MV Experts: Jake Lowder

Mario Dealba: A hundred years?

Jake Lowder: Yeah. We've been around for since 1914. So a hundred and eleven years. Ran into Thomas Edison. No way. But with this device, it brought it down from, like, 13 feet barrier down to six inches. Those medium voltage transformers there, sometimes two years out right now.

Mario Dealba: Who's driving all this demand,

Jake Lowder: do you think? Data centers.

Mario Dealba: Welcome to the Medium Voltage Experts Podcast. I am Mario Dealba, your host. I'm also the CEO and co founder of Electric App Inc, or electricapp.com. We consider ourselves at Electric App the medium voltage easy button. We think we're experts in medium voltage. And it's not just because of everything we know, but because of the network and the people that we know in the industry. I've decided to interview some of these experts. So join me in getting to know these bright minds and have fun. Okay. Subscribe. Jake, welcome.

Jake Lowder: Thanks, Mario. Glad to be here.

Mario Dealba: Yeah. This is

Jake Lowder: podcast I've ever done, so we'll see how it goes.

Mario Dealba: You're gonna have a lot of fun. So tell me about you, Steven Sales. Who's Jake Louder?

Jake Lowder: Alright. So, yeah. My name's Jake Louder. I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, kind of the Mill Creek area. Been there pretty much my whole life. Yeah. I, went to the University of Utah and studied accounting, and I got into the industry because my dad, he was the owner of Stephen Sells. And when I was in college, worked in the warehouse as a forklift driver. I called myself the CFO, the chief operator. Nice. But then, yeah. So I worked there in college and, in my degree got a a job where I was traveling around quite a bit. So I left the business for a while. And, but then when my dad was getting ready to retire, he he and Miles called me up and said, hey, come join the family business. And so then Miles and I bought my dad out and here we And

Mario Dealba: up to that point, you were doing accounting?

Jake Lowder: Yeah. Well, so I worked for a company called Savage Services. You've probably seen their trucks around and I I started in their accounting group, but then moved over to the business operations.

Mario Dealba: Okay.

Jake Lowder: And and then ended up in HR towards the end of it. So I was there about six and a half years at Savage. Cool. Really cool company. You know, when my dad and brother presented this opportunity

Mario Dealba: So Miles is your brother. Okay.

Jake Lowder: Yes.

Mario Dealba: So both your dad and Miles. And is Miles your older brother? Yep. And what's his background?

Jake Lowder: So he also went to the University of Utah. That one, he started working at Stephen Sells when both we in college at the same time, we're just a year and a half apart.

Mario Dealba: Okay.

Jake Lowder: He stayed there. And so Miles has been there for, oh, close to he's probably close to twenty years now that he's been working at Stephen Sells.

Mario Dealba: Wow.

Jake Lowder: Yep. And I'm I'm coming up on, let's see, seven years.

Mario Dealba: Nice. Nice. So tell me about Steven Sells. So it intrigued me when you and I first talked because you said you guys have been around for like a hundred years?

Jake Lowder: Yeah. We've been around for since 1914. So a hundred and eleven years.

Mario Dealba: Jeez.

Jake Lowder: We've been around. It started by our great grandfather's older brother. He went to World War one basic training camp where he he broke his leg.

Mario Dealba: Okay. And just like me. Just like you. Yeah.

Jake Lowder: But he, because of that broken leg, he can, you know, be an active military duty. So he got some money from that and went to a technology fair where he ran into Thomas Edison. No way. And then became the Thomas Edison rep in Utah.

Mario Dealba: Do you have any insight on how that interaction came about?

Jake Lowder: Like We don't. We we've looked through to find anything we could, like any signed documents and back then it was just kind of a handshake agreement. There wasn't really a lot of contractual.

Mario Dealba: Yeah. So Thomas Edison was looking for help selling?

Jake Lowder: The Mazda lamp.

Mario Dealba: So The lamp.

