Startup Series: CalWave

Energy

Jul 14

Today's guest is Marcus Lehmann, CEO and Co-Founder of CalWave.

Our planet’s surface is mostly covered by ocean, but harnessing the power of our ceaseless water world has not been a considerable part of the energy mix to date. CalWave is on a mission to provide reliable, cost-effective ocean wave technologies for sustainable energy access. The company’s award-winning technology transforms the motion of ocean waves into electricity to equip communities of scale with localized power.

In this conversation with Marcus, we discuss the potential of wave energy and unpack some of the challenges to operating in dynamic and complex marine environments. We also cover Marcus’ background, CalWave’s origins, the company’s roadmap for getting to market, and how wave power and offshore wind power can be combined in the future.

Enjoy the show!

You can find me on Twitter @codysimms (me), @mcjpod (podcast) or @mcjcollective (company). You can reach us via email at info@mcjcollective.com, where we encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.

Episode recorded July 5, 2022.

In today's episode, we cover:

An overview of CalWave
How to harness the power of the ocean for energy
Marcus' personal climate journey and background in renewables
How Marcus stumbled on wave energy at Berkeley
Different methods of energy generation from water sources
How wave power fits into the renewables mix and its advantages
Engineering and design challenges faced by wave power that are not evident in solar or wind
An overview of CalWave's innovative technology
How wind and wave are co-located and complimentary
Maintenance issues CalWave has had to overcome to withstand ocean dynamics
Learnings from CalWave's ocean pilot in San Diego
The company's go-to-market plan
How wave technology could be a leapfrog for developing or isolated island nations
CalWave's cost predictions
How wave energy benefits sourcing power by the hour
Sources of funding R&D for wave energy
CalWave's initial seed funding and DOE awards
Who CalWave wants to hear from

Jason Jacobs:
Hey everyone, Jason here. I am the My Climate Journey Show host. Before we get going, I wanted to take a minute and tell you about the My Climate Journey, or MCJ as we call it, membership option. Membership came to be because there were a bunch of people that were listening to the show that weren't just looking for education, but they were longing for a peer group as well. So, we set up a Slack community for those people that's now mushroomed into more than 1300 members. There is an application to become a member. It's not an exclusive thing. There's four criteria we screened for, determination to tackle the problem of climate change, ambition to work on the most impactful solution areas, optimism that we can make a dent, and we're not wasting our time for trying, and a collaborative spirit. Beyond that, the more diversity, the better. There's a bunch of great things that have come out of that community. A number of founding teams that have met in there. A number of nonprofits that have been established. A bunch of hiring that's been done. A bunch of companies that have raised capital in there. A bunch of funds that have gotten limited partners or investors for their funds in there. As well as a bunch of events and programming by members and for members and some open source projects that are getting actively worked on that hatched in there as well. At any rate, if you want to learn more, you can go to myclimatejourney.co, the website and click to become a member tab at the top. Enjoy the show. And hello everyone. This is Jason Jacobs, and welcome to My Climate Journey. This show follows my journey to interview a wide range of guests to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and try to figure out how people like you and I can help.
Cody Simms:
Today's guest is Marcus Lehmann, CEO and Co-Founder at CalWave, which is harnessing the immense power of the ocean as a renewable energy source. Also, you might notice that I'm not Jason. This is Cody Simms, Jason's partner at MCJ. I did today's interview with Marcus at CalWave and you'll hear me take on episodes here and there going forward. Like many people, I am in awe of the ocean. I could watch waves for hours. And yet ocean power to date has not been a considerable part of the energy mix. If you think about the strongest natural forces at play around us, the sun, the wind and the ocean along with gravity are what come to mind. So, I was curious to learn more from Marcus about why humans haven't been able to harness wave power with the same degree of success as solar and wind, and how he's planning to change that with CalWave. We have a great discussion about the different ways water is used to generate power. What key innovations CalWave has discovered in order to potentially unlock wave power? How wave power and offshore wind power can be combined in the future and CalWave's roadmap for getting to market? I learned a ton and hope you will as well. Marcus, welcome to the show.
Marcus Lehmann:
Hey, Cody. Thanks for having me.
Cody Simms:
Well, hey, I'm super excited and interested to learn about CalWave. I think I can't speak for everyone, but boy, I feel like I can speak for just about everyone when I say that people love the ocean and are amazed by it. And it's this sort of fascinating thing that makes the earth what it is. But we haven't ever really harnessed it for energy in a major way. Even though, obviously when you visit the coastline, you can see the incredible power of the ocean. So, I'm excited to learn more about CalWave, and I'd maybe love to start by understanding what enthralled you about the ocean, how did this become a problem that you wanted to focus on?
Marcus Lehmann:
That's a good question. A lot of coincidence that came together maybe to your initial point yet that there's a reason why we're called the blue planet. So, I think 80% of the world's surface is actually the ocean. And that's where all that energy comes from, that wind generates friction on the water, and that generates a lot of waves. And these are really the waves that people surf on. We often get mixed up with tidal energy, which is more moon driven, and you really need a bay like here, the San Francisco Bay, and you have a lot of water coming under the Golden Gate and going out. And so, that is very localized versus wave power has really distributed all along the coast lines, US west coast, east coast, and yes, are really great and dense source.
Marcus Lehmann:
And so, my personal journey was a little over, yeah, several coincidence coming together. I started working on renewables back in high school. I was never really the academic type, but I needed to write a final thesis. And I just picked up the first topic that said build something. And that happened to be a solar race car. And then yeah, really learned about renewables and initial solar feed-in tariffs in Europe that really helped to start the early manufacturing and boom in the early 2000s. And then saw that this is a really big problem I want to work on and help past generations of engineers have designed the combustion engines that now led us to the dire situation where in. So, I felt like this is really now our duty to clean that up essentially. And then started working on renewables. I considered fusions say, "I'll do mechanical engineering. Then you can help on renewables as well as fusion or other technologies."
Marcus Lehmann:
And then really just for my final thesis, got in touch with a professor here in Berkeley. I did a double degree in technology management that brought me to Berkeley from Munich where I grew up initially. And yeah, a lot of people always say, "Oh, there are not a lot of oceans there." There's actually a standing wave in Munich. So, I used to surf on that river wave and then I've been to France a couple times. So, personally I had some first experience with the power of wave.
