Solar + Batteries as a Service with Amy Heart of Sunrun | EP163

One of the things I'm most proud about with Sunrun is our commitment early on to work with stakeholders in the industry and also with our nonprofit allies, community groups on building these markets and building the opportunity. And so if I could encourage other installers, please join, participate your state level industry groups, CEA, they have central they have regional committees, you can be a part of to make sure this is a focus of the trade associations and making sure that your voice is heard and informing that on the early stages, not just after Seija is passed, right.

Are you speeding the energy transition? Here at the Clean Power Hour, our hosts, Tim Montague and John Weaver bring you the best in solar batteries and clean technologies every week? Want to go deeper into decarbonisation? We do too. We're here to help you understand command the commercial, residential and utility, solar, wind and storage industries. So let's get to it. Together, we can speed the energy transition.

Welcome to the Clean Power Hour. We're here at RE plus with someone who I've been stalking for several years. Actually, my guest today is Amy Heart. She is the Vice President of Policy for Sunrun. And you are involved with the largest residential solar company in the United States are doing lots of solar and storage, virtual power plants. Really cool stuff. Welcome to the show. Amy Hart.

Thank you. Thanks, man. Yeah, ditto, love your love the podcast, and it's so nice to finally get to meet you in person and to be on the show.

Yeah, this this trip has been really amazing. I've gotten to meet so many interesting people. And that's one of my favorite things about being a podcaster is I get to meet really interesting cool people and companies and technologies. The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by Denowatts. If you're a solar PV asset manager or performance engineer, you need better data and better business intelligence. With Denowatts digital twin benchmarking technology, you get more accurate, efficient, and faster performance measurement results. The fourth generation Deno recently completed a technical review by DNV you can download the report Adina watts.com, that's D E N O W A T T S.com. Now back to the show. So, Amy, though, tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you get into solar? And how did you come to Sunrun?

Yeah, so I call Milwaukee home. So you know, the hotbed of solar in the Midwest. And I love it. I got involved in renewable energy about 20 years ago, with the Midwest Renewable Energy Association mrea mrea, which has been a mainstay, especially for training up installers providing early education with homeowners on how to go solar, and really building up a network of great folks in the Midwest doing training and, and, and working with installers as able to work with the City of Milwaukee developing their solar program. And I went back to school late in life, went to law school at Marquette University in Milwaukee and stumbled into the role at Sunrun. About eight years ago, so over eight years ago, joined the Sunrun policy team.

And so when you first got involved with mrea, what year was that?

2000 to 2000. Wow,

yeah, I

mean, yeah, thank you for dating.

They are they are, you know, one of the Oh, geez in the solar industry. If you're not from the Midwest, or don't work in the Midwest, you may not know about them, but wonderful organization, and they were doing, you know, solar thermal, and then wind and then PV. Right? They've seen the whole Yeah, and even other thermal technologies, right? Yeah. And that was

like a key organization, you know, home Power magazine, again, kind of like that mainstay of, and I think it's really important when we're at a show with close to 40,000, or over

37 or 30,000. People, you know, sort of like it grew out

of this love and passion for clean energy, renewable energy, knowing that at some point, it could be mass adoption. But yeah, home Power magazine had connected with some folks in Wisconsin and saying, Hey, we should really get together and have an event where people can come and learn how to install solar, by panels and bring them home and be able to install it yourself. And so that's how the energy Fair, which happens in central Wisconsin, still, the Midwest Renewable Energy Association started. And that's how I started volunteering there in the late 90s, early 2000s, and had an opportunity to work there and then learned a lot about solar. And it's interesting, even going into law school and now spending however many years in policy. One of the biggest things I tell folks, regardless of what you're doing, but even in policy, you've got to learn how the technology works. Go to those one Oh, One classes learn how the installs work. Our CEO, Mary Powell is phenomenal of getting our leaders out on roofs, working with our frontline crews going and doing sales calls. So you sit at the kitchen table, because you need to understand how it works. We could sit down with a legislator or a city council member and talk about why we need this policy for batteries. Their first question is going to be well, how if I want to put this on my house, how much is it going to cost? What do I What questions do I ask? So I think understanding those basics, and where I came into the industry has has really given me that. That appreciation?

