Nate: Yes, you can. And in fact, private cellular networks are being adopted more and more, and especially in the industrial market, just because it provides that ubiquitous connectivity, where there might not always be a native connection. If there's an oil/gas field out there, it might not have access to a cellular tower from your local carrier available, just because there's not a tower in the area. Well, with a private cellular network, you can extend that connectivity to the site from a private cell network that the user is now in control over, so it conforms with best security practices that may be out there for isolating network traffic and communication from the outside world. So there's a lot of benefits that private cellular can provide to industrial opportunities.

Nate: Yes, it certainly is. Again, with the Digi Containers feature and functionality on the Digi industrial routers, you have the ability to deploy one or multiple containerized applications. So, the benefit of a container is each application is in its own isolated environment, for security best practices, as well as optimization for dedicating resources for those applications. The real limitation is just how much each application you want to deploy onto the Digi industrial router would consume. So, just like if you're trying to run a bunch of applications on your computer or your phone, the more you add, the more resources each one consumes, so you have a limited amount of CPU, drive, and local storage and RAM, so just a matter of making sure that that conforms. To help with that, we have some documentation, as well as details on our data sheets about each Digi industrial router, the resources and system capabilities each one has, as far as throughput and RAM constraints and all, and then we also have an SDK, or software developer kit, for helping with getting started with deploying containerized applications onto your Digi routers.

Doug: Okay. Thank you, Nate. And we also make use of the ability to run additional containers in the Digi edge routers, for doing things like preprocessing of data, also for things like doing localized control and things like that. I want to step back for just a couple of minutes here, and talk about a couple of very important points on this slide before we move on to the next slide. First one thing I want to talk about is Digi Remote Manager®.

Deploying and managing these large systems these days is a very different task than it was in the past. In the past, utilities were dealing with hundreds of devices, thousands of devices, tens of thousands of devices, maybe. Today, we're looking, as I mentioned earlier, up to millions of devices. And so, in addition to the need to get all the data from all these devices, there's also a need to manage the deployment of those devices for provisioning, software upgrades, patching, and even upgrades to the contents of the containers. And Digi has a complete, comprehensive solution, called Digi Remote Manager, and that becomes an important part of the whole ecosphere in deploying a large utility system.

And then, the next topic I want to talk about is perhaps one of the most important topics, and that has to do with cybersecurity. Folks, our grids are under attack every minute of every day.

Just think about that for a second. Every day, I talk to utilities, and I hear about how many times a day they're being attacked. Cybersecurity is no longer an afterthought. It's no longer an add-on. It's something that has to be built into the core of the entire solution, from the devices to the applications. And this is something that we've been working on at Tantalus for several decades, building cybersecurity into our products, and also ensuring that there is a secure environment, all the way from the devices to the applications.

We participated, about 10 years ago, in a study that was being done at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. And the scope of this study was to take a look at the effectiveness and the best practices standards and recommendations for cybersecurity. Because they found that while individual manufacturers were doing varying degrees of a good job securing their products, no one was really taking a look at the entire end-to-end security of it. And with the utilities buying and deploying products from multitude manufacturers and a multitude of vendors, using a multitude of communication systems and methodologies, lots of different protocols, there was a need to take a look at how do you secure this entire thing. And so, participating in that, really opened our eyes as to the vast array of threats, and all of the challenges being faced by the utilities.

So, we began working then on securing our part of it, which is the data transport part of it, in addition to, of course, making sure that each of our applications and each of our systems were bulletproof in terms of cybersecurity, but also through the Grid Data Management System, making sure that data is secure. So, I mentioned that it is a distributed solution, with different pieces running in different locations, one of them being within the Digi cellular routers. There's also instances where we're actually running within the end device itself, because there are times that there are either OEMs that we work with, that have opened up their internal device environment, and are running an instance of our software there, or other types of things, such as containers. So, because of this, we want to get that data secured as close to the point of data acquisition as possible. So, in places where we're running co-located with the device itself, running in something like the Digi IX30 industrial cellular router, we also make use of last-foot technologies, such as MACsec, which is a hardware-level security, and also of the built-in securities of some of the more advanced protocols, such as 2030.5. This makes use of TLS encryption with certificates. But the idea is to get that data encrypted as soon as possible after it's been acquired, if it's not already encrypted during the data acquisition.

So, the TRUSync software immediately encrypts the data, and then, throughout its lifetime, when it's within the Grid Data Management System, it remains encrypted. There's already a lot of NERC CIP and NIST standards about encryption of the data. NERC CIP requires that data be encrypted when it's at rest and when it's in motion.

We've actually gone one step beyond that. We actually encrypt data in use, so that when the data is existing in the memory of the computer or the device on which the software is running, it's also encrypted at that point also. So, the entire time that it's being transported, it is completely encrypted. One of the other things that we do within the Grid Data Management System is we provide protocol and data model translation. In today's world, there's a lot of different devices, speaking different protocols. And while there are standards for protocols within certain areas, with the wide variety of areas that we see across utilities today, there's a need for support for basically all of the protocols that are standardized, as well as a lot of the legacy protocols, so that the Grid Data Management System can be deployed across existing devices. So, those are two of the data services.

