AI Power & Grid Constraints

[00:00:00] Josh Lowrey: Hello and welcome to the Energy Pipeline Podcast. We are coming to you live from the Upright Digital Studios at Praying and Associates office in Houston, Texas. My name is Josh Lowrey. I am joined today with a longtime friend, a good friend of mine who's this is gonna be a great interview. Um, Mr. Chris Combs, the COO and Co-founder of gy.

[00:00:23] Josh Lowrey: Welcome Chris.

[00:00:23] Chris Combs: Thank you for having me. This

[00:00:24] Josh Lowrey: is great. You know, that actually went pretty smooth. I always complain that I don't like the intro of these things 'cause you have to stare at the camera. By the way, if you're not following us on all our social media channels and on our YouTube and going to the caterpillar.com/oil and gas website to see, actually maybe you don't wanna tune in.

[00:00:39] Josh Lowrey: Chris looks too good today. He kinda outshined me.

[00:00:42] Chris Combs: Make this audio only

[00:00:43] Josh Lowrey: this one. This one might be an audio only podcast

[00:00:46] Chris Combs: if I, I wish I could take credit. My, my wife dresses me, so she dressed me yesterday for Easter and then I was, and at this point she said, Hey, I'm gonna see Josh. And she goes, just wear that again.

[00:00:54] Josh Lowrey: I mean, you look sharp. Thanks. Shoes.

[00:00:56] Chris Combs: I can't take any credit, even though, yeah. Can you see my tam lines?

[00:01:00] Josh Lowrey: Is that for just playing golf?

[00:01:02] Chris Combs: Why do you guys say in front of everybody?

[00:01:03] Josh Lowrey: Well, I mean, they, we need the people to tune in. That's, by the way, I look. No, I don't look great. I look okay. I look like a guy you meet at Walmart.

[00:01:10] Josh Lowrey: That's

[00:01:11] Chris Combs: sock game is is very, uh,

[00:01:12] Josh Lowrey: the sock shoes are pretty slick too though. These are knit Nike, which I'm really pretty happy with right there. They're getting a little dirty 'cause they collect dirt. Those are

[00:01:18] Chris Combs: nice.

[00:01:19] Josh Lowrey: Thank you sir. Mm-hmm. Well maybe this podcast is gonna be worth, it's worth its weight today.

[00:01:24] Josh Lowrey: So we are doing, I told you, this is the Caterpillar Oil and Gas podcast. Mm-hmm. It is an awesome, we love working with these people. They are. I always tell, this is kind of something I get into halfway through it, but they are so organized. You can imagine, you know, a hundred thousand people, they're a hundred year old company.

[00:01:41] Josh Lowrey: They're growing. They're, you know, they're very strategic. And then they come and they meet me and like, Josh, here's your show notes and here's your, and I'm like, oh boy. Like man, I can barely read. These are all, that's

[00:01:53] Chris Combs: why I came. This

[00:01:54] Josh Lowrey: is a lot of questions. So you might see me looking down at my notes today just.

[00:01:58] Josh Lowrey: It's good. They don't put enough pictures on here, but I'll figure this stuff out.

[00:02:02] Chris Combs: It's all good.

[00:02:03] Josh Lowrey: Well, Chris, we have known each other a long time.

[00:02:05] Chris Combs: Yeah.

[00:02:05] Josh Lowrey: And you're a friend. You are. I've seen you succeed at multiple levels through really lots of different versions of the oil and gas business. And I know technically, are you still an oil and gas?

[00:02:16] Josh Lowrey: This is what I asked my, my friends. In your world now, what would you consider yourself in these days?

[00:02:20] Chris Combs: I, I'd, I'd say it's both. Like while there's, you know, so much I think, uh, opportunity in commercial industrial or, or, you know, the data center segment, um, we still know where we came from.

[00:02:32] Josh Lowrey: Okay.

[00:02:32] Chris Combs: Which is oil and gas.

[00:02:33] Chris Combs: And there's still, I think, a, a very real opportunity in oil and gas from a power generation perspective. Right, right. When you think about utility infrastructure being, uh, less than what's required, especially as mps continue to plow capital into expansion and production, um, the utility infrastructure just not there.

[00:02:53] Chris Combs: So a lot of 'em are looking for onsite generation in the form of private microgrids.

[00:02:57] Josh Lowrey: So, okay. Wait, you're starting to sound too smart, too fast here. Um, we haven't talked about how good of friends we are for how long we are. So we're both Texas Tech guys. Let's that

[00:03:06] Chris Combs: Yep.

[00:03:06] Josh Lowrey: Yeah.

[00:03:07] Chris Combs: Grew up in East Texas, Longview.

[00:03:08] Josh Lowrey: That's correct.

[00:03:09] Chris Combs: Area.

[00:03:09] Josh Lowrey: That's correct. Isn't that wild?

[00:03:11] Chris Combs: Yep.

[00:03:11] Josh Lowrey: You do look too good for this show today. Um, alright. So tell by the way you're co-founder of Electric Gen.

[00:03:18] Chris Combs: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:19] Josh Lowrey: Love the guy. Can we talk about Matt?

[00:03:21] Chris Combs: Absolutely.

[00:03:21] Josh Lowrey: I didn't know if he wanted to be a silent partner of this thing on these or not, but I love Matt DeMar.

[00:03:25] Chris Combs: Yeah, he's great.

[00:03:26] Josh Lowrey: He is a solid guy. He's had a lot of success as well.

[00:03:28] Chris Combs: Absolutely.

[00:03:29] Josh Lowrey: Yeah. So you guys have a great team. How did, how did this all do? Can you give the audience just a little scoop on where you came from and how you got to this point?

[00:03:36] Chris Combs: Yeah, of course. So, um,

[00:03:37] Josh Lowrey: other than Longview and Texas

[00:03:38] Chris Combs: Tech Yeah, I'll, I'll age myself and tell you, uh, 26 years, uh, this year out of tech.

[00:03:44] Chris Combs: Uh, oh boy. By way of, yeah, I know, right? Exactly. By way of, uh, uh, the Marine Corps and then Texas Tech. And then I started my career with Schlumberger. So the front half of my career was really spent more conventional operations, frack engineer, Schlumberger, Weatherford. Um, about that time, uh, I got into, uh, a consulting and then that's where this.

[00:04:04] Chris Combs: Shift came that I was fortunate to be a part of in my career where it was technology focused startups. So, and that's where you and I met it was Evolution Wall Services. That's

[00:04:12] Josh Lowrey: right.

[00:04:13] Chris Combs: Which uses which? Which is the first really major delve into the power industry. 'cause we were having to take natural gas.

[00:04:20] Chris Combs: Feed that to a narrow derivative turbine like you see under the wing of like a Airbus 300 or a 7 47. Yep. Convert that to electricity and send those electrons out to the electric frack equipment. And that was, that was the forced foray into it. So it was so many good people there that I could

[00:04:35] Josh Lowrey: learn. I was just about to say that early version, 'cause now it's from my Steven Anderson, he's doing, I mean, Steven's everybody's favorite, right?

[00:04:41] Josh Lowrey: Oh

[00:04:41] Chris Combs: yeah.

[00:04:41] Josh Lowrey: Maybe the nicest guy. He's one of the top.

[00:04:43] Chris Combs: If you don't like Steven Anderson,

[00:04:45] Josh Lowrey: it's your point.

[00:04:45] Chris Combs: Yeah. It's probably your

[00:04:46] Josh Lowrey: point, correct. Yeah.

[00:04:46] Chris Combs: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:04:47] Josh Lowrey: That's a good, that's a great way to say it. But you know, you go back to those early days at Evolution.

[00:04:51] Chris Combs: Mm-hmm.

[00:04:52] Josh Lowrey: I mean, Ben, Kara, you

[00:04:53] Chris Combs: Yep.

[00:04:53] Josh Lowrey: The, the Leap Jeff at the top of just creative.

[00:04:56] Josh Lowrey: Jeff, you guys had some that was a team of get it, get it done. People

[00:05:00] Chris Combs: I, I ran around those guys just taking notes.

[00:05:03] Josh Lowrey: I'm sure

[00:05:03] Chris Combs: you know what I mean? Just trying to feed off of a lot of energy and a lot of, uh, a lot of just, you know, brilliance.

[00:05:09] Josh Lowrey: Well, and, and at the same time, I mean, this is kind of where you are now.

[00:05:12] Josh Lowrey: This, look how good I am at this job. So this is what It's impressive you Yeah. It gets even better. So when you had to. Yeah, there was a lot of, I remember there's, this is never gonna work. You, this won't work of it. And can you kind of, I feel like some of that now your demand is so high that they're like, they're making things work now.

[00:05:30] Chris Combs: Oh yeah.

[00:05:31] Josh Lowrey: But I mean, there's still a lot of newness to what you're doing today. Do you, do you get to pull on any of that or, yeah,

[00:05:36] Chris Combs: it's, it's that it's a lot of the same environments, um, as we had to, you know, overcome from back in the day, you know, starting circa 2014, um, it's not gonna work or it's, it's gonna, it's gonna have this attached to it or it's gonna have that attached to it.

[00:05:52] Chris Combs: And, you know, one of the interesting things about evolution is, is, is they're privately held and. We just got put into a spot where we had to get super creative. And that's one of the interesting things about oiling oil and gas people.

[00:06:04] Josh Lowrey: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:05] Chris Combs: Particularly on the service side. And I say that maybe I'm a little biased 'cause that's my background, but like you, you kinda have to be able to live in the, in the penthouse when things are good and you have to be able to live in the boiler room and, and not starve to death.

[00:06:15] Chris Combs: So, and pretend like,

[00:06:16] Josh Lowrey: like both of the same room.

[00:06:17] Chris Combs: Exactly.

[00:06:17] Josh Lowrey: Yeah.

[00:06:18] Chris Combs: Yep. So you find ways to, to uh, to overcome whatever obstacles you can. And, you know, technically it was, uh, you're not gonna be able to move something that big. We fixed that, uh, you're not gonna be able to make it economic. We fixed that. Right.

[00:06:31] Chris Combs: Uh, so I mean, there's just been no shortage of obstacles that we've had to overcome,

[00:06:37] Josh Lowrey: so. Okay. So now you progressed through that, you mentioned those are, by the way, really phenomenal years of oil and gas for a minute, then they weren't.

[00:06:43] Chris Combs: Yeah.

[00:06:44] Josh Lowrey: And then you kind of, we make it through here now we are in 2022.