Marcus Lehmann:
And then really just while I was waiting for my thesis, and I emailed several professors and Professor Alam was new to Berkeley and then he just invited me. And while I was waiting for my visa and everything, I just happened to read, I was on a vacation in Italy just read the MIT technology review, personal interest. And I read about this new concept that a professor proposed with completely new approach of extracting wave energy. And I knew we don't have a design yet. And then just finished the article and said, "Oh, this is Professor Alam. That's actually the professor I'm writing my thesis with." And so, kind of, that's how I randomly found the concept. And he initially assigned me a pretty theoretical topic, so similar to where I started in high school. And then just in nights and weekends, it was actually exactly Thanksgiving, 2012, we just did a rapid prototyping, said, "Hey, let's just see how far we can get in a half day free time, essentially not wasting time on the official research," and just build the first prototype with stuff we found and threw it in the tank and in Berkeley. And that was really how we got started. And we showed it to Professor Alum and then he got really excited that we actually got a working prototype and then put some initial seed funding in. And yeah, for the second half of my thesis system, worked on the technology and that's then what led to the first patent that UC Berkeley filed back in 2013.
Cody Simms:
Oh, amazing. And we'll get to the sort of the story post there because I know you've had a lot of success going through some programs like Cyclotron Road and Activate and have received quite a bit of government money for building out the technology that you're pursuing, which we'll touch on, but it's always fun to hear the origin story. And I relate to surfing. I love to surf. I'm not very good at it. So, I personally have also felt the power of waves when I have wiped out hard on my surfboard. And if you think about it, when you think about the different forms of potential renewable energy, you've got obviously solar and wind and water. And water can be broken down into a number of different use cases. And I guess, I think we all think about solar and wind all the time, huge forces of Earth that are, or of the universe around us that are helping us create energy.
Cody Simms:
But water is something that I think we don't think about all that much. And hydroelectric today makes up a decent chunk of the energy mix depending on where you are in the world. But other technologies, whether it's title generation or wave power, I feel like are discussed less. So, maybe before we dive straight into CalWave and your specific technology, just give us a tour about water as an energy generation source and the different methods that are out there today.
Marcus Lehmann:
Certainly, there's a reason why within the Department of Energy, there's the Water Power Technology Office. And yeah, we're referring to big hydro. There's also small hydro, which is under development more and more lower head hydros being used with new technologies. And then pump hydro is really super critical. I mean, as of now, this is the only seasonal or long-term efficient storage technology we have. And hydro turbines in general, just from an engineering perspective are the most advanced piece of technology you would find. It looks very simple turbine generator, but there is no other technology where more hours of engineering went into than hydro turbines. So, people have been on this for a long time and they all have been-
Cody Simms:
And basic technology there is just you have water coming through at pressure that turns the turbines and the friction generates electricity at the basis of levels. Is that correct?
Marcus Lehmann:
Yeah. Yes and no, without going too much in the theory there. Actually, three different types of hydro turbines. There are ones with low flow, high head. So, coming from high mountains and they actually are impulse turbines. So, they spray them out of a hose and then they just run a propeller kind of. So, the impulse turbines. And then there are pressure-based ones. So, then if we go to lower head, higher flow, your river that has a lot of water. These are usually Kaplan turbines and yeah, so they're different design. They use the pressure and not the impulse. So, that's just from the hydro perspective. And then for low head hydro, there are a lot of innovations around more the civil engineering and environmental impact and fish passing. So, you really have to see the full system and the full ecosystem there as well.
Marcus Lehmann:
And then going on in hydro pump hydro, then there's marine energy. So, marine is also part under the Water Power Technology Office from the Department of Energy. And then within marine, there are all different types. Yeah. We touched on tidal energy, wave energy, then there's ocean thermal, so using the heat differences. There's saline gradient, so using different salt differences. It's kind of a rare one where a river hits the ocean and you have low salt or no salt and a lot of salt concentration. So, you can use that. And then I think sometimes offshore wind is added and then there are ocean currents. So, ocean current being a little different in tidal, people know the Alaska current that brings a lot of cold water here into the Bay Area, for example. And they just run in one direction all the time compared to tidal where the direction changes every tidal cycle.
Cody Simms:
And tidal has power plants that are out there in the world today that are generating dozens of megawatts of power, I believe, does it not?
Marcus Lehmann:
That's correct. Yeah. Tidal energy is a little ahead of us in terms of technology readiness level or to market. And yeah, there are several turbines operational in Scotland, and I think Japan recently, they also installed the ocean current turbine. And technologically, they are really very similar to a wind turbine underwater or like a river. You can just imagine a river in the ocean that flows in one direction, and then you put a similar technology, blades and turbines and they generate rotation. So, yeah, they're a little ahead of us and are currently really ramping up with project financing and larger projects.
Cody Simms:
Well, great. And maybe let's talk about how wave power in particular fits into the renewables mix. So, today, I think obviously wind and solar dominate the renewables market. And I think I saw a stat somewhere that at peak, wind and solar can get us to somewhere around what, 60 to 70% of our energy needs. And so, there's a gap. And I think your hypothesis here is that wave power can help not replace wind or solar, but complement them and fill the gap. Is that correct? And maybe unpack that a little bit more for us.
Marcus Lehmann:
No. You're exactly spot on. Yeah. I think some studies found, yeah, with wind and solar, we can get to 60%. A good indicator are always islands or microgrids. They have kind of a glimpse into the future. I think Hawaii is a good example. And there are good studies from the Rocky Mountain Institute or Hawaii as a state in general. And yeah, they found that the cost of overbuilding storage just becomes uneconomical and you want to diversify. Now also other reasons to diversify as we've seen in Texas or with the energy crisis in Ukraine, you want to be able to access as many different sources as possible that just builds up a stronger and more resilient grid if you have different sources. If one is down for whatever reason, then you have alternatives. And that really makes a more reliant system with redundancy.
Marcus Lehmann:
And so, wave power has three main advantages. It's more energy dense. We're about 30 to 60 times denser than wind and solar. So, an average coastline has about 30 to 60 kilowatts per meter compared to one square meter of solar is about one kilowatt in California compared to other locations. And then next to that, yeah, it's really delivered right to our front doors. So, in the US, half of the population lives within 50 miles of the coastline. And overall, we're seeing a trend towards migration towards the coastlines for economic reasons and shipping and industry is usually along the coastline. And so, the transmission line problem is really addressed there that we essentially get a very dense concentrated form of renewable energy delivered right where the population lives. So, the cost of additional transmission lines to bring all the renewables is going to be significant lower as if we have to produce it in the center of the country and send it in what form or shape or the other, it's always going to be less efficient. Even if you convert it to hydrogen and pump it, there will always be losses and pumping takes power and so on. Yeah. So, that's that.
