If you haven’t heard of a software product called XeroHome, you will pretty soon.  It is the primary product of startup company Vistar Energy in Rocklin.  It is positioned in the sweet spot of a combination of Big Data + Machine Learning + Generous Rebate Incentives.  It is a product likely to be central to the push for building decarbonization/electrification.  It is being rapidly deployed in cities in California and likely pushing on to New York and Georgia this year.  It’s not often that so many trends align to boost a company’s fortunes but it seems to be happening in our backyard.  It’s quite a story.

After 15 years as a building energy consultant for TRC Energy Services (formerly Heschong Mahone Group Inc.) in Fair Oaks, Mudit Saxena with a graduate degree in building science struck out on his own and formed Vistar Energy.  His intent at Vistar was to focus on ways to identify the best opportunities to save energy and carbon emissions in buildings.  It soon became pretty clear that a better tool was needed to achieve carbon reduction in buildings at scale to meet the challenges of climate change. He was joined in 2018 by data scientist Peter May-Ostendorp and cloud platform specialist Inderdeep Dhir. They decided their mission should be:  To fundamentally change the way the home energy upgrade market works today, by making accurate data on clean energy upgrade opportunities for all homes available to all market participants.  The result was the creation of the software tool, XeroHome.  

That tool provides homeowners clear and actionable guidance on how to reduce their home’s energy use and where to invest first by building an energy model of the home.  The big innovation is that this is done remotely with no home visit and in particular no labor-intensive home energy audit with the blower door, etc., is required.  The model remotely acquires data from property assessments, building permit records, and aerial/satellite imagery.  Advanced data analytics are run to optimize results of thousands of scenarios to find a zero-net energy path for each home.  The model looks at a number of changes that could be made (see diagram below for an illustration).  Even more importantly, these analytics can be run on thousands of homes in a city at once.  Utilities and local governments can use XeroHome to target properties that can most benefit from their program offerings and yield maximum energy and carbon reductions.  Cities interested in adopting codes to decarbonize buildings can refine rules to achieve the biggest bang for the buck by using XeroHome to look at all homes in their jurisdiction.  Santa Monica used XeroHomes exactly for this purpose and looked at all 8,000 homes at once.  The result showed that the city could develop ordinances such as reach codes where installing rooftop PV and heat pump water heaters on existing structures could be required at the time a home is sold or when a permit is needed for changing the heating system, installing PV, or other major upgrades.  

All very interesting, but who pays for the upgrades?  In some cases, the upgrades could cost $50,000.  As luck would have it, in 2019 a coalition launched a program (“The Switch is On”) to help customers pay to get upgrades that significantly reduce carbon emissions, most notably from switching off gas appliances to electric ones.  That incentive plus rebates offered by utilities, cities and the new Community Choice Aggregators, and tax credits mean the cost to consumer could be knocked down by as much as 75%.  With the incentives, the payback on the upgrades can be seven years or less.  

The roll-out of XeroHome, now the only product focus of Vistar Energy, began in 2021 with deployments in a few cities in California.  The results have been very positive and the feedback from clients has helped to sharpen the product.  With the convergence of all the growing attention on decarbonizing buildings to meet climate change goals and the incentives to get it done, XeroHome looks like the right product at the right time.  It is very cost-effective to scale and Mudit and his team believe it is miles ahead of the competition through its proprietary data analytics approach linked to machine learning.  

He wants to expand quickly to spread the access to XeroHome and convert it into a SaaS product.  He wants to add more engineers to customize and expand the product.  He wants to look at similar situations where Big Data and Machine Learning can provide opportunity.  He probably will find them.

Ken Hayes, Executive Director for the Clean Tech Open nationwide, and Ryan Hoover, Operations Director for CTO West, joined us March 22 for a discussion on the opportunity the CTO provides early-stage entrepreneurs.  Applications for this year’s cohort are due by April 17, so move quickly if you want to take advantage of it.  You can find the application here.

The Clean Tech Open was founded in the same year as CleanStart (2005), originally as a business plan competition in California and Massachusetts.  It has grown into much more now.  It now provides mentoring, training (through a 12-week academy), exposure to sources of capital, and a platform to showcase new companies.  It sees its mission now to help all participants to succeed, to become viable, thriving businesses, and not just to win a prize.  

To participate in the CTO, applicants need to survive a screening process where the team, the technology, and the potential market are examined by volunteer experts.  About 120 teams nationwide are selected each year to go through the process in six regions.  CleanStart provides teams coaching and classes to improve their chances of being selected.  Eight teams from our region have been accepted previously and gone on to greater success.  

The CTO program has become more structured since its inception and its offerings refined to deliver substantial value to those who participate.  One of the most important focal points is to help participants create eight important business deliverables:

1. Business Model Canvas / Strategy
2. Impact Statement (including Sustainability)
3. Customer Segmentation
4. Competitive Landscape
5. Financial Model
6. Executive Summary One-Pager
7. Intro Video (1-2 min)
8. Pitch Deck

Possibly even more important than the formal training, the coaching and the feedback teams receive is the opportunity to get connected to a global network of more than 1,000 industry experts, customers, alumni, channel partners, labs, and investors.  This is such a time-saver for entrepreneurs.  Its importance can’t be overstated.  

Selection of the participants for this year will be announced May 6.  The 12-week training is conducted over the summer in June through August.  The big roll-out Showcase for teams is the Global Forum held in mid-October.  There is a $75 fee to make an application and selected teams must pay a $1350 fee per company to proceed ($975 for student-led teams).  Most of the program will be delivered online, so there is no need to do much travel or to relocate.  

We would encourage you to give this opportunity a good look if you are an early-stage team.  And do it soon.  The application is pretty simple. 

Check out Ken Hayes’s talk from the recent CleanStart Perspective

On March 17, the CMC celebrated its first year with an impressive showcase of about 20 mobility and cleantech companies to which it is connected.  The hit of the show was the unveiling of the big 4WD work truck built by Zeus Electric Chassis, Inc., for SMUD, the first of five it will deliver.  This was a 10,000-pound staked-bed truck with front and back axles powered by separate electric motors and 2,000 pounds of batteries.  It is part of Zeus’ effort to create a family of configurable designs for Class 4-6 work trucks.  In the design, there is no connection between the front and back axles, so the trucks can be stretched or squeezed as much as needed.  It is built on a ladder frame that can be fit to purpose and is very utilitarian.  

Also at the show were displays of remote-controlled electric tractors for vegetable farms, Neptune e- scooters, Arcimotor 3-wheeled, 2-passenger freeway-ready EVs with a $17,900 price tag, Terzo Power’s latest hydraulic innovations, GridMatrix with its software for optimizing use of roadways, engineering company PEM Motion (one of the CMC founders), a Rivian truck (first one I actually have seen) and a selection of well-known EVs to ogle.  

We chatted with Mike Terzo about the progress of his company, and it is a great story.  They are well into contract manufacturing their efficient hydraulic devices for customers in the trucking industry—a bit of a surprise since they though ag harvesting machines would be the first customers.  But with shipments of over a thousand of his products he has clearly found his market.  

We were there with our new expo trailer—one you can also see up close at our MeetUp on March 24 .  This is intended to be used at events to stimulate interest in taking cleantech ideas to market and learning how to do that, but can be used for a number of purposes.  It is a “display booth in a box”.

You can also learn more about what PEM Motion is doing in Sacramento at our Perspectives event with them at 9 am also on March 24 .

The CMC is emerging as a good connection point for many things—workforce development, new vehicle prototyping, vehicle testing, and company development—all centered on mobility.  It is a great addition to the cleantech ecosystem growing in our region.

Based on the data just released from the CEC, sales of zero emissions vehicles (ZEV) in the state grew 73% in 2021 vs 2020, a new record.  Some of this surge was probably due to pent-up demand during the lockdown.  This surge in 2021 pushed the cumulative total sales over 1 million vehicles (1,054,095).  ZEV sales in California are now over 13% of all new light duty vehicle sales (approx. 1.9 million in 2021).  The ZEV leader is clearly the battery electric vehicle with 73% of 2021 sales and 66% of cumulative sales since 1998.  Plug-in Hybrid vehicles lost out to BEVs in 2014 and have never regained the lead. Fuel Cell EVs are now under a 1.5% share of all EVs in the state, down from a peak of 2.2% in 2017.  The cumulative total of FCEVs now stands at 11,933 or a little more than 1% of all EVs sold in the state.  The 2021 sales of FCEVs were boosted not only with the reduction in lockdown restrictions but also by the $15,000 prepaid fuel incentive (about 7 years of fuel) provided by Toyota to buyers of its Mirai sedan. As a result, the Mirai ended up capturing 73% of all FCEV sales in the state last year. 

California Energy Commission Zero Emission Vehicle and Infrastructure Statistics. Data last updated Dec. 31, 2021.

Entering the scene for the first time in 2021 were sales of the Rivian truck—264 sold in the state, mostly in L. A., Orange County, and Santa Clara County.  

There was an even larger 97% surge in sales of EVs nationwide in 2021 over 2020, according to data from DOE’s Argonne National Lab.  If these data are on a similar basis as the CEC data, then California EV sales represent 41% of all EV sales nationwide.

Most of these sales are still Teslas. The Model 3 and Model Y each outsold the next top 5 EVs models. This makes 2022 an exciting year. Surging gas prices, over 20 new EVs from legacy OEMs, and the arrival of electric work trucks and vans exponential present an opportunity to change the landscape.  In our predictions we optimistically said 10% of all new vehicles will be ZEV, hopefully we nail it.