[00:06:48] Josh Lowrey: When did you guys start electric? Uh,

[00:06:50] Chris Combs: voltage grid.

[00:06:51] Josh Lowrey: Okay, so you went over there.

[00:06:53] Chris Combs: Yeah. That was 20. Yeah. We were just pre pandemic when we when we started Volta Grid. Yeah.

[00:06:58] Josh Lowrey: You started Volta Grid too?

[00:06:59] Chris Combs: Well, I, no, well, something, uh, let's be clear. Nathan knows definitely Lead Horse. Yeah. But I was employed number two.

[00:07:05] Josh Lowrey: Really?

[00:07:05] Chris Combs: Yeah. Yeah. Man,

[00:07:06] Josh Lowrey: that's incredible. Yeah. Nathan's a stud too by Oh

[00:07:09] Chris Combs: yeah. A hundred percent. Yes, a hundred percent. That's, again, that's just, I kind of walk around really smart people and just take notes, you know, and try to feed off of their brilliance as much as I can.

[00:07:18] Josh Lowrey: You know, Chris, I think, I think that's gonna surprise some people and I, that that is a great little track record of, to be early Evolution, early Volta grid.

[00:07:27] Chris Combs: You know what's even better about it for the data center industry is those are the two main platforms for onsite generation is large block air derivative turbines. And reciprocating engines, which is the evolution model for oil and gas and the vol grid model for oil and gas, and obviously in now data centers as well.

[00:07:44] Chris Combs: So those are the two primary platforms. So I've just been incredibly, you know, fortunate and blessed Yeah. To be able to, um, have an in-depth knowledge of both of those business models and be able to kind of combine 'em to today what's, what is now nitrogen.

[00:07:58] Josh Lowrey: Yes.

[00:07:58] Chris Combs: Right. So,

[00:07:59] Josh Lowrey: so they, so you get to that point, so you're like, all right, number two's cool, but I wanna be not necessarily, I know your, I actually know your ego and there is, you're very much a boiler room guy or a c you can operate in both rooms, which is the best kind of way to do it.

[00:08:11] Josh Lowrey: Right. I always tell people wanna know my title. I'm like, I actually try to get janitor put on my title and they wouldn't do it. I, I, I promise you,

[00:08:17] Chris Combs: I I believe you. I know you, I believe you.

[00:08:19] Josh Lowrey: They wouldn't do

[00:08:19] Chris Combs: it. Just kind of step away from that. Well,

[00:08:21] Josh Lowrey: just because it doesn't matter.

[00:08:22] Chris Combs: It doesn't,

[00:08:23] Josh Lowrey: my my point is, is I'll do whatever needs to be done.

[00:08:24] Chris Combs: That's right.

[00:08:25] Josh Lowrey: That's right. Yes. And, and with a smile.

[00:08:27] Chris Combs: And that's, you know, that's everything that is a, a startup is about. It's like if you, I mean you have to be able to shift your hat every 15 minutes. It's like, well this, you know, the front part of the hour I'll be in supply chain. The back half of the hour, I'm, you know, I'm now in finance.

[00:08:42] Chris Combs: Uh, and I think that's how they say it. You're a finance guy. You say finance. Well, I'll tell what, how Steven,

[00:08:46] Josh Lowrey: ladies and gentlemen we're from the same hometown, same college, and where we are, you don't say finance, but that just tells you he is

[00:08:52] Chris Combs: surrounded by finance.

[00:08:53] Josh Lowrey: Surround by finance.

[00:08:54] Chris Combs: A regular

[00:08:54] Josh Lowrey: basis. I'm a finance guy over here.

[00:08:56] Chris Combs: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Finance. Um, but yeah, you know, one of the great things is that's just really opened the door to being able to capitalize on this opportunity and, and really to be around a lot of great people as you mentioned.

[00:09:08] Josh Lowrey: Oh, sorry, I'm over here. Just

cracking

[00:09:09] Chris Combs: up. No, that was good. That was pretty good.

[00:09:11] Josh Lowrey: My favorite part is that you called yourself out on that too. We were, we know who we are

[00:09:17] Chris Combs: because people will hear that and they'll go, that's not how he says that.

[00:09:20] Josh Lowrey: That's so great, dude. I love it. Alright, so now we're going there. You guys decide this is the way to go. Was it a. Yeah. Was it just like, this is where it's going to be, the puck is gonna be here, we need to get there.

[00:09:30] Josh Lowrey: And again, Detmar sharp guy.

[00:09:33] Chris Combs: Yeah.

[00:09:33] Josh Lowrey: Lot of success. He's, you found him as a partner and, and he, and he was like, let's do this together. I understand this. Yep. Okay.

[00:09:38] Chris Combs: Matt? Matt and I, we've probably known each other the better part of a decade, really. Uh, we'd see each other at, you know, various events. Sure. A lot of the DP events, you know, heavily, uh, heavily involved in those.

[00:09:49] Josh Lowrey: Speaking of employee number two.

[00:09:51] Chris Combs: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. Um, you know, we came together, we began talking, and this was probably a year and a half ago. Matt approached me and said, Hey, I'm, I'm looking at this power platform. It was, you know. Very small power platform. He's like, can you come tell me about it?

[00:10:09] Chris Combs: And I thought it was interesting because I'd been seeing the same announcements that we'd all been seeing. It's like data center, you know, announcements that, you know, at the time were like 50 megawatt data centers, or maybe somebody's gonna plow a hundred million into this data center, or whatever the case might be.

[00:10:25] Chris Combs: And, you know, through that we began looking at it from a business opportunity perspective. And it was already like, extremely attractive at that point. So shifted from that small power platform into let's take a really hard look at, uh, data center power. Is it, uh, is it something that the, the utility can bring forth to these data centers?

[00:10:46] Chris Combs: The answer was like, no. And since that time, not with any

[00:10:48] Josh Lowrey: speed.

[00:10:49] Chris Combs: Not with any type of speed. Yeah. And, and you know, the ability to do that. Is just being really hindered by public utility. 'cause if you look at public utility, it was really brought about in US electoral infrastructure was installed in the sixties mm-hmm.

[00:11:03] Chris Combs: With an expected 60 to 70 year life cycle. So guess what? It's, it's completing at a rapid rate. We coming? Yeah. Yeah. And I don't, I don't wanna get ahead, but, um, you know, when, when you look at that, that opens a door for a lot of opportunity and then you take data center power demand, and that's skyrocketing north.

[00:11:19] Chris Combs: So, you know, by the time I'd say we, we really started looking at this as a business opportunity. A month later we were seeing 200 megawatt data centers. A month later it's, it's, you know, 500 megawatt a month later. It's one gigawatt mega campus, you know, in the panhandle for Lanum or star Gator, you know, pick your logo there.

[00:11:38] Chris Combs: Yeah. So that, that explosion was pretty much something that solidified what we wanted to be a part of.

[00:11:44] Josh Lowrey: But by the way, what, you're not talking 10 years ago, just give the audience what, what year were talking here

[00:11:49] Chris Combs: 12 months ago.

[00:11:50] Josh Lowrey: What, how is this happening?

[00:11:51] Chris Combs: Yeah, it's

[00:11:52] Josh Lowrey: ai. And by the way, when you say I was, I'm glad you brought that up.

[00:11:55] Josh Lowrey: Like you went 50, then you went 100. Give the audience some idea of what scale that really is.

[00:12:00] Chris Combs: Yeah. So yeah, so when you look at, okay, so let's, let's take, okay, let's, let's pick on evolution for a moment. Those, a derivative turbines that they use, 35 megawatts. Now you compare that to, you know, how many of those would it take to power a gigawatt campus, right?

[00:12:17] Chris Combs: Mm-hmm. So that's the type of scale that we're talking about. Um, reciprocating engines typically have increments of two and a half megawatt engines, 3.3, 4.4. Now we're seeing, and, and, and the OEMs are responding, right? They're, uh, you know, look at Caterpillar. I know they've got a massive expansion, uh, plan for this facility in Lafayette, Indiana to help service this.

[00:12:40] Chris Combs: And they've done, they've done a great job of investing in the technology for the controls. Because a lot of times you have to be able to mix platforms. Um, you might have, you know, one logo on one engine and another logo on another, simply because that's what the data center demand has, has forced upon you to be able to take on, right?

[00:13:00] Chris Combs: I mean, obviously you want the same logo everywhere you can, but that doesn't always work. You may have to mix turbines with reciprocating engines, and in a lot of instances, from a technical perspective, that actually makes the most sense,

[00:13:10] Josh Lowrey: right?

[00:13:11] Chris Combs: You know, when you look at, uh, when you look at power density, et cetera.

[00:13:14] Chris Combs: So, um,

[00:13:15] Josh Lowrey: you know, it's really funny before you move on, caterpillar is. There. This is obviously, they came to us in 20, whatever year. We're now 26, so they came in 25 and this is it. We're, we're really honored to be a part of the Caterpillar podcast.

[00:13:29] Chris Combs: Yeah.

[00:13:29] Josh Lowrey: I mean, this is a big one that they own, and, and they said, let's work together on this.

[00:13:32] Josh Lowrey: So our guys said, stepped in or whatever, and when it, the theme of it, the beginning was we would like to just, they, they wanna be a mouthpiece or a megaphone for the industry. So talk about this, this, and this. What's really funny is how many people want to come on this podcast now because it's the Caterpillar podcast.

[00:13:49] Chris Combs: Really? That's not surprising.

[00:13:51] Josh Lowrey: Well, it, it, it's their position in the market now. It's just they are, they have a lot of leverage and, and they do a good job servicing our industry in industries. I mean, you can kind of pick your minings or whatever, but the, certainly the oil and gas and the energy and what we're you're talking about now, this is something that, you know, they're probably getting pulled in every different direction.

[00:14:13] Josh Lowrey: You mentioned all the different logos there, but that's. Is that gonna stop anytime soon?

[00:14:18] Chris Combs: No.

[00:14:18] Josh Lowrey: No, it's not.

[00:14:19] Chris Combs: No, no. But like, so we have the good fortune of talking to a lot of these, uh, hyperscalers and data center developers. And what we see today is I think just really a drop in the bucket. You know? And even if you look at the current administration, I mean, that's, they've even, you know, really made the announcement that they know ai there's a race for it too, right?

[00:14:40] Josh Lowrey: Ah, it's, it's a, it is a security issue.

