Watt It Takes

The United States recently surpassed 100 gigawatts of installed solar capacity, enough to power nearly 20 million homes. But to decarbonize the power grid by 2035 and meet growing demand, the Department of Energy estimates that we'll need 1,000 gigawatts of solar capacity, providing 40% of the nation's electricity in just 15 years. That means, on average, we'll need to install solar at quadruple the rate we did in 2020.We can't achieve that growth without creative new ways to install solar in as many places as possible. That’s where our guest, Aurora Solar Co-Founder & CRO Samuel Adeyemo, comes in.Aurora is tackling one of the biggest problems in the rooftop solar industry: "soft costs."The cost of solar panels has fallen 99 percent since 1980. But the cost of everything else involved in installing those panels — the paperwork, the design, the sales process — is now higher than the hardware itself. Aurora makes software designed to tackle them all together.Over the last decade, Aurora has raised $321 million to help digitize the solar design and installation process. We talked with Sam about how he turned a challenging experience with a solar installation in Kenya into a company valued at $2 billion.Watt It Takes is brought to you by Google. Google is pioneering the electricity systems of the future with its effort to source 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030 — so that everyone can have round-the-clock, carbon-free energy everywhere they operate, in every hour of the day. Learn more.Watt It Takes is also brought to you by Nextracker. Nextracker is advancing the connected power plant of the future across five continents.Powerhouse is an innovation firm that works with leading global corporations to help them find, partner with, invest in, and acquire the most innovative startups in clean energy, mobility, and climate. Powerhouse Ventures backs seed-stage startups building innovative software to rapidly decarbonize our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more at powerhouse.fund.To hear more stories of founders building our carbon-free future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review.

Ninety percent of Americans want to see more renewable energy on the grid. But two-thirds of them can't directly access wind and solar — because they don't own their rooftop, can't afford the upfront cost, or can't get it from their monopoly utility.That’s where our guest, Arcadia Founder & CEO Kiran Bhatraju, comes in.“We started Arcadia to give everyone access to clean energy. It was as simple as that,” says Bhatraju. “This is a very closed, balkanized industry. And so the core idea was to build technology to make it incredibly simple for anyone that pays a power bill to access clean energy.”Arcadia is a service that connects people across the country to solar and other renewable energy projects. Virtually anywhere in the country, customers can sign onto the platform and subscribe to community solar, or buy zero-carbon power. The company's mission is to make these subscriptions as simple, transparent, and equitable as possible. And to decarbonize grids as quickly as possible.Today, Arcadia has hundreds of thousands of customers in every corner of the country. And in mid-September, the company closed a $100 million Series D funding round. It will use that capital to expand community solar options, and help people save money while buying clean energy.Emily spoke with Kiran about his upbringing in Kentucky coal country, his early career in politics and as an author, and the anxieties and exhilaration of raising over $180 million for his entrepreneurial vision.Watt It Takes is brought to you by Google. Google is pioneering the electricity systems of the future with its effort to source 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030 — so that everyone can have round-the-clock, carbon-free energy everywhere they operate, in every hour of the day. Learn more.Watt It Takes is also brought to you by Nextracker. Nextracker is advancing the connected power plant of the future across five continents.Powerhouse partners with leading corporations to help them lead the next century of clean technology innovation. Powerhouse Ventures backs founding teams building innovative software to rapidly transform our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more about Powerhouse at powerhouse.fund.To hear more stories of founders building our carbon-free future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review.

When it comes to climate tech companies, there's only one name that's known around the world: Tesla.Tesla has arguably been the defining climate tech success story of the 21st century, driving demand for electric vehicles and becoming one of the world's most valuable companies.When people think of the person behind Tesla, they think of Elon Musk. But Musk wasn't there from the very beginning — he was an early investor in the company, and didn't become CEO until five years after its founding. Martin Eberhard was there from the start. And as co-founder and founding CEO, he'd already spent years building a new kind of electric car that people would actually want to drive.Martin started Tesla with his co-founder Marc Tarpenning in 2003 during the dark ages of electric cars. Automakers had lobbied against policies promoting EVs in the 90s, and then killed their own battery-powered models. It took years of trial and error before Tesla hit the scene with the first Roadster.Martin’s time as CEO came to an end in 2007, when he was unceremoniously kicked out of the position by Tesla’s board. But he left his mark on the EV world.Emily Kirsch spoke with Martin about his long history as an entrepreneur, the origins of Tesla, cobbling together the parts for Tesla’s first EV prototype, and blowing up batteries in his yard.Watt It Takes is brought to you by Google. Google is pioneering the electricity systems of the future with its effort to source 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030 — so that everyone can have round-the-clock, carbon-free energy everywhere they operate, in every hour of the day. Learn more.Watt It Takes is also brought to you by Nextracker. Nextracker is advancing the connected power plant of the future across five continents.Powerhouse partners with leading corporations to help them lead the next century of clean technology innovation. Powerhouse Ventures backs founding teams building innovative software to rapidly transform our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more about Powerhouse at powerhouse.fund.To hear more stories of founders building our carbon-free future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review.