Marcus Lehmann:
Another big advantage, and then, yeah, as you pointed out, the production profile is really beneficial. So, we can produce at night winter times. And what we often hear is that the winter nights in Europe where sometimes the grid is already more penetrated by solar and wind, and then they have these one or two weeks a year where there's just snow, wind and solar available. And that's just a big nightmare to be able to fill that with renewable and storage. People are working on seasonal long-term storage. But from economic perspective, total system cost is it going to be the optimum system if I use my storage battery only once a year and it doesn't generate revenue all other times that, yeah, that's of course the market has to figure that out.
Cody Simms:
How do you view and I think you mentioned comparing the notion of wave power with tidal, thinking about just within the notion of ocean powered energy potential, tidal requires sort of local phenomenon, like a narrow straight that water is rushing in and out of at a fast speed. Is that correct? Whereas wave power presumably could be deployed up and down any coastline. I presume that means that the challenge is harnessing the fact that you are completely at the whim of the elements because you're out in the middle of the ocean, not moored to anything. Is that correct? Is that the big challenge with wave power and why it hasn't been deployed to date?
Marcus Lehmann:
Yeah. So, you're correct. The power is available along the coastlines, the Department of Energy, the resource assessment and found from 60% of US electricity demand could be provided by ocean power and about half or 60% of that is wave power. So, that majority of the renewable resource in what's left for hydro, river hydro and marine, the majority 60% is really wave power. So, in summary, about 30% of US electricity demand could be met with wave power. And so, the reason why wave power is not as far as wind and solar is for several reasons. One, as you pointed out, it's just a resource where you cannot do trial and error, kind of with wind and solar, people just built turbines in the beginning, put it in their backyards. You could do really cheap testing. You can do testing and controlled environments. In our case, we need ocean size waves. There are sometimes 100 to 160 meter long, and there's just no tests environment where you can generate that size of waves and turn it on and off.
Marcus Lehmann:
And so, what really the industry needed is a level of engineering that is similar to what the oil and gas companies have been able to do with oil platforms. And people intuitively always say, "Oh yeah, the ocean is a harsh environment and destroys everything." But people have found solutions that work there for 60 years and longer, very safe and reliable with oil platforms now with offshore wind and other permanent structures there. And so, it just takes that level of focused engineering and a certain minimum amount of capital. I think the earlier generations of wave developers, they often fell into the pitfall that the utilities told them, "Hey, we want to see something in the field, show us that it works." And then they had a couple 100Ks and they tried to build something on the cheap and in a rush. And then of course, it doesn't work. You need that minimum amount of capital. So, that is one.
Marcus Lehmann:
The second is really, we were a design that is capable of meeting the same criteria as our modern wind turbine. So, from a really high level perspective, if we look at a wind turbine from a product perspective and what it does is it produce electricity really efficient most of the time. And then sometimes when the wind gets too strong, it is able to shut down, so become invisible to storms. And that really led to an economical design. It's really interesting, I once attended a conference with kind of one of the pioneers of wind and buck treasure from NREL and he kind of told the stories of the early days of wind. And so, I couldn't believe that it's actually the case, but the initial shutdown mechanisms for wind turbines was that the blades just fly out of the turbine. So, if they spin too fast, so farmers had their micro wind turbines or initial kilowatt level in turbines. So, if the wind got too fast, the friction couldn't hold it anymore and the blades would fly out. Now after the storm, they just went there and pluck the blades back in. So, that was kind of the early shutdown mechanisms for wind turbines. And then, yeah, we developed pitch and yaw control and now wind turbines are really reliable autonomous. And so, both of these features together were really lacking for wave power.
Marcus Lehmann:
And the challenge here is that it's not intuitive that if you're on the surface, you're really exposed to all the different extreme conditions. It's more intuitive to be there because you can just go with a ship and look at things and fix things and so on. But what we've found is that you have to be able to become invisible to storms. And so, waves are a little different than your wind turbine or your hydro turbine where the particles just go in one direction all the time and then you slow them down. In our case, the resource is actually circles. So, the wave particles, they go in circles and we just slow that motion down essentially. So, from a resource perspective, from engineering perspective is a very different set of requirements and challenges. And yeah, I think and what we found is operating submerged really allows us to get the high energy concentration where most of the energy is on the surface, but at the same time we can also become invisible. So, it's really closer to a light wave than your wind. And so, you can compare a wave converter to a window that wants to be absorbent, so dark most of the time. And then sometimes you just want to let all the light through and all the waves go through. And so, that was the big challenge that no one had found a solution for exactly that technical problem.
Cody Simms:
Got it. Well, maybe let's go from there and just describe what CalWave is. We've kind of set the stage on the space and some of the challenges, but maybe talk about your product and the innovations that you're building today.
Marcus Lehmann:
CalWave is a company is a marine energy developer. Specifically, we provide technology to harness wave power, and that's really our vision to, yeah, become the, yeah, leading provider of wave power technology and specifically unlock the power of ocean waves to secure clean energy future. And the technology we've developed is a wave energy converter as we call it. So, similar to an offshore wind turbine, capturing ocean waves. So, our system operates fully submerged. We're underwater at all times. And yeah, produce power there, and as I said really similar to a wind turbine in terms of great connection, layout, anchoring and so on. And we are anchored. You mentioned the other challenges to be far out in the open ocean. There is a little advantage that we have because we're submerged, so we can be closer to shore. For offshore wind, often the NIMBYism of the visual impact of winter turbines is a concern. In our case, we can be much closer to shore because we don't cause any visual impact. You don't see us. We sometimes show that picture before deployment, after deployment. And it's just a wide open ocean that looks as beautiful as before.
Cody Simms:
How deeply are you deployed?
Marcus Lehmann:
Yeah. That's exactly our secret sauce. So, at the moment, the Department of Energy builds a megawatt level farm in Oregon called PacWave that is a facility where we can really de-risk the technology to become ready for prime time and in serious production mass production and going forward. And that side is around 60 to 80-meter depth. So, water depth to the ground. And that's in years of engineering optimization, that's really the key understanding that we know where you have to be for what objective. So, if we want to produce power, where most of the energy density is, if we want to become invisible, we go deeper and we have two other mechanisms that allow us to become independent, transparent, essentially invisible to storm conditions.
