Catalyst with Shayle Kann - Tapping the goldmine of consumer energy data

Episode Date: May 26, 2022

Consumer energy data is vital to the energy transition, especially distributed energy resources (DERs). For example, a rooftop solar company needs consumer energy data to analyze bill savings from a potential solar installation. An electric vehicle (EV) charging company needs it to offer a customer special rates on EV charging. But that data has long been incredibly difficult to access – available only in PDFs and hard-to-access utility databases – often coming in very different formats and standards. And yet companies are trying to overcome these challenges by bringing that data into easy-to-use interfaces. Arcadia is one such company. Earlier this month it raised $200 million, an investment that valued the company at $1.5 billion. Yesterday, Arcadia purchased commercial energy-data provider Urjanet.  In this episode, Shayle talks to Arcadia CEO Kiran Bhatraju about how to build a business around consumer energy data and how that data could become a goldmine for DER providers.  A few important disclosures: Shayle’s firm Energy Impact Partners (EIP) is an investor in Arcadia. EIP led the company's Series A and has invested in every round since. Arcadia is a sponsor of this podcast. Kiran is also a friend of Shayle’s, and Shayle is an Arcadia customer. Shayle and Kiran discuss key questions about consumer data, such as: What are the most valuable data points? Kiran and Shayle talk about grid carbon intensity, on-time bill payments and more. What level of fidelity do we need from the data? Do we need precise real-time data to prove savings to customers and support higher DER sales, or will high-level estimates suffice? Do we need an ever-expanding pool of smart devices, or can we unlock most of the value with a few key devices, such as a hot water heater, heat pump and EV charger? How do you develop a moat that protects you from competitors in the consumer data space? What could the future of the DER market look like? Kiran argues that DER providers will shift from selling widgets to selling platforms and packages as whole-home managers. Plus, Shayle reveals the smartest business idea that he ever turned into reality. Catalyst is supported by Advanced Energy Economy. AEE is on the front lines of transforming policy that accelerates the move to 100 percent clean energy and electrified transportation in America. To learn how your business can play a key role in transforming policy and expanding markets, visit aee​.net/join.

from the studios of PostScript Media and Canary Media. I'm Shale Khan, and this is Catalyst. We're exposing data that is already there within the multi-billion dollar investments into online digital accounts and metering. But making it simple and easy for the new energy company to focus on what they're doing, pull up a single API, and get access to multiple geographic monopolies. utilities, right, without knocking on every utility store at once. This week, can access to customer energy data unlock the distributed energy resource revolution?

When utilities need flexible capacity they can count on, they turn to Energy Hub. Energy Hub works with more than 170 utilities, coordinating over 2.5 million devices to manage 3.4 gigawatts of flexibility built for the moments when utilities can't afford uncertainty. Energy Hub builds and operates virtual power plants that utilities actually stake their grid planning on, coordinating EVs, batteries, thermostats, and more through a single platform built for utility scale. Predictive, verifiable, and designed to perform when it counts. Learn more at energy hub.com. Trillions of dollars are flowing into clean and critical infrastructure, but those investments aren't driven by technology alone.

They're shaped by markets, by policy, by capital, and by the institutions that connect them. I'm Alfred Johnson, CEO of Crux, and host of a brand new podcast, Critical Capital. Each episode, I talk with people deploying capital, shaping policy, and building the clean economy. Tune in as we unpack how progress is actually made. Listen to Critical Capital on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Shail Khan. I'm a partner with their venture capital firm, energy impact partners. Welcome. So I swear, I'm almost completely done talking.

about and comparing what's happening now in climate tech to what happened 10 to 15 years ago in Clean Tech 1.0. Seriously, I'm going to call a moratorium soon. I've talked about it enough. But before I do, here's one thing that happened in that first cycle. Clean Tech's emergence coincided with a simultaneously rising excitement around quote-unquote big data. You remember that term? Seems sort of parochial now, but back then there was just a ton of excitement around startups that were basically hunting big data sets across industries that could be manipulated and used to serve some customer purpose. Those two trends, Clean Tech and Big Data, merged into a bunch of startups

who looked at energy, and particularly the consumer side of energy, and realized that we consumers do actually generate a ton of data related to our energy consumption and behavior, mostly flowing through and around our electric meter, but extending beyond it as well. So shouldn't that be one among many of the use cases for these new big data platforms? Well, yes and no. It's been clear for a long time the consumer energy data and accessing it is actually vital to the energy transition,

whether because you need to analyze bill savings from a potential solar installation, or because you want to offer a customer a special rate on their EV charging, or whatever other reason. But I would say that historically no one, save maybe for O power, figured out a truly scalable business surrounding this data. Until potentially now, Arcadia, the startup that is perhaps best known historically for being a market leader in community solar, launched a platform they call ARC, which is a data platform to unlock utility data for a whole host of different use cases.

