce our speakers and get on with the interesting part of the seminar.
So, our second speaker today is going to be Dr. Norman Bessette who is the key technology officer and senior vice president of engineering for Acumentrics Corporation. In this role, he's responsible for the engineering and manufacturing of their fuel cell products. He's also responsible for the engineering of their rugged UPS products and leads the research and development efforts under the government, military, and corporate partnerships. Prior to joining Acumentrics, Dr. Bessette spend seven years at Siemens Westinghouse Power Corporation where he was responsible for a $13 million fuel cell facility and $3.4 million in DOE contracts. Dr. Bessette has published over 10 journal papers and has five patents issued or under review for solid oxide fuel cell technology. He has a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and an M.S. and Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology.
So, our first speaker this morning is going to be Ms. Catherine Kummer. She's NASCAR's senior manager for green innovation. She's based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and she supports a wide-spread adoption implementation of sustainable practices across the auto racing sport. She joined NASCAR in 2004 and for the last two years has worked on existing and new green and sustainable initiatives that have grown into the largest sustainability program in all sports and one of the most impactful green programs in the public and private sectors. As a result of NASCAR Green's efforts, according to an April 2013 survey, three out of four NASCAR fans are aware of NASCAR Green and recognize that it's showing that NASCAR cares about the environment.
In addition to working on new programs for implementation across the sport with partners such as the Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Resources Defense Council, she focuses her attention on growing and continuing programs that have recycled more than 20 million bottles and cans, over 600,000 race tires, and enough oil to power the Empire State Building for a year. She also manages a national tree planting initiative with NASCAR partners that has planted over 181,000 trees, and that's enough to not only completely offset the carbon emissions for the NASCAR national series racing for five years, it will actually cover up to the next 15 years as well. So, she is taking NASCAR Green into the digital landscape with the award winning go-to portal for green concepts applied practically, which is NASCAR.com/green, and also the @NASCARGreen Twitter handle. She has—excuse me—Catherine is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and she's also a LEED green associate. So, with that, Catherine, you have the microphone.
Catherine Kummer:
Great. Thank you, Ned. Thank you for that. Really appreciate it. I'm just really excited to be able to chat with everyone today via this webinar.
I thought I would kick off—as Ned mentioned, NASCAR Green program—we kicked off five years ago and touches multiple different platforms and initiatives and technologies. And I know Norm is going to hone in on solid oxide fuel cell technology later in this webinar so I thought I maybe need to kick it off with just kind of a general overview on exactly what NASCAR Green is. Since I know some folks in the early days, the minute we put NASCAR and green together, we got that, "You realize you race race cars every weekend, right? They don't really go together all that organically." That has certainly been proven inaccurate at this point in the game, five years in, given the data and the research and specifically the fan attitudes and behaviors that we've been able to capture and continue monitoring.
So, with that being said, Alli, if you wouldn't mind going to the next slide, that'd be great.
[Next slide]
Cool. So, to kick it off, I thought I'd lay out just some of our kind of milestone accomplishments that have occurred over the last five years. And many of you may not have even heard of NASCAR Green until the last 12 months or the last 24 months, and really there's a reason for that. That being when Dr. Mike Lynch and our chairman and CEO Brian France kicked off work to really build the foundational pieces to this program—beta testing, data capture, listening to our fans, listening to our partners, our organizers, our teams, our drivers, our tracks—that was really what happened the first three years of NASCAR Green.
It was a complete immersion for NASCAR back into the industry to talk about biofuels or to talk about waste diversion or to talk about these strategic initiatives that we were working to pull together and implement. Because at the end of the day, our ecosystem consists of all of those parties. So, we really—it wasn't until about two years ago that we really got to a point where we were, from a social media perspective, an online perspective, our media traditional channels, earned media, really were starting to push out these stories that were being developed and that had been captured over the prior three years. So again, with five years under our belt, NASCAR Green is has been noted as the most impactful sustainability platform within the U.S., just based on numbers. Definitely the most impactful in sports to date.
75 percent of our avid NASCAR fans are now aware of NASCAR Green and they truly believe the sport cares about the environment. I will tell you that these stats for us, when we first went out five years ago and asked fans what they thought about NASCAR Green, "Did they care about the environment?" We weren't sure what kind of responses we were going to get back. And really, it was straight down the middle. But since then, we've continued to take that exact same methodology and test each of our—our fan base, excuse me, each year and at this point in the game, it's just continued to grow.
Last year was 50 percent—excuse me, 2 years ago it was 50 percent, last year 75 percent, and now we're even at a point where NASCAR fans are 100 percent more likely than non-fans to view their household as very green and always looking for ways to positively impact the environment. Those are pretty big numbers for us, pretty big data. The next three bullet points are even more impactful. But as you guys know, we run a biofuel in all of our top three series and when asking our fans about that biofuel, specifically ethanol, nearly 70 percent of our fans are more likely than non-fans to support the use of ethanol blended with gasoline to fuel NASCAR race cars. And just to give you some insight, this study was done last year in between varying reports about ethanol damage to engines.