Jake Lowder: Yeah. And so, in our building, we actually have a box. We we found a box from one of his Mazda lamps.

Mario Dealba: No way. We just have that

Jake Lowder: up on the wall, a piece of that. So

Mario Dealba: Very cool.

Jake Lowder: Yeah. And so it started that way. And then, so that was my well, so his name was Stanley Stevens. That's why it's called Steven Sells. Yep. And then my great grandfather Thaddeus joined the company when, Stanley died in a automobile accident. And so Thaddeus took over and then my, grandpa Jack Louder married into the family then bought his father-in-law out of the business and then my dad and now Miles and I.

Mario Dealba: Very cool. Yeah. So you guys start with Thomas Edison. Well, do you have a sense of who were the second line, the third line? How it how it all came together?

Jake Lowder: I know that we, had, like, a lot of the original, like, Hubble and Phillips Lighting and

Mario Dealba: Okay.

Jake Lowder: A lot of those they've they've represented. Then it was about, you know, forty years ago, forty maybe even close to fifty years now that we got into the medium voltage world

Mario Dealba: Cool.

Jake Lowder: Where, we started doing the McGraw Edison stuff. So it was, you know, Cooper Power Systems was purchased by Eaton. But before that, it was McGraw Edison. Wow. So we've been

Mario Dealba: repping did not realize that.

Jake Lowder: Yeah. We've been repping them all the way through when they were McGraw Edison to Cooper Power Systems, and now we we've kinda been through that whole that whole thing both with

Mario Dealba: Very cool.

Jake Lowder: Eaton Cooper Power Systems, but also Federal Pacific. We've been repping them for about forty five years as well. So. Wow. Long term long time relationships and they've been really good and it's just been really, really awesome.

Mario Dealba: So give me and and I'm sure and we don't wanna piss anyone off of your line. So let's make sure we don't leave anyone out. But who are in general? Some of the lines you guys rep today.

Jake Lowder: So we've got Eaton Cooper power systems. We also have the Eaton power quality like low voltage. So Okay. You know, surge protection devices and, you know, power quality power capacitors. Then, we have Federal Pacific, both their medium voltage switchgear and, their low voltage transformers.

Mario Dealba: And this is e m EMC, like electronic Yes. Which is a lot of people don't realize Federal Pacific is owned by a larger group.

Jake Lowder: Yes. Yes.

Mario Dealba: Okay. I like how they spell electric. Yeah. Because with a k like we do.

Jake Lowder: Yeah. Just like you guys do. Yeah.

Mario Dealba: And they they've been a really good company. Have they?

Jake Lowder: Yeah. Yeah. Just super solid people working there, and they've got quality products.

Mario Dealba: Yeah. Their CEO connected with me on LinkedIn the other day.

Jake Lowder: Oh, good.

Mario Dealba: So that was kinda cool.

Jake Lowder: Yeah. Yeah. They're they're good people there. We really enjoy working with them. And so that's on kind of the medium voltage side. Then we represent Mitsubishi, UPS. K. So we just have their their critical power side of the business. And that's a newer one. That's only about two years old for us. So and then we also have EyeGuard. I don't know if you've heard of EyeGuard before. They do, like, neutral ground resistors, and they they help with, you know, safety things on the system, monitoring the system. Yep. Drannets metering, we do we represent them. So we we actually own a few of the meters as well that we loan out to people. And Miles is really technical on that side of stuff. And so he we will go loan out our, our meter and the you know, obviously, we have to have electrician that hooks it up because you're putting it on the main panel board and Yeah. Lots of power there. And he he'll be able to, you know, download the reports and tell them, you know, you got these harmonics or these surges going And then from that report, then we can say, okay. You're gonna need either power capacitors, surge protection device,

Mario Dealba: And you guys do both so repping as well as renting out this equipment. Yes. So it's kinda cool because you're meeting your customers where they need to be met. And do you rent that direct to the customer or through distribution?