And it's working, at least to the extent that Arcadia just announced a $200 million Series E financing, led by JPMorgan at a reported $1.4 billion evaluation. They also just announced an acquisition even more recently of a company called Urgenet, which folks in the energy industry will know has been around for a long time pulling energy data from customers. I think they pull energy data from something like almost a third of the Fortune 500 across a bunch of different countries. Kieran Batraju is the CEO and co-founder of Arcadia, so I wanted to talk to Kieran

about this new world of energy data that he's uncovered and how it might unlock the consumer energy revolution we've all been waiting for for so long. First, though, some disclosures. So where to begin? Well, probably most importantly, my firm, Energy Impact Partners, is an investor in Arcadia. We led the company's Series A and we've invested in every round since then. Also, unrelatedly, you may have already noticed that Arcadia is a sponsor of this podcast. podcast. What else? Well, Kieran is a friend of mine personally. Oh, and also, I'm an Arcadia customer. So do with all of that what you will. Here's Kieran. Kieran, welcome to Catalyst. Great to be here, Shail. You're headed to India tomorrow? Is that right?

On a plane, 11 a.m. from Dallas. And this is a business trip. A little bit of family, but also business. That's right. I see. A little bit of both. All right. Well, Glad we catch you before you are leaving. And I also wanted to say, as I was thinking about this conversation that we're about to have, I'm already annoyed with myself for using the term data too much. Despite the fact that this is a conversation about data, so I'm wondering if you have, because you're obviously talking about it all the time too, do you have another term we can use some of the time? You know, data is all-encompassing, which I think makes it annoying because it could be anything.

But no, we use data every other sentence here. All right. I'm going to talk about getting your energy digits at some point. That's the only thing I could come up with. All right. So we want to talk about energy data. I'm annoyed with myself already, but I'm just going to plow through. And we're going to break it into four parts.

We're going to talk about what is the data itself, or what are the data, I guess, if I'm being a grammar nerd. Who needs the data? What's the point of it? What can you do with it if you have it and put it in the right place and the right situation and then like what don't we have actually what would be more valuable so let's start with what what is the data so talk me through like what as you think about building a business around becoming an energy data platform what data matters yeah so uh i'll talk a little bit about

the different layers of data um and a bit of you know what matters especially to people are probably listening to this um focused in ds and renewables um you know the People talk about the different layers of the grid, right? The distribution system, generation transmission system. And each one sort of within has just a complex set of data, right? Largest, the grid as the largest sort of engineering Marvel in the world, already has billions of data points. And the fact is, we have spent at the distribution level,

billions of dollars on upgrading the telemetry around the systems that are in our homes and in our businesses, which is the meters. Specifically around where we focus around the distribution system is the data that you and I produce when we use energy, right? So in our homes, our buildings, small businesses and commercial buildings, there is a lot of rich energy data that is produced by the meter, but it's also sitting in your online utility account. So, like, the incredible network we've already built already has amazing telemetry,

and it's actually exposed to you in an online account. Most people don't spend a lot of time there, right? I don't know how many of your listeners actually log in monthly, but there's a lot of rich data there that stems from historical energy usage, depending on the utility and the AMI meter's real-time energy usage. But there's also other subtle but very important data points, on-time bill payment history.

And when you think about the world of financing for DERs and other clean energy products that are long-term in nature, what we have found is that on-time payment history can be a better indicator of future payment history than something like a credit score or FICO score, which you and I both know has a regressive nature to how it's sort of calculated. Moving from there, there's rates and tariffs, which we'll maybe talk about in a minute, how radically important the rate structure is

to the value of DERs and the value of what's going on in the home. And we have today, at least just in the U.S., a database of over 200,000 different tariff and rate structures. And most people, when they hear that number, they had no idea. They thought there was just one way you get charged for energy. In reality, there's actually been, you know, time of use rates exist in almost more than half the U.S., and there's obviously, you know, competitive retail plans, etc.

