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Solar Simplified: How Haven Energy Makes Going Green a Breeze!
Solar is now a mature technology, but still, adoption is slow. Why is it so hard to get solar and what are the obstacles to widespread solar adoption. Stay tuned.
Today I have with me Haven Energy Co-Founder, Vinnie Campo. Haven Energy is a venture backed marketplace for electricians to connect with consumers for battery and solar installation. They are looking to take the complexity out of installing these systems by putting the people who want solar together with quality installers who can remove the roadblocks for getting it done.
So lets find out more from Vinnie,
Welcome Vinnie
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Solar is now a mature technology, but still adoption is slow. Why is it so hard to get solar? And what are the obstacles to widespread solar adoption? Stay tuned. Today I have with me Haven Energy co founder, Vinnie Campos. Haven Energy is a venture backed marketplace for electricians to connect with consumers for battery and solar installations. They are looking to take the complexity out of installing these systems by putting the people who want solar together with quality installers who can remove the roadblocks for getting it done. So let's find out more from Vinny. Welcome, Vinny.
Vinnie Campo:Hey, Chris. Thanks so much for having me. Really good to be here.
Chris Brandt:I'm always excited to talk about solar because it's, um, it's exciting. But, you know, unfortunately, I live in the Chicago area and we don't have quite as much solar as, you know, folks on the West Coast or even the East Coast. Uh, it seems to be a very coastal thing. Um, but, you know, it is very, uh, key technology, you know, for, for our country going forward, for the world going forward, right? Could you speak to like, you know, what's your, what's your perspective on, you know, the, the importance of, of, of solar and, you know, why you got into this and, you know, why, why this matters to you and, and, and to the world?
Vinnie Campo:I think it's a really good point. I mean, look, I grew up, I grew up in New Orleans and the Gulf coast of Louisiana. And so, you know, one, always being around energy was, was something. You know, I knew I wanted to spend my career in but two, you know, things like hurricanes and in natural disasters were always like an ever present threat. I was in high school when Hurricane Katrina hit, um, and there's like numerous other storms like that where you don't realize how much You really rely on power and electricity until you go weeks or months without it. And so, you know, some of those experiences really shaped me in terms of wanting to be able to spend a lot of my career in energy. How do you focus on energy resiliency and energy independence? So coming out of Out of undergrad, I got a master's degree in energy trading. I started my current energy trading. And at that point, I was hooked. I thought the industry was incredibly fascinating. There's so much advancements that are happening, both at the residential and the industrial scale, in terms of distributed generation, distributed resources. And so when we had the opportunity to really start digging into the space, we saw a really clear market need, more so around energy storage and batteries. Uh, and then we started to add solar on top of that, but that was really the wedge in is just growing up, being all around it, uh, seeing how, how important it is, but how challenging it is
Chris Brandt:for some of these, these technologies to get distributed. You grew up in Louisiana and obviously, you know, it's kind of underwater a lot of, a lot of the year, it seems like in Louisiana. Um, you know, so rising, rising sea levels and things like that, you know, there's definitely, you know, a concern there. Yeah. for, for, you know, those regions and a lot of other low lying regions. Um, and, you know, we also talk about, you know, energy resilience, you know, just, we've not only had, um, you know, it's not only just like storms and things like that, that we keep seeing, but just, you know, parts of like California and, you know, And Texas in particular, we've seen a lot of just, you know, struggles to get energy to all the, all the locations in the States, you know, could you, could you speak to like how solar impacts some of that stuff?