Cody Simms:
When you're wanting to be in energy generation mode, the product will actually raise closer to the surface in order to catch the actual surface wave. And then in a big storm or something, you'll do like I try to do on my surfboard, which is like duck under the wave, so you don't get totally blown over, is that true?
Marcus Lehmann:
Correct. Yeah, exactly. And that initial idea from Professor Alam at Berkeley was driving our thinking of being submerged. And what we really found studying the resources that the forces and the energy density goes down exponentially. So, by lowering it a little bit, we can cut the forces into half nearly. So, that's a really effective mechanism to survive storms.
Cody Simms:
And then how do you transmit power back to shore? Are these existing subsea cable infrastructure that you plug into? Or is there some other way of diverting power back?
Marcus Lehmann:
Yeah. So, the 20-megawatt farm in Oregon is re permitted and pre-cabled and grid connected, which is really amazing. It removes all the planning insecurities we have in de-risking the technology and getting all the technical checkboxes to get certification and then be able to project finance similar to offshore wind. And so, they're laying the cable and you're right, yeah, we need an export cable that goes back to shore. But it's really no different than offshore wind. Offshore wind, there are two kind of major differences. They're the piled offshore wind we're building on the east coast in the US at the moment. And then there's floating wind more like in California where it gets pretty deep, pretty quickly.
Marcus Lehmann:
And so, what we've found and that's an area where really actively researching working in as well with a couple of corporate partners at the moment now that offshore wind is really taking off in the US and globally is that we can co-locate wind and wave. There have been several studies by group in Stanford or the Pacific Northwest National Lab. And yeah, they've found that wind and wave happen at different times of the year. So, in California, for example, wind peaks in the summer versus wave peaks in the winter. And we often get asked, why is that if waves are wind generated? So, for us, the waves that are arriving here on the shores, they're generated far out in the Arctic or Southern hemisphere, and then they just travel without any losses. So, these are generated from big winter storms that are not local versus the wind is really generated from the heat differences ocean to land, and that's where that time difference comes from.
Marcus Lehmann:
And so, the big opportunity here is that wind in itself, even offshore wind has a capacity factor of 40 to 50%, meaning half of the year they don't produce at rated power. And so, we have a lot of access capacity here. I found some in the US, the current target and planned is about 30 gigawatt of offshore wind globally. We already have 60 gigawatt, and yeah, we're seeing the numbers going up quite a lot, like 500 gigawatt by 2030 or so. And so, there's a lot of electrical infrastructure that's already in place and not used, and we could fill by co-locating them. We're not planning to mix these farms because for anything offshore. It's a very conservative industry. Everything follows standards and guidelines, but we're just being in proximity and using the same substation. So, usually how it works is that a wind farm, they have cables connecting all the wind turbines, and then they collect all that power to one station. And there, sometimes it gets converted and higher voltage and then send back to shore. So, we can use that same substations as they call it. And that's really an enormous cost reduction. It's about 11% of the total project. Of course, depends on how far out it is, how long the cable is, it could be even higher. And so, the big benefits is that paying off all that electrical infrastructure will be significantly reduced. At the same time, the value to the grid. Suddenly you have a renewable combined resource wind wave together that is close to base load and fills exactly that big problem we're facing, trying to grow towards 100% renewables.
Cody Simms:
And today, when a new offshore wind project is developed, I presume the vast majority of time that same electrical cabling work is part of the project. It's not just putting the turbines out in the ocean. It's actually obviously connecting them to shore as well. So that when you look at the total project finance costs of developing a new offshore wind farm, you're already syncing that all the cabling costs into that project. Is that generally correct?
Marcus Lehmann:
Correct. Yeah. In general, a project, the phases of developing a project is siding. So, BOEM, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, they sell leases and they actually just auctioned off a lot of leases west coast, and now, also in California, I think they're pending. And then, the first step is to get all the permits. And so, project developer can win these leases. And then they can use that ocean land now for their wind farms. And then they do the environmental studies and get their permits. And then the first thing they would do is lay the cable and the substation. And then yeah, really the last step is to bring in the turbines and bring them online and export power to the grid.
Cody Simms:
Super interesting. I mean, you start to think about what are the bundles of renewable energy technologies that will be deployed together. And obviously with solar, you think of battery storage as a package now for a utility scale infrastructure. And interesting to think about offshore wind plus wave as another sort of bundled package where maybe you don't need as much storage because like you said, you can avoid the intermittency issue by having these two vehicles that are delivering energy at different times of the year and different times of the day. Interesting to think about that. That's sort of at least to me, a new perspective to wrap my head around.
Marcus Lehmann:
And the problem is really different. In California, I think you're not allowed to deploy a new solar without storage because you're overheating the grid if you don't really level it out, but this is a daily problem. What we're talking here is seasonal and annual problem, which is a completely different timescale. And what's been missing a little there is someone that can really assess the total system cost. And that's in an unregulated market. So, let the market figure it out. Sometimes the market might not find the cheapest solution and then overbuild things that are not economical. And so, we're seeing a lot of studies now in some of the more progressive corporates, like in Google now, really sourcing power by the hour and not just by the capacity. That really shows that they're thinking forward and understand if you want to optimize. Because there's limited capital, it's great to see more capital going into renewables, but there is still not infinite amount of capital. So, we want to use that capital in the most efficient way to get us to full decarbonization as quickly as possible. And so, why not use that capital to find the lowest total system cost. And overbuilding one resource and then trying to clean it up with storage most likely will not lead to the lowest total system cost, but a diverse portfolio of generation that can really meet the demand on an annual basis is most likely going to be the cheapest total system cost.
Cody Simms:
What do you imagine utility scale looks like for wave? Do you see there being instances where CalWave has CalWave specific farms out there or do you think it will truly be a mix where it's wave plus offshore wind bundled together?