And so all of that pulled together is within the account. And then there's even more data around, you know, the consumers, behavior in terms of like have you moved, have you set up accounts? Is there is there gas data, you know, wrapped in? Is it a, uh, an E and G utility utility. So all that is to say there's, there's a lot of rich data within the utility account around usage, rates and tariffs, how energy is costed, how you, the customer are paying for it where you live. Uh, and all of that can be used by new energy companies if it were available. Well, yeah, let's talk about availability then. Um, obviously all of us have access to our own

accounts so we can access it. But the whole point that you're making is that actually maybe we're not the ones who know what to do with it exactly. And so somebody else, like Arcadia or an Arcadia customer, might be able to do something more valuable with it. There's been this big movement for years around like Green Button, basically letting people open up their accounts to third parties. What's been the challenge historically in third party access to utility data at scale? So there's been a lot of attempts, and you probably have seen, you mentioned Green Button, and it's maybe the most high-profile attempt at exposing data. There's a lot missing.

And this goes back to, like, you know, I think for folks who've been in and around the industry, let's say ESCOs or new energy companies for like the last decade or two, they always run up against this problem that is asking for a PD, printout of the bill, right? Or just some really sort of manual guesstimates on, you know, how someone's using energy because it's so hard to sort of extract the data. There's a lot still missing today. So, like, there have been a lot of attempts. EDI, which is electronic data interchange, is used by a lot of retail energy companies, has a very specific use case. It's not very real time in a lot of sense. It's not applicable. It doesn't have sort of full account

visibility that a lot of sort of businesses need. You know, Green Button and some of the other attempts, at the end of the day, they all suffer from poor customer experience, limited data availability, fairly weak service quality, and sometimes all three, you know, wrapped and packaged. And utilities were sort of promised to do Green Button, but haven't actually executed on it. And the reality is, like, there's already a solution.

I think this is one of the core insights we've sort of ran against, is that your online utility account that the utility maintains has all this rich data already within it. And so, you know, while these attempts have been really sort of in earnest and I think meaningful, they just, no one's really built a meaningful business on top of Green Button. I think I would like love to hear examples. of scalable businesses that have been built on green button data. But in reality, it's so piecemeal. But the thing that the customer in Louisville Gas and Electric and Entergy and PG and E all

have is the online digital utility account, which has a lot of the rich data that a new energy company or DER company would need. All right. So let's presume, as you are doing, that you can then provide access to that utility data across customers, across tariffs, across utilities, across geographies, and so on. The next question, and I said the other sort of question embedded in like no one has built a big business off of Green Button data is, well, who needs it? Like, what is the, okay, so great, so there's all this data.

You've got my historical consumption data. Maybe you have interval data. You have a bunch of metadata about me. Like you said, you know, if I paid my bill on time, have I moved, et cetera. How do you think about some of the sort of scalable use cases for that data that allow you to build a big business on top of that? Totally. And something I say around the office is like I was sort of red-pilled eight years ago. It's sort of a reference to, you know, once you see something, you can't unsee it from the Matrix.

And that was sort of if you're going to be in this business of new energy, you know, selling energy services, DERs, the data I just described, energy usage history, underwriting, cost structures, that it's completely foundational to DERs as a valuable grid asset. And I think a lot of companies, as including me in a past life, like maybe sold energy services or even DERs as widgets. But everyone loves to talk about a big game of like, what can these responsive devices or, you know, responsive devices or or services provide over the long term. And in reality, you need data on how a customer is using energy, how it's costed, how it's priced,

and then maybe be able to finance it using this underwriting. So some very simple examples of people using our platform today. Our biggest vertical to date has been community solar. For those that don't know, the short story of community solar is sort of a developer building an asset. and being able to chop it up into thousands of off-takers. Now, without insight into the fact that, you know, Shale, you live in a mansion with a jacuzzi and three Teslas while I'm in a studio apartment,

you may need 22KW. I may only need four. And before this data, you know, people were just slapping five kilowatts on everyone, completely unoptimized, right? And so daily, we are sort of reallocating shares of communities. Community Solar based on this data. Not only that, we're also underwriting you and saying, have you paid your power bill on time? Well, then we don't need to do credit checks or long-term contracts. Right. The long-term contract being a really key one, like the early iterations of

Community Solar, the only way you could sign up for Community Solar was as if you were signing up for solar on your rooftop, which necessitates a long-term contract. Community Solar looked the same, even though there was no reason it necessarily had to be that way. So one of the innovations is like, if you can underwrite a customer, you can let them sign up for community solar. Exactly. I think we've, I mean, there's still a lot of work to do on this, but I think we've been disabusing mostly people in the finance community of this idea that this is at all similar to rooftop solar because we're bringing this data to play.

