What sounds like an easy question, can be difficult to answer for laypersons. This week Chris is joined by Chris Hopper, who does a good job answering this question. German-born Chris Hopper has come a long way from installing off-grid solar systems in Rwanda as a student to co-founding a software company in California. With Aurora solar he and his team are able to support solar professionals in the design process of solar installations. Listen in to find out why developing an AI for years is finally paying off and where the company is headed next.
https://www.aurorasolar.com/
What sounds like an easy question, can be difficult to answer for laypersons. This week Chris is joined by Chris Hopper, who does a good job answering this question. German-born Chris Hopper has come a long way from installing off-grid solar systems in Rwanda as a student to co-founding a software company in California. With Aurora solar he and his team are able to support solar professionals in the design process of solar installations. Listen in to find out why developing an AI for years is finally paying off and where the company is headed next.
https://www.aurorasolar.com/
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| Timestamp | Speaker | Transcript
| 08:21.22 | chrissass | Welcome to insider's guide to energy I'm your host chris sass and this week we have an exciting show. We're Goingnna talk about all the possibilities and tools available to the solar industry. Our guest is christopher hopper christopher welcome to the show.
| 08:48.91 | Chris | Hopeful. Thank you Thanks for having me.
| 08:52.16 | chrissass | Yeah, I'm excited to have you on his show I'm I'm um, a little bit uncomfortable because normally I start with a K dialogue with my co-host. He's not here. So I'm I'm a little bit diving right into the deep end. So let's start by figuring out what we're going to talk about today. So maybe a little background about who you are and what company you work with.
| 09:10.99 | Chris | Yeah, um, Chris hoper cofound the Ceo of Aurora Solar So We were ah a software platform for the solar Industry. So What we do is we we help solar professionals through the the process of designing installing solar. Designing selling and installing solar installations and so from a ah go ahead. Yeah.
| 09:34.13 | chrissass | So I was gonna say where where is Aurora located where where is your corporate headquarters.
| 09:38.36 | Chris | The headquarters in San francisco california but at this point a lot of the team is is all over so we've become a distributed company during covid so we've we've embraced that. So now we've a lot of talented folks all over.
| 09:53.53 | chrissass | And so you said you're the founder of this company. What did you do before you started a roar.
| 09:59.55 | Chris | So cofounder so there there's 2 of us my ah business school classmate sam and I we we started the company together. What did I do before or or maybe I can start with a bit of a personal background or actually originally I'm from from Munich germany. And I made my way west if you will via via london so I spent foy years in in London studying electrical engineering so engineered by by training and during that time a couple of my friends of my of mine and I we came across this big issue of. Electrification in the developing world. We learned a pretty staggering fact and there's more than a billion people worldwide without access to electricity and so being young and and and idealistic and and engineers we thought hey there's a big Problem. We should be able to do something about it and so um. Basically we set out to to solve that problem to find the right technical solution paired with the right business model to to make ah make ah a dent in that and and help people with ah access to to energy and so um. Yeah there's a longer story there too. There is sort of the precursor to aurora but basically spent 2 3 years doing that installing off-grid electrification solutions in in Rwanda in particular and 1 of the ways by which we did that was was through solar so we did a. Ah, number of solarpowered projects and yeah, that was there was a couple aha moments for me there. You know 1 of them was actually just experiencing firsthand the importance of energy and electricity and in in really modern life having grown up in relative privilege and. In in germany I you know don't think about energy. You just go get out your your chair you flip the switch nowadays you even hit you know, hit a thing in an app and it just happens automatically right light comes on and you don't think about it being there in those those villages living. With the sun seeing you know, um, how life is without um, was a big big a-ha moment for me really that and Motivative still motivates me today and the other thing actually was we did. We did a number of projects throughout the years and the first time round we bought solar panels at 3 dollars a watt. So for typical solar panel that might be 600 bucks and then the next year we came Back. We Bought panels again for 2 dollars a watt and so it's a thirty percent difference in decline and price and I was like wait to the first first guy did he did he you know did he.
| 12:47.40 | Chris | Overcharges or what's gone on here. But no, it's actually this price curve of solar that's been been continuing since right the the price of panels has come down ah facing older magnitude in in a decade and that still has has fundamental implications downstream and so. That was the other thing for me and I was like well there's something happening here in solar that is that is and can be quite huge and so those are 2 of the early insights that way predate aura but but in a way laid the foundation to to what we do today.
| 13:18.33 | chrissass | So so it sounds like you and some of your colleagues did some charitable kind of work and you you got some hands-on experience I guess in engineering and designing solar systems. There's um, and. Logistics of doing it perhaps in a third world environment which is probably a bit more challenging than perhaps doing it in a first world ah economy where you could just run to the hardware store or run down the street when you when you need ah a piece or an adapter or whatever I assume you could probably find it most home depots these days. Um. So how did that translate to moving to a software company. So assume you finished up your education. You said you went to london and you you did some work there and then then what happened next just curious.
