California homeowners face a complex puzzle in decarbonizing their homes: electrification without rooftop solar could increase bills due to expensive electricity, while installing solar first risks oversizing or underutilizing the system. Balto Energy, a startup founded by James Quazi, uses AI to analyze utility bills and recommend the most cost-effective clean energy strategy. In this episode, we discuss Balto's tool, its potential to empower contractors, and what California's situation reveals about the future of clean energy policy nationwide.
Text transcript:
David Roberts
Hello everyone. This is Volts for September 13, 2024, "A tool that enables solar first home electrification." I'm your host, David Roberts. Californians who want to decarbonize their homes face something of a conundrum. If they electrify their cars and appliances without getting rooftop solar, they could end up paying higher overall bills thanks to California's notoriously expensive electricity and cheap natural gas.
If they install rooftop solar before electrifying their cars and appliances, they could either undersize the system for their eventual needs or oversize it and over-produce and export solar power to the California grid. Thanks to California's recent NEM 3.0 decision on rooftop solar compensation, utilities pay much less for that exported rooftop solar power than they used to.
The most economical strategy for most homeowners is likely to be some mix of electrification, batteries, and rooftop solar. The more a California homeowner stores and consumes their own cheap rooftop solar power, the more value they get out of that solar and the lower their total bills. It is a complex calculation, though, that most homeowners are in no position to make. That's where the startup Balto Energy comes in. Founder James Quazi, a longtime energy modeler and entrepreneur, has built a tool that can use a home's utility bills to create a model of its consumption patterns, predict what they will be as appliances are electrified, and recommend the maximally economical approach.
It's part of a larger effort to help contractors and solar companies navigate a post-net-metering world. I'm excited to talk to Quazi about why his tool is needed and how it works, how it will empower contractors, and what California's present says about the future of clean energy policy in the rest of the country.
With no further ado, James Quazi, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.
James Quazi
Thank you for having me. That was a great intro.
David Roberts
Thanks. So, you know, I sort of went over it a little quickly in the intro there. But let's talk a little bit about this conundrum for Californians who are trying to decarbonize. So, just by background — I don't even know if everyone's been following the California rooftop solar wars, I kind of assume everybody has — but just by way of background, California recently basically issued a new policy on rooftop solar, and the long and short of it is that they're going to compensate homeowners much less. It used to be that basically you could get paid the retail rate for your excess solar, and now they're just going to pay much, much less than that.
On the surface, this really damages the economical case for solar for homeowners, they'll get compensated much less. This has resulted in a huge blow to the solar industry in California. There are solar companies shutting down, jobs being lost, etcetera, etcetera. So, talk a little bit about the conundrum and how you think about solving it.
James Quazi
Yeah, so about a year ago, the net energy metering policy in California changed from NEM 2.0 to NEM 3.0, now called Net Billing Tariff. The difference is, as you mentioned, that now customers get paid on a schedule. Each hour per year is a different rate. But generally, you can think of it as between like $0.05 and $0.08 for exported energy, while imported energy for me in San Diego is between $0.38 and $0.52 an hour. So it degrades the value proposition for residential solar for a homeowner. For contractors, it's also proven really difficult. So in the past, it was really easy to have rule of thumb sizing or heuristics, or if you took annual energy over the last twelve months and you designed a system that produced around that same amount of energy, it was generally going to be a good value proposition for the homeowner.
But now, what you need to understand is, like, how much of that solar production is actually coincident with the load on the house, because the export of energy is devalued.
David Roberts
Right. So, the economics now have shifted to make it so that, I mean, maybe this was true already, but more true now that the ideal thing for Californians with rooftop solar to do is to consume as much of the generated power as conceivably possible.
James Quazi
That's absolutely correct. So, if you can think of it as, and I'm sure your listeners are familiar with the terminology, like LCOE. So, the cost of solar, residential rooftop solar, is somewhere between, let's say, $0.10 and $0.12 a kilowatt-hour to produce, whereas the retail rate is much higher depending on the IOU that you're a part of. To the extent that you can consume cheap on-site electricity, you are hugely benefited as a customer.
David Roberts
Right. So then the question becomes, well, there's a bunch of different ways of approaching this question, but from this sort of like, if I'm trying to sell solar, right, I need a little bit of a new pitch, right? Because before, with full retail compensation, it's kind of a no-brainer, you could make a lot of money, but now you can make a lot less money. So this changes the value proposition for solar. So, explain exactly how the sort of calculation shifts.