Marcus Lehmann:
It's a good question. There are applications where we stand out and we can build our own standalone wave farms. One big advantage for us as mentioned is where completely submerged. So, we can go where wind couldn't go. There's some regions where the visual impact is really critical. Let's say an island where tourism is often the majority of their income, and they're really concerned with visual impact. They also don't have space. They often have hurricanes. And so, our system being submerged, we're hurricane proof, not causing any visual impact and not taking up land. And so, there's some unique features there beyond of course, a competitive electricity price where we really differentiate and stand out. And we've gotten a lot of positive feedback and interest exactly from that group, from eco-resorts that are committed to go 100% renewable, but yeah, they don't really want to impact their real estate and their beautiful landscape. So, that's an area where a standalone wave farm can really stand out. It's just co-locating with wind is a low hanging fruit because the cables are already there. The permits are already there. The developers are there that maintain the wind turbines. And fundamentally, our system is no different than the wind turbine in terms of supply chain and parts. So, anyone that can fix the wind turbine and maintain it can also maintain our system. And we've designed it intentionally only with off the shelf parts and things that are available really from the offshore wind or wind supply chain that exactly facilitates the market adoption and rapid growth.
Cody Simms:
Well, let's go into that a little bit, because as you stated earlier, the ocean is destroys everything in its path or something along those lines. I can't remember exactly what you said, but the ocean's a very destructive force. And so, I imagine given that one of the big insights you had to have is to how you essentially know to go deep when there's a heavy storm coming so that you don't get wrecked by a giant wave. What else have you had to figure out from a maintenance perspective in order to survive being out in the ocean? I assume there's corrosion issues. I assume there are just issues related to, like you said, making it easy for repairs to happen when you're submerged underwater, et cetera. So, I'd love to hear a bit more about the maintenance side of your technology.
Marcus Lehmann:
I think the best example I can refer to is our open ocean pilot. So, our team really contested in the US wave energy price back in 2015, '16, and then we achieved the highest performing system there out of 92 teams. The navy did a third party performance assessment at the very end with the nine most promising systems. And then with these really great results and strong reputation, we've built up with the DOE, we won the large award in 2017 to build an ocean going system. And so, that is now in the field operational in San Diego. We've partnered with UC San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography. They invited us to deploy there. And then, we developed that test side ourselves during the previous years. And with COVID, we got quite delayed. But it's been super exciting now to see the system in the field since last September. So, we're now close to 10 months of operating the system. Initially, the DOE set the target to operate for six months, but we had zero downtime, zero intervention. And so, we've said, "Yeah, why don't we just let it run and collect more data and more learnings." So, that's been super exciting.
Marcus Lehmann:
And so, to the common challenges you pointed out, corrosion, biofouling, and general access to maintenance, if we really addressed these from the very beginning, and that was exactly where the wave energy price was coming from, that they've seen with the state of the art we really don't have a scalable solution. And they took us away from that pure performance type of thinking that we're often seeing from a pure academic context and said, "Hey, we really have to think about like look at this as a product." And that was also my background in systems engineering. And performance is of course important, but it's equally important that you can shut it down, that it's affordable, that you can permit it, that it's acceptable at the marine ecosystem, that you can maintain it. So, just taking the entire life cycle into account in your initial design. And so, that's what we did. From a clean sheet of paper, we really designed for all these requirements right from the beginning. And no one had done that before so far.
Marcus Lehmann:
And that really led to a system now that operating submerged were actually less corrosive because there's less oxygen. Worst point you can be is on the intersection between water and air that you have splashing a chain, saltwater splashing on your structure. Overall, the oil and gas and the offshore wind industry has really found solutions for corrosion. And they use very mature paints. There are new paints coming out any other day, nanocoatings that prevent biofouling, but then we're using suffocating anodes. So, there are also some waste you can just protect steel. And people have been doing this for many years now. In terms of marine acceptability, there's a study that's a global nonprofit called Ocean Energy Systems. And they collect all the data of marine energy. They really want to share learnings, best practices. And part of their work is to really document the acceptability to marine life. And this is called the State of the Science Report. There's a new version that came out 2020 and here in the US, the Pacific Northwest National Lab is really the main body there reporting all the findings of projects that have been done in the US. And in general, there are like five areas that of concern. And yeah, as of now, for wave specifically, they are all in the green lights. And some of them require some monitoring, like for example, noise. And so, in our case, we had PNL actually independently coming by to San Diego and recording the noise level. And then they had to come a second time because they couldn't hear anything and had to come closer. So, that was encouraging. And yeah, overall, we have to be super careful and it's very important to us to not cause any impact to the marine ecosystem. That's the main reason. It's our prime motivator is to protect the environment and that's why we're working on this. So, we're really careful in monitoring the risks there, but they're all manageable and acceptable. That's why we're seeing the industry moving forward.
Marcus Lehmann:
Yeah. I think you had another question. Oh yeah. Maintenance. Yeah. So, for maintenance, the beauty of our system is that we really integrated that into the design. So, for us, we can do inspection remote and we've been keeping an eye on the system now for the last 10 months, just with our power export cable that is connected to the pier and UC San Diego microgrid there. And yeah, we also get data, so we can see exactly what's going on. We have videos on board, but all kinds of sensors on the forces and all moving parts and so on. And we have really moved all the moving parts inside the system. So, that makes it no fast moving parts are really exposed and that's a critical part. And so, with our system, we can float it like a ship. So, if you just leave it unmoored, it would be on the surface, just like a ship. And so, any ship can tow it to a location. Then we connect it to the mooring lines, to the anchors that are redeployed and then we go submerged.
Marcus Lehmann:
And so, for maintenance, we just do the same reverse. We bring it to the surface and we can do some level of inspection onsite. So, if it's just looking some visual inspections can be done offshore. But then for an overall maintenance, we're currently designing for four to five year cycles. So, for a 20, 30-year project, it's about four to five maintenance cycles. Then we just disconnected, bring it back to shore and there then we can conduct the maintenance. And what we're seeing is quite interesting now with upend of new technologies, autonomous shipping is really coming as you might see. And there were several ARPA-E funded, tidal projects that is kind of self-propelled. And so, it's not completely unconceivable that our systems could just self-disconnect and come back to shore. We have storage onboard and adding a propulsion system and autonomous system.
Marcus Lehmann:
So, come near future and the system is fully mature, reliable on the power side, there are a lot of innovations we can adopt and to lower the cost for maintenance. And there's a good chance that we're actually going to be cheaper than offshore wind because we don't need specialized vessels that for wind, these are big machines. In our case, because it is like a ship, it's much easier to actually disconnect it, bring it back to a harbor or like a set that could autonomously just come back by itself and even replace. So, with our system, we can do a hot swap. So, if we have a farm of, let's say, 100 systems and we can share anchor points, then just the one that needs maintenance gets disconnected and comes back to shore and immediately gets replaced with a new one. So, we have no downtime. We can really secure to produce at the rated power of the cable at all times. And so, we have essentially 101 machines and one just gets inspected, maintained and replaces one by one in a scheduled way. So, that's really the most efficient way we're seeing, bringing the OPEX cost down, going forward.