| 14:01.61 | Chris | Yeah, so this was during my time in London so alongside my my studies I then got the chance to come to to stanford business school for an Mba. So I moved to California pretty much exactly ten years ago September of twenty eleven. That's where I met my cofounder sam and the the 2 of us started just like became friends first and started talking what might we do after business school and both of us had a bit of an entrepreneurial bent that we discovered and so we just started talking about different ideas and 1 of the ideas that came up based on the. Experience I had in in Rhonda was actually starting a solar installation business focused on emerging markets. The idea being you don't have to go far off grid for energy access to be a problem right? even in bigger cities oftentimes the grids unreliable. It's expensive and. Yet, you have a lot of sun so that was a very simple calculus hey Solo should make sense here and yeah, so during business school. We put together a pilot project design a fifty kilowatt system so 200 and twenty panels about for a school in Nairobi kenya. And then that was sort of our Summer internship. We flew down there and we installed installed the system so we did everything soup to nuts from finding the project hiring local engineers to help us with installation sourcing suppliers shipping everything there raising a loan and then ultimately.
| 15:31.50 | chrissass | So how did you fund it. You said you, you raised a loan to fund that.
| 15:31.49 | Chris | Installing the system. Yeah, we found ah through our network private investors to to yeah fund the project. It's very the mechanism is fairly similar to how so a lot of solars financed today is you know people save on their bills so rather than paying money to the. Utility or in this case to diesel for diesel generator. They take those savings. Um some they keep and then some they they pay to investors in the form of of interest on the loan. So yeah, we we found a number of private folks who are willing to back us and back back the project. Which is still running today and actually generating savings and and it's been a wonderful It's been sort of the quintessential solo success story.
| 16:14.66 | chrissass | So what was a life expectancy on that project. You're you're saying it's still running Today is this like a 30 year project is this like a 10 year project or what what were you planning when you put it in.
| 16:24.12 | Chris | I mean typically you you sort of assume 20 to 25 years for a sole installation. Some things like the inverters you may have to replace earlier so that's typically more of a 101212 year ah typical life. But so look and produce even beyond that. So. It's ah it's a long-term thing what I meant by still producing Today is not sort much a surprise I it. It's just it was our first project and it was I'm happy and that it you know there's a lot of learnings in it. But ultimately we did a a good job I guess still it's been ah, been a great great story for us set us on this path. But also for the for the client which makes me makes me happy that I worked out all around but no yeah.
| 17:05.88 | chrissass | Well so so let's turn the clock ahead to where you are today. So you co-founded aurora so your your stanford business school partner and you decided to start this company so who who's your demographic who's your. Your target I don't don't assume you're building a whole software as a service platform for Nairobi. So so who who are you building this for.
| 17:28.96 | Chris | Yeah, actually let me let me connect those because we're sort of missing a crucial piece of the story in the in the middle right? So how do we end up from Nairobi to to now a us or currently us-centric or certainly not emerging Market centric design software.
| 17:33.70 | chrissass | Please please.
| 17:48.20 | Chris | So basically after this project we came back for our second year business school and we got ah a lot of inbound interests actually because a system like I said worked out nicely and they're now saving on their bill and normal power cuts because we put batteries in place as well. And so we got a lot of inbound increase people asking hey does solar make sense for me for my home for my building for my business should I go solar how much would I save how much would it cost and we're like well we don't know and that that is you know it's what I would call the central question of solar like. Where does solo make sense and what makes sense and you need to answer that question over and over again for every installation you do? Yeah, you need to answer that question sometimes even more than once because you might quote five systems e close 1 so you do 5 times a work for 1 so it became clear to us that we needed a scalable process to. Answer these questions right? We had this excel spreadsheet the sizing model that was frank andsteining out of control and we knew you know we can do another project that's fine. We can do another another 5 another 10 but if we want to take this business to to real scale and do dozens or hundreds of these projects. We need a scalable and a data-driven process. We need to. A good and accurate way of making these design decisions and so that's how we came up with the idea or the realization that we needed software to to support our growth and scale at the same time. We also looked at the industry right? We looked at where solars was going 2013 it was a growing but still niche somewhat industry. And but all the forecasts were pointing up and up and into the right the sort of big headline that Bloomberg uses is 50 by 50 so fifty percent of world energy generation is going to be wind and solar by 2050 with solar being a big component of it. It's actually now they up update to Fifty 8 but I guess that doesn't have us as nice a ring to it. It. The point is how do we go from that you know niche industry where solar is less than at the time a percent of our energy mix to where it's it's a main way and by which we generate electricity and where it's an outsized part of our new additions in terms of energy generation right? It became clear to us that there's no way of. Getting from where we were and even where we are today to where we want to go without a scalable data-driven process and what makes makes for that you know software so that was really the the big aha moment both bottoms up experiencing the pain point firsthand and top-down. You know, seeing where we're headed and where we need to head importantly to and helping to bring about that that future. So that's that's why ultimately we started aurora back in two thirteen so connecting to today we don't do any installations anymore. We. We're not emerging markets focused.