James Quazi
Sure, I would actually reframe it a little bit in terms of, like, I believe so in the previous net metering paradigm. We often saw simple solar paybacks in the five to seven years. I believe that those paybacks are still available to homeowners, but it's just a different set of products and services than simply rooftop solar on the roof. So, I think our goal is to help retool the solar industries, to help look at a house as a whole, maybe converting a lot of the energy on site that we previously ignored, whether that's natural gas or gasoline, and then power that all with cheap onsite renewables, and that will drive the value proposition for that homeowner.
David Roberts
Right. It's still worthwhile getting solar, even maybe still a comparable payoff period, but a different approach. And basically, it's going to be a little bit more of a complicated approach. Right? Like, it's one thing just to stick solar on the roof. Like, how much energy do I use, let's stick that much solar on the roof. Pretty easy. Once you bring in the whole home, just the combinatorial, you know what I mean? Just the calculations get a lot more complicated.
James Quazi
For sure. So, like, I think in two respects. One, it's more complicated for the contractor to feel confident in the system that they're proposing and the financial outcome for the homeowner. And then two, from a homeowner's perspective, it's more complicated to understand and digest and comprehend a suite of services that might include solar and a battery and a heat pump and an EV, than it is simply like panels on a roof. Our goal at Balto Energy is to sort of do the modeling and ingest the complexity and then deliver it in a way that's consumable for both a contractor and a homeowner.
David Roberts
Right. So, talk briefly about what your tool does. What is the outcome supposed to be? What is it trying to accomplish?
James Quazi
Yeah, so our perspective on it is that oftentimes in the past, if you asked for a solar quote, you would get maybe one option, two options, or three options, max. Really, like, if I take my own house as an example, so I live in San Diego, I can fit up to 30 panels on the roof, which is constrained by roof geometry, area shading, what have you. So let's call it maybe 20 to 30 different flavors of solar systems that I could possibly engage in. If I layer on batteries, I could have 1, 2, 3, 4 batteries. And then EVs, one or two EVs, and heat pump or not heat pump, water heater or not water heater.
And our first step in the process is to ingest an address and then interval bill data. So, we need hourly electric reads and daily gas.
David Roberts
And that, just to be clear, this is the sort of raw information that's going into the model?
James Quazi
Yeah, that's correct.
David Roberts
It's utility bills. And this, these are available from the utility. There's no, it's not difficult to get this information.
James Quazi
Somewhat loaded question. It should be available. I just finished listening to your podcast on "Free the energy data." I have —
David Roberts
That's why I ask. I'm wondering how straightforward it is to get the raw data that you need.
James Quazi
I would say that having been in this industry for 20 years, it's much easier now than it has ever been before. That being the case, there are still hurdles. There's a lot of missing intervals. There's patchwork to be done. There are services that provide synthetic intervals. It's not as clean of a dataset as I would ideally like, but it's generally like the authorization, and there are a couple of third-party companies now that do it and are making it easier.
David Roberts
Is it notably easier in California than it is in other states? Different in California than in other states? Or is this just a utility by utility thing across the country?
James Quazi
Our focus is in California right now. So, I have the most depth and experience there for this problem. Even within California and the IOUs, it is utility by utility.
David Roberts
So are you restricted geographically where you can sell your product based on the utilities, whether you can get these to utility information or not?
James Quazi
Our position is that to accurately model a home's energy use and consumption profiles, you need two things. One is you need a physics-based model of the building, and then you need to be able to calibrate that with what is actually happening in the home. I've done a lot of energy modeling, auditing, that sort of thing. I think the one definitive thing that I've learned is that the best site observed data is actually bills. It will help you ferret out how people use their home, what their preferences are, and is actually the ground truth data.
So, our position as a company is because we want to be able to confidently project — like, let's say if I converted a gas furnace to a heat pump, and I want to know on an hourly basis, what is the energy input to that system. To do that accurately, I believe that you need interval data.
David Roberts
So you are in some sense beholden to utilities here or dependent on utilities to be forthcoming?
James Quazi
Yeah, I think, unfortunately. And then to "Free the energy data" podcast. Yes, this is true, and it is being in some ways held hostage, and that's not great for the industry. I would say that our success rate right now is like, it's significant enough that we see this as somewhat of a hurdle, but not a deal breaker.
David Roberts
Right, right. So, I mean, getting utility bills seems straightforward enough. You just ask the homeowner and they give them to you. But when you say a physics-based model of the house, you have to go do that in person. Can you construct that from publicly available data?