Vinnie Campo:Yeah, I mean, it's not just Louisiana where I grew up, you know, I live in Texas now and we, and we've gone through numerous, uh, near grid catastrophes and, and extended power outages. I think it's twofold. One, there's, there's only just an increase. In the frequency and duration of weather related events that really puts a lot of stress on the grid. And that's where you see some of that energy resiliency challenges show up. The other is that the electric grid that we have today, it's, it was really built for decades ago. It's this very centralized machine where power has traditionally been produced in a, in a centralized location and then transmitted to the home. But. That infrastructure is aging, uh, at an incredible pace. And so it's led to this huge need for utilities to be able to upgrade the infrastructure, upgrade substations, upgrade or bury power lines. And that's an incredibly costly investment for utilities. And they are making it in a lot of cases, but it's a, it's a massive undertaking. I think that gets to like, where we really see the benefit of Distributed energy and distributed resources coming in, which is you're undergoing what we think is a once in a lifetime shift of the grid moving from being centralized to highly decentralized with the home really being the focal point of of energy going forward. It's, you know, it's now fairly common to see someone have either solar on the roof or, An EV in the driveway. We certainly expect that trend to continue, which is the home, which used to just be a consumer of energy is really this all encompassing. Think of it almost as a virtual power plant where it's producing power, it's storing in a battery. It's using that stored energy to optimize when to use the energy. It's charging an electric vehicle. We really see that as the transition that's happening at a very quickening pace.
Chris Brandt:Like I said, I'm in the Midwest here and, and it's been trickier to get solar out here. And, and you'd think that, um, it wouldn't be that hard, but you know, like I, I've had them come out and evaluate my house and things like that. And, you know, I mean, I guess, you know, we got a lot of snow. We don't have, you know, a lot of sunny days all the time. You know, we're not a, you know, more arid area. Um, but it, it, it doesn't seem like that's necessarily always the the blockage here. I mean, there seems to be a lot of other things around solar that make it challenging. And I know that's one of the reasons why you wanted to make, you know, this process easier. So that's not just, you know, California, Texas, New Jersey, you know, places like that. Can you speak to some of the, the, the challenges that people face when they go to get solar?
Vinnie Campo:I think it's a couple of things. One is, you know, it's a, for a lot of folks, a fairly large investment that you're making into your home, but. A lot of that decision making is being done in the absence of a lot of information. So a lot of customers really don't have enough information about how these systems work. What are the savings that can be generated? What is the entire process end to end? I mean, it is fairly complex, even from the point of, Someone saying yes, they want to move forward and add solar, add batteries. It still takes weeks to months of local permitting, local discussions with AHJs, really to get that all the way through. And so the insight for us was certainly around like, what if you could take this process that's You know, over the years, been really convoluted of how you learn more information about a system. How do you get it installed? What's that entire process? And we said, what if you were to modernize that, you know, take a lot of learnings from, from my background and my co founder's background, simplify and streamline that process and turn it into a really great consumer experience. We thought you'd see. Uh, even stronger adoption. And so far that that's been the
Chris Brandt:case. One of the big challenges is sort of the, the, the pricing and sort of the regulatory environment that we work in. And I know that, you know, like we have competing forms of energy here that, you know, are very low cost, which kind of makes it more difficult to make that cost justification, which then means that, you know, some of these programs that, you know, you get Incentives or leasing over time and things like that are harder to justify in certain regions and things like that. Could you speak to how all that works?
Vinnie Campo:The power market is, uh, it's this incredibly complex, uh, system and so it, uh, you know, incentives vary state to state, uh, wholesale pricing varies state to state and so to your point, you know, the power that uh, someone pays in one state is going to be very different than another state based on You Locality of of how that state produces and how it consumes power and you see that translate even on the residential solar side where there are certain markets where the payback period is much quicker on solar than other markets based on things like labor rates and install costs, but more so influenced by what the prevailing electricity rate is. In that state and so it is very state to state and even within that, you know, I'm based in texas Uh, texas is kind of wonky in that part of the state as part of the state's electricity market operates in one way And then part of the state's electricity market operates in a different way. So you even start to see within a state Different municipality or different city pricing issues arise. And, you know, to the point of like, what makes this a complex process and what's confusing for consumers? Uh, it's that there's just so many variations and so many nuances, uh, that for a lot of folks it gets really complex and really confusing quickly.