[00:14:41] Chris Combs: A hundred percent. Yes. A hundred percent. So the, that's just that much more capital that's gonna be deployed for these data centers. How do we secure 'em? How do we keep everybody's information private? Mm-hmm. Um, and how do we expand these? And you know, it was interesting you mentioned, you know, back to the partnership with Matt and I, you know, we looked at this and it didn't take us long to really understand that this was a very real opportunity and the time was now.

[00:15:08] Chris Combs: Yep. So, you know, we created, we created a Rogen, and you know, when you look at it, I guess maybe. From a electrician toolbox perspective, right? There's these various drawers and we said, look, for us to be successful, we're gonna have to have the right tools in each one of these drawers. So we looked at it from, you know, do, do we have the customers oil and gas side?

[00:15:29] Chris Combs: Absolutely. Data center guys. We were, you know, starting to build the, the Rolodex out, which is, you know, really gotten much, much more robust. Now, do we have access to equipment? So we leverage the same guys we've been building equipment with for over two decades, right? Um, whether it's the packages, um, or the OEMs, whoever it is, the control guys.

[00:15:50] Chris Combs: Uh, that's, that's becoming a, a big part of the industry. Push. Do we have access to capital? Capital Access has not been an issue, right? That whatsoever. Right? So you look at all those things and do we have the talent? The biggest, I, I'd say maybe the next biggest one is, is finding the right talent. So fortunately, you know, we've been able to put together an absolute A team.

[00:16:10] Josh Lowrey: Nice.

[00:16:10] Chris Combs: Yeah. Yeah. So it's been,

[00:16:12] Josh Lowrey: I would think that, you know, listen. WI wish I joke all the time. I wish everybody would go back and buy fluid ins like they did in 2012, and I would 20, they actually gimme 20, gimme 2018 numbers. I'd be pretty happy. Right, right. And you know, the, they're not, and but the industry and then this industries that we all used to work in and, and still do, they've changed.

[00:16:37] Chris Combs: Yeah.

[00:16:37] Josh Lowrey: And they, that's not for the worst. They've just gotten better at, better at maintenance, better at quality, better. Right. Better, better, better.

[00:16:44] Chris Combs: Right.

[00:16:44] Josh Lowrey: They can get more out of less. So I would think that people that are looking at this industry are going, I, I can give a real world because I was in Dallas last week for a couple meetings and all data center related.

[00:16:56] Josh Lowrey: And then I flew from there to the EWTC annual meeting and they, you know, all of our oil and gas friends, energy workforce people, right. They were all asking me, well, how was, what's going on in the world of data center? I said, you know, it feels like. I'm gonna put 2010 number on this, right? It feels like the years of 2010, where just, I need this now.

[00:17:18] Chris Combs: Yeah.

[00:17:18] Josh Lowrey: Can, can you help me get this? Can you help me build this? Can you help me secure this? Who do you know what, you know? And, and when's the last time we saw that in our oil and gas world? I mean, really.

[00:17:28] Chris Combs: Yeah.

[00:17:29] Josh Lowrey: Not, at least for the products that I sold. It's been a minute. So I would think that anybody that you're talking to would be like, this is a great team.

[00:17:37] Josh Lowrey: I like this. I wanna be a part of this.

[00:17:39] Chris Combs: Yeah. And I, and I think one of the, the differences is, is it's, you know, oil and gas, it's a little bit cyclical. I think we could all agree. Um, unfortunately. Yeah, sure. Um, this has no sign of it being a bubble anytime soon.

[00:17:52] Josh Lowrey: Thank you. Everyone tells me we're in a bubble.

[00:17:54] Chris Combs: I don't think so.

[00:17:55] Josh Lowrey: What? I wanna know where this bubble is.

[00:17:56] Chris Combs: Yeah. I, there's no end in sight. I mean, every time we talk to, to the developers, the OEMs, even, I mean, we probably talk to OEMs and packages more than we talk to customers, just because that is such a massive What bubble

[00:18:08] Josh Lowrey: are people talking about?

[00:18:09] Chris Combs: I, I, I, capital

[00:18:10] Josh Lowrey: bubble, finance bubble.

[00:18:11] Josh Lowrey: I keep that.

[00:18:12] Chris Combs: It's not a capital bubble bubble.

[00:18:13] Josh Lowrey: It's not a what?

[00:18:14] Chris Combs: It's not a capital bubble.

[00:18:15] Josh Lowrey: Okay. It's the need for this continues to grow.

[00:18:19] Chris Combs: Mm-hmm.

[00:18:20] Josh Lowrey: It is revolutionary. It's a, well, it, so tell me what bubble we're in. I heard what guys say, well, it's a five year bubble and I go, to me that sounds like a, first of all, that sounds like a normal business cycle.

[00:18:30] Chris Combs: Yeah.

[00:18:31] Josh Lowrey: So stop calling that bubble's, like it's gonna be done in six months type thing.

[00:18:35] Chris Combs: Right.

[00:18:36] Josh Lowrey: It sounds to me like we're on a build, a revolutionary industrialized build right now.

[00:18:40] Chris Combs: There, there's a guy named, uh, there's a guy named Kurt Hoel with Overwatch out of Austin. He's absolute data center. Wait, wait,

[00:18:47] Josh Lowrey: what is this that, Kurt, what?

[00:18:48] Chris Combs: O-F-F-E-L with Overwatch. You, you'd love to have him on. I promise. He's he's got a podcast.

[00:18:54] Josh Lowrey: I bet

[00:18:54] Chris Combs: it's not as good as this. A hundred percent. It's not.

[00:18:56] Josh Lowrey: That's fine.

[00:18:58] Chris Combs: But if you, you know that him and that group coined the term Fifth industrial revolution and I said that's about as perfect of a description as it gets.

[00:19:09] Josh Lowrey: Well, I'll be using that at dinner parties.

[00:19:11] Chris Combs: Absolutely.

[00:19:11] Josh Lowrey: I told nobody wants to talk, have dinner with me anymore. 'cause I talk about nothing but peptides and data centers. Hey,

[00:19:16] Chris Combs: same.

[00:19:17] Josh Lowrey: I'm telling you.

[00:19:17] Chris Combs: Same.

[00:19:18] Josh Lowrey: It's just, it's AI data centers and peptides. Yeah. And my sleep score.

[00:19:22] Chris Combs: How's that doing?

[00:19:23] Josh Lowrey: Phenomenal.

[00:19:24] Chris Combs: Duh duh.

[00:19:25] Josh Lowrey: Too much caffeine, but, you know, working out and you take care of yourself at this. Yeah. I don't listen, I'm older than people think. This is, I pretend to have a lot of energy by the time I get home, I'm done.

[00:19:35] Chris Combs: Well, it, you, you sell it. Well, thank you. You sell it well,

[00:19:38] Josh Lowrey: I'm tired, but Yes. We're, it's gonna life.

[00:19:40] Josh Lowrey: I've got, you know, 13, 15. You're right around there too.

[00:19:42] Chris Combs: Yep.

[00:19:43] Josh Lowrey: You're right between me.

[00:19:44] Chris Combs: Right.

[00:19:44] Josh Lowrey: It's a lot. Yeah. Anyway, I digress. It's let's goods go back to how great you are.

[00:19:48] Chris Combs: That's good. No, that's good.

[00:19:49] Josh Lowrey: Let's, alright, so you're in this, we all agree it's booming.

[00:19:54] Chris Combs: Yep.

[00:19:54] Josh Lowrey: You see the model, you see the business opportunity partners, good partners, good teams, good teams.[00:20:00]

[00:20:00] Josh Lowrey: Now where are we?

[00:20:01] Chris Combs: It's carried the message. It's carried the message. It's, uh, make sure that you, you know, you've unpacked the story, that you've got the right people. And that's just such the biggest key of it because it's, there's, you know, while we talk about electrons in general, um, you know, you're delivering power on, on, you know, oil and gas sites.

[00:20:22] Chris Combs: And that's one thing when you look at delivering quality power to a data center site, it's entirely different. It's so incredibly differently nuanced. Um, so people think about load balancing. People think about, and actually let me back up and give you an example. So I. You know, with these new Nvidia chips, I think they're the GB three hundreds.

[00:20:41] Josh Lowrey: Oh boy. Yes.

[00:20:43] Chris Combs: You could go down to, let's say you've got a, a gigawatt data center, or a thousand megawatts, however you want to look at it. They have the ability to go down to as low as like 38% in less than one second and back up in less than one second. So that, that's not something that just can be performed with, uh, with just engines and turbines on site.

[00:21:06] Chris Combs: That takes a very unique combination of capacitors, battery bags, kinetic power packs to smooth that everything. I know we, no, no. We can go super deep.

[00:21:14] Josh Lowrey: No, no, you're actually, this is your building a case. I, I had a, I had this point a couple minutes ago, back to that meeting in Dallas.

[00:21:21] Chris Combs: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:22] Josh Lowrey: They were, this company was interviewing for a CEO and I met, I had dinner with him.

[00:21:26] Josh Lowrey: Nice guy. Um, hopefully he doesn't listen to his podcast because he may not like this next part, but, you know, it was. Very clear to me that CEOs and, uh, this is my opinion, I, and I'm whatever it's worth, I think that the CEO of these data center companies should come from the oil and gas business. Yeah. I think it's easier to learn the widget inside of the building than it is to learn everything else going on outside of it and what makes it successful, including the power, the power supply.

[00:21:58] Josh Lowrey: Like I think these oil and gas guys are set up for total success because you just, you just, you didn't know what it, I mean, with all respect. Maybe you did, maybe you did. I

[00:22:06] Chris Combs: know what you're gonna saying and you're right.

[00:22:07] Josh Lowrey: Well, you didn't know what that was 12 months ago or 24 months ago.

[00:22:10] Chris Combs: Nope.

[00:22:11] Josh Lowrey: But now you do.

[00:22:11] Josh Lowrey: Absolutely not. That person could, could, could've known what that is 24 months ago. But he has to then go learn all of the power people, all the manufacturing. Yeah. What makes it tick? And when you say it can go down that quickly with regard to, um, the power supply, right? Mm-hmm. You actually know what that means from a power source,

[00:22:32] Chris Combs: right?

[00:22:32] Chris Combs: Yeah. And how is that possible? Yes or no, or what makes it possible? Right. X, Y, and Z, right? Yeah. Yeah. And it is, that's why I say it's, it's incredibly nuanced versus what people think.

[00:22:43] Josh Lowrey: But I think, I think, I feel like you're in a perfect spot to win.