James Quazi
Yes, you can. We've done this in several iterations in the past. So, the background engine that does this is an NREL product called EnergyPlus. And it has, let's say, a full set of data requirements, which you can imagine has a lot of physical attributes of the specific house. And what we do ourselves and through partners, is comb, let's say, permit record databases and MLS listings. And we can get close enough with that set of information to build the first model. And then it's really, in comparing that model to the billing data, what's actually happening on an hourly basis, that allows us to calibrate it.
David Roberts
Interesting. So, you don't have to do a site visit to do any of this, really. You could theoretically do all of this modeling remotely?
James Quazi
Yep. Everything like roof geometry, shading, building modeling, tariff engines, all the things that are sort of the processes to get to an output, can be done remotely.
David Roberts
All right. And so, you put all this information into the model, and then what is the model supposed to do? And here's a question I had also: Am I the homeowner, interacting with this model in any way, or is the model a tool for contractors?
James Quazi
Our plan, at the very start, we're working with a set of contractors, and we're in Napa and Sonoma to start, most notably Northern Pacific. Our plan is to deliver a tool to a solar contractor that they can use to propose a wide range of solutions that a homeowner might want. I think that this will become a customer-facing tool or exploratory tool in the future, but we are definitely starting with solar contractors.
David Roberts
Interesting. Yeah, because one of the questions I had about this is just that I'm sure I'm not telling you anything as someone who's worked in energy for a long time, but just like, people are pretty lazy, and the way people make decisions about appliances and stuff like that is generally to ignore it until it breaks and then go to Home Depot. So, like this comprehensive, long-term, holistic planning, I'm just like, wondering, like, how many homeowners are really that committed?
James Quazi
So, let me give you an idea of, like, what the output of the tool is, then where I see this going. So, you know, back to my house, 30 panels, batteries, EV's, all the things. What we want to do is expand the solution set for all possible outcomes for that house. So, if I permutate those things, it ends up being a set of maybe like a couple hundred to a thousand different individual pathways. It could be 28 panels —
David Roberts
And these are like mixes of the number of panels, the number of batteries, what kind of appliances, that kind of thing.
James Quazi
That's absolutely correct. And then what we've created is sort of a decision-making framework that allows you to search that space for the thing that's right for you. At first, contextualized in one of three goal seeks. So the first one being a very standard solar approach, which is "Deliver me the best financial outcome." The second one, which we're seeing a sort of increasing adoption around, is like, "Yeah, I want a great financial outcome, but I also want to power this set of critical loads or my entire house through an outage of this duration. And I'm not cost-sensitive around that."
So, like, if I need to add a battery or two batteries and it provides that service, that's fine. And then the third one is a sort of immersion. Ten years ago, when I was in the solar industry, it was like there was a time when we thought we had to deliver day one savings to get adoption. And it turned out there was a segment of the population, mostly retirees or people that were about to retire, who, let's say, had a $150 utility bill. And they're like, "You know, saving money isn't as important to me as, you know, I experienced the grid cost is volatile, but always volatile in the upward direction.
And if you are going to put on the system and it has a 20-year lifespan, can you lock in this $150 for 20 years? And I don't experience any increase in costs." So those are starting points. I will say that I think there's more out there. So, there are a segment of customers that could be interested in just like the environmental outcome, and there's ways to calculate that based on grid dynamics. That's where we're starting, and I think we'll kind of learn our way into the solution.
David Roberts
Right, so you can tweak the model depending on what your goals are, depending on what your aims are. And I guess one of the questions I had about it is, like, in California at least, grid electricity is so expensive and natural gas is so cheap, and solar compensation is now so low, that it seems like the most economical outcome for homeowners is always going to be to electrify all your appliances and put a bunch of rooftop solar to power your appliances. It seems like that's always going to be the cheapest outcome, is it not? And that's also always going to be the most environmentally preferable outcome, right?
Because it's zero carbon. In other words, what if I, as a contractor, just came to you and said, "Look, I can do all these complicated calculations, but trust me, you want to electrify all your appliances and put rooftop solar on your roof. That's what it's going to end up showing you." Does it ever show otherwise?
James Quazi
So, if we were to implement generalized or rules of thumb, I think that would be a good one. What I have seen is there are time when your're roof constrained, so you might not have the roof capacity to power all the things, and then you'd want to make better decisions. To the extent that you have vast plains of south-facing, west-facing roof area, we want to make sure that we're installing the right amount of solar and batteries. So, I think that there's an optimization problem there. But, I think you're right in the sense that to the extent that you can self-consume a ton of energy that you generated on-site, that will be the best outcome for you.