| 20:37.73 | Chris | But rather we're ah a platform that helps solar professionals. Um, yeah make those design decisions in a scalable manner help them with the sales process the design process and and and so forth and.
| 20:48.52 | chrissass | So are you are you working more with residential solar or pv part I mean big development type projects like who who's your demographic that is generally using your platform today.
| 21:01.32 | Chris | The good question. We do multiple things. Let's say when distributed solar. So oh can you is a working up. Yeah, it is.
| 21:05.76 | chrissass | I Can't hear you right Now. Can you hear him Luka. I Think my headphones died So We'll cut that bit out. Let me see if I get you on my speaker. Can you say something so I can see over here. You go? Yeah I hear you now I think my my bluetooth died for some reason sorry but that so go ahead if you want to take off of the answer Again. We'll cut in the question to the answer.
| 21:19.30 | Chris | More problem. This is good now. Program.
| 21:31.40 | Chris | The oh which segments? Oh yeah, we do. We serve multiple segments. We're generally in distributed solar and that's our strong suit. So We do residential and commercial commercial solar small companies and and large so many of the. Top us solo companies are amongst our clients but also many small businesses local businesses that serve their community are using our software to design design better and solar.
| 22:00.42 | chrissass | And so how how big is that market that that did you go in after.
| 22:06.27 | Chris | I mean it's it's big and importantly growing right? It's not It's a moving target. That's that's the thing that's always made this exciting for us so from a business perspective too is because we we looked at the market twenty. Thirteen I think it was about 13 billion dollars across all of solar in the us which is a decently sized industry but but by no means the the largest out there. But what's more important about solar is really where it's going right? and solar is growing at 101520 percent kagarite annualized growth rate and the cost curve keeps keeps coming down and so as costs come down in a commodity markets volumes go up as volumes go up manufacturing volumes go up prices go down prices go down. Volumes go up now more consumers are aware of solar now. Acquisition costs come down and volumes go up right? and so there's that I like to call that the flywheel of solar which is in motion and so it's not just about where it is today. Um, since then the industry is about doubled but it's also where this is going right? and there's so the world shifting. And again needs to shift to renewables and and I believe this is going to be a a particle.
| 23:18.90 | chrissass | Okay, so it's It's a big market. The slope of the curve is is is high. You've you've built something where you see a lot of demand Coming. Um. I Think what I heard you say is that you know you're B to B So Pretty much installers or companies that are selling solutions would come to you. You helped them from what I picked up along the way. Um, perhaps through the sales process. Through Apps for the engineering process through pretty much the entire backend process of being a solar installer so you become a virtual engineering team for them and sales team is that kind of the vision of what your platform does.
| 23:58.17 | Chris | Um, not so much engineering our sales team I mean we power their engineering and sales teams right? We don't we don't knock on doors. We don't we. Don't sit at kitchen tables where we're a software company and so we make the tools that their sales and engineering teams would use right. We make for example, a new product that we just launched at a conference this year called sales mode which is basically a a best in-class interactive proposal so a sales rep can use that to show the homeowner. How. So it would look on the roof co-design the system you know, walked them through the process of going solar and the the different options they have in terms of designs and financing. So we're powering that conversation. But we're not the ones having the the conversation same for the downstream engineering work. We have a lot of powerful nittygritty tools that let the. In-house design teams design optimal sole installations for the customers. But we're not the ones doing their work so we're about empowering solar professionals who are out in the field and so.
| 25:05.90 | chrissass | So Let's let's talk about some of those tools. So the downstream the engineering type tools I think in the preshow you were mentioning some kind of interesting ai and other technology you y all have brought together to deliver that. But maybe you can share a little bit about what that all means and and. But tools you have.
| 25:25.90 | Chris | Ah, yeah, it's actually a very ah you know it's a simple question should I go solar just ah, a few words but ah to answer that question. It requires. Ah you know to answer it well requires a lot of ah, a lot of technical depth. Um, there's a lot of analysis that if you want to do it well goes into goes into answering a question and so that's what we that's what we specialize in and so what we did is we had this set of technologies that all work together to answer that question. What I mean by that is there's a multi-step process so to answer. Should I go solar 1 of the things that depends on is well what's your energy consumption. What's your bill if you're paying 10 bucks a month in Electricity. Probably not worth going solar because there's not that much you use not that much to offset if your bill is Hundred bucks hundred and 50 bucks now now we're talking but it also depends. Well. How much to use when do you use it how much you forecast to use right? You might get an electric vehicle for example and so we have a set of tools there to understand the energy consumption of the home and to model that out next you need to understand the roof a lot of solar goes on roofs every roof is different. So we have some pretty sophisticated actually patented patented algorithms to quickly design roof structure.
| 26:47.32 | chrissass | To use drones to measure the roof Do you fly up and take pictures to get the measurements or how do you get the measurements of the roof.
