Catalyst with Shayle Kann - The future of the home solar market

Episode Date: January 31, 2022

There’s momentum building for electrification. But when will electrification take off as a mainstream movement? And what companies can provide electrification solutions to consumers at scale? One strong candidate is Sunrun. It’s the leading residential solar company in the U.S., after SolarCity years ago, and acquiring its next-biggest competitor Vivint solar more recently. Sunrun has also become a major player in residential batteries. And it started to push its way into the residential EV charging game via a partnership with Ford around the electric F-150. Mary Powell recently became CEO of Sunrun, after taking over from co-founder and previous CEO Lynn Jurich last year. Shayle talked to Mary about what Sunrun is today – and what it might be in the future. They talk about what it will take to lower consumer acquisition costs, overcome the inertia of policy and utilities, and compare the emotional and economic drivers behind residential solar installations.  Plus: the opportunities for vehicle-to-home charging and how NREL’s SolarAPP could speed up residential solar permitting and installation process. Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more. Catalyst is supported by Nextracker. Nextracker’s technology platform has delivered more than 50 gigawatts of zero-emission solar power plants across the globe. Nextracker is developing a data-driven framework to become the most sustainable solar tracker company in the world – with a focus on a truly transparent supply chain. Visit nextracker.com/sustainability to learn more.

from the studios of PostScript Media and Canary Media. I'm Shail Khan, and this is Catalyst. We are at 3% of 77 million addressable homes. So while we are already moving towards, you know, radically expanding what we provide for customers with our Ford partnership, with work we're doing around this really innovative new panel called Span, you know, we still fundamentally see, incredible growth in the solar space.

So, you're the newly minted CEO of the largest residential solar company in the country, currently sitting around a $6 billion market cap, but with much bigger ambitions. What do you do? 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 at the venture capital firm Energy Impact Partners. Welcome. Okay. If you're on Twitter, let me make one humble recommendation. follow Saul Griffith. For those who don't know Saul, he's the founder of Other Lab, which has spun out a bunch of interesting climate tech companies, but he's also the guru of electrification. He's, for example, the co-author of the seminal book, Rewiring America on the topic, and he's a general evangelist of the Electrify Everything movement. And most recently, via a series of daily tweets, Saul has been building the electro-fictionary, a glossary of his personally invented terms for the electrification revolution.

Recent examples, some of my favorites. Electra fry, which means cooking with an induction stove. Electrafly, of course, flights on short haul electric planes. I'm also fond of electrifier, which is, quote, the smug glow of warmth and happiness as you bathe in a new world combination of heat pump-driven radiant heat and a red-hued LED light system. I'll let you go look up Electra shitty yourself. Anyway, I've been thinking some lately.

about home electrification and what it might take to accelerate that process. We clearly already have some momentum building around individual point solutions. Electric vehicles, obviously, but also residential solar and batteries, and to a lesser extent, heat pumps, induction stoves, and so on. But at least I don't think yet that we're at the point where electrification as a whole has taken off. So who is best positioned to make that happen? One strong candidate is Sun Run. Sunrun is far and away the leading residential solar company in the country these days, having surpassed the empty shell formerly known as Solar City a few years ago, and having acquired its next biggest competitor, Vivint Solar, more recently.

Sun Run has also become a major player in residential batteries, and most recently has started to push its way into the residential EV charging game via a fascinating partnership with Ford around the electric F-150, which would allow you to use your electric truck as whole-home backup. Mary Powell is freshly in the CEO seat at Sun Run, having taken over from co-founder and previous CEO, Lynn Jurek, earlier this year. So I wanted to talk to Mary both about what Sun Run is today, but more importantly, what it might be in the future and her own personal electrovision for the future. That one's mine, Saul. With no further ado, Mary Powell. Mary, welcome. Thanks for having me. It's

great to be chatting with you today. Likewise. So when did you start at Sun Run? How far end at the job, are you? Oh, my goodness. I think it's five months. I started at the end of August. And in many ways, it feels like yesterday. And in many ways, it feels like it's been already years. It feels like it's been a long time in just the world of residential solar. And in Sun Run's history, remind me, is this your first experience leading a public company? Or have you done that before? You know, I was the CEO of Green Mountain Power, as you know, for many years. And when I was, the chief operating officer. We were actually a public company. So we went through the process of going private when I was there as one of the executives leading the company. But yes, as the CEO,

