MV Experts: Daniel Jeager

Daniel Jaeger: Woah. Gotta say that. Gotta say that. I can tell you off the microphone. Okay.

Mario Dealba: I don't know, but it always slings back and smacks my finger. Exactly. American beef, German beef. I love how proud you are when you say the Pfister Schibel.

Daniel Jaeger: Pfister Schibel. Yeah. It's good. A lot of stuff I can tell you. Okay. I cannot. Come on.

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

Daniel Jaeger: Yeah. Thank you, Mario, for having me. First podcast, awesome. Really excited about doing a podcast, especially about Medium Voltage. I like the episodes you did before. I heard a couple of them, so pretty cool. Yeah. My name is Daniel Jaeger. I'm with Pfister. I started back over at Pfister eleven years ago. So I'm at the company quite a quite a while. I was working in Germany for a couple years. And two years ago, I just moved from Germany to The United States to help the team here in The United States to grow the business and especially the C and I, the commercial industrial market with all the renewables and data centers and all that stuff going on. So we're we're going after that and wanna be wanna be get a piece of the cake on that.

Mario Dealba: Nice. Nice. Nice. So if we can back up to Germany. Sure. Because you seem like a young guy. You look young, but you've been doing this for a long time. So eleven years Pfister?

Daniel Jaeger: Eleven years And how do

Mario Dealba: you say it? Is it Pfister? How do you say it properly for Yeah.

Daniel Jaeger: Which actually means baker. Oh. So k. Actually means baker. That's a cool fun fact. Yeah. Yeah. That's the old German word for that. So why the name Pfister? Well, that's the name of the founder of the company. So Pfister actually is a pretty old company. It was founded over a hundred years ago in 1921. K. Third generation currently. Well, we just went public. We did an IPO. Congratulations. Thank you. But most of the shares are still in the family. So we still have the family involved in some sort of that. So it's pretty cool, actually. And, yeah, one fun fact about Pfister, mister Pfister actually lives on the property on one of our factories. So he has a house there. So when you enter the factory oh, no. You've been there.

Mario Dealba: I have.

Daniel Jaeger: Yeah. You gotta pass his house when you enter the factory. That's pretty unique. So it's pretty cool. Yeah.

Mario Dealba: It's very good. Yeah. Very cool. One of the best Wiener Schnitzels I've ever had.

Daniel Jaeger: We had. Yeah.

Mario Dealba: Yeah. The night before we went to the factory. I remember that.

Daniel Jaeger: Yeah. That was cool. Right? Yeah. No. I actually started there eleven years ago. Actually, my journey with Pfister started a little earlier. So I started in 2004, actually. So right after after I dropped out of school after tenth grade. Mhmm. You know, the German school system is a little different. So you can go out after the tenth grade when you're 16 and learn a trade. Mhmm. That's the European or German system. So I I went off school with 16 and learned a trade as an electrician because I grew up on a dairy farm. And my dad was first of all, I said, I wanna be a farmer. But then my dad said, well, go out, learn a trade, looks look for something else. Look what else is on the market. So thanks kudos to him. He never forced us into being a farmer.

Mario Dealba: Your family, correct me if I'm wrong, they're still farming or at least someone is in your family. Right?

Daniel Jaeger: No. We're still farming. You're still are. The farm family is still farming. My sister my dad retired in January '24, and my sister and my brother-in-law took over. So they still have to farm. It's just not a dairy farm anymore. It's like a beef cattle farm, but it's pretty cool that the family farm is still passing down. I think it's the seventh generation now.

Mario Dealba: Okay. So hot mic moment here. Put you on the spot. American beef or German beef?

Daniel Jaeger: German beef. Oh. Gotta say that. Gotta say that. Especially from my sister's farm. Do say beef in German? It's Fleisch. Fleisch. It's black Angus.

Mario Dealba: That's Deutsche Fleisch.

Daniel Jaeger: Yeah. It's black Angus farm. Oh, it is.

Mario Dealba: Black Angus.

Daniel Jaeger: Wow. Pasture raised. So that's all you wanna have.

Mario Dealba: Yum. To make that wiener schnitzel.

Daniel Jaeger: Yeah. And also t bone and tomahawk steaks, stuff like that. Yeah. You can ask my colleagues from Pfister. They've been to my house in Germany, and we did some t bones and tomahawk. It was awesome. That's awesome. So I love I love barbecue. Yeah.

Mario Dealba: Very cool.

Daniel Jaeger: But yeah. And after farming, my dad was like, yeah. Go and learn a trade. So I learned a trade and I I became an electrician and I was actually for three years, the factory maintenance electrician in the Pfister factory in Germany. So I was repairing the machines that broke down and and all that kind of stuff.