| 26:53.35 | Chris | So we don't fly drones ourselves some of our clients do and then what they do is they bring their own imagery. They import it into our software. What we do is we were agnostic of sort of input sources. So we have a set of different imagery providers. We use. Ah google and bing. We have partnerships with. But also companies that fly ah fly planes to capture imagery For example, we we include lidar data sets and so Forth. So we incorporate multiple data sets for for make those accessible to our clients and then the client would model it on the. And the software other parts that we do is also now stimulating these systems. So how do they behave given the weather data. How much energy is a system's going to kind of produce in a given location based on the roof geometry the orientation. There might be a neighboring tree and then obviously the the weather plays a big role. And then how does that energy production translate into savings. So we have a very detailed calculator financial engine that calculates both the utility bill sort of represents the rates and then calculates the savings based on the production. So these are different engines that tie together to really come up with accurate solutions right. Um, you need to go through every step in a rigorous manner to be able to answer that question. Well now I also up i.
| 28:17.23 | chrissass | So so but so so so so it sounds like there's a lot of elements that that I've heard you describe. Um, you also mentioned that your company started in 2013 so you probably have some historical data that this has probably evolved I would wager that that you do so How do you go back and score so let's say do do you have you know like ah like ah a Nielsen cable box type of thing where you would go back and you have some sensory data that from projects you've done in the past to see how well you're scoring against your projections or how do you How do you do that.
| 28:48.37 | Chris | Um, so currently, we don't do any. It's called post-insalation monitoring. It's certainly an interesting interesting area. But the way we've done It is working with our clients and we keep evaluating our our engines some of it is just math right? How a utility rail. Bill gets Calculated. We can validate that independently some of it all our models are bottoms up physicsbased model. So there there you know have some internal validity. Ah, but we do go back and we look at system production across systems and evaluate evaluate How how our engines stacks up. Um, we also have done that with external parties Nrel National and renewable energy Lab has done some of those validations. We've also worked with engineering firms to to run studies on on our engine and they've plus our clients Actually that's where the the real test is our clients keep telling me ah telling us.
| 29:45.56 | chrissass | But but but your your client would be excited so you know if I get a fifty percent savings in electric bill I'm super excited. But if there were seventy five percent potential there would be no way of no I'm I'm not trying to pick on you I'm just looking at that going. Yeah, you asked me subjectively I'm gonna say yeah I saved a bunch of money I love these guys.
| 29:46.11 | Chris | Hey this is you know I'm using Roa because because it's it's correct.
| 29:58.11 | Chris | Um, really.
| 30:04.89 | chrissass | But I don't know if there's more on the table right? That's I guess my my thinking so it sounds like you you do that through the math and just looking at the potential and and you kind of do proof points without needing like internet a thing kind of sensors. You can do the proof points just through basic calculations. What I'm hearing you say.
| 30:07.40 | Chris | Good. Yeah. Yeah.
| 30:20.54 | Chris | Yeah, so I guess there's multiple parts to so what? I'm saying what it meant is it's not sort of a that part is not a machine learning big data model where we back something out of from a big so data set because we know how we know how solar panels operate how we inver us operate and so we can. How the heat what dependence is on heat and in radiance and so we can model that out So there's and validity to just these are established models. Having said that we do validate them against actual system production so've done that both internally and with external partners. So. That's how we know these. Models represent the systems accurately? Um, but our clients. Also you know they they know it's actually a really important point here. You want to quote with confidence right? You don't want to over Quotee You don't over promise because that's going to cause downstream issues with the person you sell things to. Um, but you don't want to underqu quote either under promise because then you might lose the deal to someone else and so our our clients have a very good sense over time. What works? Well and so that's that's really the bread and butter or the the thing that makes Aura special is the accuracy we can generate by having these best in class engines. Um. Linked together and that's really what drives a lot of value for our clients.
| 31:36.66 | chrissass | How hard was it to build a model that's universal I mean you know obviously let's say you're in the Midwest versus arizona versus I don't know Boston versus san francisco I would imagine that there's quite a bit of variance in in. And understanding each of those local markets so you have a global platform or a platform that users would use how hard was that to get around or is that pretty simplistic and the models are pretty easy to work with.
| 32:05.61 | Chris | It depends and the the models generally scale quite well I mean laws of physics work the the same way everywhere. So we can you know in terms of how we simulate these systems. That's that's very similar. Um, the differences lie more. Sometimes in data sources. So do we have coverage of all the input data sources for different geographies. Um, and then sometimes around the more the economics if you will so some local jurisdictions might have a certain incentive that works a certain way or a utility rate in. You know in Canada work might work different to 1 in Wisconsin or in California right? And so sometimes there it's a bit of a product question. How do we generalize that in the best way, but it's it's all it's all solvable. But I mean that's how bread and butter is to to make that make those calculations.
| 32:56.22 | chrissass | Are those data sources readily available to a commercial company like yours do do the providers and the regions have like Apis and things like that. So you you can get that data and real time of of energy pricing and.