So, we were literally asking NASCAR fans what they thought about the usage of this type of fuel in their car when things in the media were not so good for ethanol at that time and NASCAR fans—because they came back and said, "We've seen you race close to six million miles on it seamlessly with more horsepower. We get it." They're more than 50 percent more likely to support the use of ethanol blended with gasoline to fuel their own car and then 40 percent more likely to support the use of ethanol blended with gasoline to fuel cars on the road to increase U.S. energy independence. Again, I like to open up any kind of conversation we do about NASCAR Green just because opening it up with those numbers, because they are so impactful and they are so eye-opening, it's an interesting way to do it. It's growing our NASCAR Green partners 0 to 25 as well—12 new partners and 13 engaged from the existing base—and the last five years, there's been a lot of interaction, a lot of growth, and we're just continuing to broaden and continuing to move forward. So, with that being said, if we can go to the next slide, please?
[Next slide]
So, the NASCAR Green initiatives and messaging. With all of the milestones under our belt now at this point in the game, from day one really looked at three areas of environmental impact in which we focused originally—first being waste, second being clean air, and then the third being renewable energy. From a messaging standpoint, again, taking input from our fans, really asking them what mattered, what did they care about, was conservation of the environment, American job creation, and strengthening American energy independence. And those have been the initiatives and the messages that we've maintained over the last five years—especially—it's interesting how the whole world was falling in line with those last three messages.
Our fans kind of got that from the beginning, which was pretty cool. Next slide, please.
[Next slide]
So, to dive into that first pillar of environmental impact that we focus in on, being waste—to date the largest, most diverse recycling program in sports. For bottles and cans, cell phones, tires, automotive fluids—through partners like Coca-Cola, Miller Coors, we've recycled over 20 million bottles and cans to date across our series. Cell phones—with Sprint, they actually set up cell phone recycling centers at race tracks each weekend, so 36 weekends out of the year.
Tires—partnership with Liberty Tire Recycling, Goodyear—over 605,000 tires recycled to date, tires going back in to produce rubberized mulch, which is then actually being distributed at NASCAR race tracks for landscaping purposes. And then also, we're evaluating rubberized asphalt. They're looking at repaving some of our short tracks, some of our touring series, with rubberized asphalt from recycled race car tires. Automotive fluids—over a million gallons recycled total to date with our partner Safety-Kleen, Clean Harbors.
Car batteries with Exide. And then from a car recycling standpoint—interesting fact, Roush Fenway Racing, which is one of the teams within our series in our sport, they are actually recycling race cars after every single race. Up to 96 percent of material on a race car is recyclable, which is also pretty interesting.
The second area of environmental impact in which we've focused to date would be the clean air arena. So, the most visible biofuels program in the world. I mentioned before, we run our top three series—NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, NASCAR Nationwide Series, and the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series—on Sunoco Green E15, which is a 15 percent ethanol blended biofuel. We've been doing that—over six million miles come Indy this year. And that was a big change for us. I mean, you can imagine going from a leaded fuel, to an unleaded fuel, to a biofuel. And when you mess with the race car, when you mess with the—when you update the engine, when you do anything that could affect the racing on-track, it's a big deal. But, even from the mouth of Dale Earnhardt Jr., the transition was seamless, the drivers and the teams have told us they can see more horsepower in the car. So it's with partner Sunoco, Growth Energy, other folks that we have listed out on the slide that this biofuels program is possible and continuing to thrive within our sport. Next slide, please.
[Next slide]
Ned also mentioned the tree planting program that we have. So, we started this program five years ago. To date, it's become the largest tree planting program in sports. We actually have some updated numbers just as of this last week, through a Race to Green campaign that we do every year during the month of April, which focuses in on national tree planting across the country, going back into areas of disaster, areas of need. You can actually access that off of our website, which is NASCAR.com/green. You'll see below we've got a ticker there, and you're prompted to get involved by planting, or through our social hub campaign, which is #NASCARGreen. But, to note, there were 267,000 trees that have been planted to date through the program. That offsets all of NASCAR racing already for the next 18 years, if not more. And then over the next year, 200,000 more trees will be planted.
So, we've partnered with UPS on that program for the last two years, as well as the Virginia Department of Forestry and the Arbor Day Foundation. But again, it has just been a really instrumental program for us. What's interesting is that if you actually go back and look at carbon emissions, and you look at exactly how much carbon is absorbed by a tree, versus how much is emitted from a race car in a 500-mile race, it's about a metric ton. So you plant a tree per car, which is how we're getting to that offset, which is pretty cool. Next slide, please.
[Next slide]
The third and final tier in our areas of impact to date is renewable energy. With that being said, the largest renewable energy projects in sports currently. In the top left-hand corner, we've got Pocono Raceway in Long Pond, Pennsylvania. They host two of our Sprint Cup Series events, as well as Indy car at that venue. And you'll notice in the bottom right-hand corner the three megawatt solar farm that they installed—I think it was about three years ago. It powers the race track the entire year. It also pushes back to about 250 homes within the Long Pond community. So, that solar farm in itself is the largest in sports in the world, currently. Sonoma Raceway on the far right, you'll notice they've got Panasonic solar panels integrated. This is actually the infield. Sonoma is a road course for us nestled in Sonoma, which is not a horrible place to go and watch a race. But you'll notice they've got a tremendous amount of solar energy being utilized in that garage area.