Jake Lowder: Just depends on, you know, if they call us and say, hey, we need a meter. Sure. But oftentimes, is through a distributor.

Mario Dealba: Through the distribution.

Jake Lowder: Hey, my customer's having an electrical issue and they don't know what it is. We're like, hey. Yeah. Because they could go pay an electrical engineer to, you know, do a system study, that's gonna cost them $1,020,000 dollars where we rent our meter out for a fraction of that cost, you know, save them a lot of money on that end and then figure out the solution for So

Mario Dealba: it sounds like Miles is very technical on the metering side. Yes. Where do you find yourself? What are some of your strengths in the sales agency?

Jake Lowder: Yeah. So one of the reasons they asked me to come over was because of my accounting background. Mhmm. Because you know, being a small agency, we kind of have to wear multiple hats like I'm sure you're used to where you have to worry about accounting, you have to worry about, you know, employee retention and all that stuff. So some of that skills is why they brought me over. I feel like I'm really good on the transformer side of things and understanding transformers and, you know, helping people find solutions. Yeah. When they're like, hey, we've got an odd voltage need to get something else. We can.

Mario Dealba: So are you the guy, like, if I'm looking for an Eaton transformer, medium voltage transformer, you're the guy helping spec out?

Jake Lowder: Yeah. Yeah. And we we also have an internal guy. His name's Darren and he's super technical on the transformer side. So if it's gonna be like a really high spec transformer, he's he's the right guy to do. And, so Miles and I, I mean, we try to be pretty technical in all aspects of it. It's kind of that the surge in power factor stuff that gets really complicated.

Mario Dealba: Sure.

Jake Lowder: I usually tap into Miles and he'll help me on that. But other than that, we're we're more just geographically separated, you know, where I'm covering the Utah County area and Eastern Idaho and Western Wyoming.

Mario Dealba: Okay.

Jake Lowder: Okay. My sales territory. And then Miles had we we split Salt Lake up between the two of us, but then he's got Southern Utah and Western Idaho.

Mario Dealba: So Okay. So you guys go all the way down to Boise?

Jake Lowder: Yep.

Mario Dealba: Yep. How about Wyoming? Like, the Toronto mile mile?

Jake Lowder: So we're just the far like, if you're looking at Wyoming, the Far West, just those five counties

Mario Dealba: Okay.

Jake Lowder: On that left side. So where I got, like, Jackson, we've got, Rock Springs, Wyoming.

Mario Dealba: So you have Rock Springs?

Jake Lowder: Yeah.

Mario Dealba: Okay. Sweet.

Jake Lowder: Yep.

Mario Dealba: And do you have Eastern Nevada, like the Elko area?

Jake Lowder: Yeah. We've got Elko and, but that's kind of a funny area where some manufacturers hire the California rep, the Northern California rep, and some of them hire the Utah rep.

Mario Dealba: So Yeah.

Jake Lowder: We have a really close relationship with I don't know if you've heard of Artwell out of California there. No, don't. They're an incredible agency.

Mario Dealba: Are they? Yeah. Cool. And they have the Eaton line over there or?

Jake Lowder: Yeah. They've got well, I think they have the Federal Pacific line there. Got it. So we both are the Federal Pacific and Eaton rep. Cool. And I I've I've gotta go verify now. I'm kinda having a mind blank which one you I think they've got Federal Pacific and we've got Eaton in that area. Okay. So there's oftentimes jobs that we when we get in Elko that we have to work with.

Mario Dealba: And you work together. That makes sense. Is there a specific line or maybe not line, but like specific product that you just love talking about?

Jake Lowder: I think all of it. Lately, I feel like Eaton VFI and then also I don't know if you've seen Federal's new, PSV switch. It's No. It's kind of their their version that's gonna be competing against the SNC Vista switch.

Mario Dealba: Okay. So it's gonna

Jake Lowder: be programmable. You know, they can tie it into their system. You know, a lot of remote capabilities on that. It's like a smart switch, you

Mario Dealba: know. Very cool.