| 32:57.29 | Chris | Work for for.
| 33:11.34 | chrissass | And rebates and things like that is that all done electronically or is there some intervention required from your team.
| 33:15.53 | Chris | I mean largely they are certainly North america has has really good coverage. Um, and there's different pieces of that from utility rates to imagery something like Google for example, has imagery throughout and it's a question of resolutions once you go to rural areas you may want to supplement that with. Um, sort of more purchased aerial imagery. Um, so yeah, that's generally not ah, not a big problem. Lidar data. We actually aggregate and we manage ourselves and sometimes it has involved writing to certain municipalities to mail us hard drives with data that we then't upload and process so it can be somewhat cumbersome but on the whole. Um, it's it's relatively widely available more of a question once you look into national markets because it's different vendorors that require different different integrations. but but yeah
| 34:03.70 | chrissass | So so talk a little bit more about the ai element. You mentioned that a couple times so so what specifically does ai do to help help with this problem set.
| 34:07.69 | Chris | People in.
| 34:15.40 | Chris | Um, yeah, so as I mentioned the the process of designing solar goes through these different stages right? There's the energy consumption modeling. There's a roof modeling. There is the system design so panel placement and connecting everything and then the production energy production modeling and then the financial. Calculations a lot of those steps are pretty. You know you can model out bottoms up and ah deterministic. And yes, you need to validate them to you know, make sure the calculations do what you want them to do but you can model that bottoms up. Um 1 area that's been really difficult. Hadn't it's been really solved to to addresses that of roof modeling right? How do you How do you automate roof modeling right? So if you have an image of a roof. How do you convert that to a 3 d representation of the of the building and so that's an area that was sort of the missing piece. That's an area where we've invested at this point. For 5 years almost of engineering time in automating roof modeling of yeah at scale and so we have a team that a machine learning team that basically uses all the roof models in the database which at this point are are millions. To automate that roof modeling process and so once that's in place we can now automate the entire process of going solar because we have you know we have the roof we can. We have optimization algorithms that can design optimal solar installations already. We have ah then the simulation of the system and the financial calculations. So. You can plug it all together and all you need is an address and electric bill and now the software can take it through the entire process modeling roof and well modeling consumption modeling the roof designing the system and then showing the savings and so that's ah, that's a huge breakthrough. Um. For us and for the industry it's taken us a long time but we have a new product that we're just launching called lead catch ai which does just that so you show the website asks you for a the address and a few inputs and takes you through the entire process of going solar.
| 36:21.50 | chrissass | So So it sounds like have you compressed the bicycle by adding this technology to what it was before you guys Existed. So if I if I went to a mom and pop solar guy that just does you know the engineering does all the work and had him come out and inspect my house and come back with a quote. And then I want to do the install have you compressed this bicycle.
| 36:42.27 | Chris | Um, effectively. Yes, I mean that's always what we've been about and maybe add a little bit of more context important industry context if you look at a typical inill residential installation in the us say it's 20000 dollars less than half of that is the equipment. So if you spend 20000 bucks the equipment that goes on your roof might only be nine thousand dollars so Eight Eight nine thousand dollars which is kind of crazy. Um, you know that's that's that's a lot of overhead that sits on top. These are soft referred to as soft costs and so. You know, panel and equipment prices have compressed a lot but soft cost haven't and so the next area of cost reduction the next way of making the whole solar stack more a cost stackck more. You know affordable is by focusing on soft cost right? and so that's what we're focused on how do we? How do we. Bring down overall costs by making it more efficient to go solar. 1 example is before aurora came around truck rolls site visits used to be very common. So an installer would do just that you call them up say hey what can I go so the should I go solar someone would drive out. You know, maybe's. Thirty minutes maybe it's an hour and a half to drive out to roof climb on your roof take measurements on your roof. You know sometimes it literally you fall off. But that aside they go you know, go down drive back to the office plug it into the computer now design stuff and they call you Back. You know 3 days later. You're like oh yeah, this should work kind of ballpark. Or maybe it doesn't but not a very efficient process not alone the studies I show. It's almost a thousand bucks 800 bucks or so in cost for you for an installed system right? So that's 1 example, the other 1 is just what you said it's like is about compressing that cycle and letting us letting our clients actually importantly focus on. Other parts of the business right? There's there's really necessary parts that they focus on including having the kitchen table conversation and addressing concerns and questions of the homeowner. But wherever we can automate things and create efficiencies. We can. We will do that and then thereby we can bring down the cost of.
| 38:53.16 | chrissass | I mean I guess what comes to mind to me is at a certain point I could just go on the web if I know that I want solar because it's becoming pretty mainstream I mean I would argue five ten years ago you still had to convince me of the value prop right.
| 38:55.90 | Chris | Cost of soul.
