Episode 135: The Battery That Pays You Back with Lunar Energy

Molly Wood Voice-Over: Welcome to Everybody in the Pool, the podcast where we dive deep into the innovative solutions and the brilliant minds who are tackling the climate crisis head-on. I'm Molly Wood.

This week, I went on a field trip to Mountain View, California, to talk about your home as a power plant. I'm talking the fully integrated and smart solar-plus-battery combination that can power your house, save you money, and then, when you connect it to all of your neighbors' systems, actually function as a pretty good-sized power plant that generates energy that you can get paid for.

We have talked about this idea of virtual power plants on the show before, although my guest this week argues there is nothing virtual about VPPs, and the vision of what a whole bunch of connected batteries can give back to the grid is starting to come into serious focus. Let's go.

Kunal Girotra: Yeah. Hi, I'm Kunal Girotra, founder/CEO of Lunar Energy.

We're based in Mountain View, California, Lunar Energy's headquarters. Uh, I'm, uh, Lunar's, uh, been, been around for about six years. We're in the distributed power plant business. By that, I mean we build, uh, hardware that enables every home to become a power plant from solar storage load control charging. Uh, and then we also have enterprise software that connects all these homes with Lunar devices and other devices to become a distributed power plant, or in some cases called a virtual power plant.

Molly Wood: Which we, uh, have been geeking out on the show about and will continue in this interview. But before we get there, I wanna ask you about your background, because you spent, uh, five years building Tesla Energy into what it is today, which I believe is why your batteries are so pretty.

Um, but you, you really had a front row seat to this kind of evolution from kinda dumb solar, to dumb batteries, to smarter solar, to smarter batteries. You know, what did you see that made you think, "This is the company I wanna build"?

Kunal Girotra: Yeah, I think well, before we started Lunar, uh, and of course, yyou said I was at, you're right, I was at Tesla Energy. Uh, you know, started off as a product manager for the Tesla Powerwall, and then ended up running the entire division.

Um, the e- e- even though Tesla innovated in, in some aspects of the, of the battery, and they still continue to do so, the market was still very fragmented in terms of how these things got into people's homes. What I mean by that is, um, there were companies making just a battery. There was somebody else making a smart panel, a third company making an inverter, fourth company making a charger, and there was lack of an ecosystem play, which is what Lunar's about.

We're not a widget company. We're a, we're a solution company, meaning we provide a homeowner the entire power plant in one go with one app, and so they don't have to think through, uh, if different systems work with each other or not. So it's like a very neatly designed Apple-like fully integrated ecosystem, uh, which helps customers reduce complexity in their lives when it comes to energy.

It also helps the installers who get these products in people's homes to get the lowest cost of installation, which in the end helps the consumer. So that was the reason we wanted to start, I wanted to start my own company is because I didn't see anyone else having that vision for the complete ecosystem for the home.

Not to mention the, if you want all these homes to operate with the grid, you can't have a walled garden of software like most other companies have who build their own hardware. So the strategy of Lunar has always been build an ecosystem of neatly designed, uh, uh, brilliantly designed, intelligently controlled hardware products. Pair them with an open ecosystem software enterprise product, which is the Android approach for connecting devices. Uh, I think that combined vision is what led me to say, "Well, nobody else is doing that. Let's just do it on our own."

Molly Wood: So walk me through the, the, the parts of this ecosystem that you build, and then what this looks like.

We'll start with, you know, from the consumer perspective, like what might they be purchasing, and what does their installation and then experience look like?

Kunal Girotra: Yeah. So if I'm a consumer today in, in the states that we operate in, um, you would get, you would go to an installer and say, "Hey, I want a Lunar system with, uh, whatever brand solar panel that you want."

We don't make the solar panels. We are solar panel agnostic, which, which, which, which, uh, because solar panels are commodity, so we can-- you can buy any solar panel you want. And then you get a Lunar and you say you want a Lunar system with that. Then the Lunar system comes with a, a, a few different components, which as a consumer you don't need to worry about because the installer takes care of that.

But the components are threefold. One is the small little boxes called maximizers. They go below each of the solar panel on the roof. Um, the reason they're called maximizers is, as the name suggests, they maximize energy coming out of the solar panel. Unlike string inverters, maximizers are DC-DC converters that go behind a solar panel and give you 2 to 10% more energy than you get from a traditional string inverter. So that's one benefit that you get is solar maximization.