You also, if you look down to the bottom left, UPS, just over the last two years—in the garage, there are over 43 plus 53-foot haulers that are on the road, every single weekend, pulling into every garage, every event that we go to. And UPS worked to integrate solar panels into the top of theirs to actually take it completely off the grid. That services hauler, which acts as essentially UPS pick-up and drop-off for packages during a race weekend, is solar-powered. They also have a package cart, which is a golf cart, that's also powered by solar energy, which is pretty cool.
And then you'll notice on the far right-hand side, Michael Waltrip Racing. They are one of the teams, amongst probably five or six, that started to integrate solar panels into their actual team shop operations. So, this is their driver from last year, Martin Truex Jr., on the top of their roof, actually shooting one of our TV spots for us—our digital vignettes last year. They're tapping into solar energy. And then in the middle, very top, Iowa Speedway, which is the first track that NASCAR has actually outright owned, two organizations by the name of ISC and SMI actually own and operate the majority of our tracks in our circuit. However, Iowa Speedway was purchased by NASCAR late last year, and we are looking at renewable energy opportunities, specifically wind, at Iowa Speedway, as well as at Watkins Glen International. So those are just a couple of projects that are on the horizon, and to keep an eye out for. Next slide, please.
[Next slide]
So, speaking of, we've covered tracks, and we've covered those three areas of environmental impact. I really wanted to get into partners. To note, we do have relationships with NRDC, EPA, and also with the Department of Energy. So, at our NASCAR Green Summit last year in September in Chicago, we welcomed Dr. Michael Knotek from the Department of Energy to make this announcement—this very special partnership that we couldn't be more happy to be involved in—during that summit. So it was actually at that summit that we entered and signed the memorandum of understanding. We did the same with NRDC during that time period, and then we entered an MOU with EPA two years prior. But again, very excited about our relationship with the Department of Energy. And just to give you a little bit of insight into exactly what that relationship looks like, what that MOU looks like, Alli if you could hit the next slide?
[Next slide]
Three areas of focus to date. So, clean energy deployment and utilization; research, development, and technology commercialization; and then community outreach and education are the three areas of focus for our MOU with the Department of Energy, currently. So, as an example for the energy deployment and utilization: just earlier this year, we actually joined the Workplace Charging Challenge with the installation of 20 Eaton level 2 EV charging stations. We installed them at our Charlotte, North Carolina, location, our headquarters in Daytona Beach, Florida, and then our research and development center in Concord, North Carolina. Actually note, the bottom left-hand corner is a picture of the announcement that we did in partnership with the Department of Energy. And then also, with our entitlement sponsor, Sprint, they also joined the Workplace Charging Challenge at the same time with the installation of charging stations at their facilities out in Kansas, which is a really exciting time.
Collaborative research, the R&D, something that you know Norm—excuse me, Ned mentioned before, and that Norm's going to talk about later in this webinar, that we're really proud of and excited to be able to beta test within NASCAR is the beta testing of the solid oxide fuel cell technology. So, we did this during the Daytona 500 in February which, keep in mind, is our largest race of the year. We kick off our season with that race. So, a huge deal to be able to take four broadcast cameras and, during primetime, actually utilize new technology that had never been done before within NASCAR or racing, that I'm aware of. Also beta tested at the Rolex 24, which is part of the NASCAR family IMSA sports car racing, at Daytona International Speedway as well, a few weekends prior to that. Again, seamless beta test that we were very proud to have been able to participate in. A picture of that fuel cell actually is in the bottom right-hand corner, but again Norm will speak to more specifics around this. But these were positioned around the track. This one was actually right next to the flag stand. So, you know, hundreds of thousands of fans sitting up in the stands above it witnessed first-hand this technology being utilized as it was literally right below the flag stand start and finish line.
Third area of focus—thank you—as part of the MOU is community outreach and education. So, one of the big things that we really wanted to focus in—and of course, as I mentioned before, understanding what our fans think, listening to them, making sure that they're being influenced by these technologies, or by these things that we're doing at track. Promotion of platforms and programs digitally and through our traditional media channels, just to give you an idea. So, this solid oxide fuel cell test was supported with NASCAR social media and online channels which reached over four and a half million followers through Twitter, Facebook, homepage of NASCAR.com, homepage of NASCAR.com/green. Being able to reach that many folks, and then have it trend and talked about positively—really, really cool. So, we'll continue to do that with the Department of Energy and partners to continue talking about the Green message. Thank you.
[Next slide]
So, we've talked about government partners and NGO partners, we do have NASCAR Green partners within the sport. You'll note this slide lists out each of those partners, some of these partners being existing official NASCAR sponsors where we've added in Green programs. And then, you'll notice sponsors like, for instance, ACORE and Lockheed Martin, which are specific to NASCAR Green. So, have come into the sport to activate against the NASCAR Green platform. Asterisk denotes Interbrand Top 100. This list is, again, continuing to grow, and the majority of these programs, which we've talked about before, would not be possible without the support of these partners. So, very important in our world. Next slide, please.