Cody Simms:
And maybe describe for listeners what the actual device looks like. We haven't even talked about that specifically. I know when I first heard of wave-based power, I couldn't get my head around what the actual form factor of the thing was. And I guess as part of that, the other question I have just on safety is once you describe what it is and people have their head around it, how do you manage boat safety of boats not ramming one of these things, if it's slightly submerged underwater?
Marcus Lehmann:
I think that's an easier question to answer. For our pilot in San Diego, we had to get all permits, and one of them was a coast guard permit. So, we just have a surface buoy with a notice to mariners. And if this is a permanently installed farm, like offshore wind, then it will be on the map as well. So, boats know that there is a farm. And the ocean, there's a lot of space. So, of course that's part of marine spatial planning. And wouldn't give out leases at locations where there is ship traffic. And with fishing and logistics and containerships, they already know what their routes are and so on. So, that's all part of the planning process already. And in terms of, sorry, I missed the first part.
Cody Simms:
Yeah. Just what it looks like, describe the device.
Marcus Lehmann:
Yeah. So, if you go our homepage, calwave.energy, you'd see a video during installation where it's on the surface. So, our system is really like a buoy and like a ship, essentially floating ship. And then from architecture perspective, it's as close to an electric car as it can be. An electric car has four wheels, four generators. And by that, it's really stable. It's a dynamic system on a road. And by that, gives a lot of stability. And our system exactly follows kind of the same findings. And we have several generators that allow redundancy and production, but also reliability. And then it operates fully submerged. So, you can really imagine it like an electric car underwater and then the waves really push it up and down. And so, as you know, an electric car that goes downhill would produce power. So, when you're breaking or you're going downhill slowing down, your electric motors also produce power that recharge your batteries. And that's exactly the same for us that the waves lift the system and that we can produce power there and then bring it back down. And so, it's really that cyclical oscillating motion that then allows us to produce power.
Cody Simms:
You described it as a buoy. I think it looks like a flying saucer, but either one I guess is good.
Marcus Lehmann:
So, we actually had that incident. There was a newspaper helicopter in San Diego that they posted a tweet and said, "What the hell is this?" And people thought it's a UFO or something. And no one knew exactly what it is now. I think some guy flew by with their drone and saw our name. And then luckily, got picked up on Twitter and we could clarify. But yeah, you're right. That there was some-
Cody Simms:
You know in the movie Men in Black, it's the National Enquirer that always tells the real truth about what's happening in the world. So, maybe you all are scooping the future by deploying flying saucers everywhere to power the future of our coastal areas. So, maybe on that note, talk a bit about what your go to market is. I believe you're focused right now, obviously, you're doing the trials in San Diego and then I think you'll focus on the deployment up in Oregon at the PacWave facility, if I'm not mistaken. But from a commercial perspective, I'm assuming you're focusing on more disconnected communities to begin with. Is that correct or not? I'd love to hear kind of how you see the build out happening.
Marcus Lehmann:
Yeah. You're right. There's I mean, first step is really to de-risk the technology and make it reliable. And yeah, the trial in San Diego was already extremely valuable and also encouraging for us. It's somewhat unusual that a system as complex at this, our controls is really the heart of our technology and IP is that autonomous controller. Similarly to wind turbine, that self decides when to shut down, when to produce. And so, all that complexity and mechanical parts working reliable in the first shot was somewhat surprising. We had expected at least one or two interventions. So, that's been super exciting to just all the hard work before we've done a lot of de-risking of our simulation models, of our digital twin of the system that also helps us to optimize it. At the same time, we did a lot of dry testing of the drivetrain in collaboration with Berkeley.
Marcus Lehmann:
And so, yeah, the next step, we just won a larger award from DOE in January to build a larger system, a 100-kilowatt unit. And that is intended then to go into PacWave for two years and really grid connected. And then we can grow there because it's such a great site. They have four cables of five megawatt each. So, we can then upgrade it with our megawatt class unit as kind of the next step up, because we're no different than the wind turbine. The initial wind turbines we're in the two digit, three digit kilowatts and now grew to megawatts. And then people thought, oh, six megawatt is the limit of wind that can be reached. And now, we're working on 20 megawatt wind turbines. And so, from a resource perspective, we're no different that it's scalable. The wider we make it, the more the energy input and the higher the power ratings.
Marcus Lehmann:
And what we've seen in wind is that with larger machines, the costs come down. So, people sometimes refer to that as economies of scale. And then next to that, of course you have mass production, economies of industrialization reducing labor costs, robotic manufacturing, and so on. So, both of these phenomena actually bring the cost down and that's why we have so cheap wind power at the moment. That's exactly the same path we can follow. And then at PacWave, we can deploy potentially then the megawatt system and even the farm of the megawatt system is set up to five megawatt per cable. The total site is rated 20 megawatt. So, that's kind of from a technology de-risking, making the technology ready for commercialization and serious production.
Marcus Lehmann:
At the same time, of course, we're planning to offer kind of initial commercial projects. And so, we have a collaboration with the hotel in French Polynesia that is really interested. There's actually the Olympics 2024 in France. And the surfing part of it is in Tahiti. And so, they just announced kind of the wave challenge to co-host and show the potential of this technology for island development economies. And what we found is these island development states, and these are smaller islands, not like a UK or Japan, they still represent about 11% of global population. And they predominantly rely on imported fossil fuels. So, this is often bunker fuels, the worst possible fuel, emissions worse than a coal power plant. And also, the enormous trade deficit of them having to import all that fuel and not really getting anything out of it but emissions and power. So, that's a great opportunity for these communities to use their own local resource and become energy independent. So, that's certainly an avenue. And that's we're also seeing the electricity prices are really high there. But then in parallel to that, we're also working-
Cody Simms:
Actually, before you jump, just a question on that, which is we talked earlier about how wave is likely a complement to the existing renewable mix. But in this case, it sounds like you're saying in many developing island nations, it may be more of a leapfrog. I'm wondering why wind and solar haven't been deployed there but wave technology would be able to work there?