The second component that goes on a consumer's home is the Lunar system, which is comprised of modular battery blocks. Uh, now why that's, why is that important? Because these modular battery blocks are five kilowatt hour each in capacity. They stack together like Lego blocks on a wall. It's very easy to install for an installer. It takes minimal space for a consumer, which matters because spaces inside garages as well as, uh, outside homes is quite limited, and our product stacks vertically as opposed to other products which are pretty big, bulky, and they take a lot of lateral wall space. So the vertical stacking mostly impacts the installer, but also helps the consumer get le- use less wall space.

On top of that vertical stack of batteries sits a neatly integrated inverter, which takes the solar and the battery DC, combines it, and then converts the DC to AC, which is the way you connect any power into the home.

And then the last component is, along with the Lunar System on the wall, there's another box called the Lunar Bridge, which is the bridge. It's called the, the bridge because it's the bridge between the utility and the home, and it isolates the utility from the home when the home loses power, and it creates a microgrid when the home loses power. And then solar and lunar can run your home indefinitely, uh, with all the smarts that it has.

So while these may sound multiple components, they all come together as one system. And for the consumer, they can see all this in their very engaging consumer app, which has the Lunar AI intelligence inside the system running 24/7. It's looking at your consumption patterns. It's looking at your weather data on how solar's gonna get produced. It knows your energy, uh, utility tariff as well from PG&E or any other utility, and then it continuously decides every single few, few seconds, "Should I charge? Should I discharge? Should I pull power from the grid, or should I pull power from solar, uh, or the battery?" So that intelligence comes in- innate and native to every Lunar System, and that's what the consumer interacts with for all the time.

Molly Wood: And then what does... I mean, I think people are starting to understand the benefits, but it never hurts to tell them again. What does my energy life, in terms of my cost and usage, start to look like after this? I know there are obviously multiple variables of how much I've electrified or not, but, you know, give us a, a overview.

Kunal Girotra: Yeah. I would say, uh, this is... How much you save is definitely location-dependent. 

Uh, we're having this interview in California. California has one of the highest electricity rates in the nation, if not the world. Um, so if any homeowner has a Lunar System at their home in California, either in Northern or Southern California, they will be saving at least, I would say, you know, $500 to $1,000 a year, uh, on, uh... Actually, you know, $2,000 a year total, but $500 more extra because of Lunar AI, which is our, um, AI optimization algorithm that actually optimizes the home.

Molly Wood: So you're saying if you just get a battery and maximize your efficiency, you'd save $2,000.

Kunal Girotra: Correct.

Molly Wood: If you then apply intelligence that says this sort of second-by-second decision making, then you maximize, just to keep using that word.

Kunal Girotra: Yeah. Uh, if you... That's exactly right. $2,000 is an average, uh, without, with ju- just solar and battery running on self-consumption, another four to $600 by Lunar AI because it's intelligent and your utility tariffs change hour by hour. So to optimize for that, that's another $500.

So it almost becomes a no-brainer, and people like to think of things in terms of payback. Uh, I would say it pays back in five to seven years the cost of the system. Having said that, most consumers today don't even need to shell upfront cash for this. You can lease systems, and the leasing companies who lease you systems provide you a zero cash down offer, and you can get a Lunar system for as low as 200 or $250 a month.

And that, that amount is going to be definitely less than what you paid the utility, in some cases even 150, $200 less per month. So it's like a no-brainer offer where you're not putting any money down. A company comes and puts the Lunar system in your home, uh, and the Lunar app does its intelligent thing, and you're already paying a fixed cost to the utility bill, and the Lunar AI algorithm makes sure that you never, ever definitely pay your utility bill as... you, you always have the lowest cost of energy.

Molly Wood: Um, a little more on the consumer front before we turn to VPPs.

Kunal Girotra: Yeah.

Molly Wood: Is that also the case? So, uh, it, it sounds like about half your customers get this with solar, and then maybe, you know, about half get this after the fact, like legacy solar homes of-- I am one, for example. Um, is it all the same process roughly?

Kunal Girotra: That's correct. So the Lunar system, I would say, is one of the most flexible systems in the market. Uh, by that I mean it works for a lot of different use cases, exactly how you described. There are homes where they have neither solar nor battery, get a solar and Lunar system.