[Next slide]
Just to give you an idea as well, from a green perspective, you have NASCAR official partners, but you've also got NASCAR Green partners that are operating and working with teams and tracks, as well as drivers. So, this chart will literally just give you an idea of that growth of team sponsors amongst green companies. So, for instance, Liberty Tire Recycling running a paint scheme with Darrell Wallace Jr. last year. Eaton getting involved to run paint schemes and market with Kevin Harvick in the Nationwide Series. American Ethanol sponsoring Austin Dillon, who races for Richard Childress Racing. And then, interestingly, enough, this last February, in Phoenix, you had Cotton actually sponsoring a NASCAR Nationwide Series race.
So, the increase in green companies getting involved in NASCAR since 2010, 2014, is definitely growing. We're seeing more folks get involved, which is great, to give you a little bit of insight into that. Next slide, please.
[Next slide]
Just some photos that we thought we would share. See the top left-hand corner is Nexterra Energy. They sponsor our Daytona race down in Florida. You've got American Ethanol on Austin Dillon's number 39 truck, which ran at Eldora Speedway where he won last year. It's the first time we've run trucks on dirt, which was pretty exciting. We've also got folks like POET and Waste Management communicating out their recycling message. Just brief examples of green activation within the sport. Definitely a small number of examples—there's a tremendous amount more, but this slide will only allow you to hold so many photos. Next slide, please.
[Next slide]
So, to talk about all the programs that have happened, where we're reaching fans—to give you an idea of TV viewership, to really talk about exactly what I mean when I'm saying "NASCAR fans." We've got nearly 100 million unique viewers that tune into NASCAR. Nearly 70 million tuned in to the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races, just to give you an idea. We actually run a Green television spot every single weekend, which integrates all of our partners, our messaging that I've actually spoken to in this slide. So, over 100 million folks are witnessing that on an annual basis, and we're getting good data from it.
The NASCAR fanbase—63 percent male, 37 percent female, 45 percent of the fans are 18 to 44. You see your income information, family. And then, geographic regions—really, fans live in regions that mirror the U.S. population. There's a myth that it's a southeastern sport, and that's it, and that's not true. And then, 1 out of 5 NASCAR fans is multicultural. Interesting demographics that I wanted to make sure we shared with you guys.
[Next slide]
And then, as far as the messaging standpoint, how we reach those fans, you know it's broadcast on media, and then more recently, digital media. So, television and radio, the first photo with Greg Biffle is actually our television spot. Those dedicated Green TV spots again that run every single race broadcast every single weekend. We also focus in on earned media through channels at Bloomberg, Forbes, USA Today, and then our online and our social presence has really struck a chord with NASCAR Nation. We're able to message out to millions of people when we have new programs or announcements. Folks are really responding well to that, and the conversation is really interesting. I definitely would urge you to check out #NASCARGreen, that Twitter handle @NASCARGreen, and also the website if you get a chance. Next slide, please.
So, where are we going? When all of that is said and done, it's great. We've—five years under our belt, but what are some future initiative areas? I mean, what—why are people going to want to continue to get involved, and what other technologies do we think are ready for broad adoption or testing in NASCAR? Well, certainly fuel cell technologies. I mean, hydrogen fuel cell technologies, solid oxide fuel cell technologies. You're looking at a power generation standpoint, just on a team side, over 470 actually portable generators across all race teams. That's just teams. If you then think about your broadcast compound where you've got generator usage, portable generator usage, your campgrounds, each of those campers are tapped into portable power generation to some degree. It is a massive operation of portable power generation. I mean, it's a traveling show each weekend. It picks up and goes.
So, definitely think further deployment is there, and something that we're interested in exploring. Smart grid technologies, further energy management application is an area that we're actively pursuing. Future growth in solar and renewable energy. I mentioned a new partnership with ACORE—American Council on Renewable Energy—looking at more wind, more solar, Bloom boxes. So on and so forth. Specialty applications for water purification and other field operations. LED lighting—that one gets pretty interesting, to racing under LED lighting, tracking garage lighting, mobile lighting, broadcast compound. Certainly, next generation biofuels, as well. Very, very interesting for us. And then electric vehicles, racing series. Is there ever going to be an EV series? Is there ever going to be a hydrogen series? Natural gas—so, continued power generation at track, and specifically in the NASCAR broadcast compound, our pace cars. Any opportunity where we can utilize these new technologies to demonstrate to NASCAR Nation that they do work, and here is how—and more importantly, here's how you can take them back into your home, here's how they can benefit and apply to you—is important. Agricultural efficiency is the final one. So I'm thinking about ethanol farmers, GPS technology connected network, things of the like. Another area of interest for us that we're looking at currently.
So yeah, with that being said, I think I've taken up my 30 minutes. Thank you for the time. I hope that gave everyone a good overview. Like I said, Norm will definitely dive into the specific beta testing that has been done to date with fuel cell technology in NASCAR. Thank you for that, Norm, and thank you Ned and Alli for the time.