That is, you know, people live their lives differently. Their load profiles are different, and we can underwrite them using the data. So short story, what does that mean for a developer is we can optimize an asset with probably 20, 30% fewer off-takers because we actually know how to slice up a project. Another great example is just around rate structures is for EVs and storage companies. Specifically in the EV vertical, we are partnering with OEMs and charging companies to give them the rate and tariff database to be able to tell the customer this is the cheapest charge. for you and changing that rate structure.

So, you know, one of the larger EVOEMs, as you pull up their app to charge, they're actually pulling from our API, again, whether you live in, you know, Kentucky, D.C., California, all the different rate structures available to you so that you can get the cheapest charge. And, you know, like, those rate structures, I think becomes so much more important for DERs. into the future because you're not just selling a widget, right? A smart thermostat or storage device. You should be selling a price responsive asset and having insight into those distribution level rates, not just saying, hey, we're just going to do flat,

you know, nighttime, daytime arbitrage, but, you know, intraday arbitrage of prices. And again, that's like one layer on the distribution level. then there's another layer that we're hoping to build in the platform, which is, okay, how do you make money on the capacity markets and what's going on there? And being able to do all of that through one platform. Because right now, I think anyone will tell you, if they're attempting to stack those values,

it's an incredibly complex game that they're playing. And so we're trying to consolidate all of that in the one place. How do you think about a customer who ends up with, and this has always been, I think we've even talked about this before, there's always been one of the big questions about the future of home energy and distributed energy resources is what ends up happening for most customers is that they buy multiple different devices that are controllable and not interoperable with each other. So let's just like a specific example. Let's just say I have an electric vehicle. I'm on a, let's say I'm, so I live in California, right?

I'm on a time of use tariff because everybody in California is. I buy an electric vehicle. So, okay, so I want to optimize my charging of my electric vehicle, but maybe I even have like a Ford F150 EV where I can discharge back into my house if I need to. I also have a smart thermostat, and I want to optimize my smart thermostat. You could add on to this, obviously. I have a battery backup or whatever other devices. So what your data platform is doing is allowing the OEM who delivered me my EV to

help me optimize my charging. Presumably, you could also be offering the OEM who delivered me my thermostat the same thing. Do those two things need to talk to each other? Do you think? Or is it okay that we might just end up with a network of different devices

each getting optimized against the same tariff? Yeah, I mean, that is a fundamental question. You're asking about where the market goes. And I think we at Arcadia decided that we just wanted to be, the picks and shovels while folks sort of figured this out. I'm not sure that there will be an opportunity

in the future for a single manager and someone should take that path. But again, it's not possible unless you know the rate structures and every device is sort of optimized against it. I think there's a future where there will be sort of whole-home managers that pop up. that are able to sort of, you know, you asked earlier about the different layers of data.

I actually skipped one that is sort of device-level data, what's happening at the distribution system, and then on up. Or you could do device-level, whole-home level, distribution system-level capacity markets or whatever. Exactly. And I think the, like, you know, we wanted to provide tools so that, just as an example, like your smart water heater could be optimized against the time of use rate

that you're on, but that smart water heater probably has a different profile than let's say your EV charger. And so there needs, at some point, there will be someone

that uses these tools to say, how do we optimize multiple products against the single time of use tariff? Or maybe the EV charger is just being monetized on the capacity market, but that device is actually, let's say the water heater is being optimized

against the distribution rate. What I'm describing are just like tons of different outcomes that there could be a third-party whole-home manager. And I actually think that's ultimately where we go, but you'll still need this data to, I think in the meantime,

we'll have multiple companies sort of going after their device, their value. against what's going on in the distribution system. Virtual power plants are becoming a reliable way for utilities to manage capacity, but enrolling devices is just the start. What really matters is confidence, knowing those resources will perform when dispatched and being able to prove it from the control room to the living room.

Energy Hub's platform handles the full picture, from near real-time forecasting, locational dispatch, and the kind of rigorous verification that holds up when regulators, grid operators or leadership ask, did it deliver? Easy enrollment creates momentum, proven performance builds trust. That's why more than 170 utilities

rely on Energy Hub to manage over 2.5 million devices delivering 3.4 gigawatts of flexible capacity. See what that looks like at energyhub.com. We're living through a profound economic shift, and energy sits at the center of all of it. Trillions of dollars are flowing into power plants, transmission lines, battery factories, data centers, but the future of energy isn't shaped by technology alone.

