#271 The $10 Billion Reason Commercial Real Estate Finally Has to Electrify | Charles Conwell (Novele)

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Imagine if every commercial building and data center in a city acted like a smart, flexible battery. That’s the world Charles Conwell is building.

Charles, CEO of Novele and a former commercial real estate guy turned energy founder, joined me on the show to break down how they’re transforming buildings from passive energy hogs into active grid assets. And his insight into how the built environment actually works will probably change how you think about energy forever.

Novele’s system starts inside the building, at the point of consumption. Their Energy Boards are these thin, wall-mounted batteries that slip into unused space instead of eating up rentable square footage. But the real unlock is the software, a “swarm architecture” that syncs hundreds of distributed devices in real time. Instead of reacting to energy spikes, the system predicts them and reshapes load before it ever hits the meter.

Why does this matter?

Because commercial buildings have been stuck in a broken model for decades.

Charles explained how landlords constantly overbuild electrical capacity because tenants wildly overestimate their needs. Add in the classic “split incentive”, landlords pay for upgrades, tenants reap the savings, and no one invests in efficiency. The result? Massive waste and massive bills.

But the world changed. Fast. New rules like Local Law 97 created real financial pain for inefficient buildings. Energy prices started climbing double digits. Demand charges blew past the cost of the energy itself. And suddenly Novele’s solution went from “interesting” to “we need this yesterday.”

The kicker?

Novele runs on a Hardware-as-a-Service model. No CapEx fight. No landlord-tenant politics. Just a monthly fee that’s usually covered. Customers are seeing IRRs in the 20–30% range.

We also got into Novele’s Ripple Board for data centers and why AI’s power spikes are becoming one of the biggest electrical problems no one is talking about. Charles lays out how distributed storage smooths those swings and why storage + nuclear is the most underrated combo in clean energy.

If you want to understand better where urban energy is heading and why buildings are about to become one of the most important assets on the grid, tap play for this episode.

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