There's a race going on to build the next generation of energy storage technologies using gravity, chemicals, or heat to store clean electricity for long periods of time.And that's where our guest, Ramya Swaminathan, comes in.Ramya is the CEO of a company called Malta. Malta is building an electro-chemical battery that converts renewable electricity into heat. It's like a giant version of the heat pump in your air conditioner, using commercially-available, off-the-shelf parts.Malta's heat-pump battery could provide energy to the grid for half a day -- and potentially, multiple days.In 2018, Malta was spun out of X, the moonshot factory established by Google's parent company. Since then, Malta has raised more than $76 million to commercialize its storage system. Investors include Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a firm started by Bill Gates; Dustin Moskowitz, a Facebook founder; and Alfa Laval, a Swedish company that makes heating and cooling equipment for heavy industry.Malta aims to have power-plant sized facilities serving the grid by 2024. Emily Kirsch talked with Ramya about how her background in investment banking and hydropower development prepared her for scaling an energy storage business.Watt It Takes isbrought to you by Google. Google is pioneering the electricity systems of the future with its effort to source 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030 -- so that everyone can have round-the-clock, carbon-free energy everywhere they operate, in every hour of the day. Learn more.Watt It Takes is also brought to you by Nextracker. Nextracker is advancing the connected power plant of the future across five continents.Powerhouse partners with leading corporations to help them lead the next century of clean technology innovation. Powerhouse Ventures backs founding teams building innovative software to rapidly transform our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more about Powerhouse at powerhouse.fund.To hear more stories of founders building our carbon-free future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review.

Over the past four years, we’ve interviewed 40 incredible founders and CEOs on Watt It Takes.Our guests have inspired emerging and established leaders across the industry. And each one of these conversations has helped Emily on her own founder journey.With that in mind, in this episode of Watt It Takes, we’re turning the mic around to tell Emily’s story and the story of Powerhouse.Today, Powerhouse is an innovation firm and venture fund — working with the world’s leading companies to help connect them to hundreds of climate tech startups every year, and investing directly in software-focused clean energy and mobility startups through Powerhouse Ventures. Emily’s path to start Powerhouse was anything but conventional.We’re brought to you by Google. Google is pioneering the electricity systems of the future with its effort to source 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030 -- so that everyone can have round-the-clock, carbon-free energy everywhere they operate, in every hour of the day. Learn more.We’re also brought to you by Nextracker. Nextracker is advancing the connected power plant of the future across five continents.

Andy Karsner is a highly influential entrepreneur, investor, diplomat, and strategist working to transform the world’s energy systems.In June, he was voted onto ExxonMobil’s board by activist shareholders as a way to hold the oil giant accountable on climate change.Back in the 90s, Andy was developing large gas and diesel power plants. But then he found the wind business. Andy started a company called Enercorp, which developed some of the earliest large-scale wind farms around the world.In 2005, Andy was chosen by President George W. Bush to lead the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. That meant directing R&D and deployment efforts across wind solar, fuel cells, biofuels and other up-and-coming technologies. Today, he’s a Senior Strategist and Space Cowboy X, the innovation lab run by Google's parent company Alphabet. He also co-founded a non-profit investment group called Elemental Excelerator, which has invested $43 million into climate tech startups.Emily sat down with Andy at the 2021 MIT Energy Conference earlier this year, just after the Texas blackouts. They talked about his early days in renewables, the massive tech and market changes he oversaw in government, and the new challenges for entrepreneurs in today's maturing industry. We’re brought to you by Google. Google is pioneering the electricity systems of the future with its effort to source 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030 -- so that everyone can have round-the-clock, carbon-free energy everywhere they operate, in every hour of the day. Learn more.We’re also brought to you by Nextracker. Nextracker is advancing the connected power plant of the future across five continents.Powerhouse partners with leading corporations and investors to help them lead the next century of clean technology innovation. Our fund, Powerhouse Ventures, invests in founding teams building innovative software to rapidly transform our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more about Powerhouse at powerhouse.fund