Marcus Lehmann:
It's a good question. What we're seeing I referred to that earlier is really the visual impact and the lands requirement, the scarcity of real estate and that's often a concern. And it's certainly in these remote locations, it's not easy to deploy new technology. So, it has to have a certain level of maturity and reliability because the cost of operating there is more expensive than you can ship something by railroad from Michigan spare part. And so, that is really the critical piece of getting it reliable at PacWave first, and then be able to go to these remote locations. Yeah. One example, we just got accepted to the portfolio of Launch Alaska. It's a program helping companies to set up projects footprint in Alaska. And we found a community there that also has no wind and solar. So, for them, they're completely isolated. And up north, they might have some solar in the summer, but then entire winter, not much there. So, that's exactly some of these smaller niche applications that really allow us to produce the first 100 and the first 500 units. So, what we found from a cost perspective, once we reach about 500 units, then we become cost competitive with offshore wind. And that's kind of the path we're seeing identifying the more expensive electricity markets first and then be able to collocate with wind once we have the production volume that brings the cost at par.
Cody Simms:
That makes sense. And then that's when in parallel to some of these trialing solutions in island nations, you'll also be trying to build out grid scale capacity in places like Oregon and PacWave.
Marcus Lehmann:
That's correct. And second half of your question, in parallel to these, we're also working with several corporates and project developers of offshore wind on feasibility studies, educating them on the potential on what's in the pipeline for technologies, and then starting with a small initial project and then being able to grow from there. So, I think we're getting a lot of interest there at the moment. And I think now with offshore wind growing so rapidly, I saw, I think McKinsey had a study found that offshore wind is really expected to grow to like 80 gigawatts by 2030 and then 600 gigawatts by 2050. So, we're expecting enormous growth in offshore wind in the coming years.
Cody Simms:
Well, let's talk a little bit about the cost side and just the investment opportunity side with wave power. Drawdown indicates that wave power is a top 30 technology in terms of its impact on emissions. And I think they said that it could provide somewhere of up to 25% of US electricity by 2050, but would require really substantial investment. The quote in Drawdown says it would cost $400 billion to implement wave power up to that capacity with net losses of a trillion dollars. So, I assume that's not just CalWave. That's looking at all forms of wave technology, including some of the tidal solutions we talked about earlier. But I'm curious how you have penciled out what it's going to cost to deploy your technology to get to a utility scale improvement? And I'm assuming also what you were talking about blending the investment cost with offshore wind mitigates or blunts the loss side of that equation quite substantially.
Marcus Lehmann:
That's a really good question. And personally, I'm a big fan of Project Drawdown because they really put a name tag on things and quantify the impact potential. And I think the numbers in terms of cost, we always have to be a little careful that where did they get them from. They did not ask us about our cost projections and there's a good chance that we're really on the spearhead of the industry. And they don't know what's in the pipeline at the moment with new technologies that bring the cost down. So, from a first principle perspective, there's no reason why we should not be at the same price or cheaper than offshore wind. It's generators, it's steel, same cable. The difference is really that the resource is significantly more energy dense. So, there's a good chance that we're actually cheaper. The IPCC has found that ocean energy is the lowest form of electricity from a lifecycle perspective. Exactly because of the energy density. It's water a thousand times denser than air. And so, the amount of material, steel and equipment you need is significantly lower.
Marcus Lehmann:
So, we did an analysis comparing the spatial footprint of an offshore wind farm compared to a wave farm. In our case, we can pack these really densely. So, we don't have to space them out because wind has these wake effects, as well as anchor cables, anchor chain lying out and so on. In our case, we can pack these in a very dense line along the coastline. So, the amount of space we need to get to the same amount of let's say, 20 megawatts in a mile or so is about 7% compared to an offshore wind farm. So, that just gives you a sense on how much less space and material we need. And so, that combined with the OPEX being cheaper, that because we don't need helicopters or specialized vessels, any larger tuck can install our system, if not even self-install, if we add proportion to it. And so, of course, acknowledge that wind and solar are ahead of us in the cuffs curve because they have that amount of accumulated production and capacity. But once we get over that initial hum, that kind of as they call it value of death in for the first hundred, the first 500 units, then the cost should actually become cheaper than is a good chance that they become cheaper than off showing going forward.
Marcus Lehmann:
So, there's some progressive countries like Spain and Portugal. They actually have the government mandate, I think in Portugal, it's about 70 megawatts specifically for wave. So, comparable to the portfolio standard in the US, but specifically calling out, we want a diverse, renewable mix and they said so much wind, so much offshore wind, they really mapped it out and based on the lowest system cost as we discussed earlier. And part of that is really to add 70 megawatt of wave. And so, there are exactly these kind of initial markets or countries. And that's what we've seen with solar and wind as well. California and Germany had these incentives in the early days that really allowed to bring the cost of solar down that now we have that production capacity that this is the cheapest form of electricity. And so, we're seeing similar from a demand side incentives. And next to that, we're seeing the corporates like Google, or also the community choice, aggregators really sourcing power by the hour and not just by the capacity. And so, there will be a market incentive, they call it TRX. So, there will be a market incentive for technologies that as mentioned, winter nights, no one else can produce so that there will be enormous credit there going forward for technologies that can produce at these times.
Cody Simms:
And I assume a lot of the cost side of things is on the R&D front. So, there's the scale out obviously, which as you mentioned, is steel and metal and deployment, which is pretty similar to scaling out offshore wind. But the R&D side is where I think this technology has been much more nascent relative to wind and obviously offshore drilling, which has been around for decades. So, maybe talk us through your journey on the R&D side. You've been going through sort of the gauntlet of different R&D financers and have seen quite a bit of support. And I'm curious what you're seeing in terms of both appetite for funding R&D here as well as the journey you've been on that can help other founders who are building new technologies, sort of learn from you in terms of the capital mix and support mix that you've gathered for CalWave.
Marcus Lehmann:
Yeah. And you're right. It's an important question, how do we scale these technologies and who's taking the biggest financial risk there. And what we're seeing, CalWave is a member of the National Hydro Association. And they have a specific subgroup called the Marine Energy Council. So, we have our ears in Washington. And the Congress has assigned now about 120 million per year, specifically for marine energy and to the Water Power Technology Office. So, that's already super exciting. That's an enormous increase. The head of our council there always complains that this is still a fraction of what wind and solar gets. And compared to the potential and the stage of the technology, we see a lot of solar is not produced in the US, but imported, but still a lot of funding goes into the technology in the R&D side. So, one might ask or question with the investment dollar in R&D return on investment, would that actually be higher in a new industry that could develop locally and become then exporter of some of the early finances of wind that's really interesting.
