Mary Powell, CEO of Sunrun and former utility executive, discusses institutional resistance to virtual power plants with Shayle Kann.
Opinion
Powell: US utilities view rooftop solar as a threat, creating hurdles
“In the United States, very much so in many jurisdictions throughout the country, certainly in the utility space, it's seen as a threat, not an opportunity, and so when you see it that way, there's more and more hurdles that get created to go through for a cust…”
Insight
Powell: Home battery adoption is driven by emotional security, not economic payback
“I don't think storage, you know, in my experience, is something that, again, it is about, oh, what's my payback? Yes, I mean, do customers always love that if you get a payback on top of it? Like, yay, wahoo, but it's, it is, you know, something at its core th…”
Opinion
Powell: Orchestrating distributed resources flattens peak grid demand better than legacy infrastructure
“What with distributed Technologies utilized well in a way where you're like this, the conductor of the symphony orchestra of devices, right? You can create the kind of resilience that you could only really dream of and reliability of from a, like, grid perspec…”
Disclosure
Powell: Sunrun aims to become one of the largest US energy providers
“The goal is really to be really one of the largest energy providers in the United States, right? So that we're providing energy, we're providing the acceleration around whole home electrification, electrification of transportation, and we're aggregating all of…”
Insight
Powell: US solar customer acquisition costs stem from complex permitting processes
“When you think of customer acquisition costs, you have to think of the process to getting a customer to installation, so it's not just the process of getting the customer interested in solar, right? It's the customer of really, the cost of getting them through…”
Assertion Supported
Powell: Sunrun has 630,000 customers with about 28,000 battery installs
“We now have, you know, 630,000 customers, and about 28,000 of those have batteries, but it's important to remember a lot of those were in place before really storage became a mainstream product that was being offered in the market.”