Chris Brandt:Texas is probably one of the most complex markets from what I've been seeing. It just seems like, um, you know, when, when over the winter and some of the fuel costs and things like that, it just, it, the prices skyrocketed and people are still paying, you know, for, uh, the excesses of the winters, I guess, and, and it's, it seems like a really tricky market, but in that sense, I think it sounds like there's great opportunity for you in a market like that, right?
Vinnie Campo:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, the last business I was running before this was a deregulated retail electricity provider in Texas. And so we got to see firsthand what it was like to operate a business, uh, where you're buying power in real time in that, in a very volatile market. The flip side is that there's a lot of economic incentive if you're able to capture that. And I think for the homeowner, what we've always heard is that homeowners, at the highest level, they want to pay less for their electricity. They want the power to always stay on. And so I think it's incumbent on folks like us and other companies out there to find ways to make it really simple. For a homeowner in Texas to not face exposure to the wholesale market, but to know that there are ways that you can help lower their electricity bill by smarter, either by smarter dispatching or producing at the right times, storing energy in the battery at the right time, be able to offset their costs. And so 1 of the ways we think about it is really trying to shield the consumer from any of that complexity of that part of the market, come up with really simple, either financial products. or proposals that make it incredibly simple to lower their energy bill and leave some of the trickier stuff behind the scenes to us.
Chris Brandt:Yeah, it sounds like it's a very per case kind of, um, evaluation that you got to make, you know, in a lot of these installations, I would imagine.
Vinnie Campo:I think one thing we found is it's very personal too. Like our customers will develop deep relationships with the energy advisor that they speak with. And they really start to, you know, explain more about how they use energy, you know, what their home looks like and. Again, just given the cost and investment in it, they really do form strong relationships and bonds. And so one thing we've always tried to pride ourselves on is providing that, you know, that extra layer and that extra level of touch and support to really make it so it's a process that we would want to use ourselves if we were to get solar and batteries installed. And that's how we, that's why I've always thought about things.
Chris Brandt:I know there's a lot of those like, hey, get free solar now kind of offers. out there as you're going through the internet and things like that, you know, but a lot of them seem, seem very sketchy and, you know, like having the right kind of contractors do the work and people are experienced with it, not just, you know, some, some two dudes in a truck kind of, let me, let me, you know, install your solar for you. Um, you know, like finding those right contractors is, is a, is a big deal, right? I mean, cause, cause quite frankly, it's, it's, um, it's a new area and I got to imagine a lot of. People, you know, outside of maybe some of the major solar markets, you know, there's not a lot of people that have experience in installing these. So finding the right kind of people must be kind of challenging, right?
Vinnie Campo:It is and it isn't. I think there's a lot of folks maybe to your point that are able to install solar. It's certainly less so on batteries, just given the technical aspect of it. I think the thing that we think a lot about is not just like what's the breadth of that market, but like, Who are really the top contractors within that for us? Certainly it's a reflection of who we are and what the brand looks like of who the installer is that comes on site And so we really closely monitor quality assurance. We ask homeowners for feedback. We have a two way rating system To make sure that you know from a trust Perspective from a transparency perspective, it really is the best contractors, and that way we can really assure folks that if someone is showing up to do the installation, they've been vetted, they've been screened, uh, they really are, uh, should be, uh, should be a top contractor.
Chris Brandt:I know that, you know, Haven has a whole. Way to solve this problem. You have a whole methodology. You have a whole platform, but you have this. I mean, the center at the center of everything right is is this marketplace where you're connecting the end user with the right resources to get the job done. And then you're doing all this consulting around it because it is, like you say, a very complex thing. And it sounds like there's a lot of a financial component to it. There's a construction component to it. Um, you know, there's, there's, uh, the, the, the equipment, you know, like getting the best batteries and things like that. I mean, which is super critical. Um, could you talk a little bit about how your marketplace works and like, and like, what are the things that you take care of and how that all works?