Mario Dealba: Where is the factory in Germany? Or where's most of the factories? What area in Germany? Well, it's

Daniel Jaeger: in the South. It's bit it's near Stuttgart. Stuttgart. Stuttgart in Munich. So in between there, we have two factories, basically. One is like Winterbach. It's like the headquarters. Mhmm. And my little part of the factory there, kitting there, and also our lab, and we're just building a high voltage DC lab there. Mhmm. So we're going into that high high voltage DC market and wanna develop accessories for that. And we just buy a we just build a or started to build a big lab in Winterbach. So Cool. That's pretty fun. Yeah. It's pretty cool. And the other factory is where? The other factory is in a small town. It's called Gussenstadt. It's actually that's actually the small little town where I grew up, where I come from. We're also the farmers. It's 1,500 people. It's like in the middle of nowhere, and you just drive. And before the woods began, there's like a factory and like that huge factory with like over 200 people there. So that's pretty it's pretty neat and it's a pretty neat spot.

Mario Dealba: Being so far away from Stuttgart and Bayern and Munich, sorry, not in Munich, is it not hard to find talent to come work at the factory? Or Definitely. It's been a Definitely.

Daniel Jaeger: Challenging It's the factory in Heckered in Stuttgart is a different story because Stuttgart is huge with all the companies that are down there. It's like one of the, yeah, big city pulsating cities down there out there with a lot of car manufacturer, like Mercedes Benz and Porsche and all that. So that is pretty easy. Yeah. But especially out there to find talented people, it's a little bit of a challenge. And luckily, actually, the remote working helped a lot to get more talented people to get a bigger pool of talented people if they can remote work remote. So that's pretty pretty cool. Yeah.

Mario Dealba: When I went to Gussenstadt with you, it was pretty fascinating to me the amount of shear bolts manufactured there. Where are the conics? Because you guys make a lot of shear bolts, but you also make conics. Yeah. The inner contaminations. Where are those made? They those are made well,

Daniel Jaeger: the metal parts are made in Gussenstadt. Mhmm. The insulating parts and and everything that is silicon on there and all the insulation stuff is made in Khadan, Czech Republic.

Mario Dealba: Okay. So just How which is not that far.

Daniel Jaeger: Three or four hours. Okay. Something Yeah. Like It's just a it's in the Czech Republic, but just right behind the German border. So that's pretty neat.

Mario Dealba: Okay. So you are the maintenance soup the maintenance electrician in the factory in Gussenstadt. Exactly. And one day, you're like, I wanna be part of this company. How how did it happen? What happened?

Daniel Jaeger: Well, you know, I grew up in that town, and a major employer in that town was actually Pfister. Right? Right. So, I just wrote a couple of applications to different companies in the region. And, well, I got selected for Pfister, and I was like, well, it's easy. It's in the same town. I can walk to work. Mhmm. I can take my bike, stuff like that. It was just easier. And, you know, helping out on the farm was easy because you don't have anywhere to commute. So after work, you'd be home in five minutes and and all that kind of stuff. So that's how it came to it it was Pfister. And and then over the years, after that three years, I figured, well, there's probably more that I wanna do. So I went back to college, did my degree in industrial engineering with a major in electrical engineering and renewable energies. Cool. And then didn't come back to Festro right away. I went to a utility, actually, and worked as a product engine project engineer for utility. In Germany? In Germany. Same town, different? No. Like, about thirty minutes away. Okay. So in the major one of the bigger cities, the major utility there, the next biggest city around there. And I worked for the Edge Utility as a project engineer for renewables. So I was actually there as a project engineer building solar farms and

Mario Dealba: Wow.

Daniel Jaeger: And wind farms and stuff like that. And I did that for three years.

Mario Dealba: So much, wanna ask you about that. When you if we back up a little bit, before you went to university at Pfister, what was your role when you started with Pfister?

Daniel Jaeger: I was an trainee for an electrician. Okay. So like in a Brentons. Okay.

Mario Dealba: And then you're building solar farms? Yep. Were they utility scale?

Daniel Jaeger: Yeah. They were let well How big how

Mario Dealba: big were the farm the solar farms at that time? The solar farms This is like early two thousand ten, eleven?

Daniel Jaeger: Yeah. It was 2011, 2012.

Mario Dealba: Okay. Which was like the very beginning almost here in The US for solar like at the utility scale.

Daniel Jaeger: So they were like 20 megawatt, 50 megawatt Yep. Something like that. That's when it all started Yep. To come up. And, it was actually pretty cool because, that utility was really one of the pioneers back then. What's the name? Stadtwerke Heidenheim, which means utility of Heidenheim. Cool. Stadtwerke is the German word

Mario Dealba: for utility. Translate to sort of like a co op or a municipality? It was actually Or bigger.

