MV Experts: Ben Lanz

This is a machine-generate transcription; it may contain errors.

Ben: How come nobody told me? But it's like this many. We we make a mistake.

Mario: I'm sure you're pretty good. I

Ben: have I'm precise, but I'm slow. That's what's gonna bite you. Like, really? Quite a few scenarios where people were standing in front of me, you know, veins popping out and cussing at me. Let's do the test again. Let's break it down together. Let's identify. If it's a test problem, we'll figure that out. If it's a manufacturing problem, we'll figure that. If it's an installation, we'll figure that. What I promise you is that the process will tell us what we need to do. Now another guy came along and said, you know, you got me this time, but next time. I was just like, look, I I I'm I'm really

Mario: Oh my god.

Ben: I'm just a messenger, and I'm trying to help.

Mario: Welcome to the medium voltage experts podcast. I am Mario Dealba, your host. I'm also the CEO and cofounder of Elektrik App Inc or Elektrikapp.com. We consider ourselves at Elektrik 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 fun. Okay. Subscribe. Well, I'm gonna start by just asking Ben Lanz. Who is Ben Lanz? What's your background? Where are you from? Do you have a family? What's your study? Tell us about yeah. Tell us about us.

Ben: Okay. Ben Lanz story. So if I go back far enough, I come from a farming community in Connecticut. So both sides of my family were farmers. I grew up on a my cousins had a dairy farm. I worked for them. So my my experience is very hands on. My dad was an electrician. Didn't really get involved in the medium voltage. They had splicers come in and do the splicing, but he always told me about it, paper and lead cable systems for industrial applications, Pratt and Whitney, United Technologies. So but I grew up doing electrical work. My I don't remember the first time I twisted a wire nut. My dad brought me along, so I learned the trade. And that's how I put myself through school. I ended up moving along into an electrical apprenticeship, working for a contractor, and put myself through school, electrical engineering. And I went to the University of Connecticut where I met doctor Matt Michiquin, who was the director of insulation research. And he had some fantastic ideas, and he was one of those teachers who, you know, he he was a PhD, but you knew he knew his material. He wasn't hiding behind the title. He could explain things in very simple terms and really captivated captivated my attention. And at one point, asked if anybody would be interested in supporting his work, building some electronics and so forth, and help really start a business he was starting to develop some diagnostics. He had a couple patents on diagnostics of what I didn't know was media volt medium high voltage cable. And that was in 1997.

Mario: Oh, okay. So not that that long ago. I mean, we're only talking, like, what, twenty five years ago?

Ben: Yeah. That's right. That's right. So, you know, while I've been in the industry for almost thirty, part of that, I would call include my electrician and estimation and project management days. Now when I I took a semester off, I took the summer and fall break in '97 and helped him start a business. I didn't know that it was gonna become something, but he was developing the technology to really scan underground cable to provide a a foot by foot, meter by meter profile. And he was doing something that first of all, he was 60 almost 65 at the time. You know, most people are going golfing and fishing. He was starting a business that everybody said, you no one has done a business this way. No one has created a business doing just testing on medium and high voltage cable. And with a technology that literally they hired a consultant to come in in a few years before, and he was an expert in so called this partial discharge. Right? This approach that all the cable and accessory manufacturers use to as a quality control tool for all their products. Expert in this field. And he came in and said, what you're trying to do is impossible. So basically told the university, stop funding him.

Mario: So the, say a utility back in '87, they wanted to test an underground system. What was their method at the time? What were they doing? Yeah. Were So they testing? I'm assuming they weren't.

Ben: Right. Matt Michikian, doctor Matt Michikian was a utility engineer. So that's where he came from. He went back to school for his master's and PhD and then came to to the University of Connecticut. So he had a very hands on experience from a utility standpoint. And when he was in the nineteen sixties, when he was involved, it was just the DC high pot. That's all they had. And that test made sense because for paper insulated cables, the failure mechanism is predominantly conduction and a DC test is very sensitive to conduction. So it the test was performed in the factory, and they performed the test in the field. It's just that in the nineteen seventies, all the manufacturers or even sixties when they switched over to plastic and rubber, solid dielectric insulation, all the manufacturers switched over to a partial discharge base quality control process on the design phase of products at the factory.

Mario: Not in the field.

Ben: But in the field, we kept doing DC Hypec because that's all we had.

Mario: You know, back in like 2016 when I was working for three m, I remember being in the field and the guys doing DC HyPod. So DC HyPod has been around for a really long time then.

Ben: Oh, sure. It's simple. It's small. It's light. And for paper insulated cables, it made sense and it still makes sense. It's just that you can get down to a sandwich bag thickness of material and still withstand a pretty significant DC high pot. So these materials don't conduct even at very thin layers. So trying to use a test that detects conduction when there is no appreciable conduction is just about useless. Know, you can detect shorts and that's useful.

Mario: So if

Ben: the cables failed, it's still a useful check test. And I say don't even go over the operating voltage for that. But the test that they were using back in the sixties and seventies was, again, useful for paper, not so useful for plastic and rubber, unless the cable systems already failed and you're looking for conduction shorts. So Matt Mashikian had this idea. He was being funded by a number of utilities to solve the problem of power cable reliability and to be able to assess what the integrity of the assets were and compare the results to the manufacturer's quality control test. And the the utilities were saying, we need help in this area. So he was being funded to the tune of about a million dollars a year to develop a technology at the University of Connecticut that could do this. Well, in the mid nineties, it was pretty primitive. It was literally in a five gallon pail, and that was the insulator was a five gallon pail. We put 50,000 volts on top of a and we had a a a shield on the top. It was literally a cooking pot. You know? Just it was go to the hardware store, search the cabinets in the in the kitchen, and and figure out something that would work because such a thing didn't exist before.

Mario: So you were in college where you you just had your undergrad at the time?

Ben: Right. Right. And I thought, I'll go back for my masters and my PhD. Well, I got so involved in helping develop the company, develop the technology, and I was being trained by masters.

Mario: The guy.

Ben: Right? I mean, not just him, but people that wrote the books on the subject. So I just dove in and I never went back. So got my electrical engineering degree and I took some graduate courses, but I never went back. And I have been participating in the industry, not only learning, just soaking up, but also trying to disseminate what I've learned along the way. And ultimately, over the last, say, twenty years, twenty five years, really, I have been attending the Insulated Conductors Committee, participating in organizations like NEDA, like like the Sea Grey, and really just being a connector. Connecting people, trying to solve problems. And it really has only been recently that I've started getting into grid investment. So I say I have a subject area that's an inch wide and a mile deep. Yeah. And then I have another subject area that's an inch deep and a mile wide, which is really grid investment. And that's where organizations like power delivery intelligence initiative, pditwo, .org. I was on the immediate past chair of that organization, and helping utilities make better better decisions on grid investment, whether that be, overhead or underground, making sure that they have a life cycle analysis. So they're making a a life cycle decision as opposed to just simply upfront.