it's the first time stepping in leading a public company. That's right. I forgot Green Mountain Power was public when you were in an executive role there. I was going to ask you what it's been like. It's a wild ride in general in residential solar, but it's been particularly volatile and crazy over the past five months while you've been in the job. We've had these crazy public markets and the build back better plan, you know, sort of rose didn't pass and then has been plotting along potentially with some future that whole time. Like what's the experience been like for you during the five months you've been in the job? Yeah. So, I mean, overall, the experience has been just tremendous. I mean, I feel really blessed to work with such an amazing, talented team doing

incredibly important work for the planet. So as you know, we are an incredibly mission-driven organization. It's all about the mission of creating a planet run by the sun, about really dramatically reducing fossil use and transforming the energy economy and the energy grid. So it's been a really, you know, tremendous start here. You know, in the context of the external environment, I have been really in the clean energy space. That's how I viewed the work I was doing before at Green Mountain Power is essentially being about accelerating a consumer-led revolution to a very different energy grid and energy system.

So there's a natural volatility and ebbs and flows that go when you're really on the front lines of not just combating climate change, but the front lines of trying to really create a completely different energy system. So in many ways, it feels like an extension of what, of sort of a, you know, the roller coaster of leading transformation. Okay. So I think we want to talk about sort of two things here. I want to start by talking about Sun Run's core business, the residential solar business.

And then I want to spend a bunch of time talking about kind of the next suite of things, what's coming post-residential solar, both things Sun Run is already doing and things that might be on the horizon as we head toward sort of a home electrification universe. But let's start with the basic bread and bother that Sun Run does, which is selling financing and installing residential solar. What is your take on where that market is today in the U.S.? Like, where are we in the trajectory of residential solar? Well, yes. So the history of this company is that it was really a pioneer, not just in bringing solar energy to customers' homes, but for doing it in a way that made it financially accessible to all. So that, you know, in the context of solar, yes, you're right. We're

working on a lot of additional innovations. We really see ourselves as ultimately being about whole home electrification and meeting customers where they are in their energy journey and being that beloved trusted partner, combating climate change and helping homes become. affordable, resilient, et cetera. So, but back to the fundamentals of your question, like, we are at 3% of 77 million addressable homes. So while we are already moving towards, you know, radically expanding what we provide for customers with our Ford partnership, with work we're doing around this really innovative new panel called SPAN, you know, we still fundamentally see incredible growth in the solar space. And obviously also storage has become such an important part of

the solar experience. So, you know, we see tremendous growth in, you know, what I would call the fundamentals around creating a planet run by the sun and then also see just so much opportunity to then be that beloved trusted partner for customers in all other aspects of their whole home electrification and transportation journey. So why are we at 3% today, right? Like it's been a number of years now where residential solar for a lot of customers has been economic. We have financing mechanisms in place that make it such that you can save money on day one. What's the barrier to more rapid adoption, do you think?

Oh, you know, I think that really what we're seeing now is we are finally at that tipping point that I and many others have been working towards in this space for years. right, which is, you know, what I would say, the customer-led revolution tipping point, where we are seeing now, you know, growth numbers nationwide that are the kind of numbers you would expect to see when you see customers no longer are seeing it as a technology that's like, you know, your uncle might have at the Thanksgiving dinner table, like that one person might have. So I think the adoption curve you're going to see is going to continue to really dramatically accelerate in the coming years.

You know, as to your question about, well, why not faster? You know, fundamentally, I think it's because whenever you're bringing a different, new, and improved innovative technology against the sort of, you know, 100-plus year-old system and way of thinking, you have to deal with, you know, just. hurdle after hurdle and roadblock after roadblock, whether they're policy, regulatory, utility-based, right? And they keep coming at us, right? As an industry, they keep coming at us, which are these roadblocks that in my mind are fundamentally about protecting, preserving, and defending status quo versus really radically embracing what could be and the energy grid

system of the future. So if there's anything, I think, that slows it down. It's the natural inertia that gets created by these big, large systems that have been in place for a long time. But at the end of the day, you know, I've always felt like, you know, my faith in our ability to transform as a country, as a world, relative to climate change and energy systems has always been about the power of customers. Because once customers fall in love with the technology and an approach, watch out world, because no matter what hurdles are there, they will help knock them down. One of the things that's always been a knock on the U.S. residential solar market, particularly relative to other markets like Germany, that we've actually still never solved amazingly as sort of