It's shaped by markets, by policy, by capital, and by the institutions that connect them. I'm Alfred Johnson, CEO of Crux, the capital platform for the clean economy. Join me for my brand new show, Critical Capital, as I talk with people deploying capital, shaping policy and building projects. Together, we unpack how risk is priced,

how incentives are structured, and how progress is actually made. Listen to Critical Capital on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Back to what is the data and who needs it. You focus mostly on the data that is contained within a customer's utility account, right? There's obviously a bunch of data that is relevant, at least, that's external to that. So for sort of real-time optimization of things, for example, you can imagine, like weather data being really important. or maybe some grid data, right?

There's been a bunch of attempts to sort of internalize distribution system data to try to do things. What do you think of that is interesting at least, whether or not it's currently integrated into the Arcadia platform that lies outside the customer's utility bill? Yeah, and I'll say from our perspective, we're focused on data where we have a competitive advantage. One of the reasons we acquired Urgenet is this account. level data, you know, to be able to pull it in globally across residential commercial, serve any customer, and get rates and tariffs, that's where we wanted to focus initially. So you mentioned two, weather data, of course, incredibly useful for all sorts of applications. And I think similar to carbon intensity data, which I would also say is like an incredibly valuable

source to pull in data source. It's somewhat subjective. It's actually a pretty tough physics problem to figure out what the right... As you know, there's a few different ones out there. E-grid, Watt Time, a few other private companies. It's hard to sort of know what the right benchmark is without,

frankly, I think, a utility stepping in and sort of saying this is what's happening on our system. Yeah, you're talking about real time carbon intensity of electricity data, right? So this would be if I want to optimize my EV charging, not necessarily exclusively against the cost of electricity, but also to like charge my EV when the grid is cleanest, that kind of thing. You need the carbon intensity data on the grid, which is one of these problems that I feel like sounds easier than it actually turns out to be. It's incredibly, yeah, that's what I mean by being subjective, right? And there's multiple

places to pull from. You're exactly right. I'll give you. you another example that we're seeing in the market around carbon accounting, right? A lot of these companies that are approaching the enterprise, Fortune 500 and saying, let us benchmark the E in your ESG. They're mostly running off estimates, right? What we can provide is the actual kilowatt hour and therm data in the built environment for that building still needs to get mapped to carbon intensity, right? Because if I show you a low profile during the day, you need to map that, let's say I'm using a lot of energy at noon. Well, what is the carbon intensity of the grid at noon to get a true carbon emission profile?

But even there, again, there's multiple options you could choose that are attempting to tell you how intensive the carbon is at noon. So that's another one. We talked about devices. Before we move on from that, can I add another entire level to that one that I think is like the necessary future but is even more difficult and I have no idea if we're going to solve it, which is you're describing a heart it is even just to say historically for accounting purposes, the carbon intensity of your energy consumption. But I think what we, at least what I care

more about, and I think that the carbon accounting platforms that I think of as being particularly forward thinking and progressive and the ones that I'm more excited about, their vision is to become more than a carbon accounting platform is to become a carbon management platform, where in enterprise makes actual decisions about their future tied to how to reduce emissions. If you want to tie that to any level of granularity around emissions reduction, then you need not only historical or even real-time carbon intensity, you need projected carbon intensity, ideally in the same temporal scale. So if you were theoretically saying, well, I have a commercial building and I want, and, you know, what impact would it have if I install the controllable water heater,

electric water heater, you kind of need to know what the emission's intensity of the grid is going to be at those times, not just what it is today. And I see nobody solving that. I would 100% agree. Now, there are some people using the ARC platform to help in those calculations. But just to walk through what you just described, it's let's benchmark the building, actual energy usage, and historical carbon intensity. Let's all agree on a forecast of future grid intensity and future energy use, which could change, depending, especially through COVID. We had massive changes, right, of what projected future energy use looks like. Then calculating what the counterfactual would be if I installed DER 1, 2, or 3 option, or altogether, which needs data on different rates and tariffs,

costing the carbon intensity. And then sort of decisions on, because most DRs won't take you completely, let's say you don't get completely clean. Like what are the third option, sorry, I should say, like the third party options around, you know, non-commodity credits and offsets or VPPs, things I could do to fulfill. That whole lifecycle of decision making, right, it's just incredible amounts of data that have to go into it and high fidelity data on the building. energy use, like pretty, pretty granular telemetry.