Jake Lowder: That new federal PSV is pretty exciting.

Mario Dealba: How are they how are they connecting it online? Do they have their own platform? Or

Jake Lowder: Well, they they work with the customer and whatever platform they have, they'll integrate. And so it's very highly customizable Very cool. Which is really cool. So when we get a job, you know, we work closely with the end user and have meetings with the factory and say, okay, what system are you using? How do you wanna connect it? And so they use SL or SEL relays a lot.

Mario Dealba: SEL. Yep. Sure. Schweitzer.

Jake Lowder: Yeah. One of the other cool products, and it's not so new. It's probably about five years old now, but, there's an arc quenching with Eaton, an arc quenching device. I don't

Mario Dealba: know if

Jake Lowder: you've seen that, but it's like, it's really cool product. And we, when it first came out, we we actually can't sell the arc quenching product ourselves. That's the Eaton house here in Salt Lake. But, we can do it where it ties into our transformers and our VFI switches. And when that's all connected, it's really cool because they're, you know, all those devices have an arc flash rating.

Mario Dealba: Mhmm.

Jake Lowder: Where there's something that's like, you know, the arc flash explosion is rating potential is there's no safety equipment that could even protect it. With this device, it brought it down from like 13 feet barrier down to six inches. Amazing. It's really cool. It's a really cool cool product. And that's when it's integrated with our transformer. We call it the our quenching VFI lineup.

Mario Dealba: Very cool.

Jake Lowder: Yeah. Very cool product.

Mario Dealba: Well, tell me what are some of the biggest misconceptions people like outside the industry have about medium voltage equipment and solutions?

Jake Lowder: Yeah. You've

Mario Dealba: got some funny stories.

Jake Lowder: Yeah. Mean, I mean, there's a there's a lot of I mean, even within the industry, sometimes somebody will call us up and just be like, hey, need a a transformer. Yeah. I'm like, okay. What what do you what do you want? Because we sell anywhere from like a federal pacific control type 50 VA transformer that's gone from, like, a 120 volts to 24 volts. Yeah. Or we could go all the way to, like, a high voltage transformer that's gone to, like, a 146,000 volts down to, like, you know, whatever twelve four seventy or whatever people are needing. You know? And so I think there's a misconception that they're just like all transformers are the same, but they're There's so many different combinations. And, specifically with our Eaton line, you know, people think like, oh, I need a transformer. I'll just go call Steven Sells or a distributor, and I can have it in a week or two. But, you know, those medium voltage transformers, they're, you know, sometimes two years out right now with the current market we're in and that lead time is coming down. But

Mario Dealba: So not all transformers are the same just because you need one.

Jake Lowder: Yeah. Some are in stock, some aren't in stock. Yeah. Some are two years out, and some are

Mario Dealba: The higher voltage ones, medium voltage takes time. Yeah. To to make them.

Jake Lowder: Yep. Those are.

Mario Dealba: Do you see those long lead times that we've been exposed to the last three, four years coming down at all? Yes. You you are?

Jake Lowder: Yes. They have been coming down and Eaton is actually expanding their facility as well. So there should be more production coming online And in the next

Mario Dealba: I guess I have friends, right? Like the guys that own Maddox are friends of mine. And then you have all these other transformer brokers that have been popping out everywhere, like everywhere this last twenty four months.

Jake Lowder: Yep.

Mario Dealba: And they're all like fourteen weeks, sixteen weeks. What are you experiencing with Eaton as far as like a three face pad?

Jake Lowder: Yeah. I mean, depending on the KVA size because you've got two different, plants out in Milwaukee area.

Mario Dealba: Eaton's made in The US?

Jake Lowder: Eaton's made in The US. Yes. Cool. And, so one one product line I mean, once you get above 2,000 kVA, you have to go to the other facility because the cranes just the sheer weight of those transformers, have to have bigger cranes. And so, but on the smaller transformer side, we're down to about, I think forty to fifty weeks on those. Then once you get above a 2,000, we're about one hundred and ten weeks right now.