Vinnie Campo:Uh, I spent a little over four years at Uber. Uh, and so, you know, I, I come at it from that marketplace type approach. And when we were setting things up, we, we had envisioned it You're working similar to that. I think what we found is that You know, it's not just taking a ride or ordering food. And so the idea of like a, you know, almost a fully outsourced marketplaces was challenging to execute on. We think of it now much more as a managed or heavily managed marketplace where, you know, there's a lot that we're doing as well to facilitate the transaction in addition to the installers. So the areas where we've been really. We've been able to provide value or what we think is really important to the homeowner is around like the actual the proposal, the financing, we handle all of the soft parts in between when someone decides they want to move forward in the installation, things like, uh, Q. A. Permitting material procurement. And over time, we think you can automate a lot of that stuff as well, too. And then we get the project ready to go so for an installer, they're able to show up on installation day with permits in hand, material waiting for them. They've done a pre install call with us to know exactly what needs to be done. I think the benefit of that model is it allows the installer to really focus on what they're uniquely the best at, which is installing systems and really understanding the electrical code and requirements to do that and allows us to take on all the other parts that go into the installation that lead up to it, which for a lot of installers is either time consuming or certainly not. In their wheelhouse, and then for them, they really just get to focus on for them what they think of as income maximizing opportunities, which is which is the installation.
Chris Brandt:So you're really serving two communities here, right? I mean, you're serving both the homeowner and you're serving the vendor or the contractor who who's looking for an opportunity to right?
Vinnie Campo:We think of both as our customer, and we have to do really well on both for for the marketplace to work well.
Chris Brandt:Now, you guys are you're located. primarily right now in California and Texas, right? I mean, just because those are very favorable markets. Are you in any other markets too? Or where are you looking? What is your footprint shaping up to, uh, to be right now?
Vinnie Campo:So we launched the business in California with Los Angeles being our first market. I think for the reasons you guessed, California was, was a really attractive market when we launched the battery only product. Uh, there's a high, high frequency of power outages. It's a very high penetration of homes that already have solar that we could install a battery on. In California, more so than anywhere else, has really wide time of use rates. It's where power is really cheap overnight and really expensive in the day. So you can store power in the battery and then run your house on it during those peak times. California, for all those reasons, really is, uh, the best market. It's why we started there. We then since started expanding, we're doing a pilot in Texas, uh, right now with one of the retail providers in Texas. And as we think about geographic expansion, it is very much state by state. We have a few other States on the roadmap for 2025, but the markets in California and Texas alone are, are so deep just in terms of really the need and how many folks are looking for these solutions that. That's the primary focus, and then we'll continue to add states, uh, looking at the Northeast, uh, thereafter.
Chris Brandt:When do you get to Illinois?
Vinnie Campo:We'll take a look. Uh, you know, I think one thing that we focus on is, like, how do you build, like, the, the scalable, repeatable model in, in a space where construction can be so local and nuanced. A lot of what we see it's you're always encountering it for the first time. So we think about how do you take this learning? How do you productize it or standardize it? And that way the next time you see it again, the solution's already been solved So my my guess is that it's the first couple states Uh that expansion takes some time But then once that playbook is down and once you really understand all the local market nuances You can start lighting up the rest of the country fairly quickly.
Chris Brandt:You know, when I've looked for, at solar for businesses and wind power and other things like that, you know, one of the challenges that I always found was that we have actually pretty cheap power here, because we've got a lot of nuclear and we've got a lot of coal on the ground. So, which is not a great thing that, you know, like, be making the power cheap, but, you know, it is what it is, I suppose. You know, so I think, you know, some of those cost justifications get a little, you know, Trickier, but as the market matures and prices come down, I got to imagine there's gonna be great opportunity here.
Vinnie Campo:Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, you know, we certainly see, I think it's 2 things. 1 is that if you just look at, like, the average electricity that homes using, it's certainly you want to do this long period of flat electrical load growth and now with. Evie is coming online, certainly on the industrial side with data centers coming online. You're experiencing for the first time this electrical load growth or more and more folks are using electricity. So we think that'll drive a lot of change of how electricity is produced to meet those to meet those needs. The other thing in the part of the reason we started with a battery is not every home is a. Is a great candidate for solar. There might be trees above it that, uh, that are shading the roof for the roof might need a reroof. We do think that at some point, every home will have a battery just because the requirements are much less. And there's always that resiliency benefit as well, too. So it's probably some point in the, you know, in the future, but just like every home has a. Or most homes have a dishwasher. We think the battery will become a standardized appliance in the home at some point as well too.
