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Zach Dell

Co-Founder and CEO, Base Power · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutiveinvestor@ZachBDell ↗LinkedIn ↗basepowercompany.com ↗

Zach Dell is the co-founder and CEO of Base Power, an energy startup providing residential battery systems and virtual power plant services. Before founding the company in 2023, he worked as an investor at Thrive Capital and Blackstone.

14statements → 9claims → 7claims resolved → 71%fully supported → 3.64/5average certainty → 2.21/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated →

5 supported 2 partly supported 0 contradicted 2 not checkable as stated how the 9 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 predictions · 7 assertions · 2 opinions · 2 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 9 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 7 are resolved, and 2 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Zach argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Prediction Held up
Dell: AI workloads will concentrate heavily in Texas and the Gulf
“I think the highly energy intense workloads will converge around the low cost electricity places. You'll see a lot of that go to the Gulf. You'll see a lot of that go to Texas. And you're seeing that now, right, with Stargate and Abilene and all the big produc…”
Zach Dell Oct 15, 2025 ▶ 18:15 No Priors Ep. 136 | Base Power CEO and Co-Founder Zach Dell

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
75% certainty 3
90% certainty 4
none yet certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Zach Dell on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Zach Dell said on No Priors that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion
Dell: Cheap solar and storage will make nuclear economics unviable
“My opinion is that the rate of solar deployment will go up so fast as the costs continue to go down that it might just not matter. That we'll have so, it'll be so easy and low cost to deploy solar and storage that the economics of building nuclear reactors jus…”
Zach Dell Oct 15, 2025 ▶ 13:50 No Priors Ep. 136 | Base Power CEO and Co-Founder Zach Dell
Prediction Held up
Dell: AI workloads will concentrate heavily in Texas and the Gulf
“I think the highly energy intense workloads will converge around the low cost electricity places. You'll see a lot of that go to the Gulf. You'll see a lot of that go to Texas. And you're seeing that now, right, with Stargate and Abilene and all the big produc…”
Zach Dell Oct 15, 2025 ▶ 18:15 No Priors Ep. 136 | Base Power CEO and Co-Founder Zach Dell
Disclosure
Dell: Base Power Employees Work a 996 Schedule or More
“It's like, yeah, we do nine nine six. We probably do more than nine nine six, but we don't really talk about it in that way.”
Zach Dell Oct 15, 2025 ▶ 25:26 No Priors Ep. 136 | Base Power CEO and Co-Founder Zach Dell
Opinion
Dell: A $1B fundraise is table stakes in energy technology
“In the game that we're playing, which is to build a global energy technology market leader, a billion dollars is the ante to sit at the poker table, right? We're competing against the biggest and most well capitalized companies on the planet.”
Zach Dell Oct 15, 2025 ▶ 29:19 No Priors Ep. 136 | Base Power CEO and Co-Founder Zach Dell
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Dell: Solar and storage will define the next 50 years of energy
“And it seems pretty clear now that based on where the cost curves are going, the next five decades of energy are going to be defined by solar and storage.”
Zach Dell Oct 15, 2025 ▶ 1:58 No Priors Ep. 136 | Base Power CEO and Co-Founder Zach Dell
Assertion Supported
Dell: China has lowest global power costs via massive grid buildout
“It's supply and demand. It's because they built out a massive amount of supply, and it's all of the above, right? They built nuclear reactors. They built solar farms. They built wind farms. They built a ton of battery storage. They have, you know, tons of high…”
Zach Dell Oct 15, 2025 ▶ 17:13 No Priors Ep. 136 | Base Power CEO and Co-Founder Zach Dell
Assertion Supported
Dell: Power generation costs dropped significantly while transmission costs climbed
“The cost to make the electron has gone down really significantly over the last 20 years, largely driven by the build-out of solar. But the cost to move the electron has gone up very significantly because our infrastructure is aging, and utilities have this kin…”
Zach Dell Oct 15, 2025 ▶ 20:02 No Priors Ep. 136 | Base Power CEO and Co-Founder Zach Dell
Insight
Dell: 90% of power cost reduction comes from tech, 10% from capital
“Like, 90% of the cost down comes from technology and innovation, and 10% comes from cost of capital.”
Zach Dell Oct 15, 2025 ▶ 31:20 No Priors Ep. 136 | Base Power CEO and Co-Founder Zach Dell
Assertion Supported
Zach Dell: Base Power raised $1.3B in past 18 months
“We've raised you know, 1.3 billion in the last 18 or so months.”
Zach Dell Oct 15, 2025 ▶ 7:40 No Priors Ep. 136 | Base Power CEO and Co-Founder Zach Dell
Assertion Partly supported
Dell: US grid holds 300 to 400 gigawatts of latent capacity
“The U S grid kind of max peak is somewhere on the order of 700 gigawatts, but average demand across the country is closer to like, 300 gigawatts, right? So we've got another three, 400 gigawatts you know, just up to 700 gigawatts if you believe that, you know,…”
Zach Dell Oct 15, 2025 ▶ 10:46 No Priors Ep. 136 | Base Power CEO and Co-Founder Zach Dell
Insight
Dell: Batteries move energy through time; poles and wires move it through space
“Batteries move energy through time, right? Poles and wires move energy through space.”
Zach Dell Oct 15, 2025 ▶ 14:44 No Priors Ep. 136 | Base Power CEO and Co-Founder Zach Dell
Assertion Supported
Dell: Electricity remains the only major US industry not broadly deregulated
“If you look at trucking, or airlines, or telecom, you know, all of these industries deregulated over the last 50 years except electricity.”
Zach Dell Oct 15, 2025 ▶ 22:22 No Priors Ep. 136 | Base Power CEO and Co-Founder Zach Dell
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Dell: Electricity Industry Has Not Attracted Top Engineering Talent for 50 Years
“Over the last 50 years, the electricity industry has not been, ah, the place that the most talented engineers and operators have gone, you know, out of school or, you know, breaking into their career.”
Zach Dell Oct 15, 2025 ▶ 24:05 No Priors Ep. 136 | Base Power CEO and Co-Founder Zach Dell
Assertion Partly supported
Dell: Solar makes up about 20% of Texas fuel mix
“Texas is about 20% right now in the fuel mix.”
Zach Dell Oct 15, 2025 ▶ 12:14 No Priors Ep. 136 | Base Power CEO and Co-Founder Zach Dell

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
No Priors Ep. 136 | Base Power CEO and Co-Founder Zach Dell Oct 15, 2025 22m
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