Daniel Jaeger: It was actually a little bigger, actually. Yeah. It was a shareholding, basically, like that. And they were, like, pioneers of still are, I guess, but they were pioneers in that field that they are actually hopping on that renewable train. Mhmm. So, like, projecting and building solar farms all over Germany and then and then will sell the the clean electricity to their customers and also sell shares to other utilities. Sure. So that was that was kinda cool so that all utilities can grow their renewable portfolio. Because you remember 2011, Germany decided to get out of nuclear Yeah. Power generation. So, that came in handy at that time, and they started on that pretty early. So that was that was pretty good move. I think they're still doing pretty well on that. And, yeah, I was, projecting I was there for three years. So we did, like, four or five solar farms and one big wind farm with, like, 11 turbines. I think it ended up being nine in the end, but Cool. We we asked permission for 11. Nice. But it was pretty nice. It was pretty decent. So Okay. And then And then after that, actually, I met a couple of folks from Pfister again. You know? I lived in the same town Mhmm. When you meet these people. And, I heard about a job offering, as an application engineer for low low and medium voltage. So I was like, okay. I'm just gonna shoot my shot. And then I got back and was into came into Pfister back again and was an application engineer. So I was doing, like, technical support for customers, different applications. So if they have, like, certain applications, are the Pfister products suitable for that? Can we use that in different applications? All that kind of stuff. And then one year later, I had a lot of hats in the meantime in Pfister. A year later, Martin Schuster, he was like the godfather of tech contact technology.

Mario Dealba: Mhmm.

Daniel Jaeger: Started a little team inside Pfister about hybrid power plants. So having, a hybrid power plant, like, a small hybrid power plant with battery storage, solar, a little wind turbine, and combine it all together with maybe a generator and do like hybrid power plants in regions in the world where there's no electricity.

Mario Dealba: Mhmm. So So you guys were selling basically hybrid microgrids?

Daniel Jaeger: Hybrid hybrid micro back in the day, back in '20 Okay. In twenty fifteen, sixteen when they lost Little microgrids.

Mario Dealba: And you were selling those all over the world?

Daniel Jaeger: We were starting to do so. Okay.

Mario Dealba: I like that. Because I you told me once that you traveled I can't remember to how many countries.

Daniel Jaeger: I've been to all continents beside Antarctica with that. With that project alone? With that project. Yeah.

Mario Dealba: Wow.

Daniel Jaeger: So and unfortunately, back in that time, we were still early to the party. So that never really took off. You remember it was ten years ago. Yeah. Microgrids now are starting Just starting. Just starting and just coming up, and we were, like, ten years early. So we ended up stopping that after after a few years. We actually sold three of these systems, two to the NATO and for military power. Well, it's not military use. It's basically power generation for military camps Mhmm. Stuff like that, and one to a school in Africa. And that is still up and running and and going.

Mario Dealba: Very cool. So Fischer obviously saw you as an innovator. Right? You started as an application engineer looking at different products that they could different applications for products.

Daniel Jaeger: Yeah.

Mario Dealba: Then they bring you over to do microgrids. And then what shear bolts?

Daniel Jaeger: And then shear bolts. Yeah. And then I Okay. And then I came into yeah. That project stopped basically Mhmm. For that microgrids. And then there was an offering in at the ShieldBolt product management for medium voltage ShieldBolts.

Mario Dealba: Mhmm.

Daniel Jaeger: So I I took that chance and became, yeah, part of the product management team for for Schir Bolt.

Mario Dealba: Very cool. And I've I've known you now for five, six years, and ever since I met you, it was all Schir Bolt. It was all Schir Bolt. You were the Schir Bolt man. And within the Schir Bolt family tell us about a Schir Bolt. What's a Schir Bolt? Because for those that are not list that are listening, maybe they're not familiar.

Daniel Jaeger: Okay. Well, a Schir Bolt is basically a connector that has a bolt, compared to standard old,

Mario Dealba: or I love how you put the old

Daniel Jaeger: old school. Can we say old school? Yes. You can say old Old school compression connectors.

Mario Dealba: Absolutely. Yeah. Because that's the old technology.

Daniel Jaeger: Right? That's the old technology. Gripping. And, actually, Pfister did that in the past and still does it in certain portions of the world, compression technology. We actually in actually invented the hexagonal compression technology, I don't know, eighty years ago, something like that. However, compared to the old school compression technology, shear bolts is a new technology. Well, rather new compare compared to compression that has basically a bolt. And when you tighten that bolt instead of tightening to a certain torque to make a good connection, you just tighten it down until it cheers off. So the bolt actually breaks. Installers love it because they can break something. So everybody loves to break something. So it's pretty awesome. And if you if you do demos and you just say, it down until it breaks off, Perfect. Yeah. So you tighten the bolt down until it breaks off. And when it breaks off, the connection is made. And it's like one of the securest and easiest way to make a connection because there's nothing you can do wrong. You just tighten the bolt until it cheers off. And you can do that with different things. You can even do it by hand

Mario Dealba: Yeah.

Daniel Jaeger: If you if you want to.

Mario Dealba: That would be the how it was explained to me when I was at three m. It's the most consistent way of connecting. Doesn't matter if you have Joe or Daniel or John or David, it will break off when it meets the right amount of pressure. Right?