Chris Brandt:I've got an EV myself and I love, I mean, I've got a huge battery sitting in the garage, right? I mean, it's, it's whatever, how many kilowatts it is, it's 90, 100 kilowatts, whatever the kilowatts are. You know, car and EV battery is and I'm like, man, that's a lot of power just sitting there ready to be tapped into, you know, I, you know, do you envision like the, the, uh, vehicle to be like central to that? Or do you, how do you, how do you envision sort of those, those batteries to play out?
Vinnie Campo:I think there's a lot of different flavors of batteries. There's the stationary batteries that that we install today. So these are the I think tesla powerwall is probably the most familiar example, but you know More and more folks are going to have an ev in the driver in the garage the battery capacity that ev is is multiples of what a A tesla powerwall can store and so there is really some challenges of how do you integrate that ev? That EVs battery into the grid. And how do you use it either for resiliency on the home or, or for lowering the electric bill? I think there's a lot of work that still needs to be done, but it's a, it's a massive unutilized energy asset that's sitting there, and so finding the way that's not overly intrusive to the EV owner.
Chris Brandt:I still want to be able to drive my car.
Vinnie Campo:You still want to drive your car regardless of what the pricing arbitrage is in the wholesale market. So I think there's a fine balance that we just have to find there.
Chris Brandt:I love the idea of like, you know, these big batteries that, you know, like can, can take some of the load. Like, especially during like peak energy hours and things like that. I know in a lot of states they have like, you know, during the summers when it's very intense heat and, you know, it's like, They're, they're asking people to cut back on their air conditioning and this, that, so that, cause they can't handle peak load. And I got to imagine, like you mentioned, you know, these, these energy facilities are, um, they're, they're, some of them are a hundred, a hundred years old. Um, so like scaling some of this stuff up is, is going to be really tricky. And if, if, if, And if your load is very spiky because you have heat waves and then, you know, like you can't, you can't build for that huge spike, you know, you have to have something that tops off those edges of the spike, I got to imagine, and this sounds like a really great way to, uh, for, for electric companies to even, you know, moderate that, That risk on them, their own business.
Vinnie Campo:I think it's why energy storage is so powerful. You know, solar, solar always producing the same timeframes, but really where you're seeing the peak electrical demand or where the shortage is. Isn't that like, you know, call like 5 to 8 or 5 to 9 p. m. timeframe when a lot of solar goes offline. It's why a lot of utilities are looking at how do you incentivize storage more so than, than just the pure solar. If you look at the changes that California enacted with those, with the new net metering change, it's heavily disincentivized solar by itself. Just given that, that California market has enough production, Or enough electricity production during the parts of the day where the solar is producing. What California really needs, and I, what I think you'll see a lot more states. Need or want as well, is that flexibility or that dispatch ability that an energy storage asset provides, which is when it is unseasonably hot or unseasonably cold and a generator or some other large, large facilities offline, the need to not fire up a natural gas peaking plant, but if you're able to activate hundreds and thousands of homes that have energy storage assets there to be able to offset that and to really absorb that fluctuation. Thank you. That's really powerful. And what we see is utilities wanting to find ways to turn homes that have storage into into more of a flexibility and a more of a load resource.
Chris Brandt:We've talked about a lot of things that are sort of, you know, challenges. Um, you know, like, are there like, when you look at a market, are there like, Certain like here, one, two, three things that like, you know, drive adoption that you can, you can point to a market and say, this is going to be a great adoption market.
