#15 - When You Know Better, You Build Better with Spencer Rosen

Jess Kismet (00:00)

Hello and welcome to The Building Sciology Poddie where we talk about better buildings to live and breathe in. My name is Jess Kismet and today my guest is Spencer Rosen. Spencer is the director and founder of Home Energy Academy. And today we're going to dive into the intersection of building science, electrification and homeowner engagement.

California and brings a unique perspective on how cutting edge energy tech like solar storage and smart home systems can work hand in hand with solid building science principles, especially in existing homes. He's passionate about translating technical concepts into real world values for homeowners. And he's seen firsthand what happens when great technology is paired with good building fundamentals. So welcome Spencer.

Spencer (00:42)

Thank you so much, Jess. What a fun intro. You've seemed to be knocking these out of the park. That was one of my, listened to some of the other podcasts and I was like, wow, she's really good at introducing people. yeah, exception here. Thank you for that intro.

Jess Kismet (00:47)

Hahaha

Yeah, no worries. Thanks so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate you reaching out to me. So you're based in California. You run the Home Energy Academy. Tell us a little bit about this business and how you got here.

Spencer (01:15)

Yeah, well, it's unusual for people to be full-time educators and I worked really hard to kind of get in that position. I started back in 2004. I found like this thin film flexible solar panel and I was amazed at the technology and I just got hooked. I didn't know exactly which part of renewable energy I'd kind of focus on.

But about 2009, 2010, I started to do some home energy audits and I fell in love with not just kind of saving the planet, but the connection to these kind of high level principles about energy efficiency and building performance and renewable energy like in the home. Why? Because it's so relevant to people. It's not about like mangroves in Southeast Asia capturing carbon or these huge power plants. It's something that's

impacts everyone's day-to-day living, their finances, the quality of life for their families. And so, you know, I just kind of went all in on ⁓ home energy specifically. I don't focus on multifamily. I don't focus on commercial. But there's plenty, plenty to play in that domain with. ⁓ I ran about a, ⁓ for about six, seven years, I ran a whole home energy auditing and construction company where we went in and did whole home energy audits and

At first I was just an auditor and homeowners were like, I don't know any contractors that can do the scopal work that you recommend, which was mostly air sealing, attic insulation, windows, HVAC, new ducts, tight ducts, insulated ducts, solar storage, just totally, whatever would save them money and make them more comfortable. And about that time, I was just getting really engaged with local kind of nonprofit.

Jess Kismet (02:54)

All the stuff that makes sense, right?

Spencer (03:10)

organizations that were leading the charge for statewide programs. And one of the kind of program managers at the large utility here brainstormed with me about putting a class together. And so we designed this class called the Home Energy Course. Three part course, the first part was all about energy efficiency, understanding what's happening in your home and where's the low hanging fruit? How does billing work and your rate structure work? Just the foundation.

And then we moved on to home comfort for the second part of the course, which was building science, the building envelope and the systems inside of the building envelope. And then part three was about solar and storage. And it's really in alignment with my views on how to approach projects, right? Efficiency first, know, reduce before you produce. Don't add solar onto a house that's uncomfortable or don't add it on solar to a house that hasn't done the efficiency measures yet to be more efficient. ⁓

make sure the home is comfortable so you're designing a home system to power what you, a home you want to live in. And then, you know, add solar and storage to really kind of take full control of your energy production and when you use that energy that you produce. And so that took off and other utilities started to pick it up. I was doing it for about five, six years as I was working ⁓ full-time. I transitioned from having my own home performance company to working for

Enphase as a ⁓ kind of a regional manager, I managed about 300 solar installers. This kind of teaching thing was this kind of side project, this side gig that I loved and was passionate about, but hadn't kind of taken off yet. And it just grew and grew and grew and it had become more and more my passion. And as of four months ago, I've been able to go full time and my educational kind of opportunities are expanding and I'm doing some tool buildings, some kind of.

software building and some program kind of leadership. ⁓ So it's, you know, it's just, it's basically this passion project for somebody who's a home energy nerd. It's definitely, at least at this stage, like my dream fulfilled. So I'm really happy about kind of, you know, the opportunity to do what I love, you know, most of the time. It's not all easy, of course, you know, I'm painstakingly working on my slides all the time. And, you know, there's creating new content is like,

giving birth to something, takes this kind of incredible intellectual effort. But I love it and I'm passionate about it and people seem to be really getting a lot of value from the content. And so yeah, I'm gonna keep on going.

Jess Kismet (05:37)

Yeah.

Congratulations on realizing the dream. That's excellent.

Spencer (05:55)

Yeah, one at a time, just one dream and then I got lots of other dreams. So this is, that's kind of the game. Yep.

Jess Kismet (05:57)

Yeah.

It's the beginning, right?

Yeah, I sort of have a similar, similar, but different trajectory. mean, my, my passion as well is, is, is spreading the information and getting, you know, I guess education. I don't really, I don't really consider what I do education as such, just information sharing. But I guess quite similar, because if you don't know, you don't know when you know, you can.

Spencer (06:26)

Yeah.

Jess Kismet (06:32)

I say when you know better, you can do better. yeah, there's just so much, there's a lot of misinformation and lack of information amongst homeowners. I also find there's a lot of misinformation and lack of information amongst the professionals. So do you do any training with architects or builders?

Spencer (06:35)

Yeah, it's great.

Yeah, great question. So ⁓ all kinds of people come to my classes, homeowners, professionals, salespeople, architects, consultants. Primarily, I kind of focus on two audiences, homeowner audience, and I call it the professional audience. I mostly focus on existing homes. I love new construction. It's super exciting.

You know, this blank slate that you have where you can create anything is like this magical ⁓ opportunity. That being said, if you look at the housing stock and where's the opportunity to make the biggest difference from my kind of a impact people, ⁓ impact, you know, the planet, the existing homes is kind of where it's at. So I've put most of my energy and effort. That being said, you know, you learn what not to do.

when you do an energy audit on a home that doesn't work and the insights that I've had, you know, have had architects reach out from, you know, to do custom designs on duct layouts and, you know, consult on solar, you know, system design for new construction. So I played with that area, but I'm mostly focused on existing homes because, you know, it's just, I don't know how many new homes are built every year. It's 2 % or 3 % of the housing stock.

you know, the existing home market is such a huge opportunity to transform homes from being, you know, inefficient, uncomfortable, and powered from the grid to be highly efficient, super comfortable, and powered from solar and, you know, on-site storage. It's harder, right, because you don't have this blank slate in some ways, although with new construction, you have all these new, more challenging problems, because you, you know, you have to get the flashings right, and you have, you know, these

envelope layers that you're managing moisture through and you're using new technologies. So that's got its own challenges, but on existing homes there's so much variety too. It creates lots of problems. have career security because there's so many ⁓ different types of homes and different types of solutions that can be applied.

Jess Kismet (09:11)

Yeah, one of the big risks with upgrading an existing home I know it's been talked about a lot is when you add insulation, you change the heat, air and moisture balance in a home. And how do you go about managing that with your clients or your students?

Spencer (09:28)

Yeah, it's a great question. you know, in California, we mostly have ⁓ vented attics and slab on grade construction. Vented attics are generally pretty forgiving when it comes to adding insulation. You know, moisture is effectively managed, you know, through ventilation. You know, when there's an attic that's like

partially vented or like a cathedral where there's the insulation isn't full but there's bird holes at the bottom and the decision is whether you want to insulate that space and then you're going to kind of you know stop the ventilation and create an unvented attic. Those are much more complicated and advanced projects and so you know you need to take a lot more time there but because most homes are vented making sure they have sufficient net ventilation and if they don't

Jess Kismet (10:02)

Mm-hmm.

Spencer (10:27)

that net ventilation and making sure the baffling above the insulation is effective, meaning it's actually allowing the airflow. Insulating an attic in our environment can be relatively benign. It's a pretty safe ⁓ upgrade. Tightening ducts is a pretty safe upgrade to perform from a building science perspective. Swapping out, you know, ⁓

Jess Kismet (10:46)

Yep. Yep.

Spencer (10:56)

non-variable pool pumps with variable speed pool pumps and running them slow and for a longer time, which can use about one fourth to one eighth the energy. It's a pretty safe energy saving upgrade. So I try to focus on the, you know, low hanging fruit that'll make the biggest difference for the most number of homes. And then when we get into kind of custom, you know, custom, well, I'd say like those one-off kind of homes or homes that have more of these kind of risks.

I really advise working with a BPI analyst who's got some, ⁓ so in the US, our kind of standard, ⁓ I'm glad you asked. So the kind of building performance.

Jess Kismet (11:32)

that CPI.

Spencer (11:47)

leading organization for education and certification is an organization called the Building Performance Institute. And they train ⁓ energy auditors and they train them in comfort, safety. They do tests like combustion appliance testing. They do tests like air leakage testing. They evaluate the airflow in the home based on

you know, air changes per hour that are required for health and safety. So they're kind of the most experienced, knowledgeable set of professionals that have a pretty rigorous training and certification process. And so I usually, and I used to be one, I mean, I'm not active. still, I mean, I passed all my tests and used to do these audits back in 2010, but I'll try to get.

professional involved on those projects that are more complicated and encourage homeowners to, you know, be aware of the safety concerns. And on my trainings, I'll have, you know, I'll take a slide and I'll put a huge slide on this. Changing the building envelope can impact the safety of your home based on these factors. I show some slides of things like, you know, making concepts really simple to understand. So something like back drafting, right? Where you have a water heater,

Jess Kismet (12:51)

you

Spencer (13:09)

in an interior closet. Okay, how's the air getting, know, how are the pressures in the home working to, you know, create the stack effect to move that hot air out through the vent? Okay, well it's working because, you know, we have pressure differentials. Okay, well if the house is really leaky, you know, those pressure differentials are going to be kind of normalized. But if I tighten up the house and I turn on that laundry that's exhausting air to the outside and I turn on that bathroom exhaust fan,

that's creating negative pressure, can now back draft that water heater. So I show visual pictures of that and explain the risks, know, or I explain about, you know, if you have a gas leak in your home, ⁓ you know, and you have really, really leaky home, that gas leak is going to be diluted, right? The air is going to kind of be dispersed. But when you tighten up that home, that gas leak will be concentrated. So I will usually, if I do any kind of training on air sealing, any kind of training on improving the building envelope,

I will absolutely include the key disclosures, disclaimers, and some insights