There are homes like yours with solar system existing. You can add on just the battery portion of the Lunar system. There are homes with very small legacy solar, two, three kilowatt solar, and they want more solar and Lunar. You can do that too. Our software adapts to any such use cases in homes, and that's what we've been striving that, every home, regardless of their situation, should be able to get a Lunar system, is how we've designed it for. So it works on those use cases.

The one thing we didn't cover is that for all those use cases, of course, saving money is the, uh, lowest cost of energy is our promise to the market. In addition, you also get 24/7 power in case the grid goes down, which is quite often in certain parts of the country. Uh, and I think that is another, uh, thing that is super valuable to consumers, is that why would you not get something in your home that gives you lowest cost and is more reliable than a noisy generator or a polluting generator, which requires a different fuel source?

And the same backup capability is also available, uh, without solar or with existing solar or with new solar. So that's the second benefit that you get in addition to lower-cost energy.

Molly Wood: Right. I- it's interesting 'cause I feel like in a way we're, like, almost moving through time of, of renewable deployment, right? Of solar deployment. So we, like we said, we had you dumb solar and dumb batteries, and then, and batteries then were an interesting resilience option, which they remain, especially because we're power insecure in places we did not expect to be or used to be.

And then also, we are now realizing in the past few years this potential for an energy future that takes all of that kind of tariffing and improvements to the grid and putting power back to things and, and then kind of realizing, like, oh, when you aggregate this, you have made a power plant.

Um, I am sure that you thought of this way sooner than- the last few years when people like me became aware. But how are you thinking about that side of the business and how is it evolving?

Kunal Girotra: Yeah, I think you said it exactly right that, and I, I tell people one, one home is a power- personalized power plant, PPP, and multiple homes is a distributed power plant, also known as virtual power plant in some, some languages.

We're trying to change the industry language from virtual power plant to a distributed power plant just because there's nothing…

Molly Wood: How come? Virtual sounds too techy?

Kunal Girotra: Because there's nothing virtual about it. Uh, it is actually a real thing. The, uh, the virtual nature of the name makes people think it's, uh, it's not a real power plant. So, uh, I think the, the jury is split on that, but we at Lunar try to tell people that this is a, this is just a power plant, it's distributed.

And I think for your listeners, what would be helpful for them to understand is what scale are we talking about? Uh, last year, for example, uh, our leading partner, Sunrun, uh, they dispatched about 500 megawatts of power from home batteries.

Uh, and a, a third of that was dispatched by, was, was helped by dispatching through our software, the Gridshare platform. And so we dispatched about 130 megawatts of that. And so 500 megawatts is a medium-sized peaker plant, which requires natural gas, fossil fuel. Imagine you didn't have to turn those natural gas peaker plants on, and you had these existing homes, who are generally consumers of power, to suddenly say, "Hey, we can provide power to the grid."

And that happened because all these homes had batteries, all these homes had a software that could connect all these homes, and then you had a market mechanism to incentivize these homeowners. And that proved a lot of points, uh, to the broader community. Uh, to your point, we started the wor— I started the first virtual power plant 10 years ago with Mary Powell, who's now the CEO of Sunrun. She was at, uh, Green Mountain Power, a utility in Vermont, where the first virtual power plant with, uh, residences were started about almost 12, 13 years ago.

Since then, the size of the dispatches of power have been pretty small, s- under 10 megawatts, so, so nobody really paid much attention. But the last year's 500-megawatt dispatch really has woken everybody up to say, "This is now prime time. This is not a concept. This is not a..." Y- you have sort of, we have shattered all myths and challenges that people pose about virtual or distributed power plants.

The first myth is that, "Oh, you can't aggregate and connect all these things well." Well, that's proven wrong. We can do it very easily. "Well, consumers are not reliable. They will not actually give their capacity to you." Well, the third-party finance model changes that, and also if you incentivize customers, they will lend their services, which is proven. And “the uptime can not be guaranteed.” Well, 500 megawatts shows that the uptime for these devices was pretty good.

So I think more and more utilities are taking note of that. For example, in the Northeast, uh, five states from Connecticut, Massachusetts, uh, New York, Rhode Island, Maine, have, um, given sort of, uh, very liberal, uh, credits for the same concept. Uh, and you'll see tons of megawatts being deployed in the Northeast because of this incentive.