[00:22:46] Chris Combs: Oh, a hundred percent. And, and you know, there's, I, I'll add two things.

[00:22:49] Chris Combs: One, you know, I'll tell you that there's a lot of, uh, and, and, and more power to 'em if this is what they wanna do. But there's a lot of developers that, that will, that maybe don't understand that level of nuance. And they'll say to themselves, Hey, we're just gonna do power in-house and we're gonna go call, you know?

[00:23:04] Chris Combs: Yeah. Ka MTU ge Renova, pick your logo and we're gonna just gonna take it and we're gonna plug it in. Everything's just gonna work. Right. And it's like, for those that oversimplify electrification, it's, it's, it's, it can be dangerous, right? I mean, you really do need subject matter experts to be able to take that on.

[00:23:22] Chris Combs: Um, the second point though is let, let's go back to, uh, the conference in, in Las Vegas.

[00:23:27] Josh Lowrey: Yep.

[00:23:28] Chris Combs: Let, was a power panel. That had, uh, Ron Gosick and Correct. Couple others on there. Ron made one of the post most pro profound statements.

[00:23:36] Josh Lowrey: Ron is the CEO of, uh, Liberty Energy Solutions.

[00:23:38] Chris Combs: Yep. And Yep. And Energy Services and Liberty, uh, power Renovations also.

[00:23:41] Chris Combs: Correct. Which is Yeah. Kind of their, uh, their, their power group that also, um, um, is in the data center industry. And the statement was, and it was no disrespect to any of the IPPs or independent power providers. It was, you know, in their, in their history, they've been able to work out of a very well-defined set of instructions out of a black box with check boxes and you know, if this, check that

[00:24:04] Josh Lowrey: Right.

[00:24:04] Chris Combs: Whereas, you know, us coming from that world, it's again like, you know, penthouse suite to, to boiler room is the world that we've lived in for the last two plus decades. Correct. That gives us a unique advantage to be able to find those solutions and engineer those solutions that are still so many. Not really known or clearly defined in the data center industry.

[00:24:26] Chris Combs: So, to your point Yeah, I'll, I'll back up your point, which is oil and gas guys are very uniquely positioned to be able to really make a mark.

[00:24:33] Josh Lowrey: Well, back to how great I am, Uhhuh. Um, we, during COVID, you know, we pivoted one of our oil and gas companies to go make medical gowns.

[00:24:41] Chris Combs: Yes, that's

[00:24:41] Josh Lowrey: right. I remember that.

[00:24:41] Josh Lowrey: You've heard the story. I remember

[00:24:42] Chris Combs: that. Yep. Yep.

[00:24:43] Josh Lowrey: It's, we still exist.

[00:24:44] Chris Combs: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:44] Josh Lowrey: We're still one of the largest, the largest manufacturer of gowns actually out there. And when that happened, there were two companies that came out of oil and gas to really make a, an impact for C-O-V-I-D-P-P-E gowns. Mm-hmm. And not just gowns, but that's the world that we were playing in.

[00:25:01] Josh Lowrey: And when it was kind of at the beginning, nobody knew what was going on, but go, going six, eight months into it, 10 months, all of a sudden you looked around and we realized that two companies that were impacting hospitals, the government being able to supply these were oil and gas people. Right. The rest were like 3M.

[00:25:20] Josh Lowrey: And Dow and you and I'm, I remember the questions that the government was giving us to be like, who are you people? And we we're like, we're just guys trying to figure this out. We're oil and gas guys and our design was better than anybody's. Our manufacturing process was better than anybody's. And I remember thinking to myself like, look at what oil and gas ingenuity just must have thought was able to do in such a short time there where we weren't even in that world, you know, until COVID happened.

[00:25:51] Chris Combs: Right.

[00:25:51] Josh Lowrey: And all of a sudden, a year later we're the largest in the entire United States. Yeah. Building the medical manufacturing for medical equipment. So it does not surprise me that what you just said is absolutely the case. Yeah. There is a different requirement that, that scar tissue, whatever you wanna call it mm-hmm.

[00:26:09] Josh Lowrey: That you've clearly come up in. Yeah,

[00:26:09] Chris Combs: I got plenty.

[00:26:10] Josh Lowrey: Yeah. Well you've covered with a nice coat today. Um, but there is a different. Yeah. Mindset, you know, hustle, whatever the word. Pick the exact word we're looking for here. Yeah.

[00:26:20] Chris Combs: Tenacity.

[00:26:21] Josh Lowrey: It just doesn't exist. Yeah. They're really smart people in other industries.

[00:26:24] Josh Lowrey: A hundred

[00:26:24] Chris Combs: percent.

[00:26:24] Josh Lowrey: But they don't have, like if your phone rings at 2:00 AM you are getting it.

[00:26:29] Chris Combs: Oh yeah.

[00:26:29] Josh Lowrey: Yeah. If their phone rings at 2:00 AM I'm unavailable till Monday.

[00:26:32] Chris Combs: Yeah. It's, it's a mindset, it's a mentality. It's something that just ends up, honestly, it's, you know, I hate to say something corny, but it just kinda gets in your blood that very mentality and you've had to struggle through the famine cycles.

[00:26:45] Chris Combs: Yeah. And it's like, Hey, you said it best, you gotta do more with less. Um, and that's just something we've gotten kind of good at.

[00:26:53] Josh Lowrey: I actually, that makes me very proud when I really hear that out loud like that, that you guys are dominating the way I would hope and think that oil and gas guys and girls, just the industry mm-hmm.

[00:27:02] Josh Lowrey: Would in a world that they didn't even really have to service two years ago.

[00:27:06] Chris Combs: Right.

[00:27:06] Josh Lowrey: Yeah. Love that. Look at any questions they've given me. It's

[00:27:10] Chris Combs: a lot.

[00:27:11] Josh Lowrey: I mean, listen, it's so many. This is going well. We're

[00:27:14] Chris Combs: really reaching on some of those.

[00:27:19] Josh Lowrey: Oh, isn our podcast the best.

[00:27:21] Chris Combs: This is awesome.

[00:27:22] Josh Lowrey: Yeah. Like, because if there's a

[00:27:23] Chris Combs: podcast.

[00:27:24] Josh Lowrey: Exactly. It's just amazing. That's thought

[00:27:25] Chris Combs: we were just hanging out.

[00:27:25] Josh Lowrey: It We are. I always tell, you know, off, off air, I always tell people like, look, people can, there's a hundred podcasts out there. Everyone has a podcast.

[00:27:32] Josh Lowrey: This is the best, obviously. But you know, you have 30 minutes with somebody on their way to work at the gym. We don't have, I'm not Joe Rogan. I don't have three hours to talk about Yeah. Aliens. And I like Joe Rogan, but come on. So this is like what you're describing. There's a, I want people to get the technical side of you because there's so much they need to learn.

[00:27:53] Josh Lowrey: There really is. I'm looking at this notes, it's like, what do I, what do people need to know? I mean, I'm asking that.

[00:27:59] Chris Combs: Yeah.

[00:28:00] Josh Lowrey: This is a broad question. This is your podcast now,

[00:28:02] Chris Combs: Chris. No, it's, it's, it's, it's, I'm, I'm gonna take over. Thank you. I'm just kidding. No, um, I, you know, I think for your listeners, it's, it's.

[00:28:09] Chris Combs: You know, every time, here's a good perspective. We used to go in, we used to say, Hey, I'm gonna Google this. Like, we don't say that anymore. Hey, I'm gonna use, you know, Claude or Chad, GPT, I'm gonna chat GPT this or whatever the case might be. Right? Like that's becoming very common. Yeah. Vernacular.

[00:28:24] Josh Lowrey: My son's not Googling anything.

[00:28:25] Chris Combs: Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. And but, but if you look at it from just a, a, a comparative perspective, it takes one x of power when you Google something and now when you use AI 12 to 15 x,

[00:28:37] Josh Lowrey: does it really?

[00:28:38] Chris Combs: Oh yeah. That's, I mean, power demand is very real. That's why it's able to do some of the things that it's able to do.

[00:28:44] Josh Lowrey: That's a really, I did not understand that. Oh, yeah. One of the things I heard was stop asking, stop putting please into your que dear, dear chap.

[00:28:53] Chris Combs: It responds to it though.

[00:28:54] Josh Lowrey: Well, but it almost

[00:28:55] Chris Combs: like a person

[00:28:55] Josh Lowrey: and it says, you know, please find me X, Y, Z. And what it does is it, it has to change its model to respond differently.

[00:29:02] Josh Lowrey: Then you're just like, find me X.

[00:29:03] Chris Combs: Yeah.

[00:29:04] Josh Lowrey: And I thought, okay, well, I won't waste energy on the pleas. And you're telling me that if I Google find me, you know, X widget?

[00:29:12] Chris Combs: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:12] Josh Lowrey: There's one X, but if it's on chat, it's 12 x the energy.

[00:29:16] Chris Combs: Yeah. 'cause think about it. It's, it's, you know, what's, what's the best rated, you know, whatever Thai food restaurant within five miles, like Google is gonna look at every word that you typed and it's gonna hopefully give you what you asked for.

[00:29:30] Chris Combs: However, if you did that inside of one of the AI platforms, it's gonna go, yeah, within five miles it's this. But if you wanna look at a seven and a half mile radi is, here's some more. And the best rated one is actually eight miles away. And it's just gonna give you far more than you ever really wanted.

[00:29:47] Chris Combs: But as you begin reading it, you're, you didn't even know you wanted that. But now you're utilizing all that information and

[00:29:53] Josh Lowrey: I wanna hear more about that. Yeah. I really, it blows my mind.

[00:29:56] Chris Combs: Yeah. Yeah. And that's why we've seen, you know. We've seen these data centers call it a year ago, you know, a 50 megawatt data center.

[00:30:04] Chris Combs: Everybody was just kind of throwing their arms up, you know, in, uh, in mass chaos. And now you don't even see 50 megawatt data centers getting announced, really. I mean, everything from 500 megawatts, 600 megawatts, 1.3, 2.3, the, the, you know, Oracle Volta grid deal, right? Um, 2.3 gigawatts, gigawatts, right? Um, I mean, these deals are getting massive.

[00:30:28] Chris Combs: So that just continues to lend itself toward, everybody's gonna be, you know, really kind of keeping their eyes on that part of the market and, uh, it just continues to go up.