[Next slide]
Norm Bessette:
Great. Thanks Catherine. Thanks for the overview, and I'm glad everyone could attend. What I'm going to do is basically give you the overview of the testing we did of some of our portable SOFC generators with NASCAR during the Daytona week, as Catherine mentioned earlier.
[Next slide]
So, on the next slide, basically the basis of the program—you know DoE and NASCAR have gotten together, there was some funding available to do some green initiatives. Clearly, NASCAR has just explained their sustainability and leadership in that area. For those of you that are not familiar with Acumentrics, we're primarily focused on high efficient generators mostly for remote, off-grid type applications. As what Catherine just said, there are a lot of off-grid generators within NASCAR, so it's a pretty good application. So we got together with NASCAR early—probably last year, started to discuss you know, what could we do for a demonstration which would sort of show where we're going and validate the technology and validate some gains for both sides? So we agreed to develop a 1,000 watt—sort of a cart-based, a towable, or a pullable— portable generator—again, powered by propane—for cameras and other ancillary equipment around the track.
We also developed a 250 watt more portable generator—a small, two-man liftable generator—which could be deployed either inside the track or up on top of the grandstands for power and cameras. The agreement was to deliver two of those 1,000 watt units as well as two of those 250 watt units to a number of NASCAR races, and to demonstrate the noise savings, the fuel savings, the emissions savings, and such at each of those different races.
[Next slide]
So, on the next slide, again, similar type stuff. We agreed that we would operate those units during those two weeks. Again, we weren't going to force any of the NASCAR people at this point to be trained or become operators. We—NASCAR was responsible for the delivery of fuel, providing us access, and just sort of shuttling us around the track and helping us out with the logistical issues. And, the agreement was that we would demonstrate those units at Daytona, which occurred back in the February–March timeframe of the past year.
[Next slide]
So, on the next slide you can see—you know, what are the benefits from NASCAR's perspective? Again, I think a lot of those became clear after Catherine's discussion. But clearly, they were looking for—you know, how do we show cutting edge technology, clean green technology for their broadcast cameras? They also wanted to validate that they could reduce the noise and vibration from some of their generators. Again, you'll see later that they use sort of a three kilowatt Honda generator. It uses a lot of fuel, has a good amount of emissions, as well as vibration, which creates logistical issues when you get close to cameras, which we learned early on that trying to get a camera following a car going 200 miles an hour around a track, and if there's any vibration involved, you've got some real challenges.
We also wanted to validate, and they wanted to validate, fuel savings and the emissions reductions, because again, a lot of this is savings of fuel and savings of emissions at all of their green initiatives. We also wanted to demonstrate, and they want to demonstrate, the smart generator control. Again, we've got the capability to remotely control these units, rather than having to go out there and literally fuel up these generators and make sure that they're on and so forth. So it gave them the capability to sort of remotely dispatch these units from a TV compound, as they do a lot of their cameras at this point.
And again, wanted to demonstrate some improved safety issues—some of the issues that they run into are somebody has to run around with a gasoline jug up into the stands, up on top of the grandstands and so forth, refuel these generators during race weekends. So, fortunately they do a good job and there haven't been any safety-related issues, but again, it's not an ideal situation by any sense.
[Next slide]
On the next slide, the benefits from Acumentric's perspective—clearly, it allows us to demonstrate our latest generation of power generators, gives us greater field data to refine pretty much all of the product platforms we have from 250 watts to 1,500 watts. It clearly gave us a certain amount of publicity. Again, Catherine pointed to all the public and social media issues that they do. So it clearly helped us get our name out there and better understood. It helped us work with DOE funding to further commercialize this technology. DOE has been a great supporter of Acumentrics since about the 2003 timeframe. So, again, they're kind of starting to see the—reaping the awards of the seeds they planted in 2003 as we're starting to sell these generators commercially to a lot of different—a lot of oil and gas applications, but other applications as well. And again, it allows us to look at potential avenues to move forward with this technology for remote generators.
[Next slide]
So, on the next slide, you can see that we did a comparison early on between our—what we call our RP, or remote power, 250 unit versus their—the Honda 3 kilowatt, which is really the generator that NASCAR primarily uses around the racetrack. So, looking at some of the Honda data, which primarily was provided by NASCAR, you can see that pretty much they use about 5 gallons of fuel over a 10 hour race, and you've got about 20 gallons used, considering you've got pretrials and runs and so forth. You've got a four-day race weekend; you're going to use about 20 gallons of fuel. So, roughly speaking, at $3.63 per gallon, which is sort of what it was at that time, and pretty much is close to the same price today, you're talking about $73.00 a generator, or about—a little over $2,000 per the 30 generators that they deploy around the track for their cameras.
In comparison, you know, our initial estimates for our consumption would be that we would use about 2 pounds of propane over a 10 hour race, or we would be clearly well below one 20-pound bottle, which—most of us can think about it, that little 20-pound bottle that's under your gas grill at home. One of those bottles would more than last an entire race weekend. It'd cost about $5.00 per generator, and again, or about $150.00 per race deployed weekend. So you can see considerable savings for their fleet of generators. In just one race weekend, you've saved $2,000, or about $75,000 to $80,000 worth of savings over an entire NASCAR series of a whole year.