Daniel Jaeger: Exactly. Exactly. So it doesn't matter who does it. It always looks the same. And especially compared to compression technology where you really have to be really skilled. So there are really good skilled workers out there that do awesome compression connections, but it also can happen that something goes wrong or it's more likely to happen because you need a you need a tool, you need a die, you need to have the right die, you're gonna have the the right connector or lug for the right cable, all that kind of stuff. So with a shear bolt, yeah, everything you need is the shear bolt, it's range taking in that case, so you can use different sort of cables, different sizes of cables.

Mario Dealba: That that's the other big plus. Right? Exactly. You need three or four lugs to cover twelve, fifteen sizes. Right. And two metals. Yeah. Copper and aluminum. They they'll do both.

Daniel Jaeger: They do both. Copper, And the cables doesn't matter if it's stranded or solid or compressed or compact. It doesn't matter.

Mario Dealba: You know, it used to be where people were like, oh, it's just so much more expensive. Prices have kinda like started to equalize a little bit, I've noticed. Like between crimp and shear bolt, like it's it's still a little bit more expensive, but not that that much more.

Daniel Jaeger: Yeah. It's not like it it used to be was like double or triple the price of compression connectors. It's not like that anymore. Price is actually well, I think the Schibald's still in the same price range. The compression connectors got

Mario Dealba: I'd say you're probably like a 20%

Daniel Jaeger: Yes.

Mario Dealba: 30% premium. But it's not crazy.

Daniel Jaeger: And it and if you think about it, if you have a shear bolt connector, so for example, we have a shear bolt connector that does a range from a 1 odd to 600. Mhmm. And if you add that all up, what we just said with the different sizes and ranges, different cables, different materials, make have a Seven

Mario Dealba: sizes that I can count.

Daniel Jaeger: Yeah. Have a guess how many compression connectors you could actually substitute with one connector.

Mario Dealba: I mean, I just said seven times two. So 14? 98.

Daniel Jaeger: Wow. Because you can think of, like, transition connectors, like Oh, yeah. Copper aluminum, you need bimetallic ones. If you wanna connect a four rod and a two fifty Yeah. You need different ones. So if you Yeah. If you count all that in, you end up you have one shear bolt connector that can substitute 98 That makes sense. Different compression connectors, which is pretty cool.

Mario Dealba: That is. No. There there's no better way if you're going like, hey, I've got a two ah to a four ah. There's no better way to transition. Also for

Daniel Jaeger: the for all the the linemen or workers, underground splicers out there, if they're out in the field and they have an emergency, well, there's no need for them to look for the right connector. If they come on-site and they don't know if it's four ought or two fifty or a three ought, you don't know. You just have one connector and that will use for everything.

Mario Dealba: Okay. This is leading me into another technical question, if I may. Sure. And maybe you can't answer some of these trade secrets. But I was talking with a manufacturer the other day, I won't say the name, but they allowed they allow an a 900 amp rating on their t body if you use a Pfister shear bolt connector. And we said, well, it's an aluminum shear bolt. And they're like, well, there's more ingredients in there that allow for a higher rating. So are the shear bolts, do they have any special metallurgy to them, a special ingredient in the aluminum that allow for this incredible opacity rating? Or

Daniel Jaeger: Yeah. So the easiest way to actually put that is so when you have a compression connector

Mario Dealba: Mhmm.

Daniel Jaeger: Let's say you have an aluminum compression connector, you need aluminum which has a certain softness to it because you wanna compress it. So you need a softer aluminum Mhmm. To make the compression because you really wanna make that compression to it and and compress it down. So for shear bolt, it's a little different because you don't need that soft aluminum. Right. And what I always say is, no matter which shear bolt you take, aluminum doesn't equal aluminum. There are different alloys out there, different material specifications, different yeah. It's basically alloys with different additives to the aluminum that makes it really hard to compare aluminum to each other. I know these discussions. I'm also in the discussion of the IEEE three eighty six Yeah. Where we had these discussions in the standard group. So aluminum doesn't equal aluminum. And our shear bolts, for example, use a certain really hard alloy, especially also for the bolts, because that bolt, that shear of torque, you don't wanna have the thread ripped out. You don't wanna have Mhmm. The body break with that shear off torque. So you we have a we use and all other shear bolt manufacturers do the same thing because that force that you create with that bolt, you need a hard aluminum to cover that, like a soft aluminum, like a compression connector. That would never work Yeah. With with shear bolt technology. So it's a different alloy that we're using. And we may actually made some tests, and we figured out that also for 900 amps, it's totally fine to use our aluminum alloy with that.