And I think that's, this is why this stuff's so important. Like, I fundamentally don't think we will, and like, I think this data is absolutely core to electrification because of the complexities just described, or we're just, you know, we're just sort of hand-waving the emissions impact that we think we're going to make. Yeah, I think that is sort of the fundamental question to me is, to what degree does the level of accuracy and level of granularity really matter and things like that? If it really matters, then I agree with you. It is fundamental. On the other hand, what we do today when people buy stuff is really, really high-level estimates, right? You project today's annual average emissions

intensity into the future without too much regard for what the generation profile is going to look like in the future, you assume some benchmark average for savings from whatever device it is. And you're probably off by some relatively significant fraction. But if it's enough to kind of make the decision no matter what, does it matter? Like, what level of fidelity do we really need in making these decisions? Let me give you an example that we're seeing and then pull out a bit. So Somepower uses our data. around their solar proposals. When you look at any rooftop solar companies funnel, there's a huge drop-off when the salesperson,

they come to your door, they say, we'll get you cheaper solar, put it on your roof. Then they say, can you print out 12 of your past PDF utility bills? And there's just huge drop-off. And oftentimes, you're taking swags on, like, how much can I save this customer? How should I size their system? So the world we're imagining is if you had this level of granular data,

could the product actually deliver significantly more savings and significant long-term savings and live up to promises to the customer that then sort of feed back into better sales, faster sales velocity? Because I think the problem a lot of DER companies have today is sort of unmet promises, right, on the, long-term, you know, what are long-term sort of assets going into and long-term solutions going into buildings

and homes? You know, you've probably heard of some of these stories of like, you know, people sort of miss misallocating savings on rooftop solar as an example. And so I think this is actually crucial

shale. If we're going to like increase the sales velocity and more and more people trusting these products, we kind of need that granularity. to deliver the savings and live up to the customer promise that I think a lot of folks are selling in the market. Another example. When you get the EV,

and I think the message going forward is like, this is cheaper than a nice vehicle, how much cheaper and can I rely on that month over month and prove it? And right now, and so you really need this data, the tariff optimization to be able to do that right. That's another thing, by the way, that I haven't seen anybody do, that I think would be a cool thing to do,

which is really surface to the customer. They're tracking over time the savings that they are gaining. When I have my EV, it should be really, really obvious to me how much savings I'm getting. And I should be seeing that stack up over time, and it's like a little dopamine hit that I should be getting over and over again every time I charge my vehicle and it's going to create a higher NPS and it's going to make me recommend it to my friends and stuff like that.

I want to know because otherwise it gets buried in the same way that with rooftop solar, right? Not a dissimilar thing. Like I should be seeing the counterfactual of what my electricity bill would have been. And then here's what my electricity bill is and here's my savings on a monthly basis and cumulatively and so on. Like if these things are going to be sold on the promise of savings, make that savings really clear to me. If you indeed believe you're going to deliver on that. So I think, you know, when you think about the arc of our business, pun intended.

We saw just in a single vertical in community solar proving to the customer the savings, the long-term savings, telling them what the 20-year savings will look like, all of that continually monthly. And to be able to, and then having this platform now to be able to go completely horizontal, solar, rooftop solar, storage, EVV charging, retail energy, smart home IOT,

they should all be able to do what you just, described and deliver that experience, which to your point, higher MPS, more referrals, more sales. But right now, people are still just selling widgets. They're widgets instead of that should deliver value over the long term, but again, it's not getting communicated back to the customer either. I think that's a huge value prop that this data can bring to life for a lot of products. What data don't we have access to that would be make it even more valuable? Like, what are we missing?

Obviously, there is a lot of data unlocked by just access to the customer's utility bill, but not everything you would want, I assume. Yeah, we've still got a long way to go. So with the combination of Urgenet, we're able to pull, again, 52 countries, like 9,000 utilities around the world. We're able to pull whatever the utility provides. which is still pretty radically different, obviously, of utility utility, and depending on the AMI structures that exist,

and how quickly they publish that data, because that is what we're relying on. And so, look, time of use rates, also not everywhere, right? And then we're seeing a huge growth of that. I think utilities and regulators understand why. And so that's growing. I think faster data access of even in the places where AMI exists is absolutely necessary.

We talked about carbon intensity, but I think what will be difficult here, similar in some respects to the offset and rec market is like there needs to be a single standard. And I actually see this is where the utility's role is, of like, what is the single standard on a utilities distribution grid of the carbon intensity in an intraday period?