Mario: I did not know that about you that you're involved in that. That's super cool.

Ben: Yeah. Well, that's involved, I would say, not only in the planners and engineers, but also the regulators. So I have organizations like the public the California Public Utility Commission asking me to come and present on national trends and undergrounding and also the c suite of and VP level of utility. So I I have really again, this very narrow niche area where we can talk about electrons and and and partial discharge, And I've got a subject area where it's more general utility investment.

Mario: So if forgive my ignorance. Right? So DC high pod pass no pass type of a test Mhmm. Versus PD and what you guys were building at M Corp reliability like this cable looks to it's probably gonna work for like five years and then it's gonna fail right here or Right. Is that kinda like the The ZC?

Ben: As far as the different types of tests that are available?

Mario: Yeah. And then yeah. Is that sort of like a good summary what you guys were trying to do field wise? And then

Ben: Oh, right. We were trying to the manufacturers have been doing you know, every every joint in termination when it's being designed is put through, say, extreme temperature, and then they do a PD test. And then they put it through extreme voltage, then they do a PD test. They do, in some cases, actually mechanical bending, I think. One of the companies was actually doing some super cooling on the components to see thermomechanically how they survive, and then you do a PD test. Why? Partial discharge is that micro erosion process that you know very well that is, again, part of the failure mechanism. It is a symptom that the system is eating itself apart, And the manufacturers have been using it for design and quality control for the last, well, fifty something years. It's only been, I would say, the last decade that we've really started using it in the field, and we've played a large part in that, bringing that to the marketplace in a way that's directly comparable with that manufacturer's quality control as opposed, you know, from the design. And as you know, from a quality control standpoint, as it leaves the factory, every real joint and termination that's prebuilt is tested this way. So we set out to be able to repeat that process in the field. And I'm I'm very happy to say that we figured out how to do it. And now with the company that was recently acquired by Osmos, which I work for Osmos now, M Corp has over on the order of 300,000 cable systems that we've tested in 17 countries and 49 states and done thousands on the order of 10,000 dissections of defects on their way to failure. So not only do we have the technology to scan to find the location of the thing of the problem, we've been able to cut them out and take pictures of them and be able to explain them to people and show them. When the manufacturer says, hey. Make a straight cutback or clean and make sure it's clean or make sure this component's set in the right position. We can actually show pictures of the wrong position. We can show pictures of contamination. We can show pictures of a crooked cutback that gives people a visual. Because a lot of you know, if you go back to my early days when I was an electrician, I learned by seeing, by doing. And if somebody gives me eight pages of instruction like or or maybe more, I mean a dozen pages like a three m splice or something Mhmm. I wouldn't be the first one to read it all. I mean, that wasn't my my go to. And I found that as we do a lot of training in the industry, that's very common. People learn by seeing. And because we have the technology to find the issues, we are able to show people. And I can't tell you how many splicers have come to me and said, you know, if I would have known that that was an issue, that that's a defect, I could have fixed it right away. I I have the skill set. I know I just didn't know it was a problem. And that's one of my passions as an outgrowth of this work that we've done with with the assessment technology, with the testing technology, be able to show people what a defect looks like and help them be able to self identify the the defects and fix them as they install. And it's been very exciting to see a ramp in the industry in the quality. You know, you could pick an industry like the wind or the solar industry and we have just seen an incredible improvement just because they have feedback to know, oh, that doesn't work? Okay. I didn't know that. Now next time I see that problem, I'll fix it.

Mario: Yeah. I I'm curious to hear your take on because when it comes to partial discharge, so it sounds like you guys were really the pioneers to make that available in the field to the masses.

Ben: To commercialize it in a large scale way.

Mario: Yeah. I don't

Ben: know of anyone else that's hit. How

Mario: a couple

Ben: of people that maybe hit a couple thousand cable systems assessed, but you're not in the hundreds of thousands.

Mario: How is a VLF test different?

Ben: Yeah. Well, there's actually a couple different types of tests and under the Osmos utility services, we actually perform all we've performed all the tests with

Mario: our customers.

Ben: You can pretty much name the test, and we've done it probably in our lab and in the field and sometimes both. So that's one of the values that we're providing the industry. Not only can we provide all these different tests, we can show people data to say this test is gonna give you this whereas this test is gonna give you this. Right? So and that's one of the big pieces that's missing. So when you say, you know, tell me about the difference between different types of tests like VLF.

Mario: I don't know anything about testing, like legit VLF, high pod. I I guess I do understand a little bit. Why does the high pod hurt the cable so much?

Ben: Well, you know, when it comes down to it, the the basic function is that you're just putting stress. Just feeling it. Right? Like, see if pops. The only way a HiPod can tell you that there's something wrong, the traditional HiPod, is that something has to blow up. Okay? Which means you bring it to failure. So think about this. I like to use the heart patient analogy. It's really simple, but, you know, think about putting a heart patient on a treadmill and don't hook up the EKG and the medical staff has to leave the room for what's the hypo duration. Fifteen minutes, half an hour, an hour. Okay? So they come back after half an hour, and if the patient's dead, they say that patient was bad. They had a problem. But if the patient survives and they're bent over, even if they're bent over, wheezing, having a heart attack, because they didn't die, they get to leave the office. That's a high pot. That's crazy. It's crazy because there's no feedback. You have no idea what you're doing to that system unless it blows up.

Mario: So what about a VLF? How does a VLF work? What's the difference?