Mario Dealba: Yeah. On the shear ball itself, And and this was an interesting thing for me to observe when when we went to Gussenstadt and we're looking at all the CNC machines. I never noticed any type of coating, like anodizing or any type of special treatment, and then maybe I missed it. But your your sheer bolts are just so much nicer looking than other sheer bolts out there. And I don't wanna trash on the other ones too much, because we sell them all, but yours are just, like, beautiful. Yeah. Is there anything special you how do you do how do you get that finish? How do you do that? Because they are, like, a significantly better looking shareable than than all the other ones. And I'm pretty unbiased, by the way.

Daniel Jaeger: Yeah. But, honestly, we do have we do code them. Okay. And I would just guess our coding process is pretty good.

Mario Dealba: Yeah.

Daniel Jaeger: So that's why it looks like the way it looks. They are beautiful.

Mario Dealba: Now, your shear bolt technology, the same as your not all aluminum is the same, not all shear bolt technology is the same. Right. Exactly. I love the exactness of your technology. So if you can explain the listeners how Pfister's difference in shear bolt technology versus other shear bolt technology, that'd be awesome.

Daniel Jaeger: Yeah. So we have three things that differentiate us from other shear bolts. So first of all, on the bottom of our shear bolts, if you look at them Mhmm. We have so called contact grips, which looks like rips. So you can if you look into our shield bowl, they look like small little rips that are in there.

Mario Dealba: And this is inside Inside. The lug. Inside the lug or

Daniel Jaeger: the connector where you where the conductor comes in and where the conductor actually connects with the connector.

Mario Dealba: Yeah. And those just look like teeth. Right? Those are just, like, to grab on or what?

Daniel Jaeger: Yeah. It's not like teeth. It's like it's like little rips that come up, but these are actually in there to make a secure and stable connection.

Mario Dealba: Okay.

Daniel Jaeger: And well, they also help with the tensile forces, of course, but also to actually make safe and secure connections. So these are actually designed that we have a perfect connection to the conductor no matter which conductor and material is in there. So and also it's designed the way that it breaks possible oxidation layers. Mhmm. So if we have like, usually you brush aluminum conductors Sure. And that's the way, it should be. But sometimes it happens. It's it's not brushed good enough or or, there's a little time in between installing and brushing and stuff like that. So the oxidation a little oxidation comes back before you install the the connector or the lug. So these ribs are actually there to break the oxidation layer and still make a good contact even if there is some oxidation there. Understand. And we have a special design for that just to make sure every connector that's installed has the perfect electric connection in the end. K. That's number one. Mhmm. Number two is, and I think most of the people or listeners that ever had a fistful shear bolt in their hand noticed that

Mario Dealba: we don't have any shear planes in there. So we're Explain what that means because I was explaining this to a a class the other day, and they had, like, no idea what I

Daniel Jaeger: meant. Okay. So, of course, if you have a shear bolt, you gotta weaken the bolt somewhere so that it shears off after a certain torque. Okay. Right? So you tighten down that bolt. You have your thread where you tighten down the bolt, and then you want you want it to shear off at a certain point.

Mario Dealba: Right.

Daniel Jaeger: So at that point, really wanna have, and you gotta determine that point somehow. So at the beginning of the shear bolts, and there's still shear bolts out there that do that, they have, like, planes in there, like little holes in the bolt. And you recognize that if you look at the bolt, they have, like, little steps in there, more or less. It looks like that in between the thread. And these are the steps where basically the shear bolt shears off depending on the conductor size that's in there. We talked earlier about the range taking. Mhmm. So the conductor size determines where it shears off. And also that shear plane that is in there Right. Determines where it shears off. And this is the way how it started, how shear bolt started to go into the Originally.

Mario Dealba: Originally. Did Pfister make any ever that were stepped shear bolts?

Daniel Jaeger: Yeah. Really, in the beginning, we did. And we still do on the low voltage side.

Mario Dealba: I was gonna say, that's a newer product and you guys kinda brought Yeah. Back to a to a to a step, sheer

Daniel Jaeger: bolt. Yeah. Yeah. In low voltage, just, due to be competitive on the market.

Mario Dealba: Just some pricing perspective. Exactly. Mhmm.

Daniel Jaeger: But on the other side, on the medium voltage one, we do have established shear bolt. And we came out with that in 2006. Cool. I think, the first one with a step less shear bolt, which is patented. And it actually has a technology, some sort of, it's designed a way that it always breaks on the last thread part of the connector body. Yeah. It's a special technology and it's really it would take us an hour to explain exactly how it works, but I always compare it the easiest way to say it is like the technology we used is if you have a rubber band Mhmm. And you take a rubber band and you hold it in one hand and then you just pull it, where does it rip?

Mario Dealba: I don't know, but it always slings back and smacks my finger. Exactly.

Daniel Jaeger: That's what it does when you do it like that. But it will always tear or rip off where you hold it. Mhmm. So where you hold it tight, this is the point where it rips. And this is exactly the technology we're using. So that bolt actually starts to be tared out or stretched, and then it rips where it's where it holds.