[00:30:38] Josh Lowrey: So, um, typically I'm more professional in this, and I don't let the guest in on my exact questioning, but I'm gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna go to, I, I wanna touch on that and then go back to this in a second.

[00:30:49] Josh Lowrey: But one of the questions I have is the data center and new demand, but I, I wanna go back to the demand here. And why? Remember we talked off air grid versus behind the meter. Mm-hmm. So you, I'm gonna give you all this and you tell me where you wanna go with this question. Sure. So hearing more about grid limitations, especially in places like the perimeter data for data centers, how big is the constraint?

[00:31:11] Josh Lowrey: Or how real is that, I should say? Um, are we at the point where infrastructure limitations are shaping where investment happens? And do you, do you see distributed power as a permanent solution or a bridge? That's po That's subject one. Mm-hmm. Ready? Subject two. You mentioned, uh, we talked about expansion of the data centers and digital infrastructure.

[00:31:30] Josh Lowrey: How similar are those, uh, challenges powered by the compared to the oil field? Is the energy industry prepared for the scale of demand? And what do you see as the biggest gap between growth and power available?

[00:31:42] Chris Combs: Okay,

[00:31:42] Josh Lowrey: so see, that's a lot, but I feel like those are really connected to each other.

[00:31:45] Chris Combs: They, they are.

[00:31:46] Chris Combs: They definitely are. So back to the first one. Um, yeah, so when you, when you look at the US utility infrastructure, it just wasn't prepared for this onslaught, right? I mean, um, it, it's a fun fact. Just to replace current existing transmission lines, we would need to replace about 5,000 miles per year in, in the us in the continental US 2023, we built 151 miles.

[00:32:09] Josh Lowrey: I mean, we're dead, we're dead meat on this stuff then. Yeah.

[00:32:12] Chris Combs: A hundred

[00:32:12] Josh Lowrey: percent. So the grid's not gonna catch up.

[00:32:14] Chris Combs: It's not going to, and it's, and it's really by no fault of their plus like utility interconnect times they take, they can take 1, 2, 3 years. I mean, just to even get the permits. That's a

[00:32:25] Josh Lowrey: really

[00:32:25] Chris Combs: interesting stat

[00:32:25] Josh Lowrey: right

[00:32:26] Chris Combs: there.

[00:32:26] Chris Combs: Oh, no, no, no. But listen to this one though. Okay. That's why, you know, some of these PPAs, that onsite generation guys. Such as nitrogen or what's PPA to, uh, purchase a power purchase agreement. Okay. Just, yep. So when we started this, it was five, seven years, which coming from oil and gas, golden, it's an eternity.

[00:32:44] Chris Combs: Yeah.

[00:32:44] Josh Lowrey: You can't even imagine that it's an eternity. 18 months, I'd be thrilled. Right.

[00:32:47] Chris Combs: And, and you know, the latest stat I heard was, you know, and this is backed up by people with PPAs that have contracts for data centers 12 to 15 months. And I can tell you a lot of the pricing, like the commercial packages we, we send out to customers Right.

[00:33:02] Chris Combs: We give them, we give them a 20 year option. That's always part of it. And nobody's balking at it. Right. It's moving that way. And so I would tell you it just 'cause

[00:33:11] Josh Lowrey: they don't think it's gonna catch up for them in time. They have to have their stuff no matter

[00:33:14] Chris Combs: what. And yeah. And your phrasing was right on.

[00:33:16] Chris Combs: Is it becoming more of a permanent solution? The answer is yes. Yeah, it is. And uh, uh, because, you know, one, you've got so many different things that are happening out in the ecosphere. Um, is that the right word to use? Should I say atmosphere?

[00:33:30] Josh Lowrey: No. Ethos? Yes.

[00:33:31] Chris Combs: Okay. All right. So we can use that, um, such as ethos.

[00:33:34] Chris Combs: Yeah. You know, senate bill six, which can curtail any data center. If you've got power over 75 megawatts, you have to declare it and the grid can turn you down at any point. If they start looking at having a problem, like how big of a mutiny would it be in, in Midland, Texas, if it's middle of June, everybody's got their ear on 68.

[00:33:54] Chris Combs: Yeah. And if they're looking at a blackout, guess what happens? Probably rightly so. They're gonna turn that 200 megawatt data center down, right? I'm gonna say you're only getting a hundred, so I hope you've got onsite generation right as plan B. And the other thing it opens 'em up to do though, is that that's not being used.

[00:34:10] Chris Combs: These guys with this onsite generation that they've invested into or signed these agreements with, they can now push back power to the grid and offset their cost and enhance, uh, the ability for the grid to have additional power available.

[00:34:23] Josh Lowrey: So I, we're gonna go to the second part here.

[00:34:25] Chris Combs: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:26] Josh Lowrey: I lived in California after college.

[00:34:28] Josh Lowrey: While you were slamming it down here in Houston. I was living in la

[00:34:30] Chris Combs: yeah.

[00:34:31] Josh Lowrey: And, uh, it was great, but there used to be thing called brownouts.

[00:34:36] Chris Combs: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:37] Josh Lowrey: Do you remember hearing about this?

[00:34:38] Chris Combs: Oh, yeah.

[00:34:38] Josh Lowrey: There's actually, I can't

[00:34:39] Chris Combs: remember. Remember I was stationed in California.

[00:34:41] Josh Lowrey: Oh, really?

[00:34:41] Chris Combs: In the Marine Corps? Yeah.

[00:34:42] Josh Lowrey: Oh, yeah.

[00:34:42] Josh Lowrey: So, yeah, I did actually know that. Yep. You and Mac Mass. Yeah. Um, but I can't remember the name of the company. It was actually based here in Houston that was doing the, the turbines in it doesn't matter. But a brownout, as you remember, was interesting. Like all of a sudden in the middle of the day, they're like, between noon and two, you have, you're gonna have 30% of the power.

[00:35:04] Chris Combs: Yeah.

[00:35:05] Josh Lowrey: And you're like, what? Okay, what does that mean? I'll never forget looking at my computer screen one day, and all of a sudden the full screen just shrunk down. It didn't disappear, it didn't turn off. It just went to from a, let's call it a 16 inch screen to a foreign screen. And it kept the ratio perfectly, but it did not, and all the lights went brown and you couldn't see now that the screen was like this.

[00:35:27] Josh Lowrey: Right. So your lights basically went off, your screen, went to four inches, and you had to sit like that for two hours.

[00:35:33] Chris Combs: Yeah.

[00:35:34] Josh Lowrey: Until you, until you, the rolling brown outs happened. And, and then you'd get your power back.

[00:35:39] Chris Combs: Right.

[00:35:40] Josh Lowrey: And that was 25 years ago, 26 years ago. And people would have no idea what that looked like today.

[00:35:48] Chris Combs: Right.

[00:35:48] Josh Lowrey: This is California.

[00:35:49] Chris Combs: Right.

[00:35:50] Josh Lowrey: If you think that's not gonna move. Its way, this way with the x number of millions of people moving into the south.

[00:35:56] Chris Combs: Oh yeah.

[00:35:56] Josh Lowrey: That they're not ready, the grid is not ready for this.

[00:35:58] Chris Combs: Nope.

[00:35:59] Josh Lowrey: So.

[00:36:00] Chris Combs: Well, and you look at it too, I mean, like today, you know, data center power represents about 5% of, of the US power demand Uhhuh.

[00:36:07] Chris Combs: And by 2030. A a lot of people will tell you it's gonna be closer to like 15%.

[00:36:12] Josh Lowrey: Well, I actually saw some worse stats than that.

[00:36:15] Chris Combs: Okay.

[00:36:15] Josh Lowrey: Yeah, yeah,

[00:36:15] Chris Combs: yeah. Depends on Yeah. Who's where,

[00:36:17] Josh Lowrey: right. I just read some stuff last week and you know, like Virginia is the data center capital of the world right now. Correct.

[00:36:22] Chris Combs: 10%.

[00:36:22] Chris Combs: Yeah.

[00:36:23] Josh Lowrey: But they're in some trouble because they don't have the power. Like it's, let's say theirs is at 15% now data centers take by the 2030 number. I think that goes to something like 30% of their overall power is gonna data centers.

[00:36:35] Chris Combs: Yeah. That's

[00:36:35] Josh Lowrey: a

[00:36:35] Chris Combs: Virginia's full,

[00:36:36] Josh Lowrey: that's a lot of power to be use for data centers.

[00:36:38] Josh Lowrey: It it is. And you know, and people like lights, people like

[00:36:42] Chris Combs: I'm a fan.

[00:36:43] Josh Lowrey: Yes. People like computers to turn on. Right. They, when that stuff starts happening to them, they're gonna be like, why is this happening? It's really cool right now. 'cause everybody can do a TikTok at all times and it

[00:36:52] Chris Combs: Yeah.

[00:36:52] Josh Lowrey: Goes immediately and the cloud's available.

[00:36:54] Josh Lowrey: I get this, but when your light's not turning on, you're like, stop making a TikTok.

[00:36:58] Chris Combs: Yeah.

[00:36:58] Josh Lowrey: Or whatever. Right?

[00:36:59] Chris Combs: Yeah. No, that's right. And, you know, and that's, and that, that's gonna. That's gonna bring that same deficit's gonna bring itself to here. Especially when you look at places like, uh, west Texas where there's so much gas infrastructure, which makes it very, uh, very attractive to, to install data centers there.

[00:37:15] Chris Combs: Right. You know, remember back in the time when we had EMPS that were flaring gas, right. Just to get rid of it. Right. Well, now that can all be used, I mean, to, you know, whatever degree that can largely be used for, for data center, onsite generation fuel now. Right. So it's opening up the markets even from the oil and gas perspective.

[00:37:34] Josh Lowrey: So they are, I mean that's one of the questions there, is it moving? They're moving to make it where, where that question go here.

[00:37:44] Josh Lowrey: Uh, boy limitations. Yeah. Basically, are they, are they moving data centers specifically for the economics of this and gas, et cetera?

[00:37:56] Chris Combs: So, so that's one guess availability, I should say the critical. Yeah. One of the critical components of, you know, how they do site selection for these data centers are, are all, you know, what's the land cost?

[00:38:07] Chris Combs: Um, mineral rights have to obviously be factored into that, whether that's something you know, they want to take on or not. Um, you look at available water for cooling the chips, you wouldn't believe how much heat these, these chips generate. It's immense. Um, you look at, uh, environmental regulations, is this an attainment zone or a non-attainment zone?