The need also for data model translation is that different devices, even though they are fully protocol-compliant, often have different ways of expressing the data that they have available. And there's lots of different examples of that. Also, different applications are expecting data in different data models. And so, by having data model translation, it ensures that, one, as the data is being acquired, it's understood what the model of the data is. And then, as the data is being served to the systems and the applications that need it, it's being done in a fashion that the application is going to understand. And that cuts down a lot on the integration time and the integration complexity.

So, let's take a look real quick at some of the use cases. Let's take a look at DER integration. We have a couple of large West Coast IOU (Investor Owned Utilities) companies. One of them is, we created a head end for a large direct connection of DERs, using IEEE 2030.5, under the CSIP Rule 21 compliance, being used to unmask hidden loads at customer sites, and also support for the California Public Safety Power Shutoff programs for wildfire mitigation. We have another East Coast utility, where the Grid Data Management System is doing protocol harmonization in a head end for residential solar, direct connection to 10,000 customer-owned smart inverters, and harmonizing data, doing protocol data model translation across several of the IEEE 1547 protocols. So, in this case, 2030.5, DNP, and Modbus, and giving the ability to update operating curves. So, in this case, there is an ADMS system at the head end, that only speaks DNP, and there are smart inverters out there, some of them speaking Modbus, some of them speaking 2030.5, and the Grid Data Management System is doing its thing in between there.

Down in Australia, at a utility called United Energy, there is a very innovative program going on, where the utility is deploying battery storage on the distribution circuits, and connecting it into their DERMS system. And the grid data management system is providing protocol data model translation, and this is a case where part of the Grid Data Management System is running within the energy storage system itself. So it's providing complete encryption, end to end, also with support for things like, for file transfer.

Another case is, this is kind of a summary of the previous slide, talking about the fact that we have head ends and grid data management systems that are doing direct connection for our solar, pole-top batteries, also large behind-the-meter types of resources, greater than a megawatt, and also doing aggregation for DERs. And the Grid Data Management System is the middle layer in all of this.

And then the last use case I want to talk about is where the Grid Data Management System is being used in a standard-based communication and configuration of substation devices. This is a project where the Grid Data Management System is being used at a large West Coast utility, and it's incorporating the IEC-61850, not only the protocols, but also the data models, and the ability to have an automatic configuration of an entire substation. Before something like this, it would typically take weeks to months to complete and configure a substation. Using the 61850 data model and protocols, it's possible to model the substation, download those modeling files, and automatically configure all of the devices in the substation, as well as the Grid Data Management System, and then have the substation up and running within a matter of hours.

Doug: Okay. So, we've obviously been doing data acquisition for a very long time. And we've actually been working with Digi for close to three decades. Way back when we started, and we introduced our first SCADA product, there was a need for multiple serial ports on an IBM-style computer. And we first started working with Digi because they had serial port expanders. And we could take a PC-type computer, that maybe had 2 to 4 built-in serial ports, and expand it to 64, 128 serial ports. And so that's when we began working with Digi.

And then, through the years, Digi began growing, and then we started working with Digi on edge communication gateways. And so, that relationship has blossomed. We've standardized on Digi as one of our partners, and one of the hardware connectivity products that we support. Now, in terms of specifically where we're at with this is we are a Digi partner. And a lot of the solution deployment and sales for Tantalus products, especially in the IOU markets, are being done through system integrators. And so, there are several system integrators that have both Tantalus products and Digi products. And so, in that case, we're all working together. And, but there's also...another reason for the system integrators is that the system integrators provide value-add for not only the deployment of the systems, but also for the ongoing configuration and maintenance of the systems, as value-added services to the utilities. So, did that answer the question?

Doug: The Grid Data Management System is completely agnostic. It works with any device, any protocol, any application, any vendor of applications or systems. So, any AMI, any DERMS, any ADMS, any meter data management system, any outage management system, because it is simply acting as a data acquisition, data transport, data management layer, that is compatible across the entire utility.

Matt: One of the things...when you say that, Doug, I think back to your slide that shows how TRUSync sits in the middle of the application and devices, and gets rid of that spider chart of connectivity from each device to each application. So, when I send the slides out following this, folks, just remember that slide encompasses, or encapsulates, I think, Doug, what you just said, from a visual perspective.

Doug: Yeah, that's what we adoringly call the spaghetti slide.

Matt: The spaghetti slide. Okay. I'll have to update my vocabulary! Thanks, Doug. Of course, afterwards, I'll follow up with the link to the presentation, as well as the PDF of the presentation itself. And you can always respond to that email from me with any additional questions you might have.