Mario Dealba: At the tension right at the weakest

Daniel Jaeger: point. Weakest At point, which is where the thread comes out of the body, this

Mario Dealba: is the point where the bolt shears off. I've always been fascinated by the science behind stabilized shear bolt, because it's it's an exact science. Right? The downward force is the same as the shearing force. Right. Right at the moment where the metal packs it in inside the connector. Is that

Daniel Jaeger: Yeah. Yeah. You actually that the way it's designed is that it actually pushes the conductor down Mhmm. Until till you reach a point where the conductor cannot be compressed any further. That's the key. Because at some point, well You filled all the void. Right? Yeah. The void. You fill the void and you have to pressure and the conductor really is compressed and compressed and you cannot compress it any further. And then the bolt is adjusted a way that it cheers off at a certain torque. Well, that's engineering and all that Mhmm. Where it cheers off. But then you start basically to stretch the bolt. That's the bolt that is designed. Right. So, actually, the bolt is stretched. And when you stretch it like a rubber band, it will tear at some point where it's where you hold where the where the shear of force is the highest. And this is basically on the upper part of the thread where it leaves the body. This is where it shears off.

Mario Dealba: Yeah. It's very cool technology.

Daniel Jaeger: It's it's really decent technology.

Mario Dealba: So the rip the riveting the rips, you call it, the shear, the con? The the established shear of bolt. You said there were three things?

Daniel Jaeger: Yeah. The third one is actually pretty cool feature as well. It's the friction disc on the bottom of it. Oh, yes. You you remember that disc?

Mario Dealba: Forgot about that. Yep. Mhmm.

Daniel Jaeger: So it's, it's basically a disc there that, snaps in when it touches the conductor, and then it snaps and it snaps and it spins free. So it's like a freely spinning disc, which means it's also a patented thing, which means in the end, that disc is not turning. It's actually standing still, and the bolt itself is turning on that disc Right. Instead of turn on the conductor Mhmm. Which leads to the point that you, first of all, do not damage any strands Right. Because the bolt is not turning on the strands, it's turning on that disc, And that disc actually just pushes down the conductor instead of turning on it. And on the other hand, you don't have any friction losses that you cannot calculate. Explain that. So if you have a bolt that turns on a conductor

Mario Dealba: Mhmm.

Daniel Jaeger: It's different if that bolt turns on a aluminum conductor Mhmm. Or turns on a copper conductor. Right? Okay. Because two different materials. Mhmm. So two different friction losses or friction forces on that. Okay. So if you turn that bolt on a copper conductor, copper is much harder than aluminum. Right?

Mario Dealba: Mhmm.

Daniel Jaeger: So with copper, you have a different friction loss than on aluminum. And you don't know which material that conductor uses Because also there on conductors, aluminum doesn't equal aluminum. Copper is not copper. Sure. It's like different alloys, different kind of stuff that the cable manufacturers are using. So in that case, what we did is we invent we invented that that disc, which means our bolt always turns on our disc Yep. Which is material we can't control. So that controlled material basically allows us to

Mario Dealba: have all Are these the friction losses I'm trying to make sense of this. So does friction then

Daniel Jaeger: affect the shearing force? It doesn't affect the shearing force.

Mario Dealba: What what affects the

Daniel Jaeger: friction? It affects the contact force in the end.

Mario Dealba: Okay. So it's the contact force

Daniel Jaeger: It's contact force. Because the bolt always shears off at the same at the same shear of torque. So the torque is always the same with the bolt. But

Mario Dealba: Okay. So if, like, a metal, for example, is a little bit more slippery than another That's how the the connection is actually a little bit different.

Daniel Jaeger: It's less. The connection is different. Yeah. Because because you want a good grip. You want a good grip and you wanna have Sorry.

Mario Dealba: I gotta dumb it down. Otherwise, I don't get it.

Daniel Jaeger: Yeah. Let's yep. Let's say like that, if you have your car if you drive your car on a wet street or on a on a, dry street, you have different yeah. Slipper Grip. Grip. Whatever. Yeah. Grip. So you have different grip. And this is basically what happens in a in a shear bolt if you have different materials. Have different grip on aluminum or copper. But with our disc, the grip happens between our disc and the bolt. And this is something we can control because it's our

Mario Dealba: That's really cool. Another thing, I think it was you, explained to me that if you don't have this frictionless or the the free spinning disc, it's almost like you're putting the strands of the cable, especially with DLO cable, like multi strand, on like a blender. When you when you torque down a shear bolt, you're just chopping up the strands.

Daniel Jaeger: Exactly. And with ours, that that doesn't do that. With the Pfister shear bolt, you have to

Mario Dealba: I love how proud you are when you say the Pfister shear bolt.

Daniel Jaeger: Pfister shear bolt. Yeah. It's good. Like it. Yeah. So with that shear bolt or with that friction disc, yeah, you don't burcate, you don't damage the strands basically with that. And that's why that shear bolt is the only one that can connect DLO cables, no problem. And that's

Mario Dealba: a big differentiator for us. I I we get into a lot of the two kV, battery storage, solar, these DLO flexible cables, and we're like Pfister.

