Green Giants – Episode 66

Wes Ashworth (02:25)

Yeah, I love that just going through it early on and then just being a part of the solution and saying like, yeah, this is a big part of my why and where I want to spend my career and time and energy sort of solving these problems, which I love. As I mentioned in the intro to before Haven, you worked at Uber, Bulb and in trading. You’ve got a really cool background, but what patterns did you start to see across tech and energy that led you to eventually launch your own company?

Vinnie Campo (02:48)

Yeah, if I think about, I think most folks probably know about Uber, I joined that business in 2014 or 2015, right as it starting to scale across Texas. Bulb, for folks that don’t know, was a 100 % renewable retail electricity provider. So, in Texas, you get to choose who your power provider is, and Bulb was one of those options. But with both of those companies, I think what stood out to me was that they were really trying to solve something that hadn’t been solved before was like a real gap in the markets. And even when I think back to my time at Uber, I was working in energy trading. I had no desire to like join tech or join a startup. But I remember right as it came out, I was in Houston at the time, the very first time I tried it and to see how much of an improved experience it was over requesting a cabby, get a driver in five minutes, was this light bulb moment.

And I reached out to the team, I think over email, I get invited to get a happy hour and a month later I was doing a fairly major career pivot out of energy trading and into joining Uber. But as I think about that business or as we started to expand into Uber Eats, it was really about like, what’s the pain point that’s not being addressed in the market for Uber is how do you get a ride quicker with Uber Eats? There are all these restaurants, but how do you get it delivered to the right folks?

When we think about Haven, it was the same thing. There was a huge gap in the market. How do you get residential batteries deployed? No one was really solving it. We looked into the space a bit. Now, from my time running an energy company, we knew how desperately I think the power grid needed more energy storage of batteries. And we realized it was a problem that we had to go fix and solve.

Wes Ashworth (04:24)

Yeah, and specific to batteries. you’ve called batteries the most misunderstood part of the clean energy stack. I’d probably agree. Maybe it’s because it’s newer in terms of being just mainstream and the education is a little behind or what have you. But what’s the biggest myth just around that, around batteries and specifically related to clean energy that you would want to, correct?

Vinnie Campo (04:48)

Well, I think the reason I say it’s the most misunderstood is it’s the one that I think people are familiar with but know the least about. Most people know what solar is. It’s really visible. They see it on people’s roofs. EVs now have fairly wide adoption. Everyone, for the most part, knows what that is. When you talk about a battery, I think most people have heard of them in some capacity, but don’t fully understand what it is that they do.

It has this like interesting dual purpose where it provides like real backup power. It solves a specific pain point around that. But it’s also in our opinion, by far the most valuable asset to the energy grid. It’s the only one that can store and soak up and absorb electrons when they’re not needed, and be able to deploy and dispatch them back to the grid when they are needed. So, because it has this dual purpose of like providing real world backup power, but also grid stabilizing benefits, it’s really the only what I think of the clean energy assets that has multiple different purposes The battery really is this energy asset but also provides real backup power savings as well.

Wes Ashworth (05:53)

Yeah, absolutely. And you touched on this a little bit, but I don’t know if there was a specific moment, like some specific aha moment when Haven was born. Do you remember those early days of just ideation and where you thought like, all right, I think I got to run with this? what happened in that moment?

Vinnie Campo (06:09)

Yeah, there was two things. I mean one, I was running a retail electric provider when a winter storm Uri hit and it took down a third or a fourth of the Texas power grid. And most of our customers didn’t have access to backup power. And after the storm, they were reaching out saying like, how do I get a generator? How do I get a battery? And we found that it’s fairly easy, at least in Texas to get a generator installed. The process of, and this was four years ago, the process of trying to understand which battery, which battery type, how do you finance it? How do you get it installed? Most installers at the time didn’t really know how to install batteries. I think we’re really starting to show that there’s a strong need for backup power, but a lack of visibility of how do you get that.

At the same time, my now Co-Founder Jeff Chapin, who’s a brilliant engineer by background, he was trying to install a battery at his house and he found a lot of home energy and clean energy upgrades quite easy. But the fact that he couldn’t figure out how solve a battery for him was this moment of like this is complex, was a very sophisticated engineer, how challenging must it be for everyone else?

So, we started working on the idea around that. It’s incredibly difficult to do. There’s a growing and increasing need for backup power. No one is really figuring out how do you solve this in a turnkey end-to-end way. Let’s go build a business that makes it incredibly simple for anyone who wants to get back up power through a battery to be able to do that.

Wes Ashworth (07:44)

Yeah, that’s awesome. I love that story. I didn’t know that about the co-founder and obviously the engineering backgrounds like okay, if he can’t figure out, okay, we’ve got a real problem in the market. That’s so cool. And so early on, I know as Haven started, you’re selling batteries and the model has evolved and changed a little bit. So, I guess was it about the model that was maybe a little broken in the beginning and then how’d you pivot ultimately?

Vinnie Campo (08:05)

Yeah, so the way that we started this business, we were going direct to consumer, finding homeowners that we thought wanted a battery or were a good candidate for battery, doing sales and marketing and outreach on our own, and then helping facilitate that installation.

One of our underlying theses there was that once the customer had a battery installed, they would then enroll it in a VPP and share that power back to the grid. Because it’s in our mind, that is like the purest way to unlock flexible grid capacity is to install a battery and then enroll in a VPP. What we saw was that most homeowners that we would install a battery for had no interest in enrolling in a VPP. They were getting a primarily for backup power and batteries under this other model are quite expensive, $15,000 to $20,000 fully installed. And sure, you can earn three to $400 a year in PPP revenue, but most customers didn’t want to make the tradeoff of potentially not having access to the battery in exchange for a bit of extra revenue.

So, we started talking to the utilities in California and they were seeing the same thing, right? There’s a flood of batteries coming onto the markets, but most of those are just sitting in backup power mode. And they were trying to think through what’s the right way that you bring more of that capacity to the grid and be able to use that.

The update to the model that we’ve done is instead of just selling a battery for cash and facilitating the installation is that we now partner directly with utilities. We help them figure out the exact areas that they’re interested in. They don’t want batteries all over the area. They are especially interested in where is there a substation overloaded or where there are very real constraints or capacity on the grid and we can help them target those specific areas. And then we offer a battery as a service model.

So, we own and operate the battery. We can guarantee the capacity and dispatch to the utility. And for the homeowner, we’re able to offer what is by far the lowest cost backup power in the market because we’re getting payments from the utility for selling that power back to the grid. And so, for the homeowner they can get a battery at 80 to 90 % less than the cost if they were to purchase it outright. Utilities get flexible capacity, particularly where, but also when they need it. And Haven is the platform that brings that all together.

Wes Ashworth (10:28)

Yeah, I love it. Love it. So now we have kind of like your backstory foundation and really understanding a bit of that model. I want to dive into that more into the heart of the business and explore how that Haven as a battery as a service model is making resilience both scalable and accessible. So big headline.

How is Haven and you’ve explained it, but if you can just go into it a little bit further, how is Haven giving people home batteries for free or close to it? As you mentioned, those can be quite pricey if you’re buying them outright. There’s only a handful of people that can really afford that anyways, and so that really is restrictive. But how does this work and how does it become close to free or just lower cost?

Vinnie Campo (11:09)

Think about what’s happening very broadly with energy and electricity right now. You have, for the first time, rapidly rising demand growth, both as consumers and homeowners are purchasing more EVs and electrifying their homes. But the other obvious big headline is the reshoring of US manufacturing and build out of AI data centers. That is for the first time in generations, increasing how much electricity is being consumed on a daily basis.

At the same time, you can’t just very quickly build out new energy capacity or energy supply. Right? It takes five plus years to get a natural gas plant built. Nuclear, which is incredibly interesting, is probably a decade away from being able to come online in some real or meaningful capacity. So, utilities are looking at how to very quickly grow our available electric supply? How do we do it in the specific areas that we want?

And for a utility, they purchase power from a variety of different sources. The model that we’re opening up is for them to be able to purchase electricity that’s stored in a residential or commercial battery that sits behind the meter. And so, just like they would purchase power from a natural gas peaking plant or any other traditional power plant, they are interested in doing that at both a residential and commercial level of procuring power from excess power that’s stored in a battery.

And so effectively, what we do is we facilitate all of that. The utility pays us to be able to access the stored energy and the battery, particularly on the days or hours of the day when they need it most. And then we receive payments from that. Instead of just passing that back to the customer, we capture all that, and then we can go to the customer and say, we are going to host a battery at your house. You’ll get full access to backup power; the utility is going to pay us for the power capacity stored in that battery. And so, you’ll get the battery at no cost. We’ll manage and operate it for you. When the grid goes down, the battery kicks in and powers your house. when the grid is up, we’re using that to sell excess power back to the grid and stabilize your neighborhood.

Wes Ashworth (13:18)

Yeah, and oftentimes people hear like no cost or free get skeptical, and maybe you get some pushback. Do you hear that like objections come up and people are a little bit cautious, and if so, I guess, how do you describe it to just the average homeowner to be able to increase their comfortability?

Vinnie Campo (13:35)

I mean, the biggest objection we get is what’s the catch. To your point, and I think a lot of folks have been sold free solar, no money down solar. The way that we frame it is that it’s not no money down, it’s no money ever. And they’ll look at the contract, and it very clearly states in there that the customer isn’t making a payment to Haven. There’s still like, you’ll see some bits of skepticism all the way leading up to the install, but then we’ll install the battery, we configure it for them, and we move on. We don’t ask for payments.

So, doing that enough times, building up enough reps there, I think the reputation is certainly starting to spread. We now see referrals being one of our key channels. Someone gets a system installed at no cost. They’re going to tell everybody, right? And so, we certainly see that. The other thing is that we also, we’ve also been partnering directly with the utilities or the community choice aggregators in California. That lends a lot of credibility to us, right? If they’re the ones reaching out to their customers, saying that they’ve partnered with Haven to deploy no-cost storage systems, that existing entity that they already get their power from, that they’re doing the warm intro or the marketing and outreach, that really allows us to start to build and bridge that credibility gap.

Wes Ashworth (14:52)

Yeah, and you’ve gone into this a little bit too, but if you can expand just in terms of how Haven balances customer experience with grid services, who owns the battery mentioned, you’ve talked on that a little bit. And then just how does it all work? Just in layman’s they’ve got the system in place. It’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing. Like what’s actually happening behind the scenes?

Vinnie Campo (15:12)

Yeah, so day to day, most days there isn’t a power outage. 99.8 % of the time, there’s not a power outage. When that’s happening, the battery through our software is typically cycling the battery each day, which easiest way to think about it is power is really cheap overnight when most people are sleeping, energy demand is down, and power is really expensive five to seven every day. People come home from work, they plug in their cars, they’re cranking the AC up.

And so, at its simplest level, we’re charging that battery overnight when power is really cheap. And then we are running that battery during the peak periods when the grid needs it most. In terms of a homeowner’s point of view, our promise to them is that we know the reason most people get a battery is for backup power. So, in the event of an outage, we 100 % prioritize the customer and provide backup power to the house. We cease all sorts of trading or optimizations around grid stability and fully prioritize, maximizing the amount of time that the battery provides backup power to the customer. And then when the grid is up and running, we go back to cycling it and being able to charge and discharge in the way that makes the most sense for the utilities.

Wes Ashworth (16:27)

Yeah, no, good stuff. And then I do want to touch on, so how do you address equity? And then how does that model specifically work for underserved areas?

Vinnie Campo (16:34)

Yeah, maybe in particular with underserved areas or low-income households. Typically, what we see is that utilities or retailers put out incentives for installing storage. Many of them have an income-qualifying component to it as well, so a lot of the work we do in California is geared toward low to moderate-income households. There’s an income threshold to qualify for the programs. We help them understand what that is and help them qualify. But typically, what has happened is that the areas of the grid that are most in need of an upgrade or a substation upgrade, or some types of capacity increase, are in an area that’s been typically underserved.

So, for us, are part of our model is certainly around energy, energy equity access to being able to access these systems in the best way forward. We work directly with utilities and the programs that they have in place, and we help facilitate those programs to different types of low-income customers.

Wes Ashworth (17:35)

Yeah, that’s incredible. And the model itself is powerful, but I really do want to focus a little bit too now on behind every smart deployment is a smart strategy. And I want to talk about Haven in how it’s built, not just what it offers, and that entrepreneurial side of the story, talking about capital choices, learning from fast scaling companies, and really how to build an energy startup that actually works in the real world. What lessons, I guess, starting out, did you learn maybe from Uber, Bulb, some of your other experiences that help you design a go-to-market strategy for Haven?

Vinnie Campo (18:06)

Yeah, when I think about like the Uber go-to-market strategy, the Bulb go-to-market strategy, they’re very different than what we do today. But maybe the core principle that holds through is to find the right customer at the right point of time and offer them the right product. And how you do that differs. When Uber got started, a lot of the go-to-market or the initial marketing was finding customers who really needed a ride and being able to provide the ride in the most convenient way.

So, that looked like a lot of travelers going to the airport to or from the airport, folks that were going out to dinners or going out at night, and being able to meet them where they are. As we think about it from our point of view, a lot of the go-to-market has been who really needs a battery and how do we reach that customer? And so, we’ve built over the course of a couple of years a sophisticated machine learning model that helps identify who to target and when. Did they have a power outage recently? Do they have solar? Is their electric bill increasing? We run multiple different scenarios to understand who that customer is. We then have just continued to evolve. How do you reach that customer? It used to be by going directly to the consumer. Now it’s through partnerships with utilities, but it’s always built around how do you understand who has the greatest need for this, who can benefit the most? And how do you reach them in whatever is the most economical or efficient way to do that?

Wes Ashworth (19:38)

Yeah, that’s good. And in terms of just funding and ramping up, you chose the venture-backed path. Why VC over private equity or infrastructure capital? Help give some insight into that and what went into those decisions.

Vinnie Campo (19:49)

I think for us, at its core, we view Haven as a technology platform. So, when you’re starting out and you’re building software personally, I think venture capital is the right way to do that. That model, you get exposed to some really brilliant and sophisticated investors who have seen how to scale businesses and know that eventually technology is what is the differentiator, the defining moat around this.

For us, given our backgrounds and I think the expected outcomes we have for the company, if you sign up for venture, you should know what you’re getting into. A 10X return is not, particularly, the seed or the series A round is not the outcome that they’re looking for. You have to be looking to build a category-defining business, and if that’s the outcome that you’re looking for. I think venture is the best path for it.

Wes Ashworth (20:40)

Yeah, and traditionally, venture capitalists are wary of hardware and regulated markets a bit. I guess how did you convince them to invest, and then how do you keep them engaged? What were the maybe the differentiators there in terms of maybe something that traditionally they might stay away from?

Vinnie Campo (20:57)

I think what most investors are looking for is how do you build a long-lasting moat and how the business continues to compound indefinitely to capture what is a dominant position in the market? And I think historically regulated markets, hardware, it’s not been a focus, but for us, I think we think of like the regulated markets, the specific knowledge required to access those markets, and how tricky it is to set up. once it’s set up, all of that is a moat. And how difficult the process is, end-to-end battery deployment, that becomes a moat.

So, we started out to get a battery installed; it’s 100-plus different steps in the process. We started out doing all of that very manually. But then we started looking at how to automate each of those different steps. How do you make it so that through technology and through software, you can make it so that customers can go from discovery through interconnection in a fully automated way?

And in that, as you start to think about Moats and software and raising venture, that is like what it’s building around, which is, you know, we take a big step back, like what we’re building towards is how do you build the largest fleet of residential distributed energy assets? To do that, you need like great go-to-market partners. You need some competitive advantage in how you deploy those assets, and you need the best way to optimize it. And for us, that’s the software layer that we’re building to bring it all together.

Wes Ashworth (22:10)

Yeah, no, it’s really cool and great to hear, kind of like the inside and how it all came to be, and really just the thought process behind it. I am curious, just like you, as a founder as well, too. So, what’s been the hardest lesson learned as a founder in energy tech, and any moments that you just nearly gave up?

Vinnie Campo (22:40)

I mean, when we joined, we heard this term, the solar coaster. Yeah, for sure. The solar industry, it’s up, it’s down, it’s up and down. I don’t think I fully appreciated the extent of that until we joined. We started this business right as the IRA was passing. And so, as we started, it was a home run moment for the industry. It’s extended tax credits, first-time tax credits for storage.

So, the industry was in this full upswing. You know, we got to see the euphoria of it. Fast forward 12 months in California, they changed the net metering regulations, changed the way that solar gets compensated, and effectively, unless you’re adding a battery to the system, it fundamentally changes in a negative way the impact of adding solar. The industry went way back down. And then you fast-forward to the latest budget bill. There were a lot of changes to solar and battery tax credits.

Again, so for some folks, it was up, for some folks it was down, but I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated the volatility that the industry faces, particularly for folks who are every day installing solar and batteries. Lots of ups and downs, and finding the right way to keep our team informed, being honest of like, here’s what we know and here’s what we expect the outcomes to be, being able to react to changes quickly. I think that’s been one of our core strengths or differentiators when we see a market opportunity open up. How do you jump on it very quickly?

My background as a trader, one of the key lessons is that whenever there’s any type of arbitrage available, it opens for a short period of time, and you can move in and capitalize on and then that arbitrage opportunity closes. I think you see that happen quite frequently in energy as well, in physical energy of what we’re doing, which is market changes present unique short-term opportunities for you to go and build something, but you have to make sure that you’re building to the next thing and bridging to the next thing.

Wes Ashworth (24:39)

Yeah, that’s really good stuff there. Really powerful advice, too, and just a couple of quotes in there that were phenomenal. The other part is just kind of starting up, and a big important piece of that is really team building, and I get to see that firsthand, just helping companies build out their teams, especially early on, and how important that is, how critical it becomes. Talk to me a little bit about that. What does a Haven employee need that’s different from a pure tech startup? What are some of the things you look for will ensure the success and growth as you go ahead?

Vinnie Campo (25:09)

I think for us, I have to say, I have two co-founders in this business, Philip and Jeff, they’re phenomenal co-founders. A lot of people were working on ideas together for a long period of time. For us, we came together very quickly. We were connected by a mutual colleague, hit it off right away. And for somebody you end up spending the vast majority of your day or your life with, that first needs to be a good relationship. And so, I’m very fortunate to have that.

They are both seasoned entrepreneurs themselves. So, as we started building this business, the first five or 10 hires were all like the best of the best people we had worked with personally in our past. And so that allowed us to lay the core foundation of, without ever like explicitly writing out what our core operating principles are. It was people that we’d worked with who knew us and we had respect for, and vice versa. And that allowed us to start building, as each of those became team leaders, force multipliers, they already had that culture instilled in them.

So, maybe the biggest thing is, I’d say, like around building the team. You know, we, especially as an early-stage startup, I think you’re going to pivot and you’re going to change the business model, the go-to-market. You’re to do whatever it takes to find product market fit. So, you have to be, I think, the core thing is like, you need people who are certainly bought into the mission. understand the long-term objective, but also the flexibility to be able to pivot and move and try new things out and throw stuff on the wall. Know that like nine of those are not gonna work, but the one that works is a home run outcome. And so that type of very sharp, very analytical, very data-driven, but very flexible type of person is who we have been very fortunate to work with and build around. I think that’s what, you know, when we look at successful team members, the ones that do it best, that’s what they do.

Wes Ashworth (26:39)

Yeah, no, it’s good stuff. I think it’s tried and true for very similar things. If you’re built that way, you can really thrive at a startup. And if you’re not, you might have a hard time. But I think you do see people who are hardwired one way or another. And it’s important to pay attention to those things as you bring people on. Just overall, startups exist inside systems. In energy, those systems are massive, sometimes slow-moving, and resistant to change. But the storage landscape is evolving fast.

What happens next, I think, could redefine the grid. So, I want to zoom out and look at the broader forces shaping the future of batteries, policy, and power. So, as you’ve outlined as well earlier in this conversation, batteries are often sold as a backup for outages, but they really can do so much more. What’s the full role you see them playing in grid stabilization, short-term and maybe future and long-term stuff?

Vinnie Campo (27:47)

Yeah, a battery can do so many things for the grid. Not only can it just store excess capacity and deploy it when power prices are at their peak, but provides ongoing ancillary services to the grid. It can provide frequency regulations, different types of grid services that the grid needs to stay in perfect harmony or perfect balance in real time. As we started looking out, there are a couple of interesting trends.

First and foremost is you’ll continue to see battery prices come down. There’s been a tremendous downward pressure over the past 10 years, which’ll continue to push battery prices down, and the cell packs down. That’ll make it easier and more affordable to get more batteries out there. On the flip side of that is that we’ll continue to see electricity demand rise, maybe indefinitely, but certainly for the next 50 plus years, as we’re undergoing what is a once in a lifetime build out of power supply and capacity.

What that means is that we’re going to need to very quickly build as much new capacity as you can. And there are a lot of different ways you can upgrade the electric grid. could build net new power plants and bring on more baseload. What we think is the best path is how to maximize the existing grid? How do you deploy batteries at the edge of the grid where it’s needed most and optimize that with software to be able to maximize the existing grid infrastructure that’s been built? And so, we certainly think we’re at maybe the first inning of battery deployments. Five million homes in the US have solar, and 500,000 have a battery. And so, we certainly expect battery adoption to catch up and certainly surpass where solar is today.

Wes Ashworth (29:13)

Yeah, no, I agree. And I think that trend is absolutely happening. Something you mentioned earlier, too, that I wanted to come back to. So, California’s net metering changes were controversial. I do want to understand that a little better. Just how do they affect battery adoption and ultimately like who wins or loses?

Vinnie Campo (29:38)

Yeah, the way California used to work is that you would install solar. And if you consume the solar that you produced, it would offset your electric bill, and for anything that you produced that you didn’t consume, you would effectively get a credit for it. And that credit was equal to what you would pay on your power bill. What ended up happening is that so much solar came online in California that if you’re familiar with the duck curve, that’s what they call it.

A lot of residential solar producers operate during the day when there’s not necessarily a demand for it. And so power prices dip significantly. In some cases, go negative during the day, because all of the solar is online that doesn’t have a natural use case. And then when energy demand picks back up in the evening, your solar is typically going offline. And so, what California was looking to do was, how do you balance that out? The benefit of a battery is that it stores all that excess solar when it’s produced. And then the home, when solar goes offline, the evening it runs off of that stored energy.

The change that they made is that without a battery, you no longer receive that credit, that one-to-one credit for what your solar produces. You receive effectively a value of energy credit. And the value of energy in the middle of the day is not that high. So, if you were to install a solar system in California today, without a battery, anything you export back, you get very little compensation for it. So, you leave a lot of the value of a system untapped if you don’t install a battery with it.

Wes Ashworth (31:07)

Yeah, cool. That’s good to better understand it. And we hear so much right now around headwinds and the things that are making it harder, all that sort of stuff. But what are the biggest regulatory or market tailwinds for storage right now? And you’ve mentioned a few, but any policy you’re watching closely or what’s happening in the greater industry for you?

Vinnie Campo (31:26)

I think as we look at it, there are a couple of things. One is like a lot of states have state mandates around storage. And so that’s incentivizing utilities to be able to find ways to deploy storage. The other thing that I think is a concerning trend, but just yesterday, PJM, the results of their capacity market came out, and they went up again, they’re at record highs, and they were actually capped. If there hadn’t been a cap in place would have gone even higher. And so, as we look at it, this trend around higher electric prices, higher capacity prices, that’s only going to increase. I think that being able to capture all of that value and be able to deploy it back to the utility only increases the number of homes that can benefit from a battery. And this model, we are able to capture all the grid revenue, pass it back to the utility.

So, I think the things we look out for, certainly on the state side, you’re seeing a lot of states adopt new programs, but also as power prices keep rising, grids and utilities and operators are gonna increasingly be looking at what is the best way and what’s the quickest way we can grow our available capacity. I think as you start looking out five or 10 years, there’s gonna be this really interesting dilemma of AI data centers keep getting built out, communities that they get built out in, they’re gonna continue to see power prices rise. And a lot of big techs, the original promise was to build all of their own power plants around it. That’s happening in some cases, and in others it’s not.

So, you’ll continue to see this divergence; we have to build out more data centers for AI. I think a lot of people agree that that’s a good thing. And there’s a lot of good that will come from that, but how do you power that? How do you fund it? How do you source it? That is going to be the increasingly growing question as you look forward.

Wes Ashworth (33:06)

Yeah, absolutely. And you also shared that you do believe storage will eventually outpace solar in residential demand. Can you explain that a little bit? Why or why not would that happen?

Vinnie Campo (33:15)

I think if you zoom out far enough, I think every house ends up having a battery, whether it’s a stationary battery that’s attached to your wall or inside your garage or through an electric vehicle. But increasingly, what you’re seeing happen, California is already doing this, and we expect many states to follow suit, is that the amount that you pay for electricity varies based on the time of the day. And it matches what is actually happening in the wholesale markets.

The best physical hedge against that is a battery. Something that absorbs power overnight when prices are cheap and then runs your house on it during the day. If you talk to folks in California, they’re very cognizant of when do I run my dishwasher. When do I run the laundry? We need to make sure it’s not in these peak or super peak pricing times. Batteries give homeowners the independence and flexibility to be able to run and operate their lives very seamlessly.

And in the background, the battery does the optimization. So, if you look out far enough, battery prices will continue to come down dramatically, and then the need for a battery, given how wide we expect to see power prices diverge, is only going to increase. Solar is good for some homes. There are a lot of reasons many homes aren’t great candidates for solar, whether it’s too much shade or an old roof, or the wrong type of roof. Every home is a good candidate for a battery, as long as it has a wall and minimal space. And so those are all the reasons that, certainly in the next five, but for probably 10 years, we’d expect to see battery adoption surpass that of solar.

Wes Ashworth (34:38)

Yeah. And with that, so what’s your long-term vision for the grid? So, if Haven is successful, what will the grid look like in 2035 and maybe beyond? What’s the vision?

Vinnie Campo (35:02)

I think it’s what we were just talking about. I think it’s every house and business has energy storage, and that storage is working seamlessly and automatically to balance the grid in real time. And it’s providing real VPP services back to the grid. And it allows us to be able to continue to very quickly grow manufacturing AI in the U.S. and do so in a way that is beneficial and positive to homeowners and business owners.

Wes Ashworth (35:28)

Yeah, what needs to happen? So, for every home, every business to have a battery, what needs to happen for that to be true?

Vinnie Campo (35:34)

I think it comes down to the financing mechanisms around it. And what are the right ways to finance? How do you capture all the grid services and the grid value? You know, that is, I think the biggest missing piece here is how to dramatically bring down the cost to the end customer. If a battery were only $500 or $1,000, you would see 10X or 20X the engagement or increase, right?

And so, you need to continue to see battery prices come down. You need to see new financing products emerge that capture that grid value and be able to offset the cost to the customer. And we hope to be a very meaningful portion of that solution.

Wes Ashworth (36:16)

Yeah, absolutely. So far, we’ve looked at the past, we’ve looked at the business model, a bit of startup mechanics, and a little bit of the grid ahead. Underneath all that is a deeper mission. And so, as we get closer to time and wrap, I want to take a moment just to reflect on the why behind the work, the legacy being built, and the human side of the transition.

So, with that, what do you wish every homeowner in America understood about the energy transition, energy expansion, whatever you want to call it? What do you wish every homeowner in America understood about it?

Vinnie Campo (36:45)

Well, two things. One is that it’s happening very quickly and quickly than most people think. It’s not, it’s not 10 or 15 years away. It’s happening today and tomorrow. And the other thing is that it’s a good thing. It’s going to present a lot of change, but as we zoom out to the most macro levels, the ability to quickly build out our power infrastructure and expand our grid capacity unlocks so much economic activity and opportunity, certainly, if done the right way.

So, as we think about it, it’s how do you expand the grid? How do you expand the grid capacity? It’s not just for that purpose alone. It’s so how can you make power prices decrease over time? How can you continue to build out manufacturing? How do you make the U.S. a leader in all of those areas? And that comes from being able to expand grid capacity, drive power prices lower. And that’s a problem that needs to be solved today, not five or 10 years from now.

Wes Ashworth (37:41)

Absolutely, no, good stuff. And you mentioned you want Haven to become the largest decentralized power producer in the US. I love that vision and goal. What does it actually look like?

Vinnie Campo (37:50)

Yeah, at scale, Haven has gigawatts of power under management that it either directly owns and operates or manages through some type of tolling agreement. But as we look out, how do we get every house in America to have a battery? And how can Haven be the preferred provider and operator of all those battery systems?

Wes Ashworth (38:11)

Yeah, good stuff, good vision. Early on, so what’s one mistake you made that you now see as a gift?

Vinnie Campo (38:18)

Oof, that’s a great question. I think one thing that we did early on was that we tried to take on too much. And I think as a startup, you can only really solve a couple of key problems well at a given time. We bit off the whole Apple of like, how do you solve sales and marketing? How do you solve financing? How do you solve the installation and all the parts that go into it? And it would have certainly been easier to just start with one of those. How do you solve the go-to-market? How do you solve the financing?

But by actually doing all of those, we’ve come to realize that our utility partners and cities and grid operators, they’re looking for an end-to-end solution or a turnkey solution. And as we started bidding on and winning contracts with utilities, it was because we had built this end-to-end solution, as we were always looking for how do you find product market fit. And so, if I were to do it all over again, we would have just started by being great at one thing. We instead went very horizontal and said, how do you do everything? But it ended up that that was exactly what your utility partners were looking for and has positioned us exceptionally well to be this turnkey end-to-end provider of residential storage for them.

Wes Ashworth (39:31)

Yeah, I love that. Based on all that as well, too, thinking about other entrepreneurs in the space or other folks thinking about starting up a company, or they have an idea, or they see a problem that needs to be solved. What’s some advice you would offer to someone that’s who’s earlier on and hasn’t quite stepped into it yet?

Vinnie Campo (39:48)

I think everyone wants to have the perfect idea at the perfect moment. And that’s like a lot of the traditional advice. My advice is always just do it, just launch, just get it out there. It’s not going to be perfect. Nine times out of 10, you’re going to pivot or change. The best way to actually figure out what the market wants is to get a product out there and talk to your customers, and see what resonates or doesn’t.

So, my best advice is to just start. It can be terrifying, and you don’t know if it’s going to work, and it’s a leap of faith, but if you have conviction, at least in the direction of an idea, right? For us, it’s how do you modernize the grid? And we’re starting in this one area around storage. And we’ve had a pivot to get to where we’ve gotten to today, but you just have to get started and start working with great people, start building, and start getting feedback. And I think that’s always the key to success.

Wes Ashworth (40:25)

Yeah, I love that advice. It reminds me of a quote that the quote around like the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago or 30 years ago. The second-best time is today. It’s just getting started that is the hardest part of it, and just getting out of your comfort zone, taking those first steps. Yes, I really love that advice a lot.

Thinking about it too, as we get really close to concluding and a couple more questions here, when it’s all said and done, you’ve done it, you’ve gone to the end, you’re retiring. What legacy do you want to leave in the industry and in the communities you serve?

Vinnie Campo (41:14)

Yeah, I appreciate that. I think for us or for me, it’s, I get if Haven is successful, we will have been very effective at helping bridge the country from where it is today into this age of electrification, as everything electrifies, as homes and transportation go fully electric. And we will have been a very meaningful portion or contributor of that. And so, as we think about where the country is going, I think from a legacy perspective, the ability to be able to be a piece of that as the whole economy electrifies and to really help do so in a way that’s stable and reliable and provides real value to our customers, our communities and our utility partners. That I think is what we’d be very proud of.

Wes Ashworth (41:58)

Yeah, that’s good. It’s powerful. I’ve said this before, but the battery really is at the center of everything. Every dot eventually kind of connects back to the battery, and the importance of battery and storage and all that goes in. Incredible work that you’re doing. Final question, and just a really open one. Anything else you want to share with the audience? Things you didn’t get to talk about? Final words of wisdom, advice? The floor is yours. Anything else you want to share?

Vinnie Campo (42:23)

I mean, just to wrap up, I think to summarize everything is that like we’re in probably the most interesting period of electric generation this country has ever gone through. And I think for every country out there that is thinking through; How do you electrify quickly? How do you grow your available capacity? I feel very fortunate to get to spend my career, my time thinking about those problems and working with others who are in the space, but we are just one of many parts of the solution.

So, my last bit would just be like anyone else that’s out there thinking about building in the space, whether it’s storage or just other parts of electrification or energy transition, we need it all. The grid needs all of it and very, very quickly. So, I’m fortunate to work with a lot of folks that I get to build with, but we certainly need more. And the grid needs as much capacity as it can get as quickly as possible. And so, we need all the builders out there, and looking forward to connecting with those folks.

Wes Ashworth (43:16)

Yeah, I couldn’t think of a better way to wrap that up. That’s perfect. with that, that’s it for this episode of Green Giants. A huge thanks to Vinnie Campo for sharing not just the mechanics of Haven Energy, but the mindset behind it.

As always, to our listeners, thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to subscribe to the podcast, share it with your network, and leave us a review. Also, check the show notes. With that, we will see you next time.