Mario Dealba: Okay. And so So just under a year for the smaller. Yeah. About two years on the really large ones. Yeah.

Jake Lowder: Okay. So and currently no production, like expedite production slots.

Mario Dealba: You can't. And who's who's driving all this demand, do you think?

Jake Lowder: Data centers. A lot of data centers.

Mario Dealba: And is this on the utility side or the contractor side?

Jake Lowder: I I would say more on the commercial industrial side.

Mario Dealba: On the private side of Yeah. The meter.

Jake Lowder: Yeah. So utility, they, I mean, they do a lot of business as well. Sure. And and that was why at the beginning of when all this lead time went crazy Mhmm. Utilities went and pre purchased a lot of

Mario Dealba: production slots. They bought all the capacity.

Jake Lowder: Yeah. And so that was kind of the initial. But then, I mean, in the last five years, data centers, renewable energy, all those are coming out. And so those are really big ticket items, especially for the data centers because their footprint is huge. Not to transform itself, but the importance of the footprint and keeping it compact. Sure. Is really important. So Eaton has a transformer that we can put the VFI inside the transformer and save that footprint. Because a lot of other companies, you'll have to have a transformer and then a medium voltage switch Yep. Right next to it that provides that protection. Sorry about that.

Mario Dealba: And you can put it all compact in one?

Jake Lowder: You can put it all compact on one, which is huge. And so

Mario Dealba: So Eaton just acquired my friend's company.

Jake Lowder: Oh,

Mario Dealba: really? Like two weeks ago. Yeah. Resilient Power. Okay. Did you see that announcement?

Jake Lowder: I didn't see that announcement.

Mario Dealba: Yeah. So Josh Kiester, he and I went to the same Techstars accelerator in Alabama. That's where we kicked off our companies. And he had already been running his company for for a couple of years. But his company's cool. They do direct inversion and transformation of power. Okay. So at the same time as DC is transformed to AC, they also transform it. And it's see and it seems to it's like seems to reduce the amount of harmonics. Oh, cool. And also the compact, The it's a lot more compact of a solution rather than like in a skid

Jake Lowder: Yeah.

Mario Dealba: Where you're gonna have both the switch and the transfer. I and I don't know too much about it, but he didn't just acquire their company.

Jake Lowder: Oh, that's cool.

Mario Dealba: So I'm sure you'll be seeing some of that.

Jake Lowder: Is was that or mostly like solar applications or renewables?

Mario Dealba: A lot of electrical vehicle charging. Okay. You know, because you're gonna have that $12.04 70 going to a DC chargers and then you're gonna have to invert it. Yeah. Go to DC. So heavy there. And, I'm sure I'm sure there's demand for that in solar because you see those big skids in solar.

Jake Lowder: Yeah. They're needing inverters, transformers, and and transformers, especially. I think that's here's here's another misconception that you're talking about, especially in the solar industry, because I'm sure you're aware of these, these entrepreneurs that are like, I'm going to start a solar field, get up and running, sell it off or whatever, you know, and they just want things cheap and dirty. They just wanna get as quick as they can, whatever it is. But solar fields actually are very hard on transformers

Mario Dealba: Can.

Jake Lowder: Because of the the demand. I mean, the sun's out and powering up all those solar panels and generating all that energy, the transformers are ramping up a lot. And so there's a lot of with the oil field transformers, a lot of expansion and contraction with the transformers. So they actually have to physically, you know, make the wall barriers and the radiators, they have to beef everything up. Interesting. Yeah, I came across this part down in Delta, there's a solar field.

Mario Dealba: And

Jake Lowder: this person started up. I don't know who it was, but they just got whatever was available. Sure. They didn't get solar rated transformers. Mhmm. And now the people that are managing it have to deal with oil leaks all the time because it's just

Mario Dealba: Those walls are just expanding like crazy. And contracting at night. It's probably cold at night too. Yeah.