Daniel Jaeger: Yeah. And not only not only our medium voltage connectors, basically, every bolted connection that you have within Pfister Mhmm. In all our you know, and we do, like, fifteen, twenty different product lines. And all everywhere where there's a bolt that connects to a cable has that friction disc.

Mario Dealba: Very cool. I there's two more topics I wanna touch on. We're, like, running out of time. So the first one, what are you most excited that you're innovating now here in The United States and working on with Pfister? Because I know you're always working on something new. Let's talk let's talk about that. And then and then I wanna talk a little bit about the differences between The US and Europe working with customers, how how is it different? But let's talk about the new stuff you're working on.

Daniel Jaeger: Well, a lot of stuff I can tell you. Okay. I cannot

Mario Dealba: Come on.

Daniel Jaeger: I cannot tell you what we're doing. But, one stuff that we can definitely talk about and, well, it involves you Mhmm. Is, that we're gonna bring over some inventory for our MVCONICS connector, and we're gonna kit that in The US It's

Mario Dealba: very exciting.

Daniel Jaeger: Together with you. Yep. And we're in the process to get that started and can serve our customer with local stock because this is something that we had some some issues with. If you have an emergency and you need to ship stuff out of Germany, it always takes a couple days up to a week. Of course. That's because it is what it is.

Mario Dealba: You're crossing a pond.

Daniel Jaeger: You're crossing a pond. There's nothing you can ex expedite. So we're pretty excited and stoked for that that we can go with that. But other than that, unfortunately,

Mario Dealba: nothing Can we talk about the two kV connectors?

Daniel Jaeger: Oh, yeah. They're not. They're already released. We can talk about that.

Mario Dealba: Okay. So tell me about them, because maybe a lot of people don't know about

Daniel Jaeger: this. Yeah. So we just came out well, we had low voltage connectors, like two kV connectors, one kV connectors back in the day, but now they're rated for two kV because with all the solar. But we have that for, like, forty years. We just never brought it to The US. Like, we do have a lot of products.

Mario Dealba: So they bring you here, you're like, oh, look at all these products we have over there. We need to bring them here. Exactly. That was Yeah. That's why they brought you here.

Daniel Jaeger: That that's one of the reasons they brought me here. Yeah. To bring all the stuff that we sell in other parts of the world to The US. Of course, standards is always a thing, so we gotta test first and do all that stuff.

Mario Dealba: They need an engineer. Yeah. Oh, man. They they're killing so many birds with one stone here. Here we are.

Daniel Jaeger: Here I am. Yeah. And, so, yeah, the two kV connectors, the in inline connectors are already out in the market. So, we have a portfolio UL listed? Not yet.

Mario Dealba: Okay. Working on that.

Daniel Jaeger: Soon. Come on, UL. Mid mid of the mid of the year. Okay. It's not it's not on on UL.

Mario Dealba: It's on you guys.

Daniel Jaeger: That's on us. Yeah. Okay. Because we wanna test, the two hole LUGs and, even one hole LUGs together. And We

Mario Dealba: get asked so many times for one hole LUX. You are listed and so difficult to find. Yeah. Good options.

Daniel Jaeger: And we're we're actually, we have them. So they are ready now. We have two hole LUX. We have one hole LUX. And, well, we're waiting on the UL testing to be finished, and then, we're ready to go.

Mario Dealba: Awesome. Man, I can't shake off. I wanna know what other secret stuff you're working on. Now okay. You don't have to tell me.

Daniel Jaeger: I can tell you off the microphone. Okay. Here.

Mario Dealba: Now for our listeners, is there secret stuff out there you guys are actively innovating on?

Daniel Jaeger: Some sort of. Yeah. And we're pretty excited about it, What's coming in the future. We have a lot of cool products coming in the future. We're currently working on, not only for medium voltage or low voltage, so also for high voltage where we're doing pretty cool stuff. Also, well, it's not a secret anymore that we're working in HVDC. Okay. High voltage DC? High voltage DC. This is

Mario Dealba: like the half million volt type of stuff Yeah. The transmission lines?

Daniel Jaeger: Yeah. All of the large transmission lines, large distance and stuff like that. So as I said earlier, and and that's I

Mario Dealba: would love to understand why in high voltage DC starts making sense again. I I still don't understand.

Daniel Jaeger: I can I can I can tell you later? It's Okay. Off the microphone. It's like another hour conversation. Why that makes sense? So Got it. Yeah. So but, yeah, we're working on a lot of cool stuff. High Voltage TC is one of the is a part of that. And as I said, we just announced to to build that lab. So whoever wants to look into our LinkedIn, page, there is, a a time lapse of the the construction site of the high voltage DC lab. It's pretty decent. It's pretty awesome.