| 39:07.98 | chrissass | Um, today I mean if you're in denver and you're putting new development and you're going to have solar in your rooftop here in Switzerland I mean I don't pass a barn without solar on it here. I mean everybody's pretty much got Solar. It's it's pretty well expected. So I don't think it's so much. A. A value proposition I might make decisions of whether I want my roofing tile to have solar in it. Do I want to put solar on a roof I mean there's there's different decision points that someone might take me through the costs of you know, paying more for the connectors or for the tiles and what the longevity is but but I but I don't know that. You know if if I've gotten to the point where I'm calling a solar guy that you've got to convince me that I want solar so it may be an easier sale I would think and to me it's straight economics I mean as a homeowner. It's there now. An interesting conversation I had ah a number of weeks ago is someone that's. In the solar industry and they make the hardware for the solar panels. A good friend of mine works at 1 of those companies and he said you know in North america he's he's also here in europe but he's a north american like myself that relocated to switzerland that um you know the the challenge with the model is an individual home model only works in. Middle class and upper middle class homes because if you look at the average install price of a solar rooftop that works really well when your house is worth 1 hundred and 50000 dollars up. But when you take the you know 40000 dollars is the number he threw out of a solar install. You're not going to put it on a.
| 40:20.90 | Chris | Or link. Oh.
| 40:32.52 | chrissass | Ah, low-end house. You don't have the economics to do that. So it works well in higher income neighborhoods is is that your experience as well is that ah is this a a wealthy upper middle class and middle class phenomena solar I mean I know you started in third world but let's look at the North america market where you are today.
| 40:48.25 | Chris | Um I would look at it differently. It's not so much I don't think it's the house. The value of the house that matters directly. Um it. It is to some degree a function of how much energy you consume and how much you you pay right? to my previous point if you're not.. You're not if you're paying 1 hundred fifty bucks in Electricity. There's a lot of cost to offset and to you know reduce that buy and then you you generate savings if you only have a small electricity bill that not might not be the case so that can correlate and typically does correlate with.
| 41:21.54 | chrissass | To be but I mean I don't argue that solar isn't the answer I just think that it it might be a larger solar farm producing it for someone that doesn't have the resource to put solar on the roof because you've got to get that loan or you've got to get the financing even if it drops your electric bill in Half. You need the credit to get that right.
| 41:30.65 | Chris | Yeah.
| 41:37.49 | Chris | Yeah, yeah, exactly like there's another point there too. There's a tax credit in the Us which you know lower Income Households can't always monetize directly then there's leases for that's so it's it's kind of a complicated question. The overarching thing though is that you know solar is. Becoming by and large the cheapest way of of generating electricity right? and so that will ultimately trickle down to to cheaper energy costs for the for the consumer and so it's not you know there's certain policy questions around low income and versus you know higher income neighborhoods and and homes. But. On the whole you know, cheaper electricity cost benefit all all Americans Not not just the ones who are better off and so um, yeah, that's why.
| 42:22.46 | chrissass | Yeah I I Just understand that you know the market I'm not asking you for the politics of it I Just assume you're you know you're looking at potential market size and you you would look at that demographic. But what came to my mind is you get to a point where I don't really need a local solar company I mean I could just find a web company and buy directly with your.
| 42:27.24 | Chris | Yeah mean.
| 42:41.63 | chrissass | Your technology so pretty much you could work with a large North american or global installer or global company and it would almost seem from what you're saying that I could almost sellprovis because if you can get imagery of my site and you got my address and stuff like that. Do you need that. Middleman I mean I get that it's part of your market today but is there is there a world where where this becomes just a virtual service just like an amazon where I buying I buy solar from my house online or do you think there's still a middleman at some point.
| 43:10.90 | Chris | Um, they'll always be a middleman because you know Amazon can ship stuff to your door. But if you get a couple solar panels wires racking inverters. You know this, you won't be able.
| 43:20.58 | chrissass | No, but you could schedule ah a technician from a from a website right? So I mean I can get the pre-priccing do all the sales thing and say hey I I want this thing you send me a mockup of what it's gonna look like I click. Okay, and you know 2 weeks later or a week later some guy shows up and starts installing it right? I mean that.
| 43:35.73 | Chris | Yeah, and so so some of the tools we have will empower that for our customers right? So There's definitely a lot of efficiencies to be created in the sales and design process to a point where I think increasingly solo will be more bought than than sold. Um, at this point you know at least in the Us There isn't as much consumer awareness as there is for example in in Europe right? Where every barn you say has has solar I mean well I'm from in Germany Yeah, journey too. You know I sat on the train recently and I looked out and I was like well right? There's so many.
| 44:02.76 | chrissass | At least in switzerland.
| 44:13.68 | Chris | Solar installations and it's sort of previewed from me. Also how the us market might look in ah in a couple years but so's efficiencies be created there and more consumers will buy than they need to be sold to ah but there's still those you know those questions that. For example, you mentioned like oh should I go this way or that way whether the. Do I want it. You know this to 1 in the front of house to back of the house should I go storage. There's another questionnaire. What does that mean? So I think there's still room for a sales process but there's a lot of efficiencies to be created and importantly, there's also the installation and then the maintenance of these systems that needs needs to happen. So there's. Always going to be be an important role to be played for for solar companies small and large.