customer acquisition costs are so much higher here. Soft costs in general are much higher than they are in places like Germany and Australia, but customer acquisition costs in particular, we still have to spend a lot to attract a customer to get them to sign up to buy solar to put it on their roof, despite the fact that, as you said, there is this sort of increasing recognition that it's not some nichey thing that your uncle has at the Thanksgiving table. So that's always been my question of how do we go from one or two or three percent penetration to 10 or 20 or 30 percent penetration? it seems like there has to be a way to drive customer acquisition costs down dramatically, which must come from some broad recognition that residential solar is an attractive asset for homeowners,

but just doesn't seem to have unlocked yet. And I wonder, first of all, whether you agree that that's true, like what is the obstinate customer acquisition cost problem? And second of all, what changes that? Well, I think, so yes, there are some differences, and I would say a lot of the differences are around, when you think of customer acquisition costs, you have to have to think of the process to getting a customer to installation. So it's not just the process of getting the customer interested in solar, right? It's the customer of really, the cost of getting them through that process. And when you look at it in the United States compared to other countries, you know, the reality is we have, we have a lot of built. complexity that comes at the local level, it comes at the utility level. And in some states, it's way more streamlined in other states. So in fact, the state I was working in Vermont, they actually did a lot of work around

really streamlining the process. And when you streamline the process, you actually help streamline the cost. Sun Run was a big part of also something that I know you've probably seen Secretary Granholm talking about, which is the solar. Right? So there are technological solutions to drive down cost, which is really about simplification of process. And if you look, you know, particularly in Europe in certain areas where you see lower costs, it's because there was a tension, again, at the regulatory, at the government level, at the local government level of how do we make going solar easy, right? Not how do we look at it as a threat. And I think in the United States, very, much so in many jurisdictions throughout the country, certainly in the utility space. It's seen as a threat, not an opportunity. And so when you see it that way, there's more and more hurdles that get created to go through for a customer to go solar. So the solar app was one,

you know, initiative and innovation that again, now we have to get more and more parties to adopt it, more and more jurisdictions to use it. But it could be a really significant unlock in the context of cost and streamlining of the process. So you ascribe stubbornly high customer acquisition costs largely to permitting and interconnection, those kinds of soft costs. And you think that those aside, you know, what it takes to get a customer to sign up for solar these days is not a problem and we could scale the market sort of infinitely within the current bounds.

Yeah. Yes, 100%. I agree with that. Yes, we would be able to, without a shadow of a doubt. Do you think the cost is, or rather that cost reductions are necessary to scale to the next order of magnitude for residential solar? Like, do we need to drive costs substantially down? Because we've started to hit a little bit of an asymptote where, like, panel costs aren't falling much anymore. In fact, they've been going up a little bit because of supply chain issues and trade issues and things like that. Soft costs have been, you know, we're chipping away at them, but they've been real tough. relatively flat. And I wonder whether, you know, we historically have this mindset of like the only

way to get the next set of customers is to make solar cheaper. Do you think that's still true? I think that's a great question. And I think that it is true. So again, not all customers are created equally, right? So not everybody is motivated by the same things. But when you think about just 20, 21 and what, like an incredible, year it was in the context of the number of billion-dollar disasters that affected literally tens of millions of customers around the country or people, you know, homes around the country. So, you know, what you're seeing is more and more customers are interested from a resilience perspective. They're interested from a perspective of understanding that no amount of, you know,

storm hardening by utilities is going to make them have reliable power on a regular basis that really going with Sun Run. So again, when I think about customers that we have started working with in Texas, in California, so much of the motivation is about feeling, you know, honestly, just more emotionally safe in your own home. So so much, you know, again, there's a certain amount of customers. It's so much the environmental, you know, benefits. so many that want to be feeling more energy independent.