Mario Dealba: And this one's in Winterbach?

Daniel Jaeger: It's in Winterbach. Yeah.

Mario Dealba: Very cool. Yeah. Tell me about The US versus Europe. EPCs, utilities, your end users, how are they different? Or are they very similar?

Daniel Jaeger: I would say and this was actually for me to adjust when I moved from Germany to The US. The US moves a lot, lot faster than Europe. So not only utilities, also EPCs, all the projects, everything, everything moves extremely fast. While in Europe, some projects are delayed due to different reasons, like permissions, stuff like that. It's it's never really, like, that demanding that it is in The US because a lot of a lot of stuff seems like easier to do to get permissions to Here. Yeah. Here in The US to get work in all that. Well, of course, the utility market is a little different to compare to EPC renewables, C and I market. The utility space is a little bit I don't wanna call it conservative, but a little bit slow moving. Yeah. If utilities have a good solution, they stick with that solution. For sure. Definitely. And and and that's a good thing

Mario Dealba: because They have like a thirty year lifespan of them. Yeah. They put it in, they gotta stick with it for at least thirty years. Right?

Daniel Jaeger: So Well, I don't know if they gotta do, but but at least if they found a solution that works, and which is a good thing. Sure. If they have a solution that works, they stick with it. It's good

Mario Dealba: for the people making that product.

Daniel Jaeger: Yeah. They're in. Yeah. If you're in, you're in. Yeah. But, on the other side, on the commercial industrial market, a lot is project based, a lot is price based or availability based. Mhmm. And a big helper for us is that that we started manufacturing our Schuylkill in Rochester, New York about a year ago.

Mario Dealba: Yeah. We just had How's that going?

Daniel Jaeger: It's going awesome. Yeah. And it's it's so great. The team up there is so great. We put a really nice team together, and we're growing. So we started, a year ago, with the first machines there, and we're adding machines, and we're adding capacity. The plan is year over year to add more capacity and and produce more and more products. Of course, when you do a switch like that, you start with a certain product. So we started with inline connectors and center palm connectors, and now we're adding other stuff from time to time so that hopefully, by next year, 2027 I'm not saying next year, but 2027, we're have most of the portfolio made out of Rochester. Very cool. And we do have a big stock here, which helps a lot, especially for projects. Yeah. If you and we're not only stocking the products we manufacture there, we also stock our other products there and start up to stock them to have them fast. So that's pretty cool.

Mario Dealba: So the main the main thing you've noticed in the last couple of years, speed. Speed. Thing.

Daniel Jaeger: But also pretty interesting, and we have a lot of discussions with our our colleagues in Germany about it, where the r and d is, where product management is. The whole electrical system, especially the distribution system, is different. Because the distribution system here in The US is medium voltage most of the most of the time. It's like 15 kV Mhmm. Distribution in rural areas, basically overhead line. In Europe, the distribution system is mostly low voltage. Mhmm. And it's underground. And it's four conductor cables, because every house is connected with three faces and a neutral. So you have, like, four conductor cables. Mhmm. You have it's a complete different philosophy to do it. And it's not that one is better than the other. Sure. In The US, definitely, the big distances you have Right. From house to house and all that, that would be super expensive to put that all underground. And if you have these distances, you wanna go to medium voltage to reduce the losses, because Sure. This is one part of the of how a system or electrical system is designed. The higher the voltage, the the lesser losses you have. But in Europe, everything is like so populated and the people are so close together that it makes total sense to make a low voltage because it's easier to walk on to work on. It's easier to insulate and all that kind of stuff. And, well, you can put everything underground because all the users are so closer together. It's not that expensive because you don't have these distances. Right?

Mario Dealba: Mhmm.

Daniel Jaeger: So it's always like, when we talk with our colleagues in Europe and, it's always good that we have us here now and we grow that organization here in The US just to show them we need adaptions of our products for The United States because the system is so different. Yeah. And the whole distribution system is different, and we need adaptions of our of our products. And they took that up pretty well. They're doing an awesome job there. So, we're doing some adaptions. We did some adaptions for The US, especially also in Shieldbowl. When we started, we didn't have two hole NEMA lugs. Mhmm. We didn't have stem connectors. So all that is something that we only use in The US because the The US system calls for it. And so we just need to adapt more and more all

Mario Dealba: the products we We I remember last year, I think, we brought in the four hole Yeah. NEMA Sheerbold, and that's been, like it's been a great product to have. Yeah. We even have three hole you guys have, like,

Daniel Jaeger: so many products. We have six hole NEMA lux because people use the extra one or two holes for grounding. Mhmm. So they don't have to loosen the pad to do grounding and stuff. Oh, They just very add the grounding cluster, so the grounding point On the top. On the top and just have two one or two extra holes for that.

Mario Dealba: Interesting. So three holes. Three holes. Alright. Thank you. With that, we're gonna end. Love you, brother. Awesome. Love you too. Thanks for being here.