David Roberts
So then, if I'm a homeowner and I run this model, or a contractor comes to me and runs this model, and the outcome of the model is the most economical approach for you, the homeowner, is to buy a heat pump, buy a heat pump water heater, buy an induction stove, et cetera, buy a bunch of batteries and put a bunch of rooftop solar on the roof. On the one hand, I might believe, I might find it perfectly plausible that that is the end state that will yield the lowest ongoing operating costs for my house. But on the other hand, that's a daunting upfront investment. Do you know what I mean?
In a sense, if I'm a homeowner and a contractor comes to me, he's like, "I'm selling solar. And by the way, I have this fancy tool that shows me that you also need to buy a bunch of other stuff from me." I guess I'm just a little suspicious.
James Quazi
I think the intent of the tool is to allow a homeowner to make the best decision for them. To the extent that the best decision is, in fact, a larger PV system, more batteries, maybe a heat pump, and all of those things in aggregate end up being expensive directionally , but have great payback. I think that hits on like sort of the second vein of Balto. So the first is like, how do we create a decision framework and compute engine to give you the scenarios and help you make a decision? Once you've made a decision —
David Roberts
Will the model also crank out a preferred order of operations for that? You know what I mean? Not just like an end state that would be best, but like, what steps in what order are economical?
James Quazi
This is getting back to the solar-led electrification vision for this. Our position is that solar and storage should lead always , and we should be building 20 or 25-year products for the future energy consumption. The tool is there to say, can we share a vision of the future and what applies and things you'll be engaged in, whether that's EVs or heat pumps or whatever. Once we have that, can we build 25-year renewable infrastructure on site to support those things over time? We think that there are interesting ways. And I'll touch on the financing in a little bit about how to transact this and make it consistent.
David Roberts
Yeah, I want to get to the financing in a minute, but before I leave this question. So, why always solar and batteries first? Or put it this way, why shouldn't I put a little bit of solar and batteries on, enough to power my current appliances? And then, you know, when I switch out my furnace for a heat pump, just stick a couple more solar panels on the roof. Why not do it incrementally like that?
James Quazi
Yes, I myself have a background, and then we've got some deep partnerships with contractors. They are not a fan of that approach for a number of reasons. One is if I take a five-kilowatt system and then I append a three-kilowatt system on later, that is not the cost of an eight-kilowatt system. It's much more costly.
David Roberts
Because just coming out to the site again and all—
James Quazi
Redesign, permitting. Yeah, all the things. And then separately, depending on the time lag between system one and system two, there are at times, compatibility issues with modules that make it more difficult. I think solar's gotten inexpensive enough where if you were going to engage in one of maybe the three big electrification projects, which would be EV, heat pump, heat pump water heater, I mean, you should be sizing for at bare minimum that. And I would argue for the whole thing if that's what you intend to do, on day one. And then if you're doing other things, let's say that have a more de minimis impact on your meter or your electrical consumption, like a stove, then maybe it's fine to wait.
But to the extent that, like, you're considering solar and storage and one of the other things, I think it makes a lot of sense to size appropriately for future loads.
David Roberts
So, you would say to any homeowner contemplating solar that the financially smartest thing to do is to size a system for your projected total need in the future, not your current need.
James Quazi
Yeah, no, I feel strongly that that is the case. I will take myself as an example again. I have an EV. I am considering a heat pump. I have a tankless hot water heater that is in a closet and is not easily replaceable with a heat pump water heater given form factor. But given those things, I did size the PV to the anticipated heat pump. Even if that doesn't happen on day one, it might happen on year one, three, five, or seven, right?
David Roberts
So, are you not then, while you have the solar that's oversized for your current needs, are you not sort of financially losing out in the interim, in the meantime?
James Quazi
So, I think that again, the export value for solar today directionally is much lower. So, there is some value, it's not a lot. I would categorize it as you're not optimizing the system today.
David Roberts
Suboptimal, then let's see.
James Quazi
But I think that what you're really doing is putting together the infrastructure to adopt more products in the future.
David Roberts
Right. A contractor comes to me as a homeowner, says, "Let's look at how much solar you will need once you've electrified your home," basically, and install that amount. Do you envision these same contractors who are trying to sell solar, selling these other things to homeowners as well? Sort of like offering, like moving beyond solar to offer kind of total home electrification packages type of things.