And now increasingly so many customers that basically are craving that emotional and psychological security and safety that they get the feeling of when they have, again, particularly now that we have so many customers going with solar and storage. So again, cost is always important. But again, just look at you know, again, just look at you. utility rates. I mean, PG&E alone has seen a 65% increase in their rates since 2011, right? So when you think about solar and you think about it related to utility power, you know, over time, while it is important to get every cost as effective and low as possible,

you know, I think, again, you're going to see, you're going to continue to see rapid adoption and growth in this space because other costs are going up at the same time, and increasingly Americans are realizing that for so many of them, the grid just can't provide the kind of resilience and energy independence that our systems can. That's a good sort of segue into starting to talk about kind of the, what you're layering on in addition to solar. You talked about batteries, and we'll get later to the partnership with Ford and things

like that. Are you finding that customers, I mean, Sun Runs in how many states now? Most of the country at this point. 22 states. 22 states, okay, so maybe half the states in the country. And presumably some of those are states where we've seen major reliability events,

certainly California and Texas amongst them of late. And then there are a bunch of states that have not seen that. They've certainly seen natural disasters, but maybe haven't seen big outages. Do you see a big divide in terms of what drives consumer adoption in different markets based on, you know, basically the recency by,

bias of like have they had an outage, a big outage in the past couple of years? Or is this trend toward the desire for resiliency somehow shaking off on everybody despite the fact that not everybody has suffered from it? You know, that's a great question. I mean, certainly, you know, certainly what I've seen. I've had, you know, been, I'm a boots on the ground leader. So since I've taken this job, I've been in a lot of our states. I've been in a lot of our warehouses. I've been with customers in the field. And, you know, again, you see some customers that are in areas that are very, I would say, very reliable, either because they're super close to a substation, they're not in an area

that gets hit by a lot of, you know, major climatic events on a regular basis. Still very interested in solar. So, so very much interested in, you know, having that bit of, that sense of energy independence, of generating their own energy to be used in solar. their own home. But we are absolutely seeing that the climatic events all over the country are driving up adoption. And it's, and you know, and I would say it's hard to find areas of the country that aren't affected in some way, frankly. So, you know, I think it's pretty widespread. So I think we're seeing the increase in climatic events affecting pretty much every region of the

country in some way or another. So let's talk about that next, the vanguard of home products that Sun Run is selling, starting with batteries. You've talked about them a little bit. They're obviously a big part of the business now. Have you, I can't remember, has Sun Run disclosed what portion of new customers are attaching batteries to the residential solar installations these days? You know, we have a good clip of customers' interest. We now have, you know, 630,000 customers, and about 28,000 of those have batteries, but it's important to remember a lot of those were in place before really storage became a mainstream product that was being offered in the market. So of current customers going with solar, we have a pretty strong attachment rate.

You know, well over, you know, I would say well over a third of those customers are interested in storage as well when they're going solar. 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 Capital on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. And in most of the country, you can't really monetize that storage. I mean, you can do time of use arbitrage in California. And maybe in some places, you're going to be benefiting from participation in some grid services program that Sun Run runs.

But presumably for a lot of those customers, this is an uneconomic decision still. And yet many of them are making it, depending on what you consider an economic decision. I suppose reliability of home electricity is economic to a lot of people. But I guess how do you think about packaging it for customers? Is the pitch, because the solar gives you savings. The solar plus the storage gives you maybe slightly less savings, but more resiliency. How is it framed to a run customer? So, I mean, first of all, customers have been paying for resilience for decades.

So there are, you know, again, I mean, one of the things that, that, concerns me from a climate perspective is when we do see these natural disasters, what you see so many customers do because they can do it like that day and they're so shaken to their core by what has happened and by the lack of utility power for extended periods of time, you know, so many of them will race to the store and get a big old fossil generator. So let's remember customers have been spending money on generators and in many cases, big expensive generators for a long time. And that has actually continued to increase because of this issue.

So I don't think, I don't think storage, you know, in my experience, is something that, again, it is about, oh, what's my payback? Yes, I mean, do customers always love that if you get a payback on top of it? Like, yay, wahoo. but it is, it is, you know, something at its core that is so much about emotional security. You know, because again, you know, using, utilizing California as an example, yes, there could be some math that is supportive of storage, but the realities, I think, well, the key driver that we hear when we talk to customers and I talk to neighbors is, you know, they talk about the events

where they have their power shut off in many cases, you know, and I was, you know, and I was, in L.A. County at Thanksgiving, and, you know, the power was shut off to about 100,000 people from the evening before Thanksgiving until Friday night. There's, you know, I think there's no price tag that could be put on those folks feeling like they have a path so that they don't have to have that kind of instability and insecurity at any time, let alone as they're trying to work through, a significant time with family. One thing that Sun Run has been doing that's been interesting over the past few years

is as you've gotten into the residential storage business, you find yourself with a fleet of residential batteries of assets that have grid value because they can do anything from demand response to feed power back into the grid and so on. And so you started to get into this grid services virtual power plant game where you aggregate up baskets of those installations