[Next slide]
The next slide, we've got some of the issues with regard to noise. Again, we're at about 58 dBs at about two feet away, whereas the Honda generator you've got to be 23 feet away to be at the same noise level. Now, most people would think, well, during most of the NASCAR race, that's not a big concern, and that's true. But there are certain times where there are some silent times, they're trying to do some monitoring and do some interviews and so forth, and I mean, those are places where being able to have the generator in close proximity to where the camera and the recording is going on is beneficial, you know, to NASCAR and to the broadcast folks.
Vibration, we talked about that—I mentioned it a little bit earlier. The Honda 3000 needs to be located at least 10 feet away from the camera. Our unit was basically sitting within one or two feet of the camera with no issues with regard to vibration. And to be honest, a lot of the cameramen would touch the unit, wouldn't feel any vibration, and wouldn't think that the unit was on unless they looked at the back display panel.
And, as I mentioned earlier, remote start and control. The Honda is, like most people have seen portable generators—you go up, you pull the rip cord, you plug into the back of it, and you've got power. And you pretty much only know you don't have power if the generator goes off, and you go back out to it and you see it's not live, and you can't hear it. With our unit, we have the ability, or do have the ability through either Wi-Fi or cellular networks, to control the unit pretty much from anywhere, or primarily in this case from the broadcast compound. So, where they do control a lot of their TV cameras remotely in a broadcast compound, they also have the ability, through us, to remotely control these generators and monitor these generators and make sure that they remained operational through the entire race weekend period.
[Next slide]
On the next slide, you can see that there's a direct sort of dimensional and physical comparison between the two units. You can see the Honda on the right, our unit there on the left. You can see dimensions are pretty comparable, and we actually came in a few pounds lighter than where the Honda generator sits right now.
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On the next slide, we have—you can see this was a little bit of a challenge for Acumentrics going into the—again, a lot of our units are stationary units, and oil and gas industries, you plop them down once per year and that's it. You don't move them for five, six years from that point in time. Obviously with NASCAR, they're moving every four or five days. So we needed something that was lighter, and more easy to be portable, and smaller to stack and place together. You can see the standard RP500 and RP1000 watt units, which we have, were about seven inches longer, six or eight inches wider, and five or six inches taller in height, but also considerably heavier, 300 to 350 pounds, that's not really, obviously, a man-portable type operation. Whereas the 250 watt we developed under this program got us down to 127 pounds, which set us down about 47 percent smaller in volume and 58 percent lighter in total weight, which did allow them to be sort of a two-man portable unit to carry up to the grandstands or place around the infield track of a race track.
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So the next slide just gives you a little bit of the things—idea of some of the design issues that we had to do to accommodate more of our standard stationary, RP, remote power type products, to get them to be deployed for this NASCAR test. Again, we had to scale down our cell bundle, our standard 500 watt unit is a 20-cell bundle, we went to a 10-cell bundle here. We had to redesign some of the propane delivery system. Again, most of our standard installations have a huge, 500-gallon propane tank which they fill once per year. Here, we had to have something that's more portable, again, using sort of your standard gas grill type units. We also had to design the cart and enclosure for the unit, and we also—to get some of that weight savings, we also integrated lithium ion batteries into our units, where our standard units right now sit with lead acid type batteries.
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So, on the next slide, this is just—again, a CAD rendering of the initial unit that we built, that we designed. In the upper picture on the left-hand side with sort of the aqua blue cover is basically the fuel cell module or the insulated box. It has 10 individual fuel cell tubes located in it. Everything on the right side of that divider wall that you see there is either the electronics, towards the back, the black—towards the bottom of that—is your battery pack, and towards the front of that enclosure is all your gas modules, your flow control, your blower controls and such. The lower right-hand picture gives you the same type rendering from a different angle. And basically, NASCAR has the ability to just plug their cameras right into a standard 110 outlet plug that was located on that back panel that you can see on the lower left picture.
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On the next slide—you can see this was our basic, 1,500 watt DC model, which we added an inverter to to be able to give them AC output, because obviously that's what most of their cameras are operational on. And you can see again, similar type design. The left-hand side has the fuel cell module, which includes the fuel cell bundle, which is a removable device. We've got desulfurizing canisters on the top. Again, you're taking the odorant out of the propane that comes with the fuel. The picture on the right-hand side again shows you some of that electronics and valve type configuration. So, the key here was to then integrate this into sort of a cart design that could be pulled around by either a golf cart or someone who could walk it around.
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The next slide actually shows you that unit, at least in a CAD rendering of how we incorporated that into a mobile cart. The picture on the right-hand side—you can see that standard unit. Towards the front of it, you can see we built an enclosure which would handle two 20-pound propane bottles that would allow them to run this larger unit more than a four-day race weekend. And actually, below those two bottles, not so easy to see, but there's also a UPS—one of our UPSs that's basically taking that DC input, converting to AC, and giving you AC output, as well as some battery storage time in the event of some other shutdown or loss of fuel.