| 44:56.14 | chrissass | So how do you play with other renewables. So when I before I've I've lived in Switzerland a few years but before I left I wanted to do a couple things in my house I was passionate that I wanted a geothermal system in my house I lived in the midatlantic states and thought that that would be helpful for both my heating and my air conditioning. It was very but. When I was going there. Also at that point you know, totally electrifying my my property with the system I also looked at solar there. So do you have components that interact I mean it would seem that if I have geothermal I'm probably more likely to have solar than perhaps someone that you know only wants oil or wants gas in their house today. Um. How does that work with your system is that a future product for you consideration or is that not really relevant.
| 45:40.15 | Chris | Um, wouldn't say it's not relevant for some of the reasons you mentioned, but it's it's not where we're focused I mean we're not modeling I mean there's There's so much to to to that how you generate consume electricity or energy as a whole. And so we can't do everything what we focus on is is solar now. What as an exception is you know to some degree.. There's a little bit of things like electric vehicle will change your energy consumption quite drastically so understanding that a modeling that is important for us or if you you know. Lighting or your energy. You know if you use electricity for heating versus gas. You know that's a big impact on your energy production. So Some of that modeling we do do um and ah and the other area is is storage right? So a lot of solar increasingly gets sold with storage and so. Modeling those together and and allowing for the sales design process of those in a unified manner is important so storage is 1 area where we do blade out of solar if you will or capture more.
| 46:45.62 | chrissass | Well I mean that it'd be hard to put in a solar system and not imagine that you're going also put storage in to take advantage of it. Do do you sell just plain solar. Do people buy solar without batteries for the most part in their homes.
| 46:56.74 | Chris | Ah, yeah, a lot of people you know by it's it's increasingly common to at least get get quoted batteries but you don't need to like the standard way of going solar today is still ah a grid tied system meaning when you produce more than you consume you feed it into the grid when you. Consume more than you produce you draw from the grid so you sort of can think of using the the grid as a battery um which can work work. Well and efficiently. Um, the problem is of course if the grids down if does a power cut.
| 47:27.80 | chrissass | And the midatlantic we seem to have a lot of storms and they seem to get more frequent so you know pretty much everybody I knew had generators right? and so battery would make sense.
| 47:32.80 | Chris | There is that clip. Yeah, in fact, just ah today 1 of my colleagues she's in in Northern california there was a storm and she was out of power for most of the weekend right? So you have storms you have hurricanes down in Florida you have blizzards and exes you have wildfires in California right? And so. Yeah, it's increasingly. Ah you know a factor right? and so that's that's why we've seen a stark uptake of of storage attached rates also driven by a decline in and storage costs right? So that's a similar thing is happening in storage in Batteries. What's happened in panels. A decade or years before but those 2 factors are driving the adoption of storage and yes, you're right increasingly it's the sale of solar plus storage.
| 48:25.85 | chrissass | So so I guess you lead me to my my question So so I'm a big proponent I founder or cofounder of a company as well and we have a software as a service platform and and 1 of the things I would make as ah from the cheap seats out here in podcast land is that. Your users get the advantage of all your r and d across them so smaller operations obviously don't have the you know the kind of development teams that you have and the years of experience that you have to to modify this so you just talked about a couple trends that that are taking place whereas you know solar panels are considerably getting cheaper. Batteries getting cheaper I think you know depending on the current administration at least in the us there's incentives. There's not incentives it really just kind of changes with the tide there of what's going on and where you happen to be geographically. Um so are are there economies of scale that that your customers are getting or you know I mean obviously is there's kind of this the the. Quick ramp and the easiness of of having a software as a service platform all that goodness. But what are some of the r and d advantages they get for going with a company like you guys.
| 49:30.55 | Chris | So yeah, absolutely I mean that's ah I'd say a core valley prop right? people can sign up and get best in class software just right out the box and that's ah, that's a huge event I mean compared to a decade ago. You know the the larger companies in this space had invested. Quite heavily in software and built in-house automation tools and software platform to do just this to get you know somewhat accurate around the designs today. You don't need that you know don't need. Ah, you know we have disappointed a Hundred plus person engineering and product and design team that. All they do every day is is just this right? We have ph ds in electrical engineering trying to figure out how do we model this better all set of like a team of machine learning engineers to automate the roof modeling. You know we have folks only thinking about the modeling the financial use systems and and you get all that out the box and so. In a best in-class platform integrated process with best practices baked in for example for a sales platform. We spend a lot of time and not just talking to our clients but also our clients clients understanding what are the factors that matter to a homeowner in going solar and then baking that into the. Into the product and so there's a lot of efficiencies that get created a lot of value gets created for our clients and ultimately you know their clients which is the the homeowners. So that's really the big big dream. That's what what gets a lot of us out of bed is by doing our work. We can make the whole industry more efficient and thereby. Bring down the cost of solar and you know put more help our clients put more solar on roofs.