Vinnie Campo:I'd say there's two major ones and then some like, uh, some other buckets, but really, if you think about why someone gets solar and batteries for the vast majority of folks, it's, it's to lower their electric bill. Uh, and so when you think about states that are prime candidates or markets that are really good markets, the payback period can vary dramatically anywhere from. Now, three to four years on the short end to 15 plus years on the high end. And so the first thing that we think about is like, where's there the, an economic incentive or, or like a real rationale where you can solve a consumer pain point. I think that's the first one. The other is, is really around energy resiliency. And so states and markets where. You've seen increases in power outages and that's increased. Those are homeowners that are looking for backup power in some form or capacity. And so those are the two main benefits in unsurprisingly, when we think about best markets or, or best customers, there should be a fairly quick payback period. So from an economic incentive standpoint. The economics make sense and the greater the need for energy resiliency from from a lack of reliance on from their local utility that really seems to increase adoption and conversion as well
Chris Brandt:to as the demand goes up the prices are going to start to rise to because like we said it's a very it's very capitally intensive to bring new power plants online so you know like making that those are going to be enormous investments and as you You know, they, they try to game out the peak loads going forward, that, that's got to be, um, a real factor in, in how, how pricing, how the markets react to, you know, the price of energy in each, each location too, right?
Vinnie Campo:Yeah, I think that's right. I think what, I mean, if you just look at power prices, you know, historically, they're rising at 3 to 4 percent a year. Certainly in the past couple of years, it's 5 to 10 percent a year. And so there is this real upper pressure. On, uh, on utility rates where we operate in California, it's been over 10 percent a year for the past three years. Hopefully that trend, that trend stops. It's painful for consumers, but that's kind of like the under, that's like, that's what's underpinning this is that, uh, you know, wholesale electricity prices continue to get more expensive. I think the flip side of that, that we see is that on the hardware side, The prices keep falling. So batteries 10 years ago were dramatically more expensive than they are today. And we would expect in the next 3 to 5 years, the price will continue to fall. So the cost for a consumer to install, certainly energy storage, but that extends to solar as well, too. That cost will continue to decrease. And so the payback period starts to, to shift and make a
Chris Brandt:lot more sense. What are you seeing is like sort of the, that, that ROI point, like, like, have we, you know, keep hearing like solar has price parity with, you know, the, a lot of these electric grids, you know, is that true? Where's that sitting? How does that all work out?
Vinnie Campo:I can't necessarily speak to like some of like the large scale solar, where I know a lot of those costs have come down to be fairly cost competitive with With some of the other like large scale energy projects out there, I think on the consumer level, what we see is that, you know, there's a lot of states in particular within California, a lot of markets where that payback period is, is under five years. And so that's when it really starts to make sense for. For the consumer where there's, you know, a near immediate payback and near immediate incentive when you start extending out to 10 or 15 years to break even. I think that's a, I think that's a more challenging investment to make, uh, but the more especially
Chris Brandt:with volatile energy markets where you don't know what direction the market's going to go in 10 years.
Vinnie Campo:100 percent right? But the more acute the need is, and the more acute or more acutely, energy prices keep rising. I think that's where, that's where you see a lot of consumer adoption.
Chris Brandt:One of the things that you do is you help figure out the financing for a lot of this too, right?
Vinnie Campo:We do. So there's, I'd say there's two things. One is, you know, we have in house financing. We have a, uh, an energy services agreement that we've developed in house. Uh, the other thing is that there's a tremendous amount of, of both state and federal rebates that are available. Now, the vast majority of people don't know about, we ran a, When we got started, we ran a poll and none of the 87, either 85 or 87 percent homeowners didn't know that there is subsidies or rebates available to them for solar and battery projects. So, there's a tremendous amount of ways to lower the cost, but most folks aren't privy to that. And so, one of the things that we do is we We'll scan the different, uh, city and state databases based on their address to figure out what exactly are all the incentives that they're eligible for. And then we'll show them, in some cases, how to apply, or in other cases, we'll help finance that as well, too.
Chris Brandt:So, like that five year ROI in a lot of these locations, is that including incentives in those things, or is that just, you know, more straight up?