[00:38:27] Chris Combs: Non-attainment zones have a much more as stringent policy on, on how much, how much emissions you can push, push into the atmosphere, right? So then you have to take additional, uh, precautions or additional measures or additional technologies to be able to, to meet whatever those, uh, those, those thresholds are.

[00:38:46] Chris Combs: Um, you look at natural gas infrastructure, you look at all these different components, you know, as you begin to think about. Where we're gonna put this data center at. Right. But Nat Gas is one that I think people kind of take for granted. They say, Hey, we're gonna do this and we're gonna, you know, put this data center here.

[00:39:04] Chris Combs: And the first question we ask is, what's, what's the gas pipeline look like? Who's it with? How much available gas do they have? Is it enough? Is this a, you're gonna have to contract that gas immediately. Otherwise there's other people that are looking at it for data center usage. So that, I would say that's probably one of our first questions is, is do you have, do you have security on gas

[00:39:26] Josh Lowrey: power?

[00:39:27] Chris Combs: Yes. Yeah. Do you have power security on gas? There's no need. Can

[00:39:30] Josh Lowrey: you do me a favor and give the audience, um, listen, we're, this is just new to a lot of people, like behind the meter, b tm, you might hear it called. Mm-hmm. Um, GR grid. I don't think we touched risk to

[00:39:41] Chris Combs: grid,

[00:39:42] Josh Lowrey: so we talked off air on this stuff.

[00:39:43] Josh Lowrey: Right. We haven't touched on the beginning of this. Can you give the audience example of, or just explain to them. What all that really looks like. And then where exactly you guys fit into this.

[00:39:52] Chris Combs: Yeah. Yeah. So, so for the power as a service guys or the behind the meter guys such as nitrogen, um, you know, we, we meet with the, uh, we meet with the developers or the hyperscalers and we really kind of engineer a solution for them.

[00:40:07] Chris Combs: So we get a load profile from them is usually one of the first things we try to get secured. And that way we know we can build out the perfect design, right? So we know the core power is gonna be, uh, reciprocating engines or turbines, and then we know we're gonna have to build out something to handle how much the load's going to swing.

[00:40:27] Chris Combs: Is it a hundred percent down to, 'cause like you'll be at a hundred percent when, when you're in learning mode, right? And then when that data center is just in query mode, which is just me and you going, Hey, where's the best Thai food at, within five miles or whatnot, please.

[00:40:41] Josh Lowrey: Right.

[00:40:42] Chris Combs: Um, you know. Uh, that that is gonna drop it down to, you know, sometimes as low as like 35, 40%, it might be 60%.

[00:40:50] Chris Combs: They're all different, right? And that's why I say there's no one solution that fits for everybody. You've gotta know all these things. Some companies will say, Nope, we are dead set. We want nothing but recepts. Or We want nothing but turbines. Okay, well that's gonna come with delivery issues. Turbines, right now, I would say take probably a year longer than Recepts to get.

[00:41:11] Chris Combs: Yep. Um, they take a whole lot more load balancing, but they're also very tried and true. And gas turbines have been used for decades, uh, you know, in the industrial markets. So some people haven't gravitated toward the recepts yet. It's happening at a pretty fast pace. Um, so you look at those people, well,

[00:41:30] Josh Lowrey: I mean, I don't think your demand.

[00:41:32] Chris Combs: Oh, yeah, yeah. At some point you just kinda have to go, Hey, I like X, but I'm gonna take Y.

[00:41:36] Josh Lowrey: Right,

[00:41:37] Chris Combs: right.

[00:41:37] Josh Lowrey: I'd like to look like you today, but I don't,

[00:41:40] Chris Combs: I don't have your socks. Matter of fact, I have no socks.

[00:41:42] Josh Lowrey: I know.

[00:41:42] Chris Combs: So now I'm just showing hand

[00:41:43] Josh Lowrey: lines.

[00:41:43] Chris Combs: Look,

[00:41:43] Josh Lowrey: I didn't mean to take you off, but No,

[00:41:45] Chris Combs: that's okay.

[00:41:45] Josh Lowrey: But I mean, look, I, there is a matter of like, you want something, but what can I have?

[00:41:50] Josh Lowrey: And I feel like there's a lot of, you know, there, I, I'm not gonna say their name, but they just announced an acquisition. You, you may know exactly what they announced it at the Vegas conference where for the first time in that purchase?

[00:42:01] Chris Combs: Yeah.

[00:42:01] Josh Lowrey: They purchased a large, at a premium number, number one, and number two, the first time that they went off of their current, uh, generator.

[00:42:11] Josh Lowrey: And it's because we need it.

[00:42:13] Chris Combs: D demand. Uh, yeah.

[00:42:14] Josh Lowrey: Demand demanded

[00:42:15] Chris Combs: it. Demand, yeah. Demand demanded it. Yep. That's phrase of the day right there. Right. And, and that's the biggest constraint that we run into. It. It's all equipment and there's this long sales cycle. When you think about onsite power gen road data center, just all the components of it.

[00:42:29] Chris Combs: It's, it's a long deal.

[00:42:30] Josh Lowrey: So real quick, and we, we both who we're talking about on that, like, that's not a co competitive view guys though, is it?

[00:42:35] Chris Combs: Uh, not, not exactly.

[00:42:38] Josh Lowrey: Yeah. 'cause I feel

[00:42:39] Chris Combs: like there's some ways, in some ways there's more. Yeah, there is, it's, it's, you might even say there's some synergies there, uh, potentially.

[00:42:45] Chris Combs: Right. But

[00:42:45] Josh Lowrey: everybody, I feel like this is a world where it is may maybe demand is making strange bedfellows type type situation where a

[00:42:54] Chris Combs: hundred percent

[00:42:54] Josh Lowrey: Yeah.

[00:42:54] Chris Combs: The sandbox is huge and there's plenty of sand for

[00:42:57] Josh Lowrey: really

[00:42:57] Chris Combs: for us all to, oh yeah. It's, I, you know, that's, um, I, I won't name 'em, but you know, we talk pretty regularly and we say, Hey.

[00:43:06] Chris Combs: As you know, if I get something I can't handle, I'll, I'm bringing it to you.

[00:43:09] Josh Lowrey: Just 'cause we, it's not our thing. And this will be good for you guys.

[00:43:12] Chris Combs: Yeah. And maybe it's too, too little, too big. Maybe it's just can't get engines, can't get equipment, can't get, you know, whatever component and certain component here that's gonna be required for you to be successful.

[00:43:24] Chris Combs: Right. And I'd say, so

[00:43:26] Josh Lowrey: if you're going to the data center manufacturer, the hyperscale builders, what, what, what are those guys like to work with?

[00:43:32] Chris Combs: Uh, from a technology platform?

[00:43:34] Josh Lowrey: Yeah, I mean just, just in general. 'cause I feel like that's a new market for everybody.

[00:43:38] Chris Combs: It, it is. I, you know, I'd, I'd say we still see a pretty strong mix of both if you're talking about turbines.

[00:43:44] Chris Combs: It's interesting. So, I'll, I'll give a shameless plug here. Um, I'm speaking at a conference, uh, in Miami later this month. And, and the topic is turbines or resets and, you know, given a, I've got a bandwidth. In both of those platforms, I think maybe is why they'd asked me to do it. But, uh, um, so it's becoming a real thing though, right?

[00:44:05] Chris Combs: I mean, obviously if that wasn't a hot topic, you know, they wouldn't be putting panels together. Sure. And, and, and, uh, sessions on it. Um, so I, I would say it's, it was gas turbines a number of years ago. Uh, Volta Grid did some great things to really change the adoption rate of reciprocating engines, which again, it all goes back to never, it'll never work.

[00:44:27] Chris Combs: Well, it's now working, right? Right. So, um, so I think there's just a mix and now it's becoming, what do you got? What can you get by x date? Right? And that's, that's really what the driving factor isn't. That crazy factor is, that's crazy to me. I know it's, uh, uh, you know, wild, wild west. Um, yeah. I mean, and that's the biggest constraints.

[00:44:48] Chris Combs: So again, we, you know, we talk to the OEMs more than we talk to customers, and

[00:44:52] Josh Lowrey: the OEM is a hyperscale. Data center manufacturer. That's what you're

[00:44:56] Chris Combs: calling, uh, engine manufacturer. So, okay. The OM you think, think, you know, cat yellow engines, MTUS? Yeah. Uh, uh, you know, EEO yba, um,

[00:45:06] Josh Lowrey: you're just gonna hear a bunch of beeps at the end of this.

[00:45:08] Chris Combs: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

[00:45:09] Josh Lowrey: Cat beep, beep,

[00:45:10] Chris Combs: beep, beep, beep. Yeah. Yeah. Yellow engines. Yeah. That's, uh, that's one way to get around it,

[00:45:16] Josh Lowrey: right?

[00:45:17] Chris Combs: Yellow, blue, green. Um, I, so do you want me to start over?

[00:45:21] Josh Lowrey: No shit. No, these guys are awesome, dude.

[00:45:23] Chris Combs: Okay. Gotcha.

[00:45:23] Josh Lowrey: Gotcha, gotcha. But listen, they, caterpillar is, again, they're, they're so big.

[00:45:28] Chris Combs: Yeah.

[00:45:28] Josh Lowrey: They, they understand. Like, I always tell people like, if you, if you are as good as you are, then host everybody.

[00:45:34] Chris Combs: Yeah.

[00:45:34] Josh Lowrey: Because at some level you are the thought generator.

[00:45:38] Chris Combs: Yep.

[00:45:38] Josh Lowrey: And Caterpillar is, I mean, they're, they touch everything. And what, we had one of the first guests on here, he was a, uh, he started in mining and now he's running an oil and gas division, right?

[00:45:49] Chris Combs: Mm-hmm.

[00:45:49] Josh Lowrey: And you realize like none of this gets solved alone. No one person or idea is gonna solve this. And it requires the understanding of the whole, like there's, i I, my friends in Dallas, I talked to these guys, there's a lot of balls floating in the air and it's how do you collect these balls of information, organize them, and go to a straight shot?

[00:46:10] Josh Lowrey: Because ultimately, just like the oil and gas industry, I think, I think o and G did an awesome j awesome job of really rephrasing, or repositioning is probably a better way to say what they really do. They are there to make sure that in a hospital when your mother's in surgery, that the power stays on so that surgery can be complete.

[00:46:28] Chris Combs: Right?