Africa is becoming a dynamic market for clean, distributed energy. All across the continent, solar, batteries, generators, and microgrids are giving people energy cheaply — and providing greater reliability in a region where many central grids remain unreliable.But that dynamism can come at a cost. Systems are often complex. They lack standards. And it’s often difficult for buildings and businesses to manage and integrate them in concert with an incomplete grid. And that's where our guest, Ugwem Eneyo, comes in.Ugwem is the Co-Founder and CEO of a company called SHYFT Power Solutions. SHYFT has built a platform that makes it simple to optimize distributed energy resources and integrate them with centralized power grids in Sub-Saharan Africa.SHYFT has raised nearly $4 million in seed funding to expand its platform across Nigeria—a country where the majority of citizens still don't have a reliable grid connection. SHYFT has won the MIT Clean Energy Prize, the California Climate Cup, and a host of other recognitions. Ugwem also landed herself on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Energy.Emily spoke with Ugwem about how she took an unexpected turn from academia to entrepreneurship, how she raised money for a concept that is not well understood by investors, and how she's scaling the company. We’re brought to you by Google. Google is pioneering the electricity systems of the future with its effort to source 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030 -- so that everyone can have round-the-clock, carbon-free energy everywhere they operate, in every hour of the day. Learn more.We’re also brought to you by Nextracker. Nextracker is advancing the connected power plant of the future across five continents.Powerhouse partners with leading corporations and investors to help them lead the next century of clean technology innovation. Our fund, Powerhouse Ventures, invests in founding teams building innovative software to rapidly transform our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more about Powerhouse at powerhouse.fund.

This episode was first aired on February 25, 2021. In this episode: Emily’s conversation with Stephen Lacey, the founder of Post Script Audio.Stephen has been the creative force behind many of the top podcasts about climate change and clean energy. And, he also happens to be our executive producer. He’s been making podcasts about the energy transition since 2006. This was the dawn of on-demand audio and the modern clean energy industry—and he had a front-row seat to both.The conversation was recorded in front of a live, remote audience in December 2020.This podcast is brought to you by DLA Piper, a full-service global law firm that works with leading technology companies and their investors to meet all their legal needs. It’s also brought to you by AES, a fortune-500 company helping organizations transition to new, smarter and cleaner solutions. AES is working toward a world that is 100% carbon-free.Powerhouse partners with leading corporations and investors to help them lead the next century of clean technology innovation. Our fund, Powerhouse Ventures, invests in founding teams building innovative software to rapidly transform our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more about Powerhouse at https://www.powerhouse.fund/

Matt Duesterberg, Co-founder of Ohmconnect, discusses building a virtual power plant using smartphones, software, and smart devices. Topics include their $100 million investment, challenges in clean tech fundraising, building a sustainable business, the future of Ohmconnect and energy, desire for sustainability, building a successful startup, and overcoming challenges.

This episode was originally released on January 15, 2021.In this episode: Emily’s conversation with Donnel Baird, the founder and CEO of BlocPower.BlocPower is a Brooklyn, New York startup electrifying and weatherizing buildings in underserved communities — slashing pollution and saving money. This includes housing units, churches, community centers. BlocPower was founded in 2012. It has raised venture capital from Kapor Capital and Andreesen Horowitz. But that process was not easy for a company with a mostly Black leadership team. As a black founder, Donnel was turned down 200 times before any venture firms were willing to back his vision.The mission for Donnel isn’t about just about hitting milestones for investors. It’s about changing the fabric of underserved communities that are plagued by pollution and energy poverty. That’s because Donnel has lived it himself.The conversation was recorded in front of a live, remote audience at the end of 2020.We’re brought to you by Google. Google is pioneering the electricity systems of the future with its effort to source 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030 — so that everyone can have round-the-clock, carbon-free energy everywhere they operate, every hour of the day. Learn more.Powerhouse partners with leading corporations and investors to help them lead the next century of clean technology innovation. Our fund, Powerhouse Ventures, invests in founding teams building innovative software to rapidly transform our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more about Powerhouse at https://www.powerhouse.fund/