XeroHome Getting Great Traction

XeroHome Getting Great Traction

Jan 6, 2023

In April 2022, we wrote that we believed Rocklin-based XeroHome had a bright future. In the last nine months, XeroHome has been seeing that very future unfold.

XeroHomeXeroHome provides a software app that can give individual homeowners insights on how best to save money and avoid GHG emissions based on scraping a massive amount of information from databases and applying their analytics engine. It takes only a few seconds to generate a report using public data and their proprietary AI. The homeowner doesn’t need to do a thing. It is a “push” application. By answering a few supplemental questions, the homeowner can get even more refined answers. This app replaces the tedious and expensive door-to-door home energy audit process, not to mention the sales process of trying to get homeowners engaged. It has been validated repeatedly as providing information as good as or better than the audits. XeroHome has a great 2 minute video explaining the product and one that talks about a recent project with EPRI that left the client very satisfied.

According to CEO Mudit Saxena, they have now 4 big projects and have been promoted widely by the Electric Power Research Institute to its utility members. There are projects in St. Louis, Atlanta, Petaluma, and San Luis Obispo. Most significantly, the City of Sacramento and SMUD are engaging XeroHome to model all 120,000 homes in the city, the largest application of the software yet attempted. More projects are in the pipeline in Seattle, San Diego, and Birmingham.

XeroHome

Clients have been thrilled with the outcomes. One said they had never seen such an efficient application before, even though they were skeptical at first. XeroHome is now in the enviable position of out-performing client expectations. That has a way of snowballing sales. One measure of this success is the rate at which customers, after receiving the report, actually respond and take steps to decide how to act on the recommendations. Utility programs have struggled to reach 1% to 2% engagement while XeroHome have now repeatedly shown over 10% engagement rates in their deployments. Compared to the old process, this can result in much quicker improvements in homes.

Now XeroHome needs to cope with the challenges of success: Building out a top team and creating a cash reserve to underwrite the growing level of activity in the face of expected lags in invoice payments. They are looking to have revenue in excess of $1 million in 2023 (up 35% over 2022), and they see a need to raise funds to propel their growth.

The signs are good so far.

Thomas Hall

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gary Simon is the Chair of CleanStart’s Board. A seasoned energy executive and entrepreneur with 45 years of experience in business, government, and non-profits.

CleanStart Sponsors

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Lots of New Business Opportunities Identified as Utilities Evolve

Lots of New Business Opportunities Identified as Utilities Evolve

May 8, 2019

Our May 7 Roundtable took full advantage of our panel of 9 experts and an audience of three dozen.  So many ideas were flying around the room that one participant said it was like drinking from a fire hose.  The clock ran out on this session, but the crowd was very interested in continuing it to another one or more.   The focus was not on what policy should guide the evolution of the utility business, but on what business opportunities for entrepreneurs may emerge as that business changes.  It is impossible to capture all the ideas, but here are the highlights many of which involved software development:
  1. Aggregate supply from hundreds of small sources into a “virtual power plant” of 100 MW or more that can bid more easily into CAISO and get full value for the power provided.
  2. Do the same with points of load control, using sophisticated software and distributed load controls
  3. Get a better picture of the “energy density map” of loads in a service area and manage less dense areas differently (could be close to net zero draw from the grid) than more dense areas (with a big draw on grid).
  4. Find ways to add more renewables, integrate EV charging/discharging (V2G), and storage without adding substantial new costs.
    • a) Could involve providing more reliability and backup locally rather than at great distance in order to avoid adding a lot more T&D investment
    • b) Provide backup as an explicit service to customers going off-grid
    • c) Add storage at strategically located “caches” to avoid T&D investment
    • d) If complexity brings new costs, find ways to simplify to avoid costs.
    • e) Look at increasing sensors, micro-controls, and software-based network management as a way to avoid investing in large hard assets.
  5. Create software that can achieve seamless integration of microgrid devices with utility SCADA systems
  6. Use Stone Edge Farm in Sonoma as a test site for innovative new renewable and microgrid demos.
  7. Become a central buyer and dispatcher of supply and Virtual Power Plants for CCAs.  This is a function which has big economies of scale.
  8. Provide management services for a network of microgrids and backup generation
  9. Become a purchaser and aggregator of existing rooftop solar installations for which current owners and new owners of homes with solar panels no longer want responsibility.
  10. Invent very inexpensive point controls on loads that can communicate with systems to aggregate load under control.
  11. Prepare for circumstances where value of on-site production of power has lower value.
    • a) Mixed monthly charge rather than on a per-kWh basis.  
    • b) Could mean a fixed fee of $80/month charged by the grid
    • c)Find a way to turn the high fixed cost nature of poles and wires into an advantage rather than a problem
  12. Offer to refinance “stranded” contracts for renewables that are surplus to shrinking utility needs and worth less to new buyers at CCAs—stretch out payment terms, etc.
  13. Develop technologies to underground distribution lines inexpensively to reduce liabilities on wildfires—trenchless conduit-laying, for example.
  14. Re-think utility business not as supplying power, but as managing a network of assets largely owned by others.
  15. Approach CCAs about using reinvestment of “profits” in local supply or load control projects.
All of these ideas require further consideration.  Some are just trial balloons. But the keen entrepreneurial minds that gathered for this discussion had no trouble seeing a bright future for new products and services.  All the participants seemed very pleased with the creativity, breadth and depth of this first discussion and wished it could have gone on longer. Watch for our announcement of our “Part 2” of this discussion.  And many thanks to Stoel Rives for being such generous hosts for this gathering. Please join us at our next Cleantech MeetUp on May 30 at Uptown Studios.
Panel The Future of the Utility Business: What New Opportunities it Creates
Will Storage Demand in the Electric System Be Smaller than Expected?

Will Storage Demand in the Electric System Be Smaller than Expected?

May 3, 2019

One of the biggest questions about the future of the utility business is how much energy storage will be required to match the availability of renewable sources to loads on the system.  The conventional view is that a lot will be needed. But it could be the opposite. Here are a couple of views of some experts recently expressed at an energy conference:

“The smarter the grid, the less storage that will be required”

“Rather than using generation and storage to match a variable load, wouldn’t it be better to match the load to the variable generation?

This raises a number of questions about the reality of making the grid that smart and whether users would accept a greater degree of control of loads.  Can that degree of load control be fairly invisible? Or does this just put storage more “behind the meter” rather than as a standalone facility? What new product and service innovations might be stimulated by this kind of development?

This is just one of the provocative topics to be covered at our Tuesday May 7 event:  “The Future of the Utility Business and the Opportunities That Presents.” Come join us for this discussion.  It will run from 9:30 am to 1:30 pm. Lunch will be provided and a small fee is charged to cover it.

Register Here!

Thomas Hall

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gary Simon is the Chair of CleanStarts Board. A seasoned energy executive and entrepreneur with 45 years of experience in business, government, and non-profits.

Turmoil in the Utility Business: Openings for New Products and Services?

Turmoil in the Utility Business: Openings for New Products and Services?

Apr 16, 2019

There are so many things changing in the utility business it is almost certain to be a rich source of opportunity for clever startups.  What might those opportunities be?

 

This will be explored in a roundtable discussion set for May 7 from 9:30 am to 1:30 pm.  We have invited a number of experts to kick off the discussion, and then we will open it up to the audience to explore the questions that are raised.  The idea is to speculate what might be in store five or ten years out, and use that to spark some ideas as to useful products and services that might result.  

 To register to the event, use this LINK.

 The potential questions we have in mind covering are these, to the extent we can:

 Will the investor-owned utilities become just a poles-and-wires business?

  1. If so, will that business also involve network management (clusters of microgrids, CCAs, and public-owned systems)?
  2. Can network management become a profitable business?  What’s the latest experience in managing multiple microgrids?  What insights does this provide?
  3. What would be a viable pricing strategy for network management?  A fixed monthly fee?
  4. What role would the network manager have in setting prices for various services like load management, frequency and voltage control, reactive power, ramp up and backup?  Will it all be regulated?
  5. Would a network manager be allowed to invest in equipment to provide those services itself rather than purchasing them from third parties?
  6. Could there be an integrated network manager arise that does not own the poles and wires?
  7. How would the future of public-owned utilities be different than for investor-owned utilities?  Would they remain integrated utilities?
  8. With the rise of CCAs supplying now over 25% of all power in the state, and likely to reach 50%, what will happen to the existing power purchase agreements with the utilities?  Will they be successfully remarketed? 
  9. The same will occur as Direct Access is potentially expanded.  Will there be a new “stranded cost” if they are sold at prices below the original contract price?  Who will pay that?
  10. What might be the business opportunity in refinancing these contracts to achieve lower prices?  How will the PG&E bankruptcy play into this remarketing?
  11. What will happen to net-metering?  If there is a fixed monthly poles-and-wires charge, will in effect net metering prices fall to just the avoided wholesale power supply price?  How will that affect the installation of rooftop solar?
  12.  Will the new mandate for rooftop solar on new dwellings intensify the interest in storage?  
  13.  Will the economics be better for distributed storage or centralized storage?  Currently, local marginal prices for power are sometimes negative. Will that happen more frequently?
  14.  Will demand management and load control significantly lessen the need for storage?  What kind of software would be needed to make this extremely responsive to changing conditions?
  15. With huge economies of scale in acquiring, delivering, and managing power, will the CCAs consolidate?  Or will someone arise to provide services to CCAs on a consolidated basis, while multiple CCA local governing boards continue to exist?
  16. Will the new structure of the utility business make local generation projects more attractive?  They tend to be higher cost than big projects.  Will anything change that?
  17. Will the gas utilities be immune to these changes?  Would the introduction of a “renewable gas portfolio standard” and provision for customer direct access to discrete supplies trigger the same evolution?

 This is a lot of questions.  We may not be able to get to them all, but it frames the extraordinary range of the opportunities that may exist.  We will cover as much as we can. Then we might have another session later in the year.

 

Limited Space Sign Up Now!

Big changes are underway for utilities.  What doors might that open for some new solutions and new business opportunities? Will the traditional utilities become more like network managers?  What would be their software needs? How would rates change?

Click Here
Thomas Hall

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gary Simon is the Chair of CleanStarts Board. A seasoned energy executive and entrepreneur with 45 years of experience in business, government, and non-profits.

Turmoil in the Utility Business: Openings for New Products and Services?

Future of the Utility

Apr 4, 2019

Big changes are underway for utilities.  What doors might that open for some new solutions and new business opportunities? Will the traditional utilities become more like network managers?  What would be their software needs? How would rates change? Flat fees per month? How would that change incentives? What would happen to net-metering?  Will utilities be required to compensate providers of alternatives to upgrading the distribution grid? Who will the buyers of power be? What will they want?  How will network management interact with EV charger management? If there is extensie load management, will the need for storage disappear?

If these questions are of interest to you, sign up for our upcoming roundtable “The Future of the Utility Business:  What New Opportunities it Creates” The format will be a lively discussion format with a group of experts and stakeholders in which you can participate.  It will be held at 500 Capitol Mall on May 7 from 9:30 am to 1:30 pm, with lunch included. Gather your questions and sign up. This is your big chance to see new opportunities.

Tues, May 7th

9:30 am to 1:30 am

500 Capitol Mall

Sacramento Ca, 95814

Sign Up!
Thomas Hall

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gary Simon is the Chair of CleanStarts Board. A seasoned energy executive and entrepreneur with 45 years of experience in business, government, and non-profits.