[00:46:29] Josh Lowrey: Right. It's not just so, you know, the car can go a hundred miles an hour or whatever. Right. They're doing, they're literally saving lives. The life expectancy rate has gone up because of oil and gas and energy business and you know, caterpillar and you know, Chris Combs and the other guys out there.

[00:46:45] Josh Lowrey: There's no, there's always a world of like, look, I'm, there's gonna be another Chris Combs. It was before me will be afterwards. Yeah. So all we can do right now is the best job that we can do right now.

[00:46:57] Chris Combs: That's right.

[00:46:58] Josh Lowrey: That's right. And then that's, and there's other, there's other young people. You have a 15-year-old son.

[00:47:02] Josh Lowrey: Yeah. Right. I mean, your job is to make sure that he's great. That's right. And he has what he needs for the future.

[00:47:06] Chris Combs: There's, there's future people out there that have that serial entrepreneurial bug that, uh, has caused a lot of the scar tissue that you and I have talked about. Correct. And they were here before.

[00:47:15] Chris Combs: The best thing I think we can do is, is try to, you know, uh, leave it to them as best we can,

[00:47:20] Josh Lowrey: you know, and back to your friends at Evolution and our friends at Evolution, like that was a, I remember them getting hammered. Uh, by the industry. 'cause it just looks so unique.

[00:47:29] Chris Combs: Oh yeah.

[00:47:29] Josh Lowrey: I've got my friends up in Oklahoma with curb pump.

[00:47:31] Josh Lowrey: Right?

[00:47:31] Chris Combs: How are you gonna spin a frack pump with an electric motor? It'll never

[00:47:35] Josh Lowrey: work. How are you gonna get it there?

[00:47:36] Chris Combs: Yeah.

[00:47:36] Josh Lowrey: You know what I mean? I remember that being a big deal. How are you gonna get it to site?

[00:47:40] Chris Combs: How are you gonna put 6,000 horsepower on, on one on one trailer and be able to actually use all of it too?

[00:47:45] Chris Combs: Well,

[00:47:46] Josh Lowrey: these things are spinning. What happens when it, it hits the wrong bump. Right? It never rea like those are crazy questions that, that people identified and solve those issues. And, you know, and here what that, that forward thinking did was, look, it kept people safe. It's take, you know, people have been repositioned on the job site.

[00:48:01] Josh Lowrey: Oh yeah. There's been prices of gas caused

[00:48:02] Chris Combs: a shift

[00:48:03] Josh Lowrey: shift. There you go. So, no, the caterpillar is bigger than, like, they're not afraid. They understand what's going on. Oh, a

[00:48:10] Chris Combs: hundred percent.

[00:48:10] Josh Lowrey: And, and same with you. Like, dude, we got good, I have great competitors. I don't know who they are, but I'm sure they're fine people.

[00:48:15] Josh Lowrey: Mm-hmm. So, um. Anyway, I could go on this for well, a while.

[00:48:20] Chris Combs: Well, and, and I'll even dovetail something onto that. You know, it's, it's been interesting because, you know, caterpillar and, and others. Yes. Um, I guess in fairness, you know, they want to develop partnerships, right. Um, you know, they want to visit with us and see what our needs look like and what our customers needs look like.

[00:48:35] Chris Combs: So we can work together to, to create that solution together, right? To be able to say, Hey, this is what they're looking for. Your, your ex company, your ex logo with, right? You know, that color engine, you know, you guys have a mountain of engineering, correct. At your, at your fingertips. Let us feed you some inputs and let's work together and figure this out.

It's

[00:48:55] Josh Lowrey: funny you bring, that's a great way. We're gonna segue here in just a second. But, you know, they're a hundred years old this year, and they, and I ask the guys, I'm like, well, how do you go from a hundred to to 200? And they, all of them who they live in different towns have basically said, yeah, no, no. We don't view it like that.

[00:49:12] Josh Lowrey: It we're starting over.

[00:49:14] Chris Combs: Oh.

[00:49:15] Josh Lowrey: You know, like we're, we're taking the lessons, but it's a new, like, it's a new 100. We're not trying to go to 200. Yeah.

[00:49:20] Chris Combs: Yeah. We're

[00:49:20] Josh Lowrey: trying to go to 1, 1 0 1 2

[00:49:23] Chris Combs: 0.0 is coming.

[00:49:24] Josh Lowrey: Correct. Right. And you're doing that by going to customers and saying, what do you need?

[00:49:28] Chris Combs: Yeah.

[00:49:28] Josh Lowrey: And this guy in, uh, mining actually, he understands that.

[00:49:31] Josh Lowrey: And we're gonna bring him down. And you've got somebody that used to work in turbines, we're gonna bring him over. And, and it, it's really incredible that I'm just telling you that the average person, I hope they listen. This has been a great podcast. I hope they listen to this to really understand what shift is actually happening for everyone.

[00:49:49] Chris Combs: Yeah.

[00:49:50] Josh Lowrey: In our, in the world.

[00:49:51] Chris Combs: No one's unaffected. No one's unaffected by this AI is, uh, AI is very real.

[00:49:58] Josh Lowrey: I asked my, I've got one more story. Yeah. I promise I'll go back to you. Thank you for having me on your podcast today, Chris. Um, I asked my grandparents, my, my grandfather was my best man at my wedding, so I was very close to my grandparents growing up.

[00:50:09] Josh Lowrey: Mm-hmm. And I asked them however many years ago, my grandmother's still alive. 98. Wow. And I, I said, grandma and grandpa, I go, what is the most incredible thing you've ever seen in your entire life? Like, was it the landing on the moon? Was it, you know, like, did they see airplanes take off for the first time?

[00:50:25] Josh Lowrey: You know, I kind of went through all these, you know, world War ii, my grandfather served all the different things that he'd seen along the way in his 95 years before he passed. And without missing a split second, they didn't even have to think about it. Both of them said the tv.

[00:50:41] Chris Combs: Oh wow.

[00:50:42] Josh Lowrey: They said the television.

[00:50:43] Chris Combs: Yeah.

[00:50:43] Josh Lowrey: They said, you cannot imagine how crazy it was to see the first TV. And they go, all of a sudden there was just this box that was, had a person's face on it,

[00:50:53] Chris Combs: black and white. Fuzzy as be.

[00:50:54] Josh Lowrey: Absolutely. And there was one in the whole town.

[00:50:56] Chris Combs: But, but it changed everything

[00:50:57] Josh Lowrey: and, and you think about like, and I've never forgotten, like to them the moon was secondary to a television.

[00:51:04] Chris Combs: To the tv.

[00:51:04] Josh Lowrey: Yes. Yeah. You know, if you really think about what changed their world on, and you think about media, how that influenced people and the family unit, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:51:13] Chris Combs: Right.

[00:51:14] Josh Lowrey: The, I would've said the biggest thing in my life up to this point was, and I'm born in the late seventies, was the internet.

[00:51:19] Josh Lowrey: Mm-hmm. I thought the internet was, when I first saw it, I couldn't believe what it was.

[00:51:24] Chris Combs: I think that's everybody from our era's answer,

[00:51:27] Josh Lowrey: except for now.

[00:51:28] Chris Combs: Yeah. It's changing.

[00:51:29] Josh Lowrey: This is going to change everything.

[00:51:30] Chris Combs: Yeah.

[00:51:31] Josh Lowrey: This is gonna influence, like there are humanoid robots coming, ai, AI there. That's going to happen.

[00:51:36] Chris Combs: Yeah.

[00:51:37] Josh Lowrey: There are different jobs that don't exist today that because of ai, so this is where, you know, when, when I'm kind of doing the Josh Lowrey routine of, you know, the iceberg is coming, I'm doing this as loud as I can to my friends in the industry. Say, Hey, pay attention. This is not your, this is not a normal thing.

[00:51:53] Josh Lowrey: That's just right. In addition to.

[00:51:55] Chris Combs: Yeah. This is, this is not something that's gonna pass by.

[00:51:57] Josh Lowrey: It's not

[00:51:58] Chris Combs: No, not at all.

[00:51:59] Josh Lowrey: This is the TV of my grandparents is what I really believe.

[00:52:02] Chris Combs: Yeah,

[00:52:02] Josh Lowrey: yeah,

[00:52:02] Chris Combs: yeah, yeah. And, and did I ever think we'd see this, this, you know, fifth industrial revolution? I, I didn't see it coming.

[00:52:08] Josh Lowrey: That's a cool thing. You're

[00:52:09] Chris Combs: right. Um, you know, and that's, uh, you know, at that point, I think Skynet's just gonna go live and, no, I'm just kidding. We'll have to take that one out. Sorry, I had to, sorry. That's, uh, but, um, do you want

[00:52:21] Josh Lowrey: that out? Really? I mean, oh

[00:52:23] Chris Combs: yeah. We, you want me to do it again?

[00:52:25] Josh Lowrey: No. Okay. No, unless you say something.

[00:52:27] Josh Lowrey: If you hear it, you're like, take that out. No, by the way, audience,

[00:52:30] Chris Combs: I didn't think you would actually even let me, uh, even keep that in there. That's why I kind of just did it low underground.

[00:52:34] Josh Lowrey: Oh, no, we're joking with you. So I've got a question here. Mm-hmm. Um, the, they, they got a couple things here because I really want two things from you.

[00:52:42] Josh Lowrey: I need you to do a little bit of forecasting.

[00:52:44] Chris Combs: Okay.

[00:52:44] Josh Lowrey: And you don't have to forecast. Numbers, but I'd like to know one of the questions, if you look five to 10 years ahead, what is the standard energy, it's standard in quotes, energy model, look for, look like for high demand users? And do you believe that we're moving towards a meet more decentralized energy system?

[00:52:59] Josh Lowrey: And how does electric nitrogen play in that? Basically, how does GY play? What does the average user look like? Give me a five year scope of where you think this is going. Tens too far. Give me five.

[00:53:11] Chris Combs: Yeah, yeah. No, I agree. Uh, you know, five years from now, um, US infrastructure for electricity is, is gonna be, I think, in even more poor shape than it is.

[00:53:22] Chris Combs: Oh, okay. Because you look at it, look at the rate at which data centers are coming online and that that counts everything. Is it colocators? Is it AI data centers, is it, you know, just cloud, uh, data centers? Like, it doesn't matter. It, the fact is it all requires power. And at a public utility level, we don't have it.