James Quazi
I think there's going to be a couple of different flavors, and we'll see what sorts out. In San Diego, one of the biggest residential installers actually has historically had a heat pump division of their company. That's probably not the norm. I do see a lot of solar installers — I mean, certainly, a solar installer is now installing storage by default. A lot of them install EV chargers. I've seen some interest in heat pump water heaters as the installation is quite a bit easier than heat pumps, HVAC. So, I think that we'll see some adoption of product over time.
I do believe that the heat pump is probably the one thing that is a set of expertise that is probably different than what solar providers have in-house. What they can do, and we anticipate doing, is a lot of pre-wiring work. It's taken as an industry axiom that HVAC products get replaced when they break. To the extent that that infrastructure, whether it's a 240 circuit to the existing furnace location, is not in place, it's very likely that the existing thing gets replaced with something very similar, and then we're locked into this pattern for 15 years.
So, we're very interested in, again, sizing appropriately, but then also doing some of the pre-work that allows these things to be adopted.
David Roberts
Trey, interesting. And so, from your perspective, you're going to put the tool in the hands of contractors, and then to some extent, the contractors are going to figure out exactly how best to use it and what kind of packages to offer and stuff like that. Is Balto out being a contractor, like running this, interacting with homeowners?
James Quazi
No, we are not. So, what we're doing is providing a toolset, which is computational tools, finance tools that allow existing contractors today to be more effective.
David Roberts
Got it. And so, talk about the financial side of this. So, I'm guessing I'm borderline illiterate when it comes to money issues. But I'm guessing that part of the promise of this is that if you can more accurately and reliably project future energy needs in a home, you're going to have an easier time financing the sort of oversized solar system that you want in anticipation of those loads. Is that right? Part of this is like giving confidence to financial institutions to finance these things, right?
James Quazi
Yeah, that's exactly right. So, I would say that the first step is having a shared vision of what the future of this home looks like. So, what are the appliances that are on the list and off the list? EVs, whatever the case is. And then, from past learnings at Solar City and Dandelion, really what you have to do is package it in a way that people can experience the savings at the same rate as they chunk off the capital cost of these projects. And then, in terms of energy savings over time and confidence, I think the goal there is, and we could think of it as if you were getting a loan.
One factor in the loan might be your debt-to-income ratio. How much debt do you have, and can you actually service this loan over time? And our position is, to the extent that these suite of products actually lowers your obligations to pay, so your utility bills, that should be factored into any financial product as well. Does that make sense?
David Roberts
Yeah. So, it's almost like future income increases, almost like.
James Quazi
Yeah, so if I had, like, if my obligations to pay a loan provider were $1,000 a month, just randomly, and I made x amount of income, if the obligation was less, if it was $500 a month, given all these energy savings, I would have a greater ability to pay back that loan, and that should be factored in.
David Roberts
Oh, I see, I see. So, is the idea here just for this tool you've created to give confidence to homeowners who are going to banks and stuff, or are you getting in the finance game at all?
James Quazi
Our intention is to provide the financing for it as well. I mean, like, I think any time we're trying to make the process as seamless as possible. So, it's sort of like a one-stop shop in terms of assessing what's right, what's the best fit for you in terms of these projects, and then packaging it in a way that — we're hoping it incentivizes people to do more sooner, but to the extent that they want to do things over time, it is also like a flexible facility that allows you to adopt a heat pump water heater in year three, if that's what you want.
David Roberts
So the contractors are the ones offering the homeowners this sort of financing package?
James Quazi
Yep, that's correct.
David Roberts
Right. And the contractors are able to do it because they have this information from your tool that gives them confidence?
James Quazi
Hand in glove.
David Roberts
Right. So, just having gone over all this, let's rewind and just imagine I'm a homeowner, and a contractor knocks on my door. What do you envision the contractor sort of like, what is the homeowner facing pitch from the contractor? Because there's a lot of complicated stuff going on behind the scenes for the contractor. What is the homeowner hearing? What is the pitch to the homeowner?
James Quazi
Yeah, we see it as a stepwise process. So, because our go-to market is through solar contractors, the first step is to say, if I were any other solar contractor, and you called me for a solar and potentially storage system, what I would have done is looked at your current electrical bills and size the system this way, and this is what... "You want a five kilowatt solar array and one battery, 110 kilowatt hour battery." The next step is to say, "Hey, listen, we're actually in that world. We're only looking at one of probably three silos of energy that you're using."