Jake Lowder: And so just when when you have a transformer that can is just running standard Mhmm. Levels all the time, you don't need it's not gonna be hard on the the radiators or any of that, but solar stuff, you need to beef up those transformers. Interesting. Not a lot of people know about that. So I think that's a misconception.

Mario Dealba: Ah, very cool. That's a cool tidbit. This is kinda cool. From your perspective, so what are the biggest shifts you've seen in the medium voltage space over the last decade?

Jake Lowder: Yeah, back to kind of what you were talking about in the last twenty four months, a lot of competition has come in because before the long lead times and everything, know, is basically eating ABB and maybe, you know, one or two other competitors that we'd have. And now we're competing against Korean and Chinese manufacturers now because, you know, they can build for especially these data centers that have a they need to be up and running by a certain date.

Mario Dealba: Yep.

Jake Lowder: You know, they're buying massive, you know, four MVA transformers for their for their facilities, but they're buying, you know, thirty, forty of them. And China can provide them in, you know, ten to twenty weeks. And we're two to three years out.

Mario Dealba: It creates a vacuum. Think these vacuums are interesting. I think sadly manufacturers are too big, too large to respond quickly to some of these vacuums. They should see this a year in advance and react. And it takes them a year to make a decision. Yeah. But it it I'm very confident that even though that happens long term things kinda. Yeah. Even how.

Jake Lowder: Yeah. And and that's what we actually have seen that people who have purchased, you know, transformers they've never heard of from a different country. Mhmm. And failing on them when they're here and now they're in even worse of a situation.

Mario Dealba: Yeah. So It reminds me of like I I like dirt biking. Yeah. And I I'd prefer to buy a 20 year old Yamaha or Honda for my kids or myself

Jake Lowder: Yeah.

Mario Dealba: Than to buy one of those $500,000 bikes that you find online. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You just don't

Jake Lowder: know what you're gonna get.

Mario Dealba: Yeah. They run great for about a month and then spare parts are gonna be an issue.

Jake Lowder: Yes.

Mario Dealba: Or a Honda, Yamaha, you're gonna be able to go take it to any mechanic and those engines are gonna run forever. So Oh, yeah. I'm curious to know if that's similar with these Chinese made transformers or Yeah. Or not as bad.

Jake Lowder: Yeah. Well, I've, you know, I There's still a lot of hesitation from

Mario Dealba: So the market it has hesitation. Still is a

Jake Lowder: little hesitant to buy them but the people who have gone it, we have heard of issues.

Mario Dealba: They do have some

Jake Lowder: issues. Yeah. And, But on the flip side as well, of the high demand of transformers and manufacturers having a hard time keeping people, there has been some quality issues across all manufacturers.

Mario Dealba: But

Jake Lowder: I would say overall, there are more catastrophic failures on the unknown transformers versus the Eaton and ABB Hitachi ones.

Mario Dealba: Makes sense. Okay. This is an interesting one. And and I'm gonna ask a second question, a follow-up question on this one. So sales reps like yourself, you guys sit at an intersection of like manufacturers and end users.

Jake Lowder: Yes.

Mario Dealba: What unique role, and then you also have distribution in the middle of that, right? So there's this weird four way conversations happening all the time.

Jake Lowder: Yeah.

Mario Dealba: What unique role do you think rep agencies like yours play in shaping the future of the medium voltage industry? And how do rep agencies have to adapt to the modern era of the Internet and communication being so fast, etcetera?