I think they should own that. Someone should put a stamp of approval on it, that this is what it is, not six different companies saying it's six different things. And so all those things matter. I think, you know, we also look at other things around like the payment of a utility bill, the sort of consolidation of accounts if I'm a company with, I don't know, like 40 franchises. Like there's sort of other mechanics of the account that I think would make life easier for

new energy companies and customer. And, you know, like broadly, like, you know, utilities and regulators, I think, haven't needed to put a lot of emphasis on exposing this data, right? I mean, their core business is sort of keeping the lights on. But I think as more and more customers are sort of asking for new energy products, this is going to become like a necessary thing for every, sort of utility executive and regulator to figure out. How do we expose more and more of this data? What do you think about the sort of next categories of things people are going to have

in their homes? I mean, you've sort of alluded to big categories already. You talked about community solar. We talked about EVs. We talked about some like thermostats and IOT devices, batteries, is this going to be just an ever-expanding category of different devices that need to all, you know, have common characteristics about how they need to be sold and managed on behalf of the customer? Or, you know, is there ultimately, there's like five things that matter. You know, if you just look at our home energy, certainly for residential, if you look at our home energy consumption, you know, like half of it is HV, generally speaking. If you add an EV, then that adds a big category to it. If you had a battery, that adds a, big category to it. But beyond that, everything else is pretty small. My plug load is pretty small. My lights, my fridge, all those kinds of things. So, like, at what point do you get, you know, to your, what points is the 80, 20 rule take effect? And if you've got these, these sort of four or five things managed the right way, you're basically all the way there? Or do you think that the category just keeps expanding? You know, I think for, I think you're right.

there's only a certain number of loads that are incredibly meaningful for a home. But for each individual product, I mean, you could even take an induction stove that I think is going to become more and more popular. It may not be the product you and I talk or think about when it comes to big loads in the house. But it's going to be one that some homes will need an upgrade for. to 220 volume. It will use significant energy and will be another device that could be optimized

and then maybe sold differently, sold as part of a package with other larger home, you know, DERs. And so I see, like, sure, there's like a limited number of products

we use today for electricity. Part of where we're going as a business, though, is expanding into small commercial and commercial buildings where there's just so many more options and use cases depending on what the business is doing and

what they can do to a building. And look, at the end, we're talking about decarbonizing the built environment. Just monster industry that even across the few, you know, big load devices in the homes

and then obviously in commercial, it's just huge market for. But, you know, I think your general premise is right. Like, it's these large loads around heating, cooling, potentially the EV, storage and solar that are going to be the drivers, but then these smaller devices, I think some enterprising companies will sort of wrap into the customer solution

because you shouldn't, you know, I've said this on one of the earlier pots we did show where I think, you know, rooftop solar companies do this amazing feat, which is sell someone a 20, 25 year power plant on their roof. But it really should be the entry point to whole home electrification, all those little products stacking up. value and management for the customer. And we just, look, where we are today is like,

we want to be the platform for all of that to help you manage all of that as a third-party company. And so there may only be, again, I see the sort of us going through a period of everyone attacking their product, their device, trying to own the customer to then these full-fledged new energy managers that are sort of fully managing the home.

Again, none of that's possible without device level data, distribution level data, and then eventually, like, energy market data as well. All right. Maybe taking one big step back to close out, how do you think about building a moat as a data business? I think there's sort of various versions of data businesses that have found ways to scale and stay differentiated and stay ahead of the competition. There's sort of proprietary access to data. You have data nobody else has.

There's the, we, you know, just did a lot of hard work to get access to it, and it would be annoying for anybody else to replicate at scale. There's network effects you can try to build if you have kind of a two-sided marketplace for the data. Then there's the like algorithm-driven differentiation. We, you know, used our fancy ML box to do something with that data. Nobody else can do. There's like so many different configurations.

What's the one that you think, first of all, how do you tell the story around Arcadia's moat? But I guess more broadly, what's your view on building a long-term moat in a data enterprise? Yeah, so when you look at examples from other industries, and the most similar and analogous to us is Plaid in the fintech space, they're not inventing any new data, right? They're simply exposing data in a much simpler, easier way for, in that example, fintech companies to build new innovative customer solutions. So that's sort of, I mean, from being honest, we're exposing data that is already there within the multi-billion dollar investments into online digital accounts and metering. But making it simple and easy for the new energy company to focus on what they're

doing, pull up a single API, and get access to multiple geographic monopoly utilities, without knocking on every utility's door at once. And that is just wildly valuable. The moat, a lot of people, they assume outside looking in that this is like a simple task. But in reality, the way a kilowatt hour is presented by Duke Energy versus mid-American versus Pacific War, it's radically different. and then when you talk abroad, it's a tough data model to standardize.