So, we're ignoring the natural gas side of the bill. We're ignoring everything that's happening at the pump. But, if we look at your energy spend holistically, here are a suite of options that are available to you. And this is the differential sort of financial outcome versus just a solar system, versus, like, resiliency versus bill stability kind of thing.
David Roberts
So, the idea here is, I go to the contractor and say, "Hey, I've been thinking about solar and battery," and the contractor says to me, "Well, hey, what about this larger package? You could have even bigger savings, and you could have resilience," and stuff like this. So, it's a little bit like an upsell for a contractor.
James Quazi
Yeah, I mean, I would think of it as like, being able to more holistically address energy spend. Like, that's our goal, is to say, "It's not just one flavor that we're dealing with. We're looking at the entire house and things, and we want the best solution for you."
David Roberts
It makes me wonder how long it will be before homeowners think that way, or if they ever will. Because homeowners just think of products as separate products. I don't know that a lot of homeowners, especially outside our world, even sort of think of the home as a system, right? With certain energetic inputs and outputs that should be dealt with as a holistic system. Like, that's just — I'm not even sure homeowners are at all accustomed to thinking that way.
James Quazi
I wonder if I myself am, like, blinded by sort of a friend group or whatever the case is. But I would say that, like, I don't know of a lot of people that aren't at least considering an EV, right? Even if they're not, like, actively join in. But it's like, "Hey, listen, this is actually a real option." I don't think that heat pumps are very far behind that curve. It's interesting, like when people, like historically, when people inquire about solar, we often times have thought of that as they want bill savings. But I am not entirely sure that that is the reason.
David Roberts
Do we know? Have we done surveys and polls? I'm so curious. I would also assume, just out of a sort of, I guess, a low, like a background degree of cynicism, that that's going to be the dominant motivation. But is it? Like, I don't feel confident about that at all.
James Quazi
Well, I don't either. My belief is that bill savings are part of a decision-making process, but probably very rarely the primary driver. And that is the thing. And even if you look at, like, the funnel conversion metrics of, like, the solar industry as a whole, it's just like, for every hundred people that inquire, single-digit people actually do the things. And our perspective is like, you know, they're getting stuck somewhere in the process. And it's oftentimes with questions that cannot be answered, and that's when they stall out. And that is our reason for expanding the set to everything that's possible in your home and letting you search that, because we think we'll figure out what are the motivations. I think that there's a strong cohort of people that are just anti-utility.
David Roberts
That's a piece of it. There's an environmental piece of it. There's a sort of independence, anti-utility piece of it. There's a vague mix. There's just social contagion, there's just peer pressure. You see it around you. It's the whole stew of motivations. I'd love to understand that better. So, I mean, it kind of seems like what you'd want is for your tool to be in the hands of everybody involved in any of those products. Do you know what I mean? Like, if I want an EV and I go to the car dealership, you know, it'd be cool if the car dealer could say to me, "Hey, you know, save even more money if you threw in a heat pump with this and a solar panel."
You know, like if, or the heat pump, people are like, "Hey, throw in an EV and solar panels." Like, it'd be nice if homeowners confronted the idea of total electrification everywhere they looked, right? I mean, that'd be ideal.
James Quazi
Yeah, 100%. I really think that's the vision, and that's where we're going. I think the entry point into a lot of this stuff will be varied. Like, it will be through an EV at the start, or a broken furnace that gets replaced by a heat pump or whatever the case is. I think our goal is to engage homeowners in a way where we have a persistent bill connection. I think that this is why that episode resonated so much with me. If we have an address and a persistent daily, hourly, monthly, whatever the case is, bill connection, you can drive insights over time to a homeowner at very meaningful times to intercept them.
Right now, I think this business, like solar in general, is very transactional. We think of it as like, we get leads in the top of the funnel, we set them at this rate, we convert them at this rate, we install them. It's a 30% gross margin, and then that's the end. Whereas, I don't believe that that's the way the products will be adopted and people will have to, I mean, internally we call it energy literacy. Like, how do I start to understand the problem and the solutions?
David Roberts
Right. So, in the same way, you sort of have a financial advisor, you could have like a home advisor, basically. A home energy advisor.
James Quazi
And we also think it's got to be low impact, so it can't be like, "Hey, you've got to go do this detailed sort of appliance audit or whatever the case is." So it's bills and address, and then, you know, this is a great state of change problem where utility rates are constantly changing, prices of products are changing, incentives are changing, and there's always a chance to message. I very viscerally feel this in the sense that, like, when I took four years off and then reengaged with the industry, I was like, "Wow, we like, crossed the threshold, like, the point of no return, where electrification now makes sense for everyone," and I had missed it, and this is the only thing I'd ever done.