[00:53:42] Chris Combs: Not necessarily the utility's fault. It, they, it just, it wasn't prepared for this type of onset. Correct. So the only thing we can do now is, and, and I think people get a little bit, you know, clouded because they go, Hey, we've got this load letter from, you know, again, pick your logo of, I, I don't wanna call anybody out.

[00:53:58] Chris Combs: Sure. You know, um, and then they, they bank on that, but there's no teeth in these, these load letters. So at that point, they get a revision. They go, Hey, we will have grid power here in, you know, 3, 5, 7, 10 years. And then they get this revision that says, Hey, guess what? You're getting about half of that. Right.

[00:54:18] Chris Combs: And I'm, I'm just making up, I understand Yeah. Scenarios, but hey, you're, you're gonna get 75% of that and it's gonna be a year after what we, what we told you, and there's nothing you can do about it. Correct. So the best thing they can do is invest in something that's gonna guarantee that they're gonna get that power there, which is where behind the meter power comes in.

[00:54:33] Chris Combs: Not, you know, I'd love to say, yeah, that's where nitrogen comes in. But I'll, I'll, I'll be broad and say that's where behind the meter generation comes. Yeah,

[00:54:41] Josh Lowrey: it's a shame I didn't have any money when you guys started this business. 'cause this sounds like it's gonna blow up. Dude, this is incredible.

[00:54:46] Chris Combs: I asked you,

[00:54:47] Josh Lowrey: we no, I You must have missed the first part of that sentence.

[00:54:53] Chris Combs: Uh, but yeah, no, it's, it's, uh oh. It's, it's it, no, I caught that. I didn't have any money at the time for it. Um,

[00:55:01] Josh Lowrey: I am proud of you guys though. It's incredible. It's, I see how

[00:55:03] Chris Combs: hard

[00:55:03] Josh Lowrey: you are all over the place.

[00:55:04] Chris Combs: I'm, it's, it's, you know what though? It's, and here's the catch at, at my age.

[00:55:10] Josh Lowrey: Don't talk like that.

[00:55:11] Chris Combs: Yeah.

[00:55:12] Chris Combs: Well, okay. And, and me not being in my forties anymore, are you? I say that. No, I'm 52.

[00:55:17] Josh Lowrey: You look great. Oh, God bless you. That coat does wonders.

[00:55:20] Chris Combs: It's the coat.

[00:55:21] Josh Lowrey: Yeah. It's gotta be the coat.

[00:55:22] Chris Combs: Yep. Yep. It's the coat. Totally. It's uh, it takes, yeah, it distracts people. They look at the coat and not the face. Um, but, you know, at 52, you know, I want to have fun too.

[00:55:31] Chris Combs: Like, it's great to go, you know, we all wanna build something that's, that's fantastic. And we believe in this heart and soul, but we wanna have some fun doing it too. Right. And that's just kind of where I'm at in my career. Like, if we're not having fun, what are we doing?

[00:55:44] Josh Lowrey: Yeah.

[00:55:44] Chris Combs: Right. So that's, that's why I say it's, it's fun to be all over the place, like traveling, you know, as much as I've had to travel and meeting with a lot of great people.

[00:55:52] Chris Combs: Yeah. Um, building those relationships and, and again, it's, it's, I'm learning from everybody that I talk to. Like I want to be the dumbest person in the room. That's my goal. I want to,

[00:56:03] Josh Lowrey: unfortunately today you've lost, but

[00:56:08] Chris Combs: I don't know if that's true, but, uh, that's very kind

[00:56:10] Josh Lowrey: of Yes.

[00:56:10] Chris Combs: Um,

[00:56:11] Josh Lowrey: so before I, I love, I, I actually, this is such a great deal.

[00:56:14] Josh Lowrey: We asked this question and everybody's got good answers, but I would like to know if you, we used to ask this back when David and I were doing O 360. Mm-hmm. He's hijacked this question de road. I love David, but he's like, this is. Now his question. Mm-hmm. Really? Okay.

[00:56:27] Chris Combs: We, we know the talent is.

[00:56:28] Josh Lowrey: Thank you.

[00:56:29] Josh Lowrey: Yeah. Well, that part we might have to delete or I'll come stab you. So if you could give yourself, if there's a lesson, a piece of advice, something you've learned over your career or that you would pass on to somebody that's up and coming young. You know, it's hard to get, we've had, by the way, this has been almost an hour.

[00:56:46] Josh Lowrey: This has been great if somebody could get, so it's very difficult to get an hour of your time, right? And if somebody says, Hey, really enjoyed it, but I want to know something that you think is great, lesson learned, et cetera, is there something that you tell yourself, focus on, have always remembered, et cetera, that's gotten you to where you are today?

[00:57:05] Chris Combs: Don't be afraid of the scar tissue.

[00:57:07] Josh Lowrey: Ooh, I love it.

[00:57:08] Chris Combs: Don't be afraid of the scar tissue. It's, it's gonna happen. And if, and, and look, there's people that, that aren't built to be. Entrepreneurs, and that's not disparagement. You need those people. They are solid, they're, they're steady state people and you have to have those to make a society function.

[00:57:27] Chris Combs: And then you got me, and, and, well, I, I wouldn't say me. You have other people that are gonna go take some bumps and bruises and they're gonna risk it and that are gonna walk into his wife and go, Hey, I have an idea.

[00:57:39] Josh Lowrey: Right.

[00:57:40] Chris Combs: Our liquidity could be gone forever if this doesn't work. But if it does, it's, this is gonna be the, you know, the most incredible thing.

[00:57:47] Chris Combs: It's gonna allow us to, not just as a family, but just to do the things that we want to do in our lives. Um, not at a home level necessarily. Yeah. But, you know, within our community, um, to be able to, to do things for others, to be able to serve others at the end of the day. Right, right. That's, again, that's kind of where I'm at in my life.

[00:58:04] Chris Combs: That's, I've been, you know, the world's been very good to me. And, uh, um, I, I think it's up to us to really kind of give that back,

[00:58:11] Josh Lowrey: man, Chris, there. That is a great way. It, it. You are a great guy. It's fun to be your friend. It's fun to watch you guys succeed. You've been a great sport. Give Well, again, it's hard to root against you or Detmar.

[00:58:23] Chris Combs: I

[00:58:24] Josh Lowrey: appreciate that. And, uh,

[00:58:25] Chris Combs: yeah, Matt's awesome.

[00:58:25] Josh Lowrey: Yes, he is. And I, you know, he would've been fun to have. We we'll have him on later, just Yeah. Yeah. 'cause again, I'm, I'm a huge detmar guy and

[00:58:30] Chris Combs: that guy's twice as busy as I am.

[00:58:33] Josh Lowrey: Oh, he is Got three kids under like five, right? Oh,

[00:58:35] Chris Combs: yeah.

[00:58:36] Josh Lowrey: Yeah. So he's busy and busy

[00:58:37] Chris Combs: and busy.

[00:58:38] Josh Lowrey: Yeah. But truly, I, it is gonna be fun to, to root you on here. Um, if you have anything from us, the show let us know is, did I leave anything out?

[00:58:46] Chris Combs: No. You've been, this is a dominant, you are, you are the premier podcast host. I'm just gonna go ahead and say that.

[00:58:51] Josh Lowrey: No, no, I know,

[00:58:53] Chris Combs: I know. I was, it was an affirmation.

[00:58:56] Josh Lowrey: Yeah. This is, uh, there's people that don't know me and I talk like that, and you can just see the look. They're like, who is this guy? Like, what is he?

[00:59:03] Chris Combs: I I do the same thing and I'll, I'll text somebody something that that's kind of, has that vibe and then I don't put an LOL behind it. Yeah. It's kind of on purpose.

[00:59:10] Chris Combs: Like,

[00:59:10] Josh Lowrey: this is it.

[00:59:10] Chris Combs: It's like, let's see what, yeah, yeah. Let's see what the response is.

[00:59:13] Josh Lowrey: So Caitlyn is producing for us today, Caitlyn, how do you think the show went? Great. Oh, do you hear

[00:59:18] Chris Combs: dynamite drop in Monte?

[00:59:20] Josh Lowrey: So good. Yeah. Um, all right, well this is your la well how do people get ahold of you? What's your website?

[00:59:25] Chris Combs: Uh, yeah, it's, it's uh, Elgen, E-L-E-C-T-R-I-G-E n.io. Oh,

[00:59:32] Josh Lowrey: I like

[00:59:32] Chris Combs: that. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:59:33] Josh Lowrey: By the way, Kevin always tells me Stop doing dot coms. He's like, nobody cares about dot coms.

[00:59:38] Chris Combs: Yeah. I think we sounded very kind of tech savvy when we put the idea.

[00:59:41] Josh Lowrey: Yeah. I think it's great. He would've told you the same thing.

[00:59:43] Chris Combs: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:59:44] Chris Combs: And I can take no credit for it. That was actually Matt's idea.

[00:59:46] Josh Lowrey: Good. Yeah. Well, that's great. Well, if there's nothing else, I'm gonna shut us down.

[00:59:50] Chris Combs: Thank you so much for having me.

[00:59:51] Josh Lowrey: Thank you for coming

[00:59:52] Chris Combs: on. This has really been fantastic. Always great to see you. Always great to see you. Yes. Caitlyn, even more so with you.

[00:59:58] Chris Combs: No, this is

[00:59:59] Josh Lowrey: great. I'm not looking back [01:00:00] at Caitlyn. We're just gonna push through that little compliment, even though Caitlyn is amazing. Um, look, that's gonna wrap up our show today. Thank you for joining us. I hope you guys enjoy this is, you know, you obviously got the understanding that, uh, Chris and I have known each other a long time and there's a lot of respect and truly wish you guys the best of luck.

[01:00:15] Josh Lowrey: If you have any questions, uh, look us up on all of our social media channels. You can either go through Upright Digital or you can go to the website, caterpillar.com/oil and gas. They do, you can imagine a phenomenal job of indexing all of their topics. So there's, there's this topic. There's others. If you have any complaints, send those to Kaitlyn.

[01:00:34] Josh Lowrey: If you have any compliments, send those to me. And actually, unfortunately, I don't read emails. So both of those have to go through Kaitlyn. Um, what else Kaitlyn do I need to talk about?

[01:00:43] Chris Combs: That should be it.

[01:00:44] Josh Lowrey: She says. That's it folks. Chris Comb. Thank you for your time,

[01:00:48] Chris Combs: Josh. Thank you again,

[01:00:49] Josh Lowrey: caterpillar. Thank you for your support.

[01:00:50] Chris Combs: Absolutely.