and then bid them in for utility contracts or wholesale market contracts and things like that. How do you think about that moving forward? Does every residential battery that gets installed at some point become part of a grid services program? Or is it sort of, well, there are pockets where this makes a lot of sense because the grid has big capacity needs

and we can value them or something like that, but it's going to be in pockets? Yeah, so this is an area I'm very passionate about. So Sun Run does have 12 virtual power plant projects in place. Sun Run was one of the pioneers on the solar side around grid services, around how do we make a more affordable cleaner energy system for all. And I was doing the same work as a utility CEO. So way back in 2015, we were one of the first to aggregate storage devices in people's homes

to utilize them to basically, drive down costs, drive down carbon, and make the grid more resilient and more effective for all. So, yes, we're going to continue to do that work. You know, it is because it is work that is naturally working with, again, the incumbent system that isn't necessarily wired for innovation and change. You know, it is, it should be scaling a lot faster than it is, but we're going to continue to be, the leader in demonstrating again that we can get to a more affordable, resilient grid for all that, again, helps us combat climate change through radical collaboration. So I talk a lot about

the need for radical collaboration because, and it's radical because it needs to involve regulators, it needs to involve utilities, it needs to involve technology leaders like ourselves and many others to really say, how can we together create systems that incentivize this kind of system that is really leveraging these distributed resources in a way that is powerful, not just because it gives you a more secure home, not just because you personally get to achieve energy independence, but because you're part of the greater energy economy and energy sharing economy that we can, where we can really create value for broader swaths of society. What would unlock, I mean, you're saying that it should be scaling faster than it is.

What would unlock it? More, what would unlock the ability to make virtual power plants using Sun Run batteries ubiquitous? I mean, honestly, creating a culture of yes versus no at the, at the sort of incumbent system level. So, you know, part of the challenge is, part of the challenge. is really fundamentally, and I dealt with it a long time on the utility side, right, is that these structures are fundamentally seen to look at innovation with doubt, with skepticism, and with viewed as a threat versus an opportunity. So much of where you see, you know, the really good stuff happening is because you have

leaders that are willing to, you know, basically lead towards a different kind of future, a different kind of cultural approach. You know, so, yeah, so more of that would, so more radical collaboration, more culture of, like, how do we get to yes? How do we figure this out? How do we make it work? Not how, like, oh, my gosh, this is such a challenge. Oh, my gosh, this is a problem, right?

Flipping that would accelerate it a lot faster. So, again, we're excited by the work we've done because we believe that all of the those things build on that momentum to create that more affordable, accessible, clean energy grid for all. To the extent that there's sort of cultural reticence to do things like this, you know, I think oftentimes it's driven in part by sort of this, the first and foremost reliability mindset of system operators and grid operators. And I wonder what you think it takes from a technical perspective to sort of prove to them

and to everybody, like, that this works. This is it going to be reliable in all instances. We can show you data from our aggregated fleets of assets to prove X, Y, and Z. Like, what does it actually, what does it take to reach the level of conviction amongst, you know, I think legacy, but also rightly concerned with reliability actors in the ecosystem? Well, I mean, I say often culture eats strategy. And I actually think what we have is way more a cultural challenge than a technical challenge. So again, in my experience, there's no end, there's no like bottom to the rabbit hole you go down when what you're trying to do is prove, like to your point, like should we prove the technology like the technology works it's about getting to a culture of

saying like how based on what we know how can we leverage that versus a culture of of skepticism and doubt and and i hear you loud and clear about the importance of reliability you know it's it's so interesting to me though having been again on the on the utility the grid side of things for 20 years and being a leader of distributed energy at the same time, right? And how do we embrace it? Because, you know, we were seeing that we were going to get to levels, we could get to levels of reliability that grandpa's grid was never built to get to again by embracing these kinds of distributed assets. So we were able, again, and then when you can aggregate those to what we called, you know, not just there was sort of like this talk for decades about beat the peak, right?