Vinnie Campo:Everyone is eligible for the 30 percent federal, uh, incentive. Investment tax credit through the Inflation Reduction Act. And so that's always going to be factor.
Chris Brandt:30%. That's a, that's a big chunk.
Vinnie Campo:It's a big chunk. It's that 30 percent has been available for years on the solar side. For the first time, it's, uh, I guess, you know, not that many people. I didn't know. For the first time, it's now available on batteries and energy storage. And so we've really seen that be a accelerant to the battery only market. Folks that looked at getting a battery only project, Even two years ago, the cost is now a fraction of what it was because of that. So it's really been helpful in, in lowering the cost and yeah, and really helping folks adopt these technologies.
Chris Brandt:I, I didn't realize there were quite that many incentives. I know that Illinois has some, some incentives. I always, I knew when I was building facilities here and we were looking at some of the incentives, at the time they weren't as strong as they were in like New Jersey for some reason had just tons of great incentives. You know, and, you know, similar climate kind of, you know, places we were looking. Um, so it's great to hear that. I mean, like that, that 30%, I didn't, I didn't realize that, that, that was there. I mean, that's a, that's a big chunk of change to, you know, put towards it. So that, that sounds really fantastic.
Vinnie Campo:Yeah, it's really the federal level. And again, each state has a, has some version of a program as well, too. So it's been really good to see the, you know, the incentives and rebates available.
Chris Brandt:Everybody's speculating on, on. You know, the future of solar and battery tech and things like that. You know, where, where do you see this, where do you see all this going? Where do you see these markets going? What, you know, like in, in five, 10 years, where do you think we're going to be with all of this?
Vinnie Campo:As we've gotten smarter in the space, we've definitely realized that there's a lot of ups and downs in the solar industry. And as, uh, you know, we've been in this business for a few years now, but if you look historically the past, 20 to 30 years, there's a lot of like really good periods. And then a lot of, uh, you know, candle, like really challenging periods for the industry. Some of that is incentive driven. Some of that is policy driven. I think that, I think the thing that stands is that, uh, at the end of the day, homeowners really want to find ways to reduce their electricity costs. And so for the industry to stay viable and to stay relevant, there needs to be that underlying consumer value prop, which is, uh, Adding solar and adding, adding energy storage need to have an economic payback for the industry to remain robust. I, I think the big change that you'll see is that the idea of solar only in a lot of markets will go away or will become significantly less valuable in the percent of systems that get installed with solar and battery. Uh, is going to increase dramatically because adding that energy storage to the solar provides so much more flexibility and really over time should dramatically change what the economics look like. So, you know, we have always been weary of solar only markets, just given what we've seen out of California and all the changes that have come from that, I would, I would speculate that in the next 5 years, you'll see a lot more states. adopt a similar net metering policy to what California's done, where it disincentivizes the solar only, and it really encourages the householder or the contractor to come up with a more inclusive or all inclusive solution.
Chris Brandt:You know, we're always looking at new, new strides and sort of more efficient solar and, you know, Larger capacity batteries and, you know, that sort of thing. Um, but are you looking at other things other than, you know, like in the future, maybe other things than batteries, like hydrogen storage or other kind of storage mechanisms or, you know, like what I personally love is to have like a mini nuclear plant in my, my home. backyard, you know, like in a, like a two by two sort of space, that'd be really awesome if I could have something like that, you know, but, uh, I don't envision that's coming anytime soon, but I mean, do you see any new technologies potentially having a big impact on this market?
Vinnie Campo:I think what we see is there's a lot of different energy storage technologies that are really early in the, in the life cycle and adoption curve. That are in early phases of testing, what that could end up doing is really what they're all solving for is how do you extend what the storage capacity is pretty dramatically beyond what it is today. So I don't have a great sense of which of those will work out. I would guess that in the next five to 10 years, one of those will really start to work out and you'll be able to dramatically extend how much. Energy can be stored in, in a fairly consolidated battery that you can attach to the home. Uh, so we're just like, yeah, we're, we're interested participants as well, too, to, to see what happens and when new technology gets built and what starts to reach a mass market appeal.