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And on the next slide, you can see that what we did early on, you know, seeing again, as Catherine mentioned earlier, we went primetime with these units on cameras at the Daytona races. So, needless to say, that scared the living you-know-what out of most of us here, so we decided that we would test the units at the Rolex 24 in the middle of February. Which we did—successfully ran cameras and some different lighting type applications. Here, you can see basically the unit demonstrated sort of near the trophy stand. We were able to roll that unit out there, fire it up, power some cameras, power some lights, and then shut it back down and roll it back out.
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So, on the next couple of slides—again, I'm going to go into some of the field trials, what we did at Daytona, and you'll be able to sort of see the unit operational.
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This was one of our first tests. I believe this actually was during the Rolex 24. Coming around turn two, you can see on the left-hand side—you see the picture of the unit sitting there on the ground with a 20-pound propane bottle delivering fuel to the unit. In the picture on the right-hand side, it's a little unclear, but there's actually a boom camera that's sort of sitting just above the unit to the left, and there's a camera operator off the picture to the right-hand side who's actually running the camera itself, an articulating arm which allows the camera to spin as the cars come around the track, as well as an LCD monitor where he can actually see what's coming up on the screen.
So, in that case, we needed about 200 watts of power at total load to run the articulating arm, to run the LCD monitor, as well as to provide the feed and power the feed back to their broadcast compound. Again, the unit would basically sit there for about eight hours of filming, and then we'd go dormant overnight, and then they'd come back and be able to run the next day for further filming.
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On the next slide, you can see that we were—excuse me—powering a unit at turn three. This one is actually up on the top of the grandstands at Daytona. You can see the unit sitting down below the stands where the operator is up on the camera, up above. Again, another case where we're powering the camera itself, plus the LCD monitor so you can see what's going on. About 150 to 180 watts are needed for this one. Not too clear to be able to see in the picture, but in the lower picture, there's actually two 20-pound propane bottles located there. We were able to run over, I believe, about a 13-day operation on those two propane bottles. So, again, it was set up before their two Speedweeks in Daytona in early March timeframe, or February timeframe, I believe it was. We loaded those two bottles in there, and they never had to touch, never had to fuel this machine over that entire two-week period.
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On the next slide, we had another unit located at the base of a tower, as you can see there on the right-hand side. You can see also the three kilowatt Honda generator that was sitting there before we actually showed up with these units, and you can see also the two propane bottles which were located there. Again, these were set up to run the entire two-week period leading up to the Daytona 500 and through that. I think also, most importantly, we were able to show that we were only using four pounds of propane per day. So, obviously, you can get five or six days of use out of just one of those 20-pound propane bottles.
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On the next slide, you can see one of the units operating near the flag stand, as well as operating in pit row, just you can see the picture on the right-hand side, there's a fixed camera sitting sort of behind the unit, if you will. So these were basically run through the Daytona 500, and again, demonstrated the unit, also gave a lot of publicity both to NASCAR, to DOE, as well as Acumentrics, because there were hundreds of thousands of spectators that came through the stands to see these units—see the race, obviously, and see these units live powering some of their devices along the way.
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So, on the next slide, just wanted to conclude—what did we achieve from doing some of these tests? We showed that the 250 watt unit could be successful in running both fixed—you know, manually operated—cameras, as well as articulating—automated articulating cameras. We were able to show that we're less than five pounds of propane consumed per day, which is what we designed the unit to do beforehand, so we demonstrated to NASCAR that we could get through a four-day race week on the 20-pound bottles that they were desiring so they would not have to fuel any of these units through an entire race weekend. We also demonstrated to them that we could dispatch these units, we could monitor the units from their TV compound similar to what they do with other cameras. We were able to show the ruggedness of the units. We were able to—smaller units were thrown on the back of a golf cart, carried out, carried up stairwells, and tested. Larger units were on wheels. Those were actually able to be sort of towed behind a golf cart, taken out through a number of races over a couple of week period. And again, no damage to the machines or the fuel cell stacks themselves. And again, noise levels were well below background levels when non-race times were out there. So, the units were able to be kept up running through the night, not bothering anybody, as well as power through the key race times.
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On the next slide, just—we wanted to just also list out what would need to be done to sort of move the technology and move the product forward at this point. Clearly, like a lot of fuel cell type technologies, cost is a big issue. At this point, you would require about a five to seven year return on investment based on the fuel savings to justify utilizing the technology right now. That's a pretty long ROI. Most companies in most operations are not willing to wait that. So we probably need some improvement there. Fuel monitoring, you know, even though we're not using a lot of fuel, again, knowing how much is left in those propane bottles, how much you're consuming, and what's actually going on—we're really only monitoring that by what's being consumed through the machine. That doesn't always directly tie back to what was in the delivered tank at the start of the race. So, some design work and some thinking would have to be done on that front. And again, I think some more extended trials would be key to more validate the technology. We tested the units over a one or two week period, but again, the logistics of actually—in NASCAR's case—packing up these units, shipping these units by truck, unloading them, redeploying them, restarting them up—all of that data would need to be collected and assured that there aren't any big logistical issues going on there.
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So on the next slide—again, we'd like to just thank NASCAR for supporting the program, supporting the operation, giving us some insight, helping us around the track. I'd also like to thank DOE for their financial support and technical support throughout this program, as well as all the way back to the 2003 timeframe. Again, DOE's been a great supporter of the technology. And now that we're actually selling these units commercially, it's a positive for us, as well as it's a positive for them. So, I think with that, Ned, I can probably turn it back over to you.