Like, and the problem is the peak and we have to, you know, what with distributed technologies utilized well in a way where you're like this, the conductor of the symphony orchestra of devices, right? You can create the kind of resilience that you could only really dream of and reliability of from a like grid perspective. Because so again, you know, what we also saw is that through greater and greater aggregation of these distributed resources, again, we could move away from talking about like beating the peak to flattening and crushing it and basically kind of making it disappear over time because you have so many devices to orchestrate versus grandpa's grid of, you know, a large, big, assets, right, that move in large big ways and then something goes offline and then you have to have so many others lined up behind it. So again, I'm going on about this for a long time because I'm passionate. But again, it is, you know, in my mind, it's like a faster way to scratch that

itch, that concern around reliability than the traditional way we think about reliability. So so much of is this mindset shift and this culture shift. And then when you see it happen in our space, when we collaborate, when that exists, it's amazing what can be accomplished together to, again, get to that really important reliability in a way that I think is 10x improved over time done right in a way of collaboration. Let's talk about the next step in the journey toward home electrification, which is the adoption of electric vehicles.

Sun Run has already dipped its toe in the water here in a pretty interesting way. I guess let's start with walk through the partnership that you guys have announced with Ford, because I think it's pretty intriguing, and it leads to a bunch of questions about what happens with electric vehicles and what role a company like Sun Run should play in that world. Yeah, it's incredibly exciting. I would say we didn't dip our toe. I think we've jumped right in. I think we are solidly in an amazing partnership with Ford on their F-150 Lightning and bringing it to, again,

you know, 50 states with this really amazing bidirectional charger that we worked with them on that will allow customers again back to, you know, I've always been a big one on how do we think about energy innovation in the context of stacking benefits? And actually that was a huge part of really also leading from a sustainability perspective is always looking at how do we not do one thing, but how with anything we do, do we stack benefits? So again, it kind of ties back to the conversation we just had about storage and the grid and how we could stack benefits and achieve an amazing outcome. Very much the same here with electric vehicles, right? So it's not just about helping customers adopt an electric vehicle and helping reduce emissions and get to a better future by having more electric vehicles out there and powering them with the sun, right, with solar in many cases.

But it's also about how do we stack other benefits and ultimately in this case utilize the truck to provide backup power to the home. So that is what is so exciting. So again, a customer who goes with the Ford, who gets the bidirectional charger, who also then may opt or probably will opt to also go solar, maybe even get additional storage, right? They have the capacity then to build a whole home solution for their transportation and for all of their needs at home, all of their energy needs with what they can generate themselves as well as then what they drive, as well as then using what they drive. to back up their house when they need it for longer periods of time. So it's incredibly exciting what we're doing. So one of the things I've always been curious about with home electrification is what are the

decision points where consumers make these big decisions and can you actually combine them, right? There's been lots of excitement around home electrification, but historically, basically you re-roof at a different time from buying a vehicle, from updating your HVAC to whatever it else it might be. So this is at least the opening the possibility of combining a couple of them. So I'm curious to walk through what the customer journey will look like here and then how you think about layering things into it. So I go to buy my Ford F-150 Lightning.

What happens? Well, again, back to the broader thing. So we, again, want to be the beloved trusted partner for where you are on your energy journey. So you're absolutely right. It's not necessarily a one-stop. I'm going to do everything in my home, although I think we're going to increasingly see customers do that. But yes, back to the Ford. experience, it would be the opportunity to make sure that you, you've made the decision,

you know, in the example you're using where you want to go to the Ford F-150. So as a part of that experience and a part of that experience of getting that installed, it also is the opportunity to make sure that the customer also understands the power of generating their own power with solar and adding other kinds of electrification as a part of making this whole system work. But, you know, yes, for many customers, you talk to them, and then they come back to you a year later and they say, oh my gosh, I'm ready now.

You know, some we anticipate will be ready right in the moment to do both of these things at the same time. And some may be on a journey that we're going to meet them back again in a year, two years, but again, we want to be that beloved trusted partner on the whole journey of whole home electrification, electrification of transportation and providing them the opportunity to generate their own energy.

Okay, so we've talked about residential solar. We've talked about batteries. We've talked about a different kind of batteries that kind of come in your truck that you can use to provide backup for the home. I think the next big category of home electrification that is happening, but feels like you could use some sunrunnification,

if I may, is heat pumps, right? It's sort of the obvious next major category of home electricity load that is not currently electrified and could be and is economic and could be financed and wrapped in together. Have you thought about getting into heat pump world? And, you know, I guess either way, I'm sure you had this experience from Green Mountain Power, too. What is stopping the heat pump revolution? Because heat pumps are one of these, like, magical technologies that, you know, they deliver more energy than they take in, which very few things do. So why not get into the heat pump?

game. So that is a great question. I am absolutely passionate about heat pumps. And you're right, we did a ton of work around that at Green Mountain Power. And actually, I would say that there is a lot of acceleration of adoption. You know, I certainly went with them many, many years ago in Vermont and absolutely out here in California as well. So yes, we try to make sure customers are aware of that. We haven't, you know, we're continuing to look at where do we want to be in that partnership. Where are we playing an educational role with customers? Where do we think it makes sense to actually add products to our product suite? We're constantly evaluating that.