Chris Brandt:The other thing I think is cool. It's like, you know, we, we think of batteries. In the use case of cars all the time, right? And cars have a very specific kind of use case for batteries. Um, but home is a different animal altogether. And some of the things that wouldn't work necessarily in a car, just because of, you know, battery inflation or, you know, like, You know, capacity, you know, the way, the way they have to be provision or the safety requirements for them and things like that don't necessarily apply to, to the house. Um, so it seems like the house is a great innovation platform for a lot of really interesting new technologies going forward. I mean, do you see, do you see some of that happening on the battery front? I mean, I know you, you're working with like the Tesla solar, uh, power walls, but, uh, do you, do you see any other companies out there doing anything really interesting? I think.
Vinnie Campo:I think on the battery side, there's what we've seen is there's been a lot of new entrants to the market really trying to. You know, come up with something new or unique, uh, in the battery space. I, I think the reason it's so interesting for a lot of folks is that, you know, you're mentioning before, uh, like the Texas market, trying to get someone to lower their thermostat in the middle of summer, while that is a demand response event, it is really challenging. By being able to dispatch the battery in the middle of that same demand response. I, I've
Chris Brandt:been in Texas in the summer, it, I'm not turning my air conditioning down. It's hot as hell. It's all,
Vinnie Campo:it's warm out there. Yeah. And so same thing in the winter too, when, uh, uh, you know, when there's a lot, we
Chris Brandt:know all about winters.
Vinnie Campo:Right. Uh, but I think the benefit of, of the energy storage device is that by dispatching the battery at a certain timeframe, it doesn't disrupt someone's daily life. They don't even really know what's happening. And so that, that's why it's such a valuable resource to the grid is you're not asking the consumer or the homeowner to make it. A trade off or a sacrifice in the sense of changing the AC or like altering what they're doing It just happens automatically and I think that same concept you'll see get applied to a lot more aspects of the house too, which is there are a lot of devices in the house that are starting to get interconnected and Uh and have the ability to be turned on and off at certain times based on thresholds and what I think you'll end up seeing is is Someone come in and centralize You How does all that work? And you'll have the house really be one coordinated, uh, one coordinated system of a bunch of different devices, not, not just solar and batteries.
Chris Brandt:What's next for Haven? Where do you go from here?
Vinnie Campo:Yeah, I think there's two areas we're really excited about. One is the ability to continue to lower the cost. But coming up with creative financing solutions. So finding ways to bundle rebates with unique financing and grid services in a way that lowers the cost versus someone buying a system outright. I think that's like a particularly interesting concept that we're working on. And then the other is what we're seeing is utilities really getting focused on. How do you deploy energy assets and more particularly, how do you deploy residential storage assets to their customers? And so we've been discussing pilots with a number of utilities across the country where they want to deploy assets. They have the engaged customer base, and we think we can really help. Come up with turnkey solutions where it bundles financing installation grid services management in something that is is really attractive for both the homeowner and the utility.
Chris Brandt:I think that's amazing I'm a big fan of renewables and you know obviously I'd love to see it take hold and get greater expansion so that that drives prices down and you know it's. cheaper for me and everybody else. Um, so, you know, thanks, thanks for, for putting it all together and I can't wait till you, you've got it all figured out and the economics of it all figured out and you can bring it to my area. So thanks very much. Thanks a lot for, uh, doing what you do. And excuse me. Thanks a lot for doing what you do, and I look forward to watching you, uh, grow and, and achieve great things.
Vinnie Campo:Amazing. Yeah, thanks so much. It's been really good, uh, yeah, been really good to chat, and thanks so much for having me.
Chris Brandt:Thanks for watching. Sorry for the bad voice. I'm coming off of a cold. Love to hear from you in the comments. And, if you could, give us a like, think about subscribing, share with a friend, and I will see you in the next one.