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Show Summary
The conversation explores innovative energy solutions being piloted in New Mexico, focusing on the use of natural gas for sustainable power generation. It discusses the technology involved, including air compressors and plastic pipelines, and highlights the integration of cooling systems with electricity production.
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Michael Orshan (00:00)
In the pipeline space, yes, that ends up really being waste. So it was new to me, so it might be new to others. The way that gas and oil get moved through pipelines is with compressed air. And so putting a compressed air into a pipeline for that purpose has been done and we are aware of that. But when you compress the air, you create extreme or serious heat. And when you release the air, it comes out cold. So it all has to do with the amount of pressure that you’re putting it under. So if you did it with a gas pipeline, it would come out at minus 100, minus 150 Celsius. And we do have some projects we’re designing that do that for 300, 400 miles and along the way.We serve communities with electricity. We use the heat for greenhouses and the cold could be, you know, was used for cooling, but it’s intermittent so that, you know, you have to control how that all happens.
Dylan Silver (02:34)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest is with Breeze, a compressed air pipeline system. Please welcome Michael Orshan. Michael, welcome to the show.Michael Orshan (02:46)
Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.Dylan Silver (02:48)
I was doing a lot of research before hopping on here because this was a new area for me and I think probably a lot of our listeners are thinking the same. But before we get into exactly what Breeze is, I want to ask you, how did you get involved in Breeze and what’s your background?Michael Orshan (03:04)
My background has been in, I guess, technical sales. I’ve been in the telecommunications business and I worked for the governor of New Mexico. I was the head of science and technology here for Bill Richardson. He was the secretary of energy for President Clinton and that’s what got me into energy. And my job has always been to organize engineers, try to optimize them and get difficult prods.projects, or sometimes products done quickly, accurately, on budget, that sort of thing.
Dylan Silver (03:35)
Did you see a need or a niche where compressed air and cooling systems can be used? Did someone bring this idea to you? How did Breeze come up?Michael Orshan (03:45)
So, I’m in New Mexico and we have two national labs here. One is Sandia, one’s Los Alamos. Sandia, I met the former head of technology and we had a discussion and he had said he’s a of scientists around the world who don’t think that solar nor wind would ever get deployed fast enough to make a difference for climate change. And climate change is pretty real.He went through the things that are going to happen, which this has been a couple of years ago. So some of them actually have happened by now. And he said that they thought that the science that would scale and make a difference is compressed air. And so that led me on a journey to find out how to deploy compressed air. And some competitors, what they do is they fill up a salt mine.
and they release it with compressed air and they release it and spin a turbine and create electricity. We were doing work in Alberta, I was doing work in Alberta, Canada, which is sort of like Texas, but in Canada. And somebody in the room said, hey, let’s put that air into pipelines and then we can move it, then we could store it, then we could release, you know, generate electricity. And that was the beginning of Breeze.
So, and then since the, yeah.
Dylan Silver (05:03)
I wanna add- I- wanna-I want to ask you about the idea to put it into pipelines. Because I think when a lot of people think about pipelines, they’re thinking about gas pipelines. But we also talked before the podcast here, and you mentioned to me how these pipelines can have multiple purposes. And one of the main ways is, or ways where it’s highly useful, is compressed air comes out very cold. Is this one of the ways that’s kind of untapped in the pipeline space?
Michael Orshan (06:17)
In the pipeline space, yes, that ends up really being waste. So it was new to me, so it might be new to others. The way that gas and oil get moved through pipelines is with compressed air. And so putting a compressed air into a pipeline for that purpose has been done and we are aware of that. But when you compress the air, you create extreme orserious heat. And when you release the air, it comes out cold. So it all has to do with the amount of pressure that you’re putting it under. So if you did it with a gas pipeline, it would come out at minus 100, minus 150 Celsius. And we do have some projects we’re designing that do that for 300, 400 miles and along the way.
We serve communities with electricity. We use the heat for greenhouses and the cold could be, you know, was used for cooling, but it’s intermittent so that, you know, you have to control how that all
We also, and this is, we, mm-hmm.