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Ned Stetson:
Thank you Norm, and thank you Catherine. I think this has been very informative. We do have a number of questions. In fact, we have one submittal which is not really a question. It's actually a comment, and that is that this is really impressive, so congratulations. So, we do have a number of questions. We have time for only a couple here, so let me start with a question for you, Norm. This question is: what is the future of solid oxide fuel cell technology? Can the efforts to reduce solid oxide fuel cell operating temperature be successful in the near future?
Norm Bessette:
Well, obviously our unbiased opinion is that the future of the technology is great. We've deployed about 170 of our units, similar to the ones you saw here—not so much for portable NASCAR type applications, but for remote power. We supply to oil and gas, we supply to the U.S. Coast Guard. We're on the Alaska Railroad, a lot of other remote applications. So, again, we are seeing commercial sales with commercial warranties and repeat customers. The more detailed part of reduced temperature—we're not a big pusher per se of reducing the temperature. I know there's a lot of good research going on out there on 650°C operating temperatures. It's interesting, and it would be valuable, but we're not pushing that far because again, every one of our fuels is a hydrocarbon fuel. And if you're going to run on a hydrocarbon fuel, you're going to have to reform those fuels. And if you're going to reform them, you're probably going to need to be above 650°C. So, you may have a very good cell technology and have a very big problem with your fuel and fuel reforming. So we view that we can run at 750°C and hit our commercial targets for life and cost, and therefore if lower temperature works, we'll utilize some of that technology, but we don't necessarily need it to be successful.
Ned Stetson:
All right, thanks. And to be fair, I've got a question here for Catherine: can you please elaborate on whether or not there are any concrete plans to race EVs or test fuel cells in vehicles in addition to stationary applications?
Catherine Kummer:
Yeah, great question, and one that we're asked pretty regularly. So, as I'm sure everyone is aware, we have extraordinarily tight relationships with all of our OEMs. Ford, Chevy, Toyota, and I know this group specifically is also very well aware that Toyota is working to launch their hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, I believe next year. We have been in conversations with each of those OEMs as it relates to electric vehicles, or as it relates to hydrogen fuel cell type vehicles, applications from a pace car standpoint, testing on track. We really will take the lead and follow our OEM partners in that space. However, and whatever we do, we'll really look to them for guidance. So, we know that that is there, that that is on the horizon, and are certainly open to exploring. And again, we'll definitely stay in sync with our partners, Toyota, Ford, and Chevrolet, as the technology continues to broaden. Good question.
Ned Stetson:
So, we do have a lot of questions here which we're not gonna have time to get to. So, we had one—we actually have two questions which are pretty much related. One for each of you. I'll ask it. It involves biomethanol. So, I guess, for Catherine: is there any thought of using biomethanol as a fuel, for instance, instead of E15? And Norm, for you, the related question is: any thoughts of using biomethanol instead of propane as a fuel for solid oxide fuel cells? So, Norm, do you want to take it first?
Norm Bessette:
Sure. I think from our standpoint, it's a fuel that we could use. So it really—you know, a lot of these issues of fuels and fuel cells become a little bit of a chicken and an egg game. If the fuel's available, we could use it. Right now, propane is the commercially available fuel, so that's what we'll use. If biomethanol became more readily available and commercially available, it's something our technology can handle. It's a question of whether the infrastructure's going to be there.
Catherine Kummer:
Yeah, and I think I would—yeah, I was going to say from the NASCAR side, I would actually agree 100 percent with Norm from an infrastructure standpoint. There's so many different types of application outside of just racing within our sport. I mean, if you look at transporters on average, you've got 300 that go over 18 million miles. That's over 3.6 million gallons of fuel being used on an annual basis, and that's just cars—excuse me, trucks going up and down the road to the various NASCAR events. So, from an application standpoint, that's broad on our end, from an infrastructure standpoint in testing to ensure it can work and operate, definitely something that would have to be looked at really significantly.
Ned Stetson:
All right. Thank you guys. We do have a lot of questions here, but unfortunately we are up at the 1:00 timeframe which is the cutoff for the webinar. So, we will get answers to these questions and get them sent back to the people who submitted them. But now, I guess, it's time to turn it back to Alli.
Alli Aman:
All right. Great. Well thank you Catherine and Norm, and I also propose maybe we ask those questions, Ned, if there's enough questions, we can put those on a slide and just add it to the slide deck, and then that will be posted to the website. So maybe we can do that and work that out with Norm and Catherine offline. So thank you everyone for joining today, and just as a reminder, the slides, along with a recording, will be posted to our website in about 10 days. So feel free to check back, but I will also be sending an email out to everyone that registered for this webinar as soon as those post. And then, I also encourage you again to check back for future webinar topics, as we do host these monthly, and to also sign up for our monthly newsletter, because we're always sharing great stories like the NASCAR Green. So, I encourage you to sign up for that. So thank you again, Norm and Catherine, and thanks everyone for joining.