Ben: So VLF is was invented by some some Germans in a in a naval a naval yard over in Germany. K. Some marines use VLF, very low frequency, to communicate. I don't know if you know that, but that's how they communicate. Yeah. They use very low frequency to communicate. So they they knew how to, like, make a slow moving waveform, and they got the idea that, okay. If we're gonna get rid of somebody's here. My wife's taking care of a little kid here. Oh, sorry. Let me just put these in. Otherwise, I won't be able to hear anything. Anyway and what they wanted is okay. You're gonna take our DC set away. One, because it can't find most defects in solid dielectric in insulation, and it can't and I can't detect it because there's very little of the defects have carbon associated or conduction associated with them. So you're gonna take that away. Give me another box. Something that's light, something that's small that I can energize cables with. And because modern cable systems fail by a process of erosion, partial discharge, I need a voltage source that can actually initialize partial discharge. See, DC doesn't doesn't create partial discharge. True DC. If if it's steady state, there's no changing the waveform. The the voids charge up and nothing happens. You've actually gotta change the charge and across a void in order to to get an arc through that void, through the air. Right? So the idea of of changing the polarity with VLF does two things. One is DC is like a bulldozer. It just pushes charge in one direction. And it it pushes charge into the insulation. And as it does, it all those little charges, they end up stacking up right at interfaces. So in between layers of heat shrink terminations or or cold shrinks or where there's say a water tree or whatever wherever there's a change in dielectric, you get a stack of charges. And as those charges stack up, they create a higher stress right where, in many cases, those changes of dielectric are where a defect is. So you're increasing the electric stress with a stack of little charges like little batteries right where you don't want it. Okay? So the reason the DC was a problem, especially for aged cable, is because it pushed like a bulldozer. All these charges of the insulation and when you went to turn the AC back on, now you have all these trapped charges, so called space charge, and you're magnifying electric stress right where you don't want it. It's like all of a sudden, you've created a whole bunch more cutbacks in the middle of your insulation that are not terminated. Now there's a lot more stress right here as compared to the insulation around it. And so when you turn the AC back on, you start alternating polarity, you're able to create partial discharge at a lower inception voltage because there's more stress there. It's like you put a whole bunch of needles in the cable all of a sudden. Now the charge does dissipate over time Sure. But it takes too long, and many people just energize it. And they during the energization process, even just that switching, it would create this huge I had to turn the light on with you. I saw that. That was cool. Yeah. It's dark here. They they would create this huge surge and create all new defects. And there's actually a German scientist that has this really great image where he charges up a needle and charges up the the system with space charge, and then he grounds the needle. And this huge electrical tree just comes shooting out of the needle. It doesn't fail the insulation, but just like, boom. It just it appears right there. And that's what was happening to these aged cables. They would say, past DC, and they ground it. And just the fact of grounding it, like, yanks all this charge out and rips the insulation. And so they create all these defects and they had no idea. So they create that situation and they turn the AC back on and now all a sudden, it's discharging at a lower inception voltage. It just made a mess of the cable. So they said, alright. DC, it what we're gonna do is instead of just pushing charge in one direction, we're gonna reverse the polarity and pull it back and that's what AC is. So VLF is point one hertz. That's half the cycle is five seconds pushing charge in one direction, then you take the charge and you pull it back the other direction. So the idea is you're leaving less net charge in the cable. You still leave some because it's so slow. It's just, you know, five second ramp. We're talking about electrons and particles that can move. That's a forever time. Yeah. Five seconds is forever for those particles to move. But you're leaving less behind and that's a good thing. So VLF, the idea was and and and this is where some of the misnomer came from. They would say, I remember advertisements. AC high pot without degradation. And it's like, okay. That's warped because you're creating partial discharge. Partial discharge, if you leave it on long enough, is gonna drill through the insulation. So, yes, you are deteriorating the cable if there's partial discharge. But where the degradation whole conversation came from is that I'm not pushing as much space charge in the cable, so I'm not creating the scenario where if even if I just ground the cable, it's going to create defects. Right? So there's it's less space charge. So therefore, I'm creating the cable less from a space charge standpoint. But if I have a defect, in many cases VLF will grow up faster because it still does push space charge and it pushes it to the tip of the needle. In fact, if you look at electrical tree Mhmm. In from VLF, they're coming from VLF voltage source versus an electrical tree coming from a 50 or 60 hertz voltage source. Fifty, sixty hertz voltage source will create a bush like electrical tree. It's very random pattern, whereas an electrical tree coming from a VLF, it's very narrow and needle like because you keep pushing charge to the tip and advancing just the tip. So it makes a preferential location faster. Back in the eighties, that was considered a really big benefit because the whole idea was I wanna fail the cable quickly in a short period of time if there's a defect there. Now, there was all these theories like it it puts less space charge, it doesn't deteriorate the cable so fast. If there is a defect, it'll grow it faster and like somebody would say, it's a Japanese study. It, you know, ninety seven percent of the defects will fail within a half within an hour. Well, the Japanese study had needles stuck in the cable and they said ninety seven percent of the needles failed within an hour. Well, how many defects in cable insulation represent a needle? Like, just a very sharp needle. Almost none.

Mario: Yeah.

Ben: So so the the growth rate of a defect from a needle is completely different than if I just cut halfway through the insulation. I mean, can literally stick one of our clients did this, you know, we do VLF testing and they said, well, what's the difference? They always just shove a nail on the cable and you'll see. And they did. They did shove the nail on the cable and it didn't even fail on the WISTAN. The nail, I guess, wasn't sharp enough. So what does VLF do? Well, VLF is just a voltage source. You can do all kinds of things with VLF. Just like it's saying, you know, what's a what's a 50 or 60 hertz test? Oh, it's a voltage source. You can do PD. You can do power factor, 10 delta. You can do withstand. But VLF, DC, and even damped AC, those are all just voltage sources. They're dumb. They they put stress on a cable. The question is is does it produce a stress that I can use to to learn something about the cable? And if someone says, we'll do a VLF test, but they're most likely talking about is a withstand. And what I can tell you is that when we're performing VLF withstand test, we will fail like one in 2,000 cable systems. When I'm measuring partial discharge, I will find substandard performance, which means joints and terminations with PD below 1.5 times operating voltage and separable connectors with PD at or below 1.3 or defect or PD in the cable anywhere up to the highest test voltage because it's supposed to be PD free to 200 volts per mil. When I energize the cable, 40% of new installs will have at least one substandard component. That's four out of 10. Right? Yet it's one out of 2,000 that I find a problem with VLF.

Mario: So so does PD what does PD use to doesn't use a voltage source?

Ben: Oh, yeah. It uses a voltage source. In fact, you can use a VLF voltage source to energize a cable and measure its response. It's it's like what kind of treadmill do you wanna use, you know? It's how do you wanna stress the system? You know, VLF does one cycle every ten seconds. 50 hertz does one cycle, a push and a pull, every, you know, 16 every 50 times a second or 60 times a second. Right? 60 hertz.

Mario: Mhmm.