David Roberts
Yeah, I mean, it's moving so quickly. I will say, though, one thing I hear from, you know, and there's been articles written about this. It's just like, it's all out there from people who have tried to do this total electrification thing. It's just incredibly difficult, just incredibly difficult to synchronize everything and arrange everything. And so, in that context, the idea of having a kind of home advisor where, like, your hot water heater breaks and you just call your home advisor, you figure out, like, what's the right approach here, what's the economical approach, where to look, what kind of thing to get?
A lot of people would very much welcome having one of those, I feel like.
James Quazi
And I think that this speaks to the general funnel conversion in the industry, but generally, a lead comes in, and then what we're trying to do is furiously convert them to a sale and install as quickly as possible, hopefully within 30 days, hopefully in one set. And I just don't believe that that's the way that people will consume products. It will be through a bunch of different experiences over time. And I think that's a meaningful difference. Like, you know, we're in such a rush to do all the things. Like, I'm in a rush to do all the things at once, but I think we have to also meet people where they are and, like, engage them in some way over time so they can make a decision, so they can make another decision.
David Roberts
I hope it changes because, honestly, like, you know, I've thought about solar. Ten years ago, we did one of those sort of, like, online audit things, and it was like, "No, you're too shaded." But I think it's just changed since then. Uh, just like, what's possible. But, like, I know that if I got a solar contractor and sat down at a table with that person, that they would just be sweaty and desperate, you know what I mean? To sell me just like it, exactly like I feel at the auto dealership, which is just like, "Ew," kind of uncomfortable, you know what I mean?
And rushed and don't feel like I have a full sense of all the pieces in play, and that I can't trust the person I'm talking to, to help me out, you know what I mean? I'm sort of, like, adversarial. I hate that whole model, you know what I mean? And just like, I would be, I don't know how representative I am, but I'd be inclined to spend more money if I just had a person who was like, had the big picture, had the model, had the data in hand, said, "You know, like whenever you're ready, this is the right first step."
Just like a better environment for homeowners to deal with these things and think about these things.
James Quazi
Yeah, no, I get it. I feel very similarly. I totally understand from the other perspective, like solar sales reps are expensive and they're hired to do one thing. I just don't know that it's the way that most people want to adopt the things.
David Roberts
Yeah, I can't believe that it's going to go to truly, truly mass penetration running on this model. It's going to have to evolve into something else. As we near the end here, let's pull the camera back a little bit and talk about the Agile Electrification project. My understanding basically is that the NEM 3.0 decision in California threw the solar contracting world into a bit of a tizzy. And there are efforts now to organize and figure out how to move forward and how to help contractors and what the right approach for contractors is in this new world.
So, tell us a little bit about what the Agile Electrification project is.
James Quazi
It is an industry-sponsored project that's hosted at the Design and Innovation Center at UCSD. The genesis of it was a lot of, quite honestly, hammering around NEM 3.0. It was like if you read Canary or any of these publications, a lot of it is doom and gloom. This industry is down 70%.
David Roberts
Yeah, there's a lot of "sky is falling" sentiment flying around.
James Quazi
Yeah, I think there have been. And you know, a lot of people are like, "Hey, listen, a lot of the bad actors are going to get flushed out with this," which I believe. I also believe a lot of some good actors will go out of business. So this is like a real issue. In times of turmoil, there's oftentimes opportunity and there's a group of people, contractors, manufacturers, investors, who have come together in this venue where sometimes it would be competitive or driven by business interests and they're coming together to solve problems for the industry. So right now it's a series of three projects to expand from there.
One is like energy modeling for the entire state of California. It's something that everyone needs. We want to do it and open source it. Another one that we touched on earlier is understanding customer motivations and understanding where they got stuck and how to unstick them, because our general sense is they want to save money. And I don't know if that's the primary motivation. And then the third one is around incentives and rebates and how to, like, it's a constantly evolving landscape and just staying on top of it is like a challenge and maybe a full-time job.
So, it's how to open-source that aspect of it, and how to qualify people for rebates and make sure that they're up to date, make sure they're not over-allocated, and deliver that information to the people on the ground that are actually installing the systems.