Dylan Silver (07:22)
Now, I do have a question based off of that. Is the existinginfrastructure, the pipelines, the energy sources themselves, can this be utilized to facilitate, you mentioned heating, cooling, energy, or is there additional steps, is there additional infrastructure that needs to be built up in each subdivision or locality in order to have a system like this utilized?
Michael Orshan (07:45)
Well, it depends on the application. obviously no one’s going to be living in a minus 100 Celsius room, but you can drip it in with valves and just put a little bit of cold air in. But cold air, we’re, and it’s significant to talk about cold air because that’s 30 % of most people’s or buildings load is for cooling. So you can,You know, either you can drip it in, but cooling means cold air comes in and hot air comes out. And so there are tools that we use to do that. And that actually is what creates cooling. You have to take the hot out at the same time. And we could do that.
Dylan Silver (08:25)
Now, heating and cooling, I’m imagining there are two sides of the same coin, but I’m also picturing in my mind’s eye, if you will, that when you’re creating energy that moves, it’s either from a solar source or it’s from gas and you’re taking that energy and you’re converting it. I’m imagining, you’re talking about Canada and New Mexico, right? Two totally different places.that the applications might, you might need heat in Canada, you might need cool in New Mexico. Is there one that you’re more focused on, for instance, is cooling the greater focus or are they both equally applicable just depending on where you’re at?
Michael Orshan (09:03)
Well, where cooling is 30 % of everybody’s most people, the average load. Heating is the second. So it’s pretty important too. So, but our heat is intermittent usually, meaning it’s on, it’s off, it’s on and off. But applications can use that. So if you put it in a greenhouse, you can regulate the temperatures.There’s a lot of drying applications that you can use that for. Or I’m aware that some factories just use the compressed air, that heat to warm up ⁓ a factory. And I’ve actually been in factories that have done that. So you could apply it. It’s kind of difficult to move too far because you have to capture it. Cold air is easier. It’s under pressure. So it’s going to move.
you know, again, you can regulate it by dripping it out or, you know, there’s other ways of doing that. And all during this process, you’re generating electricity, which is, so you’re really getting a lot of opportunities to use these different outputs.
Dylan Silver (10:45)
I want to ask you Michael about the use cases for it. mean it sounds like you know gas companies, people that have large infrastructure, maybe spanning you know large areas or states might be looking at this but could also individual developers that are looking at you know building out a subdivision in North Texas or really anywhere, could they take advantage of this as well?Michael Orshan (11:06)
Yeah, I think we’ve got something really wonderful. And so what we’re piloting now here in New Mexico is a place where we start with natural gas because it’s available, it’s quick, and we can get a system up in six months. And so we use that natural gas to run an air compressor. From that air compressor, we put the air into a pipeline, a plasticcalled HDPE, it’s a yellow plastic pipeline that can handle about 150 PSI. So that’s a pressure that would impress you, but it’s not a thousand or 2000, which you might see in the oil and gas industry. So it’s safe. And from there, we can go to buildings and put a small turbine in and spin that turbine and put electricity into a building.
a house, light CNI, and we could take the cool air and use that for cooling. In fact, we have a little hut in front of the house, if it’s a house, and we have a freezer in there because it’s going to be that cold. Before then, while these buildings are being built, if we’re installed first, we could actually power the pneumatic tools as we’re at that pressure.
You can build, you can move over to electric, and then the heat from the air compressor, which would kind of be near a road, we think, because you would probably tap in, could heat up greenhouses for a community. And so we think this would be a nice circle. And this would be areas that are, you know, when you think about it, an hour away from most cities, land’s pretty available, but electricity is not.
Well, now you can go get that land probably at a low price. We could install this and now you’re electrified and cooled and we could leave fiber while we’re going to trench anyway. And then all of a sudden you could have this great community. The land that you bought for a low price can be worth, I don’t know how much, but certainly a lot. And then an hour away you’re into a big city. And so we’re
Dylan Silver (12:46)
Right.Michael Orshan (13:10)
envisioning that this could be a very helpful thing for a lot of people.Dylan Silver (13:56)
Now you mentioned natural gas. I’m thinking about how everyone typically pays their bills. They’re looking at a couple of utilities. They’re looking at gas. They’re looking at electric, right? But when they have natural gas with your system, what types of energy usage bills would they have? I’m imagining they would still have something,Michael Orshan (14:17)
Yeah, well, we’re envisioning. And of course it depends what buildings you’re going to build. mean, but if a building is maybe, I don’t know, say a million dollars just as a round number. We think that at that purchase time, maybe add a percentage, you know, a 1 % or something like that to the bill. And that should handle the gas for 10 years plus some replacement.if that’s needed. So it’s not that much. know, in a way we’re optimizing the gas, we’re optimizing the electricity. At the house level, we’re really at the moment, we’re recharging batteries. And so the batteries are really running the house. So we recharge once, twice, maybe three times. Ultimately, though, I want to say this though, is that maybe three to five years after installed, the infrastructure is very comfortable.
We are expecting to move over to a solar field of some type. And every year the solar gets less expensive as the panels are getting bigger and bigger. And so, you know, then you, because gas does have emissions and, you know, we would like to lower that also.
Dylan Silver (15:20)
Right.Now I want to ask you, because there does seem to be really adaptability with these systems, right? From regionality to heating, to cooling, to delivering energy. For folks who have existing solar grids or solar fields, can they tie that in potentially? Or would they have to have a whole new system that’s hooked in kind of uniquely? Or can they use existing solar?
Michael Orshan (15:49)
They can, and we could do interesting things. So many solar fields, maybe all, have what’s called clippings. And that is the amount of energy that’s not really sold. It just goes up into the air. So we could tap into that. We could fill a pipeline if it’s available. Now, this probably would not be the low-cost pipeline, but maybe an existing pipeline or athere are products we can put into the ground that are less costly than steel. We could fill that up if it went miles. So it really kind of has to go miles. And that could be an air battery. And so when you need that electricity, because we’ll fill it up with compressed air, you can release it and create electricity. And that could be kind of an overnight amount of power to do whatever application you might need.
So you’d have to size it because the sizing would change a lot but that opportunities there and the power is wasted so might as well use it
Dylan Silver (16:49)
I had this question and I could be totally off base here in thinking or asking this. So please correct me if this is totally out of left field. you know areas where there’s maybe high population density and not a lot of open open space. I lived in Boston for years for instance right. It’s kind of tough to put a solar field in Boston but I’m thinking about compressed air pipelines and the way that that’s transmitted. Could you potentially have a source that’s rather far away from a destination location but it’s delivered through this type of system.Michael Orshan (17:17)
yeah, mean, we there’s pipelines that go a thousand miles and you might have to recharge it, but you might not. It depends on the sizing. We tend to be better though as a distributed solution. And so what that means is if you live in a city somewhere nearby, you’ve got a big power plant and that power plant powers the city. We would be a better application if along the pipeline.we would give five megawatts or something to this city, something to this city, power up an EV station, maybe two, maybe there’s a water works along the way and create power for that. so, and it’s because we do have the constraint of the pipeline. So we can hold a lot of power, but we can only generate, you know, in the… ⁓
maybe we can generate up to 50 megawatts, but probably 10, 15 would be kind of our max for an application. So that’s where we would do better.
Dylan Silver (18:16)
Michael, we are coming up on time here. Where can folks go if maybe they’re a developer, they’re interested in learning more, maybe they work with a municipality, they’d like some more information? How can folks get in touch with you?Michael Orshan (18:28)
Well, our website is BreezeSqueeze.com. So it’s kind of easy to remember that rhymes. So it’s BreezeSqueeze.com and then there’s a way to get in touch through the website. I think that’s the easiest way and we’ll get right back to you and we’d love to talk.Dylan Silver (18:47)
Michael, thank you so much for coming on the show here today.Michael Orshan (18:50)
Thank you. It’s been a pleasure