Ben: So it's just it's still going positive, negative, positive. It's just doing it much faster. Now the point I wanna make is that I know that 40% of new installs will have PD before you get to 1.5 times operating voltage. Okay? BLF tests are performed at two times operating voltage thereabout, which means that most of the time when 40% of the cables will have PD. In fact, some of them will have multiple PD sites. Each one of those sites is capable of deteriorating the insulation once you turn it on. Right? Once you get to the certain threshold, partial discharge initializes, it starts eroding insulation. So a VLF test, you bring the voltage up and what you want to happen is one of those PD sites, if it's bad enough, to grow to failure. It's gonna go boom and then you know that there was a problem. Okay. That's great if one of them fails, but what if there's two more? And what if none of them fail? That means you're growing those defects to some extent. We don't know how much because there's no nothing measuring how much the growth is happening. Right? It's the heart patient that doesn't have the EKG and the medical staff are not standing by. There's no feedback. All I know is that I'm stressing the patient. And one out of every two thousand will have a problem, which means that there's a boatload of cable systems out there that have something pretty substantial, something that wouldn't even meet the minimum expectations coming from the factory left in the ground. And a VLF test is passing it 99.9% of the time. When I look at the failure rate of systems tested by VLF versus the failure rate of systems that have no no test whatsoever, you actually can't even tell the performance difference on new cables. If you look at aged cables, the cables tested with VLF are often worse than if they had not been tested because we're stressing defects, we're growing them, but because we don't know we're growing

Mario: them How do you feel?

Ben: Know that they were there and they didn't fail, we're making it worse.

Mario: Most of the clients that we deal with, they don't love Incorp so much because I understand. They come and tell them that they did it wrong.

Ben: Yeah. Where the owners might like you alone. You don't make mistakes too. You know? There there is a human part of the process. Sure. And if somebody says, oh, I think I see the problem here. It could be that, you know, just that individual is looking at it incorrectly. Now fortunately, the process goes through a quality control. And actually, these days, because we have on the order of 300,000 cable systems that we test, we actually have an AI engine learning this. So Cool. We've been at that for seven years. So it goes through a a an actual algorithmic analysis, and then a human that checks it again before the final report goes out. So there is a quality control. And, you know, one in several thousand cable tests, we we make a mistake. You know? So it's not that But it's like this many. Yeah. But it's very rare.

Mario: Yeah. Right?

Ben: It's it's not the it's not what what what we find most often when someone doesn't like PD testing

Mario: Mhmm.

Ben: It's often that they've had a bad experience where perhaps we've performed the assessment, left the site, and they open it up and they say, I don't see a problem. And in reality, in many cases, they don't recognize what a defect looks like because what do they know? Well, what would I know if I didn't have the experience? What I would say is that if there's no hole in the cable, then there's problem. That's the simplest thing to say. But if you see a little tab on a cutback, you say, well, I I've been installing these things for twenty five years. I've been leaving tabs everywhere. Right? But not realizing that, you know, we we used to have systems last maybe twenty years before they have their first failure. Maybe only five to ten years. But when they fail, we now know that they're 10 times more likely to fail again because an aged cable cannot handle the electric stresses that come through the fault, that come from the fault location process, and often the emergency repair is not as good. So we've got an opportunity to fix something that probably would have only lasted, in some cases, only five, ten. In some cases, it's only weeks. I have plenty of examples where things have only lasted weeks, but the individual didn't recognize it as a defect. And in many cases, people have been relying on DC Hypot or the VLF test. And I can cut halfway through the insulation and pass these tests. So you can have an egregious problem and the out the the result is that I I tell I'll tell people that there's one thing worse than someone installing a cable system and energizing and saying, you know, I didn't make the cutback perfect just like the manufacturer said, but it's still energized. So they get a sense of false sense of security. The only thing worse than that is if they do something like a DC or a VLF test because I can pass most most problems in a cable with a VLF test. In fact, you wanna do the experiment, take the termination off, leave a raw cutback and it'll pass the VLF test. Okay? So if that's your measure of what quality is, it's like almost anything goes. And now I I have not I mean, I have it's been very rare to find a splicer. The vast majority of cases, they are people who care. I I include myself. I do some splicing in the lab, but I'm not as proficient as the the teams I see in the field.

Mario: I'm sure you're pretty good.

Ben: I I have I'm precise, but I'm slow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Slow. You wouldn't you wouldn't make any money as me

Mario: as a splicer. Yeah. I hear.

Ben: But I do know how to do it. Yeah. And I I from my electrician days, I'm decent with the tools. I'm just not as proficient. But anyway, when it comes to looking at these assets and and working with with splicers, I I met so many good people who go home every day and wanting to do a good job. And I find that very often, they we have what we call the 10 root cause categories of of cable failure. It's just some generic groups of of defects. And when I'm doing training, I find that very often, the splicers can't identify the all 10 root cause categories.

Mario: So you don't recognize Is that available to the public or is

Ben: That's on our website too. You know? It's it's pretty generic, but it gives you a nice way to categorize different problems that we find and and what they look like. It just gives you a certain view, and it again, it's just examples. So it doesn't cover the whole spectrum of problems, but it gives you a sense of these are real issues. And, yes, many of them will not fail tomorrow. In fact, they won't fail within the first year, perhaps, the one year warranty. But five, ten, fifteen, sometimes what some people don't know is that a big part of our business is actually assessing aged cable. Thirty to forty year old cable systems that most people would say, oh, just get rid of it. You know? It's old. It's it's failing. And we're finding that sixty, seventy, sometimes 80% of those assets can be left in the ground, and they're they'll out and and they'll they'll perform just like brand new cable systems. So but what we're finding is the defects that we're finding in these systems, many of them have an origin from day one. Thirty to forty year old cable systems that have issues that were introduced, whether it be from the manufacturing process or the installation process, they're still on their way to failure. Well So that disconnect between I make a little problem here and it's gonna fail twenty to thirty down years down the road. That that information has never been available and it is there now. So when you get people who say, are you sure that little thing is a problem? Well, actually, that's the most critical part of the termination. There's 10 times electric stress right there where you have the electrostatic ground and electrostatic voltage, right, where it meets the insulation. And if you put a little carbon needle there and now you have a little air void next to it, the stress is gonna be super high. Right? And you know this.

Mario: But I've Yeah. But most people are listening probably don't actually. So

Ben: Well, I I find very often, for example, they get these grease packets and, like, I've had cases where I've done training and they said, I have never used a grease packet before

Mario: Mhmm.

Ben: On a cold shrink because, well, it slides right over the termination. Why do I need grease? And it's like, I actually got one of these, guides for separable connectors not, for IEEE to have a section called void filler. So the grease is not just a the the grease is not just a mechanical assist. It's also for void filling. Right? And the void filling effect, as you know, is is critical. But I have some people who just didn't know that you've gotta fill the step around the semicon cutback. Just just didn't know it was that big of a deal. Well, until you have a test that can actually find down to a 10 mil air gap at the most critical part of the termination, you wouldn't know. That's

Mario: so cool. You guys can do that.

Ben: All the way around. What's that?

