Volts

In this episode, I explore the controversial Texas Railroad Commission with Virginia Palacios of Commission Shift. We discuss the commission's history, its misleading name, its cozy relationship with the oil & gas industry it's meant to oversee, and its role before and after the devastating Winter Storm Uri, where lax regulation contributed to widespread power outages and deaths. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

In this episode, I explore the political landscape of Pennsylvania with state Rep. Leanne Krueger. We discuss the state's nail-biting elections, the outsized political influence of fracking, and the uphill battle for clean energy legislation in a divided legislature. Krueger provides a boots-on-the-ground perspective on climate and energy politics in this key swing state. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

In this episode, I geek out with David Goldstein, founder of Hydronic Shell Technologies, about a novel building retrofit technology that wraps old multifamily structures in insulated panels with built-in HVAC systems. Goldstein's approach allows for energy-efficient upgrades without interior disruption, potentially solving a major challenge in building decarbonization. We dive into how the system combines exterior insulation, air sealing, and centralized heat pumps with individual window units to dramatically reduce energy demand and emissions. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

In this episode, we explore the Biden administration's ambitious industrial investment strategy with Heather Boushey, a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisors and chief economist for his Invest in America Cabinet. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

California homeowners face a complex puzzle in decarbonizing their homes: electrification without rooftop solar could increase bills due to expensive electricity, while installing solar first risks oversizing or underutilizing the system. Balto Energy, a startup founded by James Quazi, uses AI to analyze utility bills and recommend the most cost-effective clean energy strategy. In this episode, we discuss Balto's tool, its potential to empower contractors, and what California's situation reveals about the future of clean energy policy nationwide.(PDF transcript)(Active transcript)Text transcript:David RobertsHello everyone. This is Volts for September 13, 2024, "A tool that enables solar first home electrification." I'm your host, David Roberts. Californians who want to decarbonize their homes face something of a conundrum. If they electrify their cars and appliances without getting rooftop solar, they could end up paying higher overall bills thanks to California's notoriously expensive electricity and cheap natural gas. If they install rooftop solar before electrifying their cars and appliances, they could either undersize the system for their eventual needs or oversize it and over-produce and export solar power to the California grid. Thanks to California's recent NEM 3.0 decision on rooftop solar compensation, utilities pay much less for that exported rooftop solar power than they used to.The most economical strategy for most homeowners is likely to be some mix of electrification, batteries, and rooftop solar. The more a California homeowner stores and consumes their own cheap rooftop solar power, the more value they get out of that solar and the lower their total bills. It is a complex calculation, though, that most homeowners are in no position to make. That's where the startup Balto Energy comes in. Founder James Quazi, a longtime energy modeler and entrepreneur, has built a tool that can use a home's utility bills to create a model of its consumption patterns, predict what they will be as appliances are electrified, and recommend the maximally economical approach.It's part of a larger effort to help contractors and solar companies navigate a post-net-metering world. I'm excited to talk to Quazi about why his tool is needed and how it works, how it will empower contractors, and what California's present says about the future of clean energy policy in the rest of the country.With no further ado, James Quazi, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.James QuaziThank you for having me. That was a great intro.David RobertsThanks. So, you know, I sort of went over it a little quickly in the intro there. But let's talk a little bit about this conundrum for Californians who are trying to decarbonize. So, just by background — I don't even know if everyone's been following the California rooftop solar wars, I kind of assume everybody has — but just by way of background, California recently basically issued a new policy on rooftop solar, and the long and short of it is that they're going to compensate homeowners much less. It used to be that basically you could get paid the retail rate for your excess solar, and now they're just going to pay much, much less than that.On the surface, this really damages the economical case for solar for homeowners, they'll get compensated much less. This has resulted in a huge blow to the solar industry in California. There are solar companies shutting down, jobs being lost, etcetera, etcetera. So, talk a little bit about the conundrum and how you think about solving it.James QuaziYeah, so about a year ago, the net energy metering policy in California changed from NEM 2.0 to NEM 3.0, now called Net Billing Tariff. The difference is, as you mentioned, that now customers get paid on a schedule. Each hour per year is a different rate. But generally, you can think of it as between like $0.05 and $0.08 for exported energy, while imported energy for me in San Diego is between $0.38 and $0.52 an hour. So it degrades the value proposition for residential solar for a homeowner. For contractors, it's also proven