Yeah. Wow, that was that was quite a dated data dump. Even I'm drinking from a firehose now. Well, you mentioned Mary Powell, which got, you know, a whole others set of gears spinning Mary is an OG in the industry. Also, she made a huge mark at Green Mountain Power in Vermont, doing solar and storage, an early adopter of that technology, and now as your CEO, so let's get into Sunrun. A little bit from the ground up, you know, started as a just resi solar leasing, or leasing is your core model, though, right? You're owning the asset, which makes it very affordable for consumers. And I saw a map once you know of the installs in LA, for example, and you can literally see the grid of the city, looking at the sun run installs, right. There are so many, I think you said you've done 800,000 We installation, we

have over 800,000 customers across the country. Yeah, so 800,000 families that really have

like 3 million solar projects, I think in the US, right, so you've got a big chunk of the solar industry, especially on the resi side. And now solar and storage is the bee's knees, especially in certain markets. Very good in Illinois, extremely necessary in California, under nm 3.0. We can talk a little bit about that. And why that is, I heard that the attachment rate for storage in California, for example, went from 20% to now 70%, post nem 3.0. Because what what nem three does is it devalues solar. Right? It dings, net metering, and that increases the value of resiliency and other things that you can do with batteries. And so, batteries are de rigueur, I'm just curious, are you doing solar alone at all in California anymore? Is it always solar and storage,

we are doing almost exclusively solar and storage. So we are shifting to and we have a product called shift but the using the battery designed to meet those hours on that billing tariff. And I do want to be clear that the regime the billing regime in California is no longer net metering, right. It's not a retail net metering. It's like, what is the value of that electron as soon as it leaves your home? And so I think that is is important, like that's very similar to what's been happening, what's the transition in Nevada, in Arizona, but we're using batteries to make sure that customers can seamlessly respond to those price signals from the new utility billing tariffs. What I will say is what when Sunrun so Sunrun, formed in 2007. So, Linda, Eric and Edie Fenster were co founders of the of the company back in 2007. With the goal, as you said, to help bring financing to the homeowner, one of the biggest obstacles, and that's what I learned at mrea. Early on, one of the biggest obstacles for homeowners to participate in clean energy future is financing. If you're paying for that clean energy you're going to see for the next three to four decades, that's a lot of upfront cost. And so Lynn and Ed had the idea of what if we bring that financing to the customer. And so what we do today is a combination of leasing of solar systems or cash sales. So if you have a home equity line of credit, if you have a loan provider, we also can provide loans. It really depends on what the customer wants, but we have those those options. So if you want something that has the operation and maintenance for 20 plus years, and you want to be able to be cashflow neutral, you can do the lease, if you're like, actually, I'm good. I want I want to be able to afford it outright, totally fine. But we're seeing one of our goals is to make sure we're able to increase access to this solution that homeowners in every zip code can be a part of the clean energy future and having that financing is key. But especially now with the interest, interest in storage, and also in some of these critical states the necessity. So California, Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, you name it, those are states that people are calling. I want batteries with solar right so it's a different conversation.

Yeah, and my listeners know full well that it you No solar is great. But when the grid goes down solar does you no good unless you also have a battery and the hardware to micro grid from the grid. And then it's amazing. Because it's nice to have lighting and refrigeration, when the grid goes down for a few days because of a firestorm, a windstorm, hurricane, whatever it is, right. And those, those Disasters are happening more frequently, at greater scale. So there's a wonderful future, I like to say that, you know, today only a fraction of homeowners will have a battery. But in 10 years, everyone's gonna have a battery in their garage, just like they have a refrigerator. You know, it is this, it is a new appliance, that's still new. But in 10 years, it'll be commonplace. And it's just going to be a box that you have, and it it provides value, resiliency, but also cash flow, and money in your pocket, potentially, right, if you, if you become part of a program, that is monetizing your battery while you sleep, you can get a check for the value that that battery battery is providing. And that's really the future of the grid writ large.

Well, and that's and that's what's interesting about what are what are the opportunities for where storage can grow, and how to increase the affordability for the customer, but then how it can work for and how it can create a flexible grid. And that's what I think what Mary has brought to our team coming from Green Mountain Power, and also leading leading the conversations about how do we create these power plants, these distributed power plants on the grid. So 95% of the time, that battery isn't providing that dirt power during outages, right, it's sitting there. So how do we squeeze every bit of value for the grid out of that. And that's where programs like connected solutions out in the northeast, which is a bring your own device program or a virtual power plant, whatever you want to call it, but it's providing critical grid services. So for example, it's helping to reduce peak load. And that is helping to reduce the cost for every ratepayer because it's reducing the cost of electrons. So before the utilities have to go to the wholesale market, and buy expensive power at peak times, they're able to take the electrons or they're able, we're able to sell the electrons to them right at peak time, and use that locally and use the use the electrons that are stored in the battery. And so it's been a really interesting couple of years to see these programs develop. I think it's also neat to see, we don't this isn't we don't have to recreate the wheel in different states that there are these programs in place, coast to coast. And so using, there's about 15 virtual power plant programs across the country that we can take and replicate in new states that are looking to say, Well, how do we get into storage? How do we make sure that the solar installations that are going in have the opportunity to add batteries and then how do we use that for the grid? There's examples we can we can pull from today.

The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America. The maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over six gigawatts shipped in the US. The CPS America product lineup includes three phase string inverters ranging from 25 to 275 kW, their flagship inverter, the CPS 252 75, is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts, the 250 to 75 pairs well, with CPS, America's exceptional data communication controls and energy storage solutions, go to chintpowersystems.com To find out more. So let's talk about some of the emerging markets. You know, solar is a regional phenomenon. It's a good thing in maybe 20 to 30 states around the country. And and that number keeps growing. That's the good news. But there's many states where it's still marginal. My neighbor's in Indiana is still kind of on the on the edge, right? Doesn't pencil very well. And and so but you're the you're the tip of the spear on a ball on the policy side of things. So you're tracking the all of these legislative programs around the country because it really is the foundation right? You saw this in Illinois, how fija and then Seija just completely rocked our world. We had an RPS dating back to oh eight, right. But it wasn't until Seija 2016 that the switch really got flipped and there was a full blown industry, there was just dribs and drabs until that happened. That's exactly right. rps was broken. So what are some of the states that are kind of you know, in the mix now and really hot for you to get across the finish line?

Well, and you use the term that is exactly right, which is Foundation, those foundational policies that states need to have to create a stable market. If you have things that are fits and starts if you have you utilities who are constantly talking about eliminating net metering and not having a an off ramp, right or a stable, what's the next five years? What's the next 10 years? Industry cannot make an investment. Your customers more importantly, cannot make an investment if they don't know what that regulatory environment is. And so having strong stable foundational policies is like number one. And so things like, what is the bill crediting look like? Right retailed net metering with what is the transition plan? And what is that threshold of when you transition? And having that establish

what our looks let's talk about that threshold, for example, because that is a little more of an esoteric topic. But you know, in Illinois, for example, we have this 5% cap, right? Once renewables become or solar becomes 5% of the grid power, then it changes the value of net metering right. It used

to be 5%. legislation, but because different parts of the state were going to hit 5% at different times in the clean climate and equitable JOBS Act and Seija. It changed to a date certain. So it was like, Okay, everyone in the state will know on January 1 2025. Okay, go residential customers go from retail net metering, so the full one to one crediting, yep, to a combination of what is the export value, but also an upfront distributed generation rebate. So it encompasses some of the benefits that solar brings to the distribution grid, but you get those funds upfront, and then you have an ongoing bill credit. So that's how Illinois

Yeah, transition in your mind. How big of an impact though, is this gonna make for consumers post 2025? Because for those of you who are listening, you know, if you're a prosumer, listening to the show, thinking about going solar, this could be a aha moment for you of Oh, things are going to change kind of dramatically, going from retail to wholesale, really can be a game changer. So how do you explain that

it can be, but I do want to point out that in Illinois, they're keeping an additional value there. And that's what's troubling when you see other states that are just moving to a conversation about avoiding cost or wholesale. Yeah, you know, I have people who know me know that I have little patience. But like, that's our thing our planet is burning, we will need every single clean electron to hit 100% clean energy goals to help address this warming planet and avoid the catastrophes that are happening now. And so it really is frustrating to see this conversation over pennies, when that can really chill markets, like California, or Nevada or Arizona, and in a time where we literally do need every electron and we need homeowners to be able to have that resiliency of solar and batteries. So while there's going to be that transition in Illinois, that consumers should be aware of it, we are going to have to educate our customers and spend more time on what does that investment look like? And what's the payback? And it gets more complicated, right? When you're talking about wholesale rates and, and including batteries. And that we will have to be more sophisticated in those conversations.

One of my rules of thumb, you know, is a consumer can save perhaps 900, perhaps$1,000 in the Midwest in Illinois, by installing solar. Today, if they own the solar, post, post 2025. Just rule of thumb, how does that change is go down $100 $200 $500. So

I don't know. Like there are commercial customers that are doing this right now. Right? Because commercial customers are on that that distributed generation rebate with the export value. And so what the key though, for Illinois, is Seija does not just rely on that policy. But there is going to be this transition on how you are valuing distribution, distributed generation on the grid. Plus, there is a storage there's going to be there's a storage rebate. So you're able to like leverage that storage. Plus, they know they're they want to hit 100% clean energy. And their RPS like you mentioned is created by instate generation. And that incentive that is provided that RPS payment to customers, to commercial customers to community solar will is meant to fill the gap. So that may change between 2025 and 2030 as well. And I do just want to give kudos because I think your note of like the difference between a state like Indiana or Wisconsin and Illinois is very dramatic, but Illinois, the passage of Seija it is the most progressive and aggressive climate policy in the country. And I do want people to take note of that, especially if you're on the coasts I mean this is to to folks from the Midwest, how Okay, but I do want folks to understand that there's some really great examples to pull from. There's a low income program in this in this older program, there are equity requirements, there's prevailing wage, like their stakeholders came together and with saying, how do we make an RPS work for all sectors of the industry? How do we make? How do we get to our clean energy goals by making sure communities can benefit to and have distribution planning with the utilities that's going to benefit communities, and it's not easy, but it really set us on a path in Illinois, that is setting that state apart from anywhere in the Midwest, but also anywhere in the country.

Yeah. And now, you have a unique perspective. And let's go back to that conversation about, you know, what, what states are in the fight to get on the map, so to speak, because you're working in 20 states, Puerto Rico, DC, but you're, for the most part, you're working in the core, good solar territory within the US, right? It just, it's good business, right. And it doesn't make sense to go to a extreme bleeding edge place where there's no net metering or no incentive for virtual power plants, etc, etc. So what are the states though, that might get across the hump, so to speak in the next five years, say, is Michigan is Wisconsin? Ohio? What were the hotspots so to speak? Where are you spending a lot of time in state houses and, and lobbying these legislatures to get their act together?

I mean, certainly, I would say even those that are the current markets for us that I think are really interesting. I would point to Texas and Florida, ever, a lot of folks are interested in solar there as customers, but also really interested in batteries. And so there's a conversation, right, there's a distributed energy resources taskforce in Texas that I'm a part of, of trying to create pathways to leverage those batteries to put them to work for that grid. And, you know, lord knows in Texas that they know they need every electron. And so finding really quick pathways to get there. The taskforce created by the Commission in Texas, started a stakeholder group and within nine months had a pilot off the ground. That is unheard of. And I would love to have Commission's across the country say we hear you like we need all of those electrons in miso in PJM. Everybody has calls to conserve. Now, because we're hitting peak times during the summer months, we need to have virtual power plants in place. And you mentioned so then those are states that were really interested in creating those virtual power plants the way to get its pay for performance, right. So it's not just an incentive to feel good about having batteries on the grid, but using those electrons, states like Michigan, boy, boy, do they have an opportunity and a responsibility. Michigan is number two in the country for power outages this year. And it is, you know, it's a disservice if we are not there, just talking about oh, well, maybe we should increase tree trimming, maybe we should spend more money on undergrounding distribution lines come on, that's going to how much more is that going to cost for the grid, we could be investing in storage programs that get batteries to the grid edge in the Detroit area communities that have been impacted the worst by those outages, and getting them batteries to be able to power through those storms. But then using those batteries to help reduce the peak load reduction. I think there's a huge opportunity in Michigan, but they've got to get some of the foundational policies, right? That is the only state in the country that has a cap on solar, not net metering, but just on distributed generation. So we've got to get rid of that. And then talk about getting storage on the grid, because that will create a flexible, resilient grid. And then I think the Northeast has some really great opportunities and and examples

Yeah, you know, I have a lot of students you know, I have I teach two courses on heat spring if you're not familiar, check it out heat spring.com great platform for sustainability in the built environment. And a lot of my students are from Texas and Florida. And so I'm you know, I'm my ears are picking up the market is growing on the residential side, on the light commercial. Of course, both states are known for utility scale, Texas is the largest solar market now, thanks to all the utility solar that's happening there. And And now, large grid scale storage also. But the consumer side of things is usually quite different. And

it's different. But there's some advantages there that I think if we can do a good job and working within trade associations to do that education with policymakers and educators about just how powerful the residential and the distributed sector can be for the grid and what it is, you know, Sunrun ourselves we are we are slated to install about one gigawatt of residential solar this year. That's the equivalent of one nuke plant. And a lot of times you think about a residential Solar, that's adorable a couple of homeowners get solar, maybe we'll put in batteries. But every quarter, the residential sector is installing the equivalent of two nuke plants a quarter of solar. Imagine if we're able to put batteries on all of that, just how powerful and flexible that can be for the grid. And we're deploying it like crazy. So we know that there are obstacles on interconnection at the large scale, but also down to our level. But we're deploying that every quarter. And so we have to work with policymakers to figure out how are we using those clean electrons, we've got electrification, that's happening, we've got electric vehicles, Texas has a crazy load growth, we have to be able to manage those peaks. Without continuing to build dirty baseload fossil fuel plants. If we can bring that amount of clean energy to the grid from those small distributed resources, aggregate them together, that's going to help lower costs. And we're going to get to our clean energy future a heck of a lot faster.

So let's talk about the market in our last couple of minutes together. You mentioned doing a gigawatt a year, and how the US is growing into an eight gigawatt resi market. I think of resi as being a five gigawatt market. Is it truly an eight gigawatt market now?

I think you're seeing the demand going there. Yeah, sure.

We're gonna do about 30 gigawatts is word on the street in the US this year in 2023. And that's a big jump. We're taking some big steps now in the US growing the industry very fast. You know, it wasn't law. It wasn't just a couple of years ago. 20 was the watermark. 20 gigawatts. Now we're going after 30. And but you're saying that Sunrun is doing more than 10% of the residential market?

It depends how this year shakes out, I would say, Yeah, but we certainly have, you know, a growing customer base. And we really have seen that residential sector just take off. And again, like the power of that resource to create that flexible and immediate response to needs locationally on the grid, or for capacity reasons, we've got to tap into that if we're going to keep costs lower for everybody on the grid. It's a great opportunity.

So if your last few moments here, if you're a residential installer, how do you dial into the ecosystem that Sunrun has created? And both in terms of potentially working with Sunrun, but also being part of that ecosystem? In terms of being part of the industry and moving the industry forward? What do you have to say to installers,

I will say one of the things I'm most proud about with Sunrun is our commitment, early on to work with stakeholders in the industry, and also with our nonprofit allies, community groups, on building these markets and building the opportunity. And so if I could encourage other installers, please join participate your state level industry groups, CEA they have central, they have regional committees, you can be a part of to make sure this is a focus of the trade associations and making sure that your voice is heard. And informing that on early stages, not just after Seija is passed, right. And as an example, or when there's a crisis, but being able to partner with your trade associations, partner with community groups to do education with legislators what's possible, that coalition is really powerful. And so we've been have always been investing early on I remember when I joined Sunrun, I said, Someday, there's gonna be a huge solar market in the Midwest. And, you know, we it takes time, like you said, there's been years and years of work put in with a lot of stakeholders. And so I would encourage folks, even though if you don't think you have the time, or that money, if you're budgeting for 2024, find some space to support your state trade associations and spend some time on the policy because that makes or breaks the industry.

Yep. Well check out all of our content at clean power hour.com Give us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify. That's the best way that you can support the show. And help us be the energy transition. Check out our YouTube channel. We have a wonderful YouTube channel, all of our content is on YouTube. We do two drops a week, pre recorded on Tuesdays and then alive with John Weaver on Thursday. So please check that out. And reach out to me on LinkedIn. I love connecting with my listeners love to hear from you love to know what you're up to, and where we should be taking the show. So reach out to me. The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by Denowatts. If you're a solar PV asset manager or performance engineer, you need better data and better business intelligence. With Denowatts digital twin benchmarking technology you get more accurate, efficient, and faster performance measurement results. The fourth generation Deno recently completed a technical review You buy DNV you can download the report, at denowatts.com, that's D E N O W A T T S.com. Now back to the show, how can our listeners find you, Amy,

you can find me anywhere you can find me on LinkedIn, you can find me on Twitter, I'm kind of the only Amy heart and solar. So you can probably Google me and find me.

It's H AR T, right? E AR T. Okay, I didn't know that. Amy Hart Sunrun, Vice President of Policy for Sunrun. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you so much for having me and enjoy the enjoy the rest of our day. Plus,

I'm Tim Montague. Let's grow solar. Hey, listeners. This is Tim, I want to give a shout out to all of you. I do this for you twice a week. Thank you for being here. Thank you for giving us your time. I really appreciate you and what you're all about. You are part and parcel of the energy transition, whether you're an energy professional today, or an aspiring energy professional. So thank you, I want to let you know that the Clean Power Hour has launched a listener survey. And it would mean so much to me. If you would go to clean power hour.com. Click on the About Us link right there on the main navigation that takes you to the about page. And you'll see a big graphic listener survey, just click on that graphic, and it takes just a couple of minutes. If you fill out the survey, I will send you a lovely baseball cap with our logo on it. The other thing I want our listeners to know is that this podcast is made possible by corporate sponsors. We have two wonderful sponsors today, chin power systems, the leading three phase string inverter manufacturer in North America, and Denowatts, a performance monitoring platform for utility scale solar. So check out CBS America, and Denowatts. But we are very actively looking for additional support to make this show work. And you see here our media kit. With all the sponsor benefits and statistics about the show. You know we're dropping two episodes a week. We have now over 320,000 downloads on YouTube. And we're getting about 45,000 downloads per month. So this is a great way to bring your brand to our listeners and our listeners our decision makers in clean energy. This includes projects executives, engineers, finance, project management, and many other professionals who are making decisions about and developing, designing, installing and making possible clean energy projects. So check out clean power hour.com both our listener survey on the about us and our media kit and become a sponsor today. Thank you so much. Let's go solar and storage