Mario: I said, it's so cool. You guys can do that. It's amazing.

Ben: Yes. But it can get it can be frustrating. Right? Somebody opens it up and it's like, that's a perfect cutback. That's perfect dimensions. It's clean. And and then you go, okay. Now, look at the bottom. Now, you see that little gap in the grease right there? That's what's gonna bite you. Like, really? Yeah. Oh, I I just didn't know. Yeah. And now, all of a sudden, they're like, okay. I get it. I I can put that grease all the way around. I'll make sure I have a bead there. And and boom. All of a sudden, they're not just barely passing say 1.5 times operating voltage. Splices are clean to two times operating voltage. There's no partial discharge. So, you know, all of a sudden, they're performing way beyond what the minimum expectations are just by some slight changes. But can you imagine if somebody realizes that they haven't been putting the grease in for twenty five years? Yeah. You know how upset they would be with themselves? You know, just how come nobody told me? Right? Yeah. And and I see that people go through that, you know, the anger initially, like I don't believe you, to, you know, begrudging acceptance, to finally understanding, and then finally championing. We have a lot of folks in the industry who will champion a PD test because they'll say, look, I know I do good work and if I'm missing something, I wanna know about it. And I'm not gonna have to throw the terminate termination away in many cases or the cable away. I'm gonna take a kit, slop them slide it off or maybe have to zip off a cold shrink. I'll put a new kit on or I'll fix the little tab or whatever it is, the grease problem, and I'm done. I'm off-site.

Mario: Can I ask you and change topics for a second?

Ben: Sure. Sure.

Mario: Sure. Can can can we get a story from you? Like, you think back? Oh yeah. Failure

Ben: Lots of stories.

Mario: That that really sticks out to you in your last thirty years? Can you think of any failures that you're like, wow, that was like crazy. I can't believe I saw that.

Ben: Yeah. Well, one of my one one of the stories that I tell people, and I have a a graphic too that I show them. It's the graphic of a culture of termination. You know, here's a a prop. I'll show you. Okay. So three m termination. Right? It's got the mastic in here, and and and there's the cutback right there. Mhmm. And I've got it opened up so you can see the layers. Right? So what happened is someone installed a termination culturing termination, and the stress control was set too high. Sure. Now because there's a long skirt, it was covering. And one of our technicians, took a picture of the termination and said, every single one of the terminations in these cable systems, it was four three phase cable systems. So all 12 terminations are discharging, you know, right around the operating voltage. So this isn't even close. This supposed to be partial discharge free to 1.5 times operating voltage per IEEE 48. That's the open air termination. And a specification for IEEE. Right? So, you know, the installer or the owner of the site of this generation site used to work for the contractor for ten years. So they know these people. You know, these are people that they've had lunch with. They've they probably went to company picnics with. They know them. And the guy says, look, I've been installing hundreds of these terminations. I'll stand by my work. And so the management did as well. And we said, well, they're all discharging really close to the operating voltage, some below operating voltage. There's a real problem here. Well, our technician took a picture and you could actually see and and you probably know the trick. Right? When you see that little dimple just before the

Mario: The bulge

Ben: the k. Right. Where the high k stops, it drops down to the insulation and it bumps out for the semicon. You could actually see that? Hourglass shape. And I'm like, guys, there's a dimensional issue here. Like, what we we think, you know, this is installed right. Yeah. We'll prove it to you. We'll do a VLF test. I'm like, okay. Guys, you could just take the terminations off and it would pass too, you know. And they're like, well, no. No. No. This is industry standard test, you know. We'll do it for they do it and it passes. Well, now the owner who trust these people be and and rightfully so because he knows them

Mario: Sure.

Ben: Says, what do I believe? I've got 12 cable systems. All the terminations are substandard per this test that I don't even know what it is. They claim it's comparable to the manufacturer's test or whatever. And I've got a known splicer that's been installing hundreds of these, if not thousands. Experience telling me it's good. And they've got a test. Another test that's per some industry, IEEE guide something or other. And they're sitting there, what do we do with this information? And within three weeks, the first termination fails. Blows out. What do you know? Right by the cutback, wouldn't you know? And and it's no surprise. Right? It was a beautiful termination that had nothing to do with terminating the stress at the end of the cable. Right? It was not doing its job. It was a beautiful covering. Yeah. Because what they do, they set them all to the perfectly wrong dimension. They're up about a half an inch too high on every single one of them. So they had the perfect they had a perfect dimension, but it was the wrong one. And they oh, that's right. We had this other kit in mind, and this is a different dimension. And

Mario: Right.

Ben: We'll go back and we fix them all. So they do. And we go back and retest them. And sure enough, a lot of them are passing standards now. Well, that's great. Right? That's really fantastic. You can see the improvement. Everybody's excited but some still don't and they're like, oh, that's just frustrating. So they go and they start cutting the terminations off and sending me pictures and they're showing me that they have the right dimension and wouldn't you know, they send me a picture and the cutback has about a quarter inch tab sticking off it like this hook sticking out And and they're showing me they got it right and and their tape measure sitting right next to this big old tab sticking off the stomach. And I'm like, that is that is a story of the of the industry. Right? Yeah. It's someone who's well meaning, who's learning, who cares about their work, just doesn't know what a defect looks like. And and I tell that story and and when I tell it to splicers, I I always get chuckles. And I get chuckles from people that never knew about splicing before. Once I show them what a defect looks like and they see that and they get to the punchline of the story, inevitably, I get laughter in the room because and I say, why are we laughing? We're laughing because we know what a defect looks like. But can you imagine this installer trying to do his job and no one ever told him that that was a problem and the test that he's relying on can't tell him because it can't find it and he's gonna go on and install another thousand terminations like this and some of them are gonna fail. Where are they gonna fail? They're gonna fail right where that little tab is.

Mario: The stress line. Yeah.

Ben: That's where it's gonna drill right through and it might be five, ten, maybe fifteen years from now and they'll never get the feedback. Do you, what's

Mario: been your experience the last thirty years? Terminations, t bodies, load breaks, splices, inner cone terminations, European t bodies. What is the accessory that tends to fail the most?

Ben: Yeah. So obviously, I'm not gonna use manufacturing.

Mario: No. No. Yeah. Right.

Ben: Right? And and you wouldn't either. No. But as far as the so I wanna make sure we

Mario: Is there a trend, I guess, I should say or not so much?

Ben: Well, I wanna make sure. When we say failure, you mean it's something that doesn't pass the test or that doesn't that actually fails in service? Because we have

Mario: both days. Yeah. You probably have I don't know. I'll let you decide both I guess. What

Ben: I'll just say both. So by by and large, the first failure on a cable system is generally the accessory

Mario: because that's Which accessory tends to be more problematic?