Jake Lowder: Yeah. Yeah. I think, a sales rep agency's role mainly is, you know, because these manufacturers are selling all over the world. Right? Yep. And they don't have enough manpower to handle and reach out to everybody. Yep. I think our unique role is a lot of education. We love doing training and teaching people about the product and, you know, the different aspects of either a transformer or medium voltage switch or power quality. Like, we we can provide a lot of that technical data where I think not, you know, with with the distributors because we're kind of partners with distributors. We're both kind of middlemen Yeah. In the in the scenario where distributors have to be kind of a jack of all trades, you know. They have to to know a little bit about every little thing where we're gonna be more the technical experts. And, you know, we can go with the distributor to meetings. We can go directly to the end user to help them with issues and stuff. So I think that's where we play a key role for these manufacturers where we are their support, we're their sales force, and we're out there training people and educating people on why one product is better than the other for a certain application. You know? And so that's

Mario Dealba: It's interesting. I I love how you focus heavy on the expertise side of things, the training side of things. So I was a factory rep for three ms.

Jake Lowder: And

Mario Dealba: we had a good agency at the time, BDY. And I saw it right firsthand, I saw who were my expert partners and who were my just purely PR partners. Like, hey, this guy is really good at taking people out to lunch. Like that's his That's what he brings to the table. But this guy, he's an extension of my expertise. Yeah. And so great now, instead of talking to, I can talk to now, instead of 20 people a day, can talk to 40. Yeah. Because he's not gonna come to me every time he needs something, he can go handle. Yeah. All the technical question. He can go do trainings on my behalf. So I'm doubling my outreach, my exposure in the market. When I found that more useful, oftentimes I see rep agencies lean heavy on their credit cards and let's buy someone a drink, which is not bad, right? We're gonna

Jake Lowder: Yeah, there's a place for it.

Mario Dealba: For sure, relationship building is very important, but the value is in the expertise.

Jake Lowder: Yeah. Yeah. And that's, you know, that's where, you know, Miles and Darren have a lot of it. I'm still learning a lot because I mean, I've only been in the industry about seven, seven years.

Mario Dealba: And you're still saying you're learning a lot. I hope everybody in my team who hears this has only been two years. Yeah. This guy's been seven.

Jake Lowder: Oh, yeah. There's so much to know. It's one of those things. The more you learn, the more you realize there is to learn, you know? Mhmm. And, you know, just, I did work a bit with my dad before he retired and he was an electrical engineer. He studied electrical engineering, got all that.

Mario Dealba: Oh, that's the kind of sales rep I would want.

Jake Lowder: Yeah. His technical expertise. I mean, there were even times where the factor was reaching out to him saying,

Mario Dealba: hey, we

Jake Lowder: have this situation even outside of our territory. Like, what do you what do you see that we might not be seeing in? So he would he would often be a consultant for the manufacturers as well. Or, like, when this arc quenching thing I was talking about earlier came out Mhmm. He was the one that was like, well, even though this isn't our product, we need to start getting out to all of our engineers and showing them this and how it can interact with our VFI switch Mhmm. Or our VFI transformer when you tie in the relays and this arc quenching device, how how much it can, you know, all work together. And he was kind of the brainchild behind a lot of that.

Mario Dealba: Yeah, that's super cool.

Jake Lowder: Yeah.

Mario Dealba: I can see, a lot of people ask me, what do you think about sales agencies? I think those that have a heavy technical expertise that the local engineering firms, the local utilities, the local designers lean on and call on a weekly basis for technical questions and you genuinely help them.

Jake Lowder: Yeah.

Mario Dealba: You have a place. Yeah. Unless you learn to provide that type of value, you're gonna be bouncing around lines. Yes. Constantly. And they're gonna be weak lines. They're gonna be consumer type lines that are not heavy technical. Yeah. And they're not gonna bring a lot of value. So I I think you have a bright future if you if you learn to be like Steven Sales in that regard.

Jake Lowder: Oh, yeah. For sure. We've definitely seen a lot of benefit from I mean, even though my dad's retired, there's still people that know when they have technical questions because of how much he provided, they still come to us. We can still give them the answers because we've learned from him. And if we don't have the answers, they still know we can go find it for him.