| 51:07.64 | chrissass | So as we're getting up towards time I have just a couple thoughts so do you have exclusivity in regions or how do your customers differentiate right? So if you if they're if there's if if you're kind of the backend engineer and you've compressed and you've got that as lean as possible for them and. And 2 competing folks in the same region. Want to go bid on a piece of business. What differentiates them.
| 51:33.40 | Chris | Yeah I mean it's the core is the core interaction with the customer right? I mean yes with a software with a technology but we're not the 1 speaking with the the homeowner. So the the level of um, yeah service they provide right from the first touch points when it comes to. Acquiring these customers to being embedded in the community and you know once 1 homer goes goes solar. How do the neighbors get quoted Solar. What's you know was that process the install quality. Of course, right? and then the also afterwards does does a lot a lot that that our clients do. We're behind the scenes we're enabling but we're not the ones and never will be the ones doing that which is which is essential.
| 52:19.34 | chrissass | And so the last kind of question is where are you guys as a company see you've been around since 2013 are you still a private company or your private equity held how how's the company structured today and where's it going.
| 52:30.87 | Chris | Yeah, know we're we're still a private company. It's been a a long road but in the way it feels like we're just getting getting started a little bit like the solar industry as a whole. Um we are now venture capital backed. So we've raised 3 rounds of financing. Um, series ab c and 2018 ah what it was at twenty last year and then this year ah series c so we have some fantastic investors on on board who who are big believers in us as a company but also Solo ah as a whole there's now 2 hundred and fifty aurorans. Is incredible to to see you know when we started out. There was four of us and now it's ah it's a real thing and what's more is we we empowering many of the folks out there who put solar on roofs so at this point more than 60000 systems. Every single week are designed in our platform which is incredible.
| 53:27.40 | chrissass | That was pretty cool and so you gave a pretty big number where where do your development team set are they in San jose or san francisco where you you you said or they kind of mixed around the world wherever the the technology pockets are where do you have your development teams.
| 53:29.38 | Chris | Have 3
| 53:43.73 | Chris | So historically we used to be all in San francisco recently during covid we made this this change that a lot of companies did towards a distributed move.
| 53:52.72 | chrissass | So lot of people at tahoe enjoying like nice Lake views when they're recoding this.
| 54:00.27 | Chris | Tahoe hawaii everywhere so we've we've we really opened up a footprint is almost exclusively north America so us and canada but coast coast from montreal to California. To in Montana florida all over to those towns for Ah yeah.
| 54:17.90 | chrissass | Awesome! Well, but that's pretty exciting. so so I guess in the interest of time. Let me make sure I understood the I'm gonna repeat back. What I think we've talked about today and and and you tell me how wrong I was but what I think is is as you guys have developed a platform that helps. Solar industry. It's a b 2 b platform where it helps them everything from sales process where they you get some some tools that they need to you know, downstream kind of engineering process and stuff and help them accelerate the process. It's still the local businesses. They're the 1 that owns the customer. They're the 1 that has the interaction they do the installation they do the support and the follow up and what they're getting from going with you is they're getting economies of scale. So you're doing over 60000 of these installs at how often was that the 60000 a week so
| 55:07.60 | Chris | A weak design right? Not all get old these get evaluated. But yeah 60000
| 55:11.82 | chrissass | Doing yeah through doing about 60000 things a week um what you see is the demand and the growth of this is just you know ah got a straight line up and you know so you you see a lot of future growth and opportunity. And your mission is to accelerate solar deployment and give tools to make it easier for companies to do that does does that capture what we talked about today. Well I appreciated I really like the the journey I wouldn't have recognized from your dialogue that you started your journey in germany is is.
| 55:34.27 | Chris | I Capture the real. Well.
| 55:47.90 | chrissass | You know you you don't have an accent that you you came from over here. But ah I also like the having done a number of companies in Silicon valley throughout my career I like the Stanford connection there. That's always a promising 1 and I have friends that have gone there and most of them have done projects in Africa so there's got to be some sort of Stanford africa thing going on. Um, but I think that that's pretty remarkable and I hope that your school and your project continues to produce power there for years to come so that you have success stories to to tell in future podcasts. So I want to thank you for joining us today. It's it's.
| 56:18.68 | Chris | Of course again, Thank you for having me pretty enjoyed the conversation.
| 56:23.54 | chrissass | It's been a lot of fun and I always love Technologies You can tell I geek out a little bit on the technology but it's pretty cool stuff. So thank you and for our audience you spend another hour listening to Insider's guide to energy I Hope you've enjoyed the conversation as much as I have.
| 56:28.74 | Chris | Um, makes makes 2 of us.
| 56:39.77 | chrissass | If you enjoy these conversations. Please share it with your friends and don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and if you have yet to follow us on linkedin follow us on linkedin you'll never miss a bit of what's coming out on insider's guide to energy have a good day and we'll see you next week