Ben: Splices tend to be more unreliable than Okay. And if you think about it, I've got two cutbacks instead of one. I've got a Faraday cage or some type of dealing with the connector. You know, there's there's there's a number of steps, and it all has to do with the human element. Right? So anytime we introduce more steps and more human elements into the process, we're gonna have more errors because that's where that's where the challenges are. A lot of these products, although there are defects and when there are defects we've been at utility where the the cable adapter and it's not necessarily this brand if you can pick out the brand. But the cable adapter actually had a ridge right here, right where it turns from Mhmm. Semicon to insulating. And we they had hundreds, not thousands in their warehouse. And they had already installed hundreds in service, and they were all had partial discharge at a very low voltage level. And so those kind of things happen,

Mario: but They don't like those ridges?

Ben: Issues happen. It's it happens a lot.

Mario: So

Ben: But it's concentrated. But the vast majority of issues are human installation issues initially. For

Mario: sure. Do they do they like the adapters with ridge or without ridge better?

Ben: You mean it's from a performance standpoint?

Mario: I because I think different manufacturers offer them with or without.

Ben: Right. I prefer I prefer one with a ridge if someone knows how to use it because they can they're getting a mechanical feedback Mhmm. To feeling that that bump or that setting the seating on the on that cutback. Of course, if they go too far, you have to be able to recognize how it bumps out. And

Mario: I

Ben: think some of the manufacturers actually show that in their instruction. If it's it's set down too far, it'll actually flare out. Boltage. And that's good visual feedback. Right? Because I also just recommend to keep the tape on, you know, so that you know when it sits, it's sitting there. And keep the tape on until you're ready if you're gonna do a re jacketing sleeve. So because sometimes when you put the t body on, it can slip the cable adapter and then, you know, that's a problem as well. So joints perform worse than terminations and and cables are out the cable installation itself typically outperforms the the joints and the terminations because of the human element.

Mario: But Sure.

Ben: If we remove the human element through design and through commissioning, it's amazing. I have been able to show that by spending a little bit of capital upfront, installing a little bit of product like using a shear bolt connector instead of a compression connector, we eliminate a whole series of issues. Right? You know Really?

Mario: No. I I know.

Ben: High capacity.

Mario: It's cool to hear from an expert.

Ben: Well, from someone who's learned it the hard way. I mean, literally, we went out there. We assessed cable systems. We said they were good, and then they started failing. And we had to go back out and figure out why. And so we have a whole list of about 14 best practices in cable system design that we've come up with. Some of them are obvious, you know, you'll know. But for example, we don't for high impasity applications, we recommend against using constant force springs. We recommend bringing the concentric neutrals out and over because we've just seen so many problems with that connection. And it's not that it can't be installed right, but it's difficult to install it and there's so many ways to install it wrong. And even once you install it right, we can get corrosion, We can get mastics flowing in there. We other things can happen Mhmm. Even if it's installed right. So for high capacity applications, if you're installing a shear bolt connector for your primary conductor and you're using a crimped connection for your concentric wires, the the reliability of the splice from the connector standpoint all of a sudden takes a huge leap in performance.

Mario: In data. Like, that's what data shows. Okay.

Ben: From an electrical installation standpoint, now we use a partial discharge test to check to make sure that there are no voids, there's no stress enhancements, that we haven't damaged the insulation anyway. We've positioned it correctly. When you when you combine and there's a couple others standard design recommendations that we have. When you combine these things, all of a sudden, you get a real an amazing system that can perform a 100 times better than if you just installed it. Literally, a 100 times. We have data that on, like, over a thousand miles of cable watched over several years, and you can watch the performance difference. The typical fail cable system, in utility speak fails about three failures per 100 miles per year. If you use best practices in design selection and installation techniques and use an effective quality control test, like what we call specifications, nine word spec, offline 50 or 60 hertz PD test with five p c sensitivity, You can do that. You're gonna see a performance improvement of a 100 times, and that's what the data says now. Even if it was 10 times, that'd fantastic.

Mario: I mean, you could get into some serious liability and litigation threats and stuff like that for manufacturers. But if you think about it, like the data you guys have, it's like the ultimate readers digest, ratings on medium voltage products as well as applications. And then if you combine it with user error, if you could dissect your data from user error versus best products out there, best performing, best testing PD, you guys probably have like an incredible set of data. We we do That is unbiased.

Ben: We we it is so so the test, you know, it has a quality control process in its in its own. Right? So it tells you whether the test was done right or not. So when we take all the tests that were done right, which most of them are, you know, and I say correct, it's not just correct, but achieve that factory level sensitivity. Sometimes they don't. So it's like 95% of the tests achieve a factory near factory level sensitivity, meaning they can see all the defects. Sure. When you look at that data, it it it tells you a lot. And we have chosen to just really try to use it to educate the industry and to guide our owners, or or

Mario: Do they ever come and ask you, like, I'm thinking of using three m splices. What do you think about them? Yeah. I'm using that example because they're probably like

Ben: the name.

Mario: The the I know. I

Ben: But I'll but what I can do is I can say, I recommend a technology that has a a a an effective and long Faraday cage because that'll give you a big target.

Mario: Sure. Right? Yeah.

Ben: And I can tell you, you know, if the stress control is, again, a very large target, that's also a good product. If if if the product doesn't have a mesh shield over the splice, that's gonna be to your advantage for these reasons here.

Mario: On a Concentrix.

Ben: Sure. I give them and I'm not telling them, but if you use all the all the facts, you will hone in on a couple brands for that particular application. Now if you take another application, it'll probably be another brand.

Mario: You know what's crazy? And I hope I'm hearing mumblings around some of the IEEE standards that they're gonna force different manufacturers to test all the same. Because I'm hearing things like to pass IEEE four zero four for joints, some manufacturers are using only copper shear bolts or, not everybody uses the same connector, for example. And some some get away from a lot. Like they're claiming I triple e four zero four with any crimp when they tested only with a really gigantic heavy mass connector. And then you have failures when they're using crimps in the field and or so I'm excited for the IEEE to to put some standards to to level the playing field.

Ben: I I joke with some of my colleagues and I'll joke with you. I consider you a good friend and colleague, of course, that if we all wait for I triple e Yeah. You know

Mario: Right. They take time. Of all, we'll be retired

Ben: or we won't around because it just takes for ever for IEEE to move. Some of the best practices that we've known for already a decade, IEEE is just starting to wake up to. And unfortunately, one of my colleague one of my mentors would say, if you wanna know how somebody's gonna vote in IEEE, follow the money.