Marcus Lehmann:
There was a study that compared Denmark to the UK and have found that the total amount of money that the UK has invested in wind in the beginning is actually larger than Denmark, but they've only done it in patches. So, one legislation, the next legislation, nothing for four years, and then another amount. And so, the result is now that Denmark is one of the leading exporters of wind technology because they had a continuous funding level. And so, that's why it's super exciting. And I think actually the US has a big opportunity and chance here to become the leader in that space. In Europe, we don't see that much funding going into marine energy and not at that funding level. So, the awards we've gotten from DOE, they usually come with cost share requirements. Similar, if you go and get a R&D award from the European Union, they usually come with a match funding.
Marcus Lehmann:
And to deploy these systems that sets with the ... There is a minimum amount of capital. It just takes to do the thorough engineering and planning. And the order like our pilot program, for example, was a six million award from DOE. And in Europe, as an example, they often require 50% match funding that would come down to three million from the private sector. And that's a big challenge for small companies that still in the demonstration stage. And so, in the US now, we've received these awards at a 20% cost share and the latest at 10%. So, that's enormous competitive advantage of the US compared to other regions combined with that amount of funding going into the space and now PacWave. So, I think from a pure R&D diffusion technology development perspective, these three things all coming together are very unique. And I think the US is really well positioned there. So, it's a super exciting time to be in this space now.
Cody Simms:
How much have you raised in total from the DOE and any other non-dilutive sources at this point roughly?
Marcus Lehmann:
Yeah. Order of magnitude, we've gotten four larger ... So, briefly to our funding journey, the big initial seed investor was really, as you mentioned, Cyclotron Road and Activate. And they came in really early in 2014, '15, '16 when we graduated from the program. And that initial seed funding was super critical. Without Cyclotron Road, we wouldn't be here today in that size and shape. And that really allowed us to focus on a commercial product and not a pure research kind of focused endeavor, but still being close enough to Berkeley to benefit from a research environment. So, that was a really unique program. And I was in the very first cohort, so extremely lucky and grateful for their trust. And the amount of funding they gave us at that stage, that's hard to find elsewhere. And then as mentioned, we won some cash prices from the US Wave Energy Price. We won half a million in cash. That was really an award. We did a crowdfunding campaign in the very beginning, couple of other funding sources. And then, since '17, we started winning these larger DOE awards. We've won four so far, the latest to build the two-year system for PacWave grid connected is in the order of eight million and with the 10% cost share. So, overall, we've raised over four trenches in a seed round to a match fund these DOE awards over the years now.
Cody Simms:
And do you see this being the type of business that becomes venture capital funded? Do you see it moving straight into project finance, a little bit of both? Do you see it going other pathways for growing? And I suppose there's the growing the equity structure of the business and there's growing individual projects. I'm just curious how you see fund? I mean, you're essentially building a new type of power plant. It's a very different kind of business to fund. And so, I'm curious how you see the capital side of the business evolving?
Marcus Lehmann:
You're right. Yeah. Just to clarify, in terms of business model, we're not planning to become a project developer. We're really planning to become an equipment provider technology provider service. So, really no different business model than the wind OEMs that provide the turbines, and then the maintenance contracts and additional performance service contracts and software digital services there for improved performance or digital twin that leads to reliability. And so, these are all parts of the value offered. And in terms of private sector involvement, the project financing will really come from or to the project developers. So, they would be more our customers. And it takes a certain level of technology maturity to be able to project fines. And there are different shapes and flavors of risk, acceptability of project financing. Some firms explicitly say, "Oh, we want a project finance, the first of its kind." Then this firm, hence technology over to the next firm that says, "Oh yeah, we actually want to finance the first five or first 10 of a kind."
Marcus Lehmann:
And then we have some active conversations with the US loan guarantee office. There's also other offices in the making, Office of Climate Demonstration. So, I think the capital stack is really creating a nice kind of ladder there to allow these technologies to diffuse into the market space and then become similar, mature as wind and solar today. In terms of venture capital, we have the active conversation with the investor community. And now with Ukraine and climate change looking worse than expected with the latest reports and COVID, I think there are a lot of wakeup calls that we're seeing more and more capital flowing into the space, including capital that allows technical risk, of course, with the caveat that we have to prove the technology in the field. And that's really a great stage now that we have the system de-risk and validated, and now the technical risk is really more scaling. The fundamental risk of does the architecture work at all? Does your control work at all or your decision making? So, that's all now kind of proven our controller, our key trade secret, the digital twin will stay identical. It's really just building bigger systems and at bigger forces, higher forces. So, I think in terms of technical risk, that's already at a really great stage now to accelerate the growth.
Cody Simms:
Well, great. Well, Marcus, what else should I have asked you that I didn't ask?
Marcus Lehmann:
Yeah. We're always looking for supporters. We're hiring at the moment. We have a couple of open positions planning to grow further as well commercially in the near future. So, yeah, if you're interested in the space, get in touch. We're also looking for advisors, can start kind of a little more on a part-time or lower basis. If you have interest in this space, want to learn more, please reach out at marcus@calwave.energy, or just check out our homepage and look at the open positions there.
Cody Simms:
Well, hey, I super appreciate you taking the time. This is a new one. You're building a truly a totally novel technology here. And I know I've enjoyed learning a ton about it, and hopefully folks listening here have as well. So, thanks for your time. And certainly, we're rooting on you to help harness the power of the ocean for something even more productive than a fun day surfing the waves and help us actually power the future of the grid in a large capacity.
Marcus Lehmann:
Thanks so much for having us. And also, thanks so much for your work. I've been a big fan enjoying your work and it's really encouraging, and equally important to get the messages out and get everyone on board that this is important and urgent issue to work on.
Cody Simms:
Super. Thanks, Marcus.
Marcus Lehmann:
Bye for now.
Jason Jacobs:
Hey everyone, Jason here. Thanks again for joining me on My Climate Journey. If you'd like to learn more about the journey, you can visit us at myclimatejourney.co. No, that is. co, not. com. Someday we'll get to. com, but right now,. co. You can also find me on Twitter, @JJacobs22, where I would encourage you to share your feedback on the episode or suggestions for future guests you'd like to hear. And before I let you go, if you enjoyed the show, please share an episode with a friend or consider leaving a review on iTunes. The lawyers made me say that. Thank you.