Mario Dealba: Very cool. That is a great question. So on the technology side of things, so medium voltage is like, it's advancing quickly. Yeah. Sometimes a little too slow, but it is advancing quickly. There's some new technologies. Maybe on the Eaton side, you talked about the the arc quenching. Is there any other technologies, maybe focus more on the rubber side of things? Is there any other technology in the medium voltage that you're excited about that you see coming?

Jake Lowder: For like the rubber goods, I think there's a lot, and maybe this isn't so much as new stuff, probably know a lot of this, but I think a lot of people, they just think it's just a termination, that's all I need on the transformer. But when you get to systems like at universities where they're all tying it into like a SCADA system, you've got to get, fall indicators, you have to have voltage sensors, And they can all like, on the back of our elbows, you've got, like, the the little, I'm drawing a blank on the

Mario Dealba: Like a fault indicator?

Jake Lowder: Yeah. But, like on that 600 amp elbow right behind

Mario Dealba: Yeah.

Jake Lowder: There's that why can't you

Mario Dealba: Like the VIP? Like a smart VIP? Yeah.

Jake Lowder: But yeah, there there's a lot of stuff.

Mario Dealba: So is he focusing heavy on the IoTs, the internet connected devices that talk to SCADA systems?

Jake Lowder: Yeah. They are. They they do have a big focus on that. And so, you know, they have relationships with SEL. They've got their own. And this is a lot on the switchgear side because that's where, you know, the lot of the protection of the systems come in on those VFI switches.

Mario Dealba: It's interesting because people were wonder, well, if the switch or the transformer is connected, why would the accessory have to be connected online? What what's the purpose? What would you say?

Jake Lowder: Well, I mean, if the switch is all connected, then you're you're just getting a signal if there's voltage or not. You're not getting any other information where some of these other products you can put on there, tie into your SCADA system, and it's gonna tell you if it's phase a, b, or c that might have And gone so then you can quickly determine, you know, on their system be like, we have an outage on this part of the campus. Mhmm. We can see that phase a went out on this, and they can really narrow down and get right to where the issue is. Yeah. Downtime is is huge on some of the some manufacturing plants.

Mario Dealba: I think in I mean, you have SEL, Schweitzer. You have Lindsay. Mhmm. You have Crius, who was acquired by TE. You have a few other manufacturers, three m's trying to do their own smart VIP. You have all these different smart

Jake Lowder: Yeah. And Eaton even makes some of

Mario Dealba: their own Eaton makes some?

Jake Lowder: Yeah. But but they're flexible where they'll if the customer needs SEL, they'll

Mario Dealba: I think the future is exciting, like, on the cable side of the health of the cable. Yes. That's where I think transformer and the switch can't really tell you how the cables are. But, like, if now you can start measuring the temperature of the cable. You can start seeing down to the voltage, see if all phases are off or if you have, you know, even partial discharge. Yeah. Like, live partial discharge is possible with some of these sensors. I think it's pretty powerful. Yeah. So that excites me too.

Jake Lowder: Yeah. That stuff is really cool.

Mario Dealba: And that we're we're working on some stuff at electric to to help manage all of that data. Yeah. As an unbiased platform. So we're we're pretty we get excited about exactly that. What advice, and this is the last question. What advice would you give young professionals who want to build a career in medium voltage, whether on the technical side or the sales side?

Jake Lowder: Yeah. I mean, I think they go hand in hand. That would be my my advice is, like we were talking earlier, really dig into the technical side of things. Get to know every little piece that you can so that you can talk the same language because, you know, medium voltage, it's got its own language, own terminology, and you have to know what you're talking about in order to really communicate to the people that will be using your equipment. And so I would say dive in heavily to the technical side, But then also work on your your, personal, relationship skills because, you know, you gotta have a relationship with people. They have to trust you. And, you know, if you have the technical side and you know how to talk to somebody, you marry those two up and you could go a long ways in this industry.

Mario Dealba: I love it. That's so good. Well, you so much, dude.

Jake Lowder: Yeah. Thank you.

Mario Dealba: Thanks for being here.

Jake Lowder: Yeah.