Mario: Mhmm. Sure.

Ben: Because if you have a vested interest in a product or a service, I mean, you could argue the same with me, but people will see by my votes, I have voted with, you know, whatever, however the data and the facts lie.

Mario: Totally

Ben: supportive of it because, you know, you only you only have your integrity. Oh, I

Mario: can't even imagine the amount of stories you must have because you guys probably get pulled into some pretty nasty situations where people are, this is his fault, this is their fault, this is the manufacturer, this is the wholesaler and everybody's probably

Ben: Yeah. In some cases people have really struggled because at the end of the day, it's who's gonna pay, right? And, you know, I had I've had quite a few scenarios where people were standing in front of me, you know, veins popping out and cussing at me and I just had to say, you know, sir, I can see you're really upset and I know this is really frustrating, but we agreed on a process, right? Let's go through, let's do the test again, let's break it down together. Let's identify. If it's a test problem, we'll figure that out. If it's a manufacturing problem, we'll figure that. If it's an installation, we'll figure that. What I promise you is that the process will tell us what we need to do. And I have yet to go through that process where we haven't had a reasonable outcome. One time, I had one guy come up to me. There was a couple people, a couple of guys in the business, and one of the guys came up to me, hey, Seth. Thanks for coming out to the site today. Know, I learned something. You know, we recognized, what what the problem was, and we'll make sure that we fix it in the future. I mean and and, another guy came along and said, you know, you got me this time, but next time. I was just like, look, I'm I'm really

Mario: Oh my god.

Ben: I'm just a messenger and I'm trying to help. I'm just really trying. And you know what? You know what it was? You know what it was? They had installed hundreds of t bodies and they said no knives on the project. And so they didn't use a knife. They ended up using sandpaper, 120 grit sandpaper. Anytime they created a tab, a little step on the semicon, they didn't have a tool to straighten it out. And apparently, they didn't know enough to straighten the cable or to make make sure their their splicing tool was tuned up. Their scoring tool was tuned up to make a straight cut. And, like, well, it's just it's kind of impossible to do it at that level. And I'm like, well, actually, there are people who know how to do this. Right? Yeah. And and and can do it consistently. And if they don't, they know how to fix it. So but anyway, I didn't know that. Right? But what they were doing is they're using sandpaper to sand the tab so it was no longer a step. It was just a little bit of a ramp, a profile and T bodies, there were very few of them that were substandard. You know, they just really did a great job. We got over and this isn't a knock for three ms, but we got over to the substation, there are three m terminations and they have this mastic putty that's very thick. Right? And they did the same technique. They made the little tab. They sanded it out. But when you sand semicon, it gets these little frays that stick off and sometimes little grits of the and they were littering the semicon cutback with sand this 120 grit. Now if you've heard of using you have, of course, using sandpaper on a semicon cutback at transmission levels. But, you know, you go all the way down to 400 grit and and make it, you know, polish it. Right? So you can use sandpaper, but as it turns out, and we found out later and I read through the instructions, it says right in the three m instruction, do not sand the semicon, but they were sanding the semicon and it was leaving these little frays and what that did is it created little voids right at the semicon cutback. And it was annoying because the the partial discharge performed, they were almost passing every time. It was just barely like, instead of, you know, the five picocoulomb cut out was like ten, fifteen picocoulomb at 1.3 or 1.5 was like almost there and it wasn't passing. And when we cut it off, we found these little frays sticking off. I'm like, guys, what's what's going on here? And like, oh, we use the sanding technique and then it all came clear to me. The mastic can't get into all those little grooves whereas the silicone grease can actually flow in there and it was filling the void.

Mario: How'd guys fix it? What did what did they end up doing?

Ben: Well, I I they they they went to make a cut and sure enough, they make another step and I'm like, they were ready to put the termination. Like, on. Hold on. Or the and maybe even use sandpaper. Alright. Here. Here's a technique guy. And I took a little knife and I just went Yeah. Peeled off that little tab, made a little ramp, put the mask put the termination on, it passed with flying colors. And they went, okay. I get it. Right?

Mario: So with that, and that this is one of the questions I wanted to ask you. Knives or no knives?

Ben: So I would say you want to avoid knives. So you want to learn, you want to do something consistently, quickly because that's where you make your money. Mhmm. Really, the scoring tools are really where you need to be. And of course, when you get to bonded semicon, they've gotta be the hand laid. But you're gonna make mistakes, and you gotta have a technique

Mario: Yep.

Ben: To you all your techniques should be to avoid the problem. Right? So straightening the cable, tuning your device, making I I always try to do a a a sample cut a little higher up where I'm gonna take the semi comm off.

Mario: You get your tool.

Ben: So I I know that my cutting tool is going the right depth. I'm gonna be confident. You know, once you're you've used that same cable, same real cable where you get comfortable with it, okay. That's fine. But make sure you develop that confidence on-site because I've seen cases where the the cable's out of round. Something like thickness and and the tool that you set up is not is all of a sudden not fine. I was just working with a contractor down in Florida and they were fantastic. They did excellent work except all of their knives were dull and crooked. We're making all these little I'm like, what why is every one of these cutbacks has these little, like, gouges and and little things that are peeled off. And they like I said, have you ever replaced the blades? Like, we didn't know that was a thing. Well, next day, give them a lot of credit. They stood down. They got all new blades and they did it but they before they had feedback, they didn't even know they were creating that problem over and over and over again. Of course, the test finds in. It's like, that little thing makes it yeah. That makes a difference. It says, the void filler can't get in there now because you got this little tab sticking off. Okay. I can fix that. I gotta get rid of the carbon needle and remove the void. Got it. So what we're seeing is that once people recognize the problem and you ask me a question, I don't know if I'm answering it. But ultimately, you know, once you get that feedback, once you get the knowledge, oh, we were talking about the the tools and the setup. Yeah. Knives. That was it. Should we use a knife? Well, in some cases, a knife might be the best technique. And and if if the site has a rule rule that you can't have a knife, well, you better have another tool to be able to cut those tabs off because they are gonna create that carbon needle stress enhancement and the void filler is gonna have a tough time getting in there. And you're you're gonna you're gonna be your own worst enemy if you can't get rid of it.

Mario: Yeah. I share the same mentality. I don't often share those thoughts with too many people. But as an engineer, you wanna mistake proof as much as you can. Right?

Ben: Right. You wanna use maybe the less preferential tool when you have to and know how to do it. You know, have your have that skill to use it. In some cases, you might have to. You don't have any more cable. You can't make another cutback or whatever it is. But I say learn to use a tool and do it well. You know, I I like to watch, you know, Nick Mueller with with

Mario: Of course. Yeah. He's he's

Ben: I love to watch him do a cutback. It's just he's like talking to this person over here, he's doing this.