really difficult. So in the past, it was really easy to have rule of thumb sizing or heuristics, or if you took annual energy over the last twelve months and you designed a system that produced around that same amount of energy, it was generally going to be a good value proposition for the homeowner.But now, what you need to understand is, like, how much of that solar production is actually coincident with the load on the house, because the export of energy is devalued.David RobertsRight. So, the economics now have shifted to make it so that, I mean, maybe this was true already, but more true now that the ideal thing for Californians with rooftop solar to do is to consume as much of the generated power as conceivably possible.James QuaziThat's absolutely correct. So, if you can think of it as, and I'm sure your listeners are familiar with the terminology, like LCOE. So, the cost of solar, residential rooftop solar, is somewhere between, let's say, $0.10 and $0.12 a kilowatt-hour to produce, whereas the retail rate is much higher depending on the IOU that you're a part of. To the extent that you can consume cheap on-site electricity, you are hugely benefited as a customer.David RobertsRight. So then the question becomes, well, there's a bunch of different ways of approaching this question, but from this sort of like, if I'm trying to sell solar, right, I need a little bit of a new pitch, right? Because before, with full retail compensation, it's kind of a no-brainer, you could make a lot of money, but now you can make a lot less money. So this changes the value proposition for solar. So, explain exactly how the sort of calculation shifts.James QuaziSure, I would actually reframe it a little bit in terms of, like, I believe so in the previous net metering paradigm. We often saw simple solar paybacks in the five to seven years. I believe that those paybacks are still available to homeowners, but it's just a different set of products and services than simply rooftop solar on the roof. So, I think our goal is to help retool the solar industries, to help look at a house as a whole, maybe converting a lot of the energy on site that we previously ignored, whether that's natural gas or gasoline, and then power that all with cheap onsite renewables, and that will drive the value proposition for that homeowner.David RobertsRight. It's still worthwhile getting solar, even maybe still a comparable payoff period, but a different approach. And basically, it's going to be a little bit more of a complicated approach. Right? Like, it's one thing just to stick solar on the roof. Like, how much energy do I use, let's stick that much solar on the roof. Pretty easy. Once you bring in the whole home, just the combinatorial, you know what I mean? Just the calculations get a lot more complicated.James QuaziFor sure. So, like, I think in two respects. One, it's more complicated for the contractor to feel confident in the system that they're proposing and the financial outcome for the homeowner. And then two, from a homeowner's perspective, it's more complicated to understand and digest and comprehend a suite of services that might include solar and a battery and a heat pump and an EV, than it is simply like panels on a roof. Our goal at Balto Energy is to sort of do the modeling and ingest the complexity and then deliver it in a way that's consumable for both a contractor and a homeowner.David RobertsRight. So, talk briefly about what your tool does. What is the outcome supposed to be? What is it trying to accomplish?James QuaziYeah, so our perspective on it is that oftentimes in the past, if you asked for a solar quote, you would get maybe one option, two options, or three options, max. Really, like, if I take my own house as an example, so I live in San Diego, I can fit up to 30 panels on the roof, which is constrained by roof geometry, area shading, what have you. So let's call it maybe 20 to 30 different flavors of solar systems that I could possibly engage in. If I layer on batteries, I could have 1, 2, 3, 4 batteries. And then EVs, one or two EVs, and heat pump or not heat pump, water heater or not water heater.And our first step in the process is to ingest an address and then interval bill data. So, we need hourly electric reads and daily gas.David RobertsAnd that, just to be clear, this is the sort of raw information that's going into the model?James QuaziYeah, that's correct.David RobertsIt's utility bills. And this, these are available from the utility. There's no, it's not difficult to get this information.James QuaziSomewhat loaded question. It should be available. I just finished listening to your podcast on "Free the energy data." I have —David RobertsThat's why I ask. I'm wondering how straightforward it is to get the raw data that you need.James QuaziI would say that having been in this industry for 20 years, it's much easier now than it has ever been before. That being the case, there are still hurdles. There's a lot of missing intervals. There's patchwork to be done. There are services that provide synthetic intervals. It's not as clean of a dataset as I would ideally like, but it's generally like the authorization, and there are a couple of third-party companies now that do it and are making it easier.David RobertsIs it notably easier in California than it is in other states? Different in California than in other states? Or is this just a utility by utility thing across the country?James QuaziOur focus is in California right now. So, I have the most depth and experience there for this problem. Even within California and the IOUs, it is utility by utility.David RobertsSo are you restricted geographically where you can sell your product based on the utilities, whether you can get these to utility information or not?James QuaziOur position is that to accurately model a home's energy use

Public utility commissions (PUCs) wield enormous influence in the US energy transition — they regulate the monopolistic utilities at the heart of America's electricity system but face little public scrutiny. Now, energy analyst Charles Hua is launching PowerLines, a nonprofit that aims to pull PUCs into the spotlight. In this episode, we discuss the problems with PUCs, opportunities for reform, and the coalition the group aims to organize. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

There has been an epic battle over the past 20 years between two types of lithium-ion batteries: nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) and lithium iron phosphate (LFP). While NMC still boasts better energy density, LFP is making a major comeback thanks to its safer, more accessible materials and improving performance. However, China still dominates the LFP supply chain. In this episode, CEO Vivas Kumar of startup Mitra Chem weighs in on why America needs domestic production of LFP materials. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

The Environmental Voter Project has a unique approach: rather than convincing people to care about climate change, it identifies people who already do, but don't consistently vote, and works to get them to the polls. In this episode, EVP founder Nathaniel Stinnett discusses how to find these voters, keep them engaged, and measure their impact. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

Access to charging is a barrier to EV adoption for folks without a driveway or a garage, but what if charging your car in an urban area was as easy as charging your phone? Enter startup Itselectric, which has developed curbside level-2 chargers that connect to building electric panels, making installation quick and efficient. In this episode, co-founder and COO Tiya Gordon discusses the company’s award-winning charger design and vision for a future of ubiquitous urban charging. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

Through the passage of IRA and CHIPS, the Biden administration has invested billions of dollars and created more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs in purple and red districts that have been hard-hit by globalization and disinvestment. In this episode, Julian Spector of Canary Media, reporting from these communities, shares about local reactions to this influx of new money and opportunities, and the reality that Trump’s Project 2025 wants to roll back the tax credits fueling this growth. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

After decades of talk about offshore wind, California seems closer than ever to actually supporting an industry. But to meet the state’s goal of five gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030, a lot of as-yet-nascent pieces need to fall into place. In this episode, Adam Stern of Offshore Wind California and Jocelyn Brown-Saracino of the US Department of Energy discuss California's recent policy efforts and the state of floating-wind technology. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

Most electricity ratepayers in the US have a smart meter generating real-time data about their power usage, which could theoretically be used to reduce consumption and save money, but in most cases, utilities have locked up the information in inaccessible formats. In this episode, Michael Murray, leader of business coalition Mission:data, describes the potential value of smart meter data and the group’s ongoing efforts to pry it from utilities. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

Over the past five years, Colorado’s Democratic trifecta has produced a cascade of legislation on climate, energy, housing, and land use (among other things). In this episode, we dive into some of these achievements and the politics behind them with Gov. Jared Polis and his top climate policy advisor (and previous Volts guest) Will Toor. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

NYC’s Revel is trying to build urban EV fast chargers and demand for those chargers (in the form of its own EV rideshare network) simultaneously. In this episode, Revel’s Tobias Lescht discusses the challenges of urban fast charging and the company’s plans to expand beyond NYC. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

For years, perovskite solar cells have been the Next Big Thing in solar. In this episode, Joel Jean, co-founder and CEO of Swift Solar, explains what exactly perovskites are, the performance and weight advantages they promise, the challenges they face, and when they might actually reach market. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe