Hannun: Dandelion cut installation wait times from a year to four months
Kathy Hannun · Tapping the heat beneath your feet with Kathy Hannun of Dandelion Energy · Jun 8, 2023 · at 22:03
Kathy Hannun is the founder of Dandelion Energy, discussing operational bottlenecks and customer wait times.
0:00 / 0:18exact quote · 18.8s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“In terms of our wait times, they've varied at our worst. We forced our customers to wait over a year in some markets because we had so much demand, but now we've managed to bring it down. It's more like four months, so we've made a lot of progress there.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Kathy Hannun
Geothermal cuts home heating operating costs to one-fifth of fossil fuels
“If you look at, for example, in the Midwest, comparing using a fuel to using geothermal, your operating costs, so how much you have to actually spend to heat your home, it's maybe a fifth with geothermal. It's similar in the Northeast, and emissions-wise is si…”
Hannun: Geothermal ground loops last as long as the home
“Whereas if you invest in putting in ground loops, and we can talk a little bit more about what that entails, but if you invest in that infrastructure so that you can access all of that free heating energy that's already in your yard, then you can draw on it es…”
Google X targets software moonshots requiring massive upfront capital investments
“The issue was, you know, X really looks for a very specific type of project. Their ideal project is something like the self-driving car, Waymo, where you have to invest a lot of money up front to create, ideally, something software or software adjacent, like a…”
Hannun: Operationally intensive geothermal was a better fit as a startup than Google X project
“And for geothermal heat pumps, it involved things like drilling deep holes in homeowners yards, It was operationally intensive, and I should also mention you didn't need a billion dollars up front to get started. It was the type of problem that seems like it w…”
Hannun: Dandelion's financed geothermal was cash flow positive versus fuel oil
“We launched with a financing option. So from the beginning, homeowners that signed up with us
Would come out ahead. Like, you could come out cash flow positive against fuel oil”
In-housing installation labor improved Dandelion Energy's unit economics despite capital intensity
“It's true that having a model where you're insourcing the labor is more capital intensive, but the economics of each install were also much better. So it ended up being a financial net positive for the company, even though it did require us to, yeah, raise the…”