David Roberts
Right. And so, I'm stuck on this point. I just wanted to reiterate one more time. So, it's your belief that, because I think this sort of popular belief is that the NEM 3.0 decision has radically reduced homeowner incentives to get solar power, that it's just not as worth it anymore to get solar power. What you're saying is, with the right holistic approach, solar power is as valuable as ever and just as worth getting as ever. Is that your position?
James Quazi
That is my position, yes.
David Roberts
Do you think that that is widely, like solar contractors believe that, or are you having to sort of buck them up and convince them of that?
James Quazi
Well, I think we're in a stage right now where, I mean, we set up the simplest possible website, have done very little marketing. We've had directionally 75 to 100 contractors sign up and say they're interested. I believe that the contractors are looking for solutions. For sure. That is definitively true. I think they should believe this because it is true that there is a great value proposition in homeowners. I think the issue here, maybe the persistent issue that's undeniable, is that it's more complex. Describing the value proposition has become more complex. For sure. There's no way around that.
So, we're trying to find ways to — I mean, the back-end compute engine is great. The real challenge is finding ways to deliver that information to customers in a way that's actionable.
David Roberts
For sure. Final question then. A lot of this seems very Californian. The fears and the solutions and all of it seems sort of very customized to California's current circumstances. How applicable is all of this, do you think, outside of California? Would your model be helpful to a homeowner in, I don't know, like Arkansas?
James Quazi
Yeah. So, I would take it in two flavors. One is, I think there's the expectation, for good reason, that these policies in California will get exported to other states. So, it will become hugely relevant soon.
David Roberts
You mean rooftop solar compensation getting cut way back? It's already happened in a couple of other states. I mean, it's definitely a trend.
James Quazi
Yeah. So, that's true. NEM 3.0, or like the difference between export energy valuation and import and parity, does not have to be true for this general value proposition to hold true. So, to that extent, I would say that it's portable anywhere. We chose to start in California because it is by far the biggest solar market. It accounts for about 50% of solar and there was a demonstrated need. I will say that it's a very complex problem to solve and it has geographic sides to it. So, as you move location, utilities change and their tariffs change and the way that they charge and weather changes.
David Roberts
The information they make available.
James Quazi
Exactly, exactly. So, we've tactically started it in California for those reasons and constrained it. But there's no reason why this shouldn't be applicable to, like, any other place.
David Roberts
Right. It's sort of interesting. The big fear, or I guess the thing that solar people used to say to utilities when warning them away from NEM 3.0, is like, "Look, if you cut compensation too much, we're just going to self-consume and then install more electric appliances and then slowly wean ourselves off the grid and then not need the grid anymore. And then you're losing customers." The much-fabled death spiral. It seems like you're organizing to make that real, to make that happen.
James Quazi
I have some thoughts on this. I really do think, and I don't know the answer, but at some point down the road, we're going to have a fork. That fork will be either we find a way to use essentially distribution resources to cooperate, and I think that is the best societal outcome, or we find that we can't cooperate and everyone has to be their own, like a little micro picogrid, and that we have to build the infrastructure to do it. And, you know, I think that it's probably more likely that that's going to happen, which is unfortunate, but I do think that, as always, the affluent will serve themselves first and make good decisions and the rest of the costs will be pushed on to everyone else. And actually, in my heart of hearts, what I think will happen is we'll find a way to cooperate, but only after we've sort of incurred a huge amount of pain.
David Roberts
That sounds like the American approach that I know and love. We'll stumble through some disasters and then eventually get our act together.
James Quazi
Yeah, you end up doing the right thing when you're forced to. So, I think that that's the way I see it happening.
David Roberts
All right, well, cool. James, this is really interesting. I've been meaning to look into solar in California, how they're dealing with all this. And this is a really interesting approach. I mean, it's never funny. Until I sort of read about this, it never occurred to me, even though it's really obvious, that like, of course, electrifying your appliances and getting your battery and getting your solar panels are — that's like the same thing. You know what I mean? Like, that's all one. That's all one thing. Like I said, it's like a switch that kind of flips in your mind.
You're like, "Oh, like, it's a holistic system." It would be interesting to try to train homeowners to think that way more. Thank you so much, James. Thanks for taking the time.
James Quazi
Thank you. Appreciate it.
David Roberts
Thank you for listening to Volts. It takes a village to make this podcast work. Shout out, especially to my super producer, Kyle McDonald, who makes my guests and I sound smart every week. And it is all supported entirely by listeners like you. So, if you value conversations like this, please consider joining our community of paid subscribers at volts.wtf. Or, leaving a nice review or telling a friend about Volts, or all three. Thanks so much, and I'll see you next time.
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