You know, up until now, what we've been doing is just making sure in the process that they're aware. And what we're finding is, again, solar tends to be one of the things I think that is misunderstood at still at the regulatory and political level to tell you the truth about. solar is solar so much is the gateway to so much more electrification. So what we find is customers that go solar, they do tend to be the first adopters of heat pumps. They then do tend to be the first adopters of electric vehicles. And so they really, so one of the reasons why it's so important that we have solar on as many rooftops as possible is that so many of our customers are the ones that are really leading the whole home electrification and electrification of transportation that's

happening. So again, when we sit with them and I've sat with customers in their living rooms, you know, having these conversations, you know, we talk a lot about, are you thinking about getting an EV? Are you thinking about heat pumps? And so we certainly play a very critical role in raising awareness, certainly in many cases introducing them to the concept, I would tell you also it's encouraging, in many cases finding they already are thinking about those kinds of changes. And again, solar adoption seems to be a real accelerant of those other decisions. But they're not necessarily making those decisions at the same time that they are considering solar while you're sitting in their living room. And maybe that's the thing that is a bit of a roadblock from just selling it all

as one package and wrapping in the heat pump and the solar and the EV charger or whatever it might be. Yeah, I mean, and a part of it always at any company, right, is being clear about what we're really good at and where, you know, what are the innovation. So again, we're working on lots of innovations in the context of transforming technologies around whole home electrification. So again, always making the decision, well, are we the best to be like a heat pump installer or are there partners and folks we can refer people to? You know, yeah. So I think where we are is always making sure in those conversations that they understand all the ways that then they can also save money by generating solar on their own roof and again, driving down their heating and cooling costs by

using technologies like heat pumps. Okay, so fast forward 10 years. let's say, and let's assume you're still at the helm of Sun Run. You know, I know the ambition is to be a whole home electrification provider. What do you think that means a decade from now? Like what will Sun Run be? Oh, it's so exciting to think about. I mean, really, from a climate perspective, what's so exciting is to think about, you know, really serving millions and millions of homes

and really being, again, whether it's because we directly are selling that product or service again, I don't see us as selling EVs as an example, right? But I see us as a huge accelerant of EV adoption. I see us a huge accelerant of heat pump adoption. I see us also, you know, again, to your point, like really being that beloved, trusted partner. So in certain parts of the country, you know, customers may not even realize that we actually started as a solar company because they may be utilizing us for our expertise in how to manage all of the electrification in their homes and doing it in a way that, again, to our conversation about grid services, you know, that we are then one of the largest, you know, the goal is really to be

really one of the largest energy providers in the United States, right, so that we're providing energy, we're providing the acceleration around whole home electrification, electrification of transportation and we're aggregating all of these assets in a way where it is creating a much greener, more affordable grid for all. So again, you know, it is really exciting to me to think about not just the things we know we'll be doing because the technologies exist, but like what I get excited about when I think five or ten years down the road is all the things we'll be bringing to homes that we may not even talking here today, no even exists today, because that's what it means to be a leading innovator on technologies, products, and services. It means that we're constantly

hungry for those next things that can be transforming for customers' lives around how they utilize energy, cost effectively, but also in a way that's clean and really works in terms of their whole home and their lifestyle. Mary, thanks so much for having this conversation with me. Really enjoyed it. Oh, it was such a pleasure to chat with you. Thank you so much for having me on. Mary Powell is the CEO of Sun Run.

Catalyst is hosted by me, Shail Khan. The show is a co-production of PostScript Media and Canary Media. Find me, Canary, and PostScript on Twitter. Tag us if you want to provide feedback on this episode or suggest future topics. You can find links for this episode's topic and guests in the show notes or go to Canarymedia.com. are Daniel Waldorf and Stephen Lacey. Sean Marquan composed our theme song,

mixing and scoring by Ibru Pinheiro. I'm Shail Khan, and this is Catalyst.