Mario: Yeah. He's amazing.

Ben: Just just comes out. But he spends a lot of time tuning that thing up, and and I could name five others. I'm just it's just one example. Right? That they spend time prepping the cable. And and, you know, at transmission levels, they put this cable in heaters and they straighten it out. And you get into these large 1,500 k c mil cables that are a little bit cold and have been sitting there bent. You just can't make a straight cutback unless you prep the cable. And if somebody doesn't know that Yeah. They're gonna be mad at a PD test for sure.

Mario: There it's been a question in the past. What's your experience? So say that you're using an EPR cable, a JCN, and the guys I've gotten calls, panic. Like, hey, we took off the jacket, we pulled back the neutrals, and this installation has all these grooves. And now you have these guys like sanding them down and stuff. And I'm like, woah, woah, woah, woah. Put up a heater, a heat something Right. Let Yeah. Let the EPR pop out. Sometimes a soft flame. Is there an issue with a soft flame? Like, you seen ever a cable not pass PD test when there's been a flame put to it?

Ben: You would really have to go at it.

Mario: Okay. I mean,

Ben: if the thing is that PD is not invisible. Right? Unless there's a void inside the insulation that you can't see. But when you as far as cable prep, anything that's gonna cause PD, can see with your eye. It might be small. It might only be 10 mils, 10 thousands of an inch, but you can see 10,000 of an inch. If you know where to look. Right? If you know where those high stress areas are and what can cause it, you can you can identify it very quickly. But the likelihood because did you know are you familiar with what size void the manufacturers are allowed in cable installation?

Mario: No. I'm not actually.

Ben: It's three mils. Oh. You know? So that's a pretty big void.

Mario: Yeah. It's

Ben: obviously, it could be really day you know, high stress area, it may yield partial discharge. But that's where right about where it becomes that the the voids are getting small enough that they're not likely to cause partial discharge. You see? So there's a point at which the defect is so small that it can't create partial discharge. It's actually the there's a physics principle that at some point you think about it, like, you're making a hand tape splice, there's gotta be little gaps between some of the But shoulder when they're small enough, they can't in initialize partial discharge. That's actually something that happens as, you know, it's mean free path, all this physics stuff that we don't have to worry about just the fact that at some point there's diminishing returns. Yeah. So it's not that it's not visible. It has to be most it's gonna be something visible. He's gotta know where to look and what to look for.

Mario: Very cool. You're probably not gonna answer this, favorite manufacturer?

Ben: Yeah. I I won't answer that. Okay. But but to me, you know, and I when people ask me, well, how do I vet? Well, certainly, I give you a list of technical parameters that you should look in an accessory depending on what your application is. I can do that pretty readily. But then I say, who's the manufacturer where you know you can call somebody and get an answer? Because things happen, whether it be a missing part or a product, who is gonna respond? And to me, after you've selected the technical ask the technical specification, it's who's gonna have your back? And if you find a defect in their product, are they gonna go, oh, well, you know, that's not such a big deal or are they gonna take care of it for you? That's to me a real I have little I've had cable manufacturers say, yep, you found 20 defects in our cable, but we're not gonna proactively let our our our customers know about it. We're gonna let them if they have failures, they'll call us. And I just thought in my own mind, I would never work with a manufacturer like that. What I I want part of the contract is that, look. I won't penalize you. I will still work with you provided you say you can fix the problem and we can work out some some deal. But I I have had so many cases where there have been manufacturing issues. And listen. Manufacturing issues are less than 5% of the defects we find in in cable. 95% of them are human damage or insulation damage. But and so it's about one in every couple thousand reels will have a manufacturing defect in it. So it's pretty rare, but when it happens

Mario: So crazy.

Ben: It's like a Christmas tree. It's all over the place. But and often it's that whole batch of those reels. So if you can't track those reels, if you don't know that, it's something you really wanna be able to do and you want that manufacturer to own up to it. So to me, that's the biggest thing and that's a real deciding point. Is someone gonna have my back when something goes wrong? Because eventually it will. Is

Mario: there any thought given to ever publicly release all the data you guys have?

Ben: We have tried and we've had communications with some large research organizations. I I you know, Osmos is utility services, you know, overhead poles, steel structures, concrete, vault inspections, and transformers, and pretty much every aspect of utility services aged and new, we we participate from an expertise standpoint. And we are all about educating the industry and with this organization Power Delivery Intelligence Initiative, we are disseminating some of that information. But the whole database, I think, perhaps the results database because there's a results data. Like, what was the test result? And that's all tied to manufacturers and things like that. But there there probably is a way to share piece of that that it's not doesn't get misconstrued and misunderstood. You know, somebody would say, oh, well, the supplier is is not gonna go with the supplier because of the data. So but I will say also, there's a number of suppliers that have dramatically improved their product. Like, I remember working with Bill Taylor

Mario: Uh-huh.

Ben: We Energies. You know, I would we probably both consider him one of our mentors. Right?

Mario: I I do. For sure.

Ben: With three m there. And he was we were working with We Energies, and they were finding terminations that weren't passing I triple e 48 in the field, open air terminations. And come to find out, they had an extra thick semicon step, and Bill purposely put more mastic in the terminations after learning that. And that was, like, almost twenty years ago.

Mario: So cool.

Ben: So we have seen really people coming together and learning from each other using this as a feedback tool. Okay. We can make it pass in the lab, but when you have these kind of scenarios, the product doesn't work as well or it doesn't compensate for human error or whatever it is. And now we're starting we we've fed that back into the industry. There's manufacturers who have upgraded 20 plants with new guides because they kept damaging their cable and they didn't know it. You know? That's been an area of passion for me. And we've publicized that that data in some of our technical papers. You know? So what are some of the defects that we're finding? What's the what's the how often does it show up? And what are some of the errors the manufacturer

Mario: What a great

Ben: and how did they fix them?

Mario: What a great example. Right? Like and Bill Taylor writes the standard. The guy, the inventor of some of these technologies humble enough to go back to a factory and increase the level of high k that he's putting in his termination.

Ben: Right, right. So cool. Very impressive.

Mario: So cool. Well, really appreciate your time, dude. Like this, I know how valuable your Right? Time

Ben: We have a lot of fun in this industry.

Mario: I know.

Ben: Nothing like sharing our experience and hoping with in a with a passion that we can help others. Right?

Mario: Yeah. Thank you so much, Ben. Appreciate your time, man.

Ben: You're welcome.

Mario: Okay. And that's where we're gonna end it.