But I think that network effect, part of the reason we are so excited about bringing in Urginet, who has spent more than a decade building connectors across providers, 9,000 plus utilities around the world, I think our moat is, if I'm a new energy company

and I'm looking to build a product that I can sell anywhere, I just want a single API. And right, that is a unique thing about our market is that the utility stops where the line stops, at least the distribution utility. And so when you're talking about thousands of different utilities, if there's just a single API that can give me standardized access to data,

I think ultimately that is the moat that we were going after. And going back to that comparison, I think there's all sorts of interesting new business models and why we're so excited about the platform, new exciting business models that can come out of this because I think energy companies have always been so

geographically focused. And for the first time, we can give them the ability to maybe launch a product in multiple locations at once using a single API. So the way we think about data too is like if tomorrow we woke up

in every utility in America created like an incredibly well-documented API for their utility, we would still provide an incredible service that is a single meta API for all thousands of those just with probably better data being piped up into it

because the utilities set that up. So we are working with utilities today to help them think about this future because their customers want it. They want access their data. They want the ability to share it. And again, we are not exposed, we're simply exposing what exists today.

but that in and of itself is such a valuable thing for the market and for companies in the space. It's funny. This is reminding me of what I consider to be like the smartest business idea that I ever had and actually implemented. I've had many great business ideas I've never done anything with. But the only thing that I ever actually did that is similar to this was you'll remember this and probably our listeners won't care. But back in 2009, when I was running GTM research, I was tracking the solar market. At that time, we had no idea how much solar was getting installed in the U.S. And particularly, we had really no idea how much was getting installed behind the meter for residential and commercial customers because the data wasn't available. And it actually was available, it turned out, much of it publicly.

But it was really, really difficult to access. The utilities would publish their information. interconnection cues or it would get embedded in some incentive database for the California Solar Initiative or something like that. And even the EIA had data that they would publish, but it was in this horrible format. So we just compiled all of that. Basically, we like built connectors to put it all in one place. And suddenly we had a database of all behind the meter solar in the United States. And then we could cut it up in a million different ways. And there are all sorts of companies who were trying to build businesses in the sector. And it turns out they needed that data. And it, like,

launched this whole line of business for us that turned out to be pretty lucrative. And it was, it was not data that wasn't available. It was just data that needed to be surfaced and cleansed and presented in a format that was actually navigable and actionable for, for our customers, for other companies in the space. So you're doing, I think, a version of that that's like a thousand times more valuable than what I was doing, but strikes me as a similar idea. Yeah, I know I tell the team this often. And Shail, that's like, we should pull that database into ARC. I tell the team, it's not data just for data's sake. It's like, what is the customer problem? And then let's go find the data. And again, going back to why I think this is so foundational, knowing the rate and

tariff structures, knowing historical patterns to forecast future patterns of usage, you know, incredibly valuable for customers delivering DER. ours. But, you know, once we have the benchmark, and maybe, you know, you thought about this too with the data you're describing, was once you have an understanding of what happened in the past, you can start doing interesting things like forecasting, right? And looking out into the future and providing, you know, better forecasts because of the benchmark you have. So I think that's a lot of where we're going. But for today, it's simply pulling, pulling that data that already exist, making it easy to give other people's superpowers to go build their product. That's

really valuable in this market. All right, Kieran, I'm going to let you go so you can presumably go pack for your journey to India, but I appreciate you taking the time before you head off. Always great to chat. Thanks. Kieran Batraju is the CEO of Arcadia. So what did you think? If you like the show today, go over to Spotify or Apple Podcasts and leave us a rating and review. We really do appreciate that. This show is a co-production of PostScript Media and Canary Media. You can find the show on Twitter at At CatalystPod. You can also find me, PostScript, and Canary there too. If you want to know about today's topics and any more detail, head over to canarymedia.com for links and more info. PostScript is supported by Prelude Ventures,

the venture capital firm that partners with entrepreneurs to address climate change across a range of sectors, including advanced energy, food and ag, transportation and logistics, advanced materials, manufacturing, and advanced computing. This episode was produced by Daniel Waldorf. Our executive producer is Stephen Lacey, mixing by Greg Vilfrank and Sean Marquand, theme song by Sean Marquand. Our managing producer is Cecily Maza Martinez. My notable read this week comes from the EIA in their Today and Energy blog series, which

is titled U.S. Ammonia Prices Rise in Rize in Rewa. response to higher international natural gas prices, which is a boring title for a huge story about the fact that ammonia prices have risen sixfold in the U.S. in the past two years, mostly just in the past year, even worse in other international markets. It's a really, really big deal that I think we're not talking enough about. But more on that in a future episode. In the meantime, I'm Shail Khan, and this is Catalyst.