Molly Wood: Why... Yeah, why is that? It does seem like the, the Northeastern states-- I mean, G- Green Mountain just comes up at like talk about a pioneer. When the history books, uh, on the energy transition are written, they'll be like, "This was the, um, real frontier company in that regard."

Why do you think the Northeast states are, are moving more quickly? You know, we think of California as such a, a, a leader on some of this, falsely or otherwise. Um, and yet they're speeding ahead.

Kunal Girotra: Yeah, I think the... they have realized that a lot of data centers are going in that area. Um, there's a big movement to not want new generation. Their transmission lines are pretty old, and it's really hard and expensive to upgrade. And I think the policymakers have just realized over there that there is a faster, easier solution, and I think it's a matter of time that we feel other states will follow.

Um, in areas where... And look, I, I'm not propo, I'm not the proponent that distributed power plants is the only way to solve power. You always need more centralized power plants, and centralized solar storage is also a good idea, and that will always dominate. But the grid is always overbuilt for its peak capacity, as we all know, and what the distributed power plant advocates like me are trying to say is that you have already overbuilt the grid.

So let's use that and fill with localized batteries in all the places to fill that, to use that peak capacity much more efficiently. That's all we're, that's all we're saying. And that itself contributes to gigawatts of power, which you didn't have before. And so why would you wanna invest in that excess, make the grid even more generation heavy when you can actually fill localized storage and, and fill that gap with the existing transmission lines?

So that's what we're trying to say. And if you truly believe and you want speed to power, and you want to avoid, and the last and is very important, if you wanna avoid skyrocketing consumer bills, this is the only way out. So... And that's why we're so passionate about it.

Molly Wood Voice-Over: Time for a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about how the proof is there that VPPs can contribute significantly to grid stability, but policy and utilities still have some catching up to do. Then we'll take a deeper look inside Lunar's system.

Welcome back to Everybody in the Pool. We're talking with Kunal Garotra of Lunar Energy.

Molly Wood: VPPs have been an evolving conversation, and it does seem like we have now landed. Would you say that's an evolution that we now have landed on this kind of understanding that where distributed power plants come in best is as a replacement for a peaker plant, as a way to 

meet peak demand, as opposed to necessarily providing a, a source of baseload power?

Kunal Girotra: Yes. I think it's been, um, l- like I said, the concept has been around. People have always appreciated the concept, but the, uh, in the energy industry, you need solutions that can prove that can work, and I think the last couple of years have also proven that this is a real solution. So I think... And we, we as an industry, and we are in the industry, so we're already seeing a lot of localized energy retailers giving people incentives for dispatching power.

Like I said, we talked about, enough about Northeast states giving that. Uh, energy retailers in California are called the CCAs. Each of them have a unique program to give people incentive for installing batteries so that it can reduce their resource adequacy costs. So ERCOT has quite a bit of, uh, uh, potential to use batteries to participate in the wholesale market.

So given energy markets and systems are complex, um, we believe that each market will come up in its own way. Colorado's come up in a big way, uh, to say, "Hey, I want 50 megawatts of distributed power plants right away." So we believe tons of states are waking up, and utilities are saying, "Yeah, let's get this," especially given the speed to power and why this doesn't increase consumer bills. That's, that's the, that's the big reason I think people are waking up now, so…

Molly Wood: Well, and, and you, you mentioned AI and data centers as a driver of this. Certainly they're a big part of the reason for load growth, but load growth is increasing, you know, for double, what is it, double digits for the first time in 30 years in the United States.

I mean, it sort of seems like every anytime you could come up with a solution that doesn't involve significantly more infrastructure, why would you not do it? Which raises the question I mean, should states be paying for this? California had a program that had enrolled quite a lot of people in home battery programs, but then cut it because of, of budget concerns.

You know, like, what does the, what does the policy landscape look like in terms of deploying this quickly for the good of the grid?

Kunal Girotra: Yeah. I think the choice that policymakers have is... And it's, I think it's a cost-benefit trade-off. Do you want to pay consumers to, uh, to get these devices and help the, the peak demands of the grid, or do you actually want to put tons of more peaker plants on the grid?

And it's as-- To us, the people who've done the math, it's a straightforward calculus that you should... It's much cheaper to pay consumers for dispatching their power. Because especially in California, most consumers are getting this product anyways. Uh, in other states like Northeast, this incentive induces people to get batteries, but in California, it's very different 'cause the energy costs are so high.

Like I said, if you're saving anywhere from $2,000 to $2,500 annually on electricity bills with solar and storage, you're getting that anyways. So now all of these homes in California have a, a product in their home. All you have to do is incentivize them a little bit more and say, "Hey, in, in times of need, please push it to me."

So to me, it's a no-brainer in California to promote virtual power plants. And but the challenge also is the utilities, their business model, and I'm not faulting the utilities for this, but the, the business model is to rate base, uh, new CapEx investments on the grid. So there is no mechanism for the utilities to rate base virtual power plant payments.

So the policy makers have to allow the utilities to rate base these payments they make such that the utilities can earn a return, 'cause it's, it just comes back to that.

Molly Wood: Mm-hmm.

Kunal Girotra: So that centralized how do the utilities make money needs to get solved. Um, otherwise, the state will have to keep doing these programs like DSGS.

So ideally, the programs no- don't need to be do- done by the state, 'cause if the Public Utility Commission says, "Hey, utilities, we allow you to rate base these virtual power plant programs, and you can earn a return from that," that's great. Then they, then, then they, then they're not incentivized to only do CapEx investments, which is how they make money today.

So that structurally we need the PUC to change how utilities make money. But until then, you need programs like DSGS to support. So, so one way or the other, as you can tell, I, I... we str- firmly believe this is a much, much cheaper and faster way to both get more power at the right places and not increase consumer bills.

Molly Wood: In fact, you have said that your ideal scenario is that every house would have a solar and battery, ideally a Lunar system, I get it, um, the way that everyone has a refrigerator. And, and I... and obviously climate considerations alone won't get people there. In fact, most people are doing it to save money.

Like, is that the... It-- How many levers are there, and what do you think are the most important ones to get to that vision?

Kunal Girotra: Yeah. You said it right. I believe, uh, you know, every home has a f- uh, a appliance, like a fridge and an air conditioner and, and a battery is, is getting there and will be there. Um, I, I firmly believe that, uh, for consumers to adopt this, uh, we can't expect everyone to have the same climate, um, sort of concern as some of the hardcore people like us in the industry do.

So for consumers, cost has to be the driver. Other benefits have to be the driver. So that's why I tell everyone a Lunar system has four benefits. One is it lowers your energy bills. Hands down, lowest energy bill in any market. That's what we guarantee. Second one is, in addition to lowering your bills, if you're part of a virtual power plant, you will make more money.

This will be the only appliance you have in your house that pays you money. Imagine you buy a refrigerator. Do you expect it to actually, LG or S- Samsung, to pay you money every, every month? No. This is the only appliance you'll buy that actually sends you a check, which is what we did last year. We sent all our customers who had that anywhere from $300 to $500 extra, in addition to energy bill saving. So that's the second benefit.

Third benefit is 24/7 power when the grid goes out. Noiseless, uh, pollution-free, clean, just keeps running. Your neighbors are envious of you when, uh, you know, you have power and they don't because they don't have a Lunar system. That's the third benefit. And the fourth benefit is you're running off clean energy.

So why would you not do that? It's a no-brainer. It's cheap. It's better. It's better for our next generation of kids and, and the future we wanna live in. So it's got all the benefits here, so.

Molly Wood: Kunal Girotra is the founder and CEO of Lunar Energy. Thanks so much for the time and letting me visit today.

Kunal Girotra: Yeah. Thank you, Molly. It was great to have you.

Molly Wood: Also, I'm gonna be side-eyeing my refrigerator now for not sending me a check. Like, what are we, what are we even doing here, refrigerator? [Laughter]

Molly Wood Voice-Over: Okay, so it wouldn't be any fun if I went on a field trip and didn't get a tour, and Lunar has a little showroom and a setup to demonstrate how its app works to control your energy usage on a normal day and even during a power out. Let's walk around a bit, shall we?

Bobby Pierce: I'm Bobby Pierce. I head up marketing at Lunar Energy, and we are in our showroom, uh, which has a working, uh, Lunar system, uh, hooked up to some solar panels on the roof and a battery over here on the wall.

Molly Wood: All right.

Bobby Pierce: Those are fake solar panels obviously to prove a point, but there are real ones on the, on the roof. And we have this little kitchen over here, uh, with a bunch of different electrical appliances s- so that can simulate what your, um, what your load is, right? So, uh, we'll go over and we'll play around with the app a little bit.

But you get a sense of like, I don't know, it's funny, like businesses like this are... We sell silent boxes. Like, that is a blue box that sits on the side of your house and doesn't make any noise and doesn't light up. It doesn't do anything, and these things on your roof sit there silently for 25 years. They don't do anything. And so the way that you actually have to get some connection on this is through the app, and so that's one of the things that we like to show people when they're in here of like, "If I get this, like, what can I actually see? What, what is... What behaviors would ever change in my life?"

Um, and maybe we just kind of go and play around with that for a second. Yeah, let's do it.

Molly Wood: Yeah, let's do it.

Bobby Pierce: Cool. All right, so-

Molly Wood: Perfect, and so, and by the way, very charming, extremely little Euro kitchen setup happening here.

Bobby Pierce: Um, so what's on the wall here is maybe a useful thing.

That is the Lunar battery. That's an inverter and then these individual five kilowatt hour battery blocks all stack up in one nice neat little tower. Um, the one you're looking at here is 25 kilowatt hours. Um, but if you look at this other wall over here, you kinda see the different sizes that you can go, um, all the way from 30, which is positively NBA player-ish, all the way down to a 15, um, depending on what your home needs are. Um, yeah.

Molly Wood: Are you are you implying it's the height of an NBA player- Yes ... or it's what an NBA player would need to power his or her home? [Laughs]

Bobby Pierce: Yeah, yeah. No, there are probably some very energy efficient  NBA players. If you know Steph Curry, let us know. Like, we, we, we could always use sponsors. Um, yeah, so, uh, th- yeah, those are the different sizes.

Um, and then the other thing on the wall here, there's this other blue box.

Molly Wood: What's the... Hold on. Yeah. I'm gonna interrupt you here. What is the benefit of having the different sizes? Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, I think people know, like amount of storage…

Bobby Pierce: Of course ...

Molly Wood: Or whatever, but, um, who buys what?

Bobby Pierce: Uh, who buys what? It, it's a really good question.

It used to be, like, kind of you could do a really easy calculation on what's the square footage of your house, and like, okay, you have a bigger house, you want a bigger battery, just be totally linear. Um, and that I think for the most part is, is kind of a good baseline. If you have a lot of house, you probably need a lot of battery to power everything in the house.

But the, the electrification thing is happening, um, non-linearly. Like, so for example, I have a small house, but I have an EV and a heat pump and a hot water heat pump, and I, uh, the one that I have in my home is a 25 kilowatt-hour battery, um, just because that's what I need to get through the day. There are probably big houses that, you know, still have a bunch of gas, and they would maybe wanna start with a smaller one and get bigger.

Molly Wood: Hmm.

Bobby Pierce: So yeah, really what you're talking about with those different numbers is how much energy is inside of one of them, um, that you, you know, really you need to be able to have enough to get through. Uh, people buy these, like, really for two reasons. Maybe you have outages and you're like, "I need to have enough juice in a battery to get me through one of these outages."

Um, increasingly in California, though, you're doing it to, to save money, um, which is-- So then you're looking at like, "How do I get enough storage that I can not have to pay peak rates between 4:00 and 9:00?" Um, and that's gonna depend on all your lifestyle.

Sorry, that's a very long answer of how, how you size one of these things.

Molly Wood: No.

Bobby Pierce: But those are all kind of the, um, the considerations that I guess you'd have.

Molly Wood: And so the place that most of us are going to inter- interact with Lunar directly is the app?

Bobby Pierce: Yes.

Molly Wood: Should we do, like, a little walkthrough?

Bobby Pierce: Yeah, we can do that.

Molly Wood: What can you, what can you show me here?

Bobby Pierce: Yeah. So we are on the showroom one, and this is the, the place where we are right now.

So what you're seeing in the app here is how much solar power you're making, how much your home, in this case, the showroom, is using, uh, how much is going to the battery, and how much is being sent back out to the grid or taken from the grid. Basically, it's just a real, like, live look at the energy situation in your house, like what's going on.

Um, it can do a bunch of things for you at this point, where again, if you're one of the people who's really worried about outages, you can scroll down and be like, "Hey, if a power outage happened right now with my... Like, what would happen? Like, how long am I good for?" And it's gonna tell you that you're good for at least 24 hours.

I'll tell you that's partially because you're not using any power right now. Um, but we can start turning some things on, and you can get a sense of what that's like.

Molly Wood: Okay. [Sounds of movement]

Bobby Pierce: So that should immediately spike something. I just turned on an induction hot plate. So we turned on the induction hot plate, and immediately you saw about, uh, 1.6 kilowatts, which is, you know, a medium amount of power, um, immediately demanded. And so what's happened is we're no longer sending anything excess out back to the grid.

We are taking the little bit of, uh, power that's coming off of the solar panels and taking some of the power that's coming out of the batteries, and that's meeting everything in the home.

Molly Wood: Got it.

Bobby Pierce: If I were to say, like, maybe want some more, I just turned on an oven, um, and you'll start seeing that number jump even more, and that will be…

Molly Wood: He just turned on an oven. Sorry.

Bobby Pierce: Oh, yeah. Uh, turned on the oven, and, uh, that power is now being met, um, by the 

battery as well. It just increased. And so you'll see that you're discharging. Battery's at 80% charged. This kinda gives you, like, just a, like, a little look at what, uh, at like w- you know, what's going on in your home.

Again, what's actionable about that is if you go down here, you now see that that number that used to say you're good for 24 hours now says you're only good for seven hours, because you're using a lot of power, and there are a few hours left of daylight today. But, um, that's gonna go away and you're gonna be left without.

So what you might wanna do is turn off something.

Molly Wood: So we turned our oven off. Okay. Yeah, and now we'll just wait a second. This is, like, very real time. Oh, we're up to eight hours again.

Bobby Pierce: Yeah. Uh, and that's kind of the... I mean, this is the thing is, like, we, we are energy nerds. We do not expect our customers to be energy nerds.

So we just try to write, like, write these things to them in ways that they will understand and appreciate. And, you know, what do they actually care about? So how, how protected am I? How much money am I saving? Um, any of those types of things. And so again, you see that number just ticking back up and yeah.

Molly Wood: Huh.

Bobby Pierce: All right. So that's kind of like a normal operation, I guess.

Molly Wood: Um, I mean, I know we're not energy nerds. The problem is that often when you have access to data, you become-

Bobby Pierce: Oh, absolutely.

Molly Wood: An even big- Like, I'm literally, like, I would look at this and be like, "Turn everything off."

Bobby Pierce: Oh my God, I do it all the time.

Uh, I mean, the worst thing in the world to me is when my system in the home is exporting energy during the middle of the day because I know that I'm getting paid really little for... If I'm sending energy back to the grid at, like, 2:00, it's April right now, and I, I think the, I think I get paid something like maybe a penny or maybe two pennies per kilowatt hour for what I get sent, or what I send back to the grid. So it's like giving it away.

Um, I would think at that point, "What can I turn on? Like, what can I... Like, where else can I use this? Can I, you know, you know, turn the AC on to make it really cold in the house? Can I plug an EV in?" Like, I mean, I've even thought about, like, finding my neighbors with EVs to be like, "I will give you this power, so I'm not just like, you know, throwing it away," and, you know, 'cause they're gonna have to buy it for 35 cents a kilowatt hour.

It does turn you into an energy nerd, but I think we don't... We try not to present that way to people 'cause it can be very like, I don't wanna do math, I just wanna turn on a light switch kind of thing.

Molly Wood: Right. So the app is really, I mean, it's, like, pretty optional, you're saying. 'Cause, like, you have this snapshot, and you could see, and it might be useful. If, for example, there's a power outage, you could be like, "Okay- Yes ... cool, I have 24 hours." But even the idea is not to obsess about this, even though we all totally are going to.

Bobby Pierce: And to... Yes, exactly. I mean, I've- I, uh, I talk to a lot of our customers when they first get it, and they turn into nerds, and they obsess over this. And I have it on my little to-do list. I haven't done it yet. But I'm like, I wanna talk to 'em, like, six months later. Like, are you still doing that, or have you moved on to something else? You know, uh, uh, and we'll see. Um, I like the idea of them be- being energy nerds, but we don't know.

Molly Wood: It's like the, it's like the FitBit of, you know, it's like the wearable problem. Right. You're really into it for a while, and then you're like, "I trust that it's happening. I'm getting enough steps."

Bobby Pierce: Right. Like, my 10,000 are being met. Um, they aren't. Um-

Molly Wood: They're, they're, they're not. They're not.

Bobby Pierce: No. Uh, yeah, and then s- with Loka, I, I guess the other thing is, like, downstream of this, you're gonna see it all on your energy bill, right?

You're just gonna notice that, hey, I'm not paying the utility what I, what I previously was. And so that's a nice little thing. But if you wanna go in and see live, like, what's going on, you can do it in the app, too.

Um, I guess I can show you what an outage looks like if you wanna see that.

Molly Wood: Yeah. Cool. That's relevant.

Bobby Pierce: Here we are. So I'm just going to flip that, and that's going to simulate... Or not simulate. That's basically gonna cut the power to the showroom. Um, did that. You'll hear a click. There you go. It caught it immediately.

Molly Wood: Oh. Yeah, our screen changed. Our home is off grid.

Bobby Pierce: All right. More fun... Or, sorry. Turned the oven back on so we can show you a couple other things. Um-

Molly Wood: Oh, now our little line is red.

Bobby Pierce: Yeah, the little line's red telling you trouble. Um, but here even more prominently we're featuring the thing that you care about. Hey, you're gonna make 9.5 kilowatts more, uh, before the sun goes away.

Uh, and that means given your current usage, that you're good. It's telling you right now, 8:30 tomorrow. Um, that's gonna tweak around as it catches like how much, uh, energy this oven's taking.

Molly Wood: Hm.

Bobby Pierce: Um, so okay, there's a fun thing here that gets energy nerdy as well on controls over this. Sometimes these are going to happen, and you're not gonna be home.

Um, you probably wouldn't leave your oven running when you're not home, but there are other things. Imagine, like, you have a pool pump or even like your, um, your heat pump or something like that. There's something going on in the house, you're gone, power's out, you're spending energy that way. Um, there are ways that you can basically control this energy to be able to extend how much, uh, backup you can get one of these, and this is what we have with this, this Lunar Bridge product.

This is, um... Oh, how to not get too nerdy with this. Anytime that you have a battery and solar and you want to be able to have backup protection, um, when the grid fails, you need what's called a, an MID, which is basically just a way that you island your house from the grid, so you're not sending power back onto the lines that would electrify workers. So this is where we put that for us. Um, but it's also kind of just a regular panel and, and i- in addition to that function.

Uh, inside of here we have these things that are called, um, uh, they're, they're made by Eaton, which makes, you know, breakers by the millions and billions. Um, they developed these with us. Uh, they're smart breakers. So basically, uh, you know, i- in the event of an outage, you don't really wanna have control over your Wi-Fi. Y- you, you want your Wi-Fi. You don't really wanna control your freezer. You want your freezer. But things like an oven or an EV charger, things like that, you might wanna put on a heat pump... Or, uh, I'm sorry, uh, you might wanna put on a smart breaker.

Um, so what basically that allows you to do, if we could look back at the app here, is, say, all right, well, that range oven is actually using quite a lot of power right now, and I only have it, you know, I, I'm draining the battery. So I'm just gonna go in here, I'm gonna turn it off.

Turn it off, confirm, it clicks off, and then you'll see that, hey, actually, um, in this case, you have quite, you know, you're gonna last quite a long time. Um, if for whatever reason you wanna just bring it back on, you can do that too. And so we have two ways to do these in the app. You can do something, manual control, which is what I've been doing here.

In my home, I have these set to automatic control, so the EV charger immediately turns off in the event of an outage. I don't wanna move energy from one battery to another battery. Uh, and then if, uh, the battery's below 60% for my home, uh, my heat pump will drop, basically just to make sure that I'm not losing, like, things that can't be replaced in a freezer.

Molly Wood: Mm-hmm.

Bobby Pierce: So it can... Just more controls for you, more ability to think of your home, uh, in a different way. I mean, I think if you think of, like, residential solar 1.0, you slap these things on your roof, you don't- you have your energy bills go away. Um, as these things just get smarter and smarter, it's doing more for your, for, uh, for what you can actually control in your home.

Molly Wood: I mean, even residential battery 1.0 wasn't doing all this.

Bobby Pierce: No, no, no, no. Residential battery wasn't doing all of this.

Molly Wood Voice-Over: All right, that's it for this episode of Everybody in the Pool. Thank you so much for listening. I know this is a little longer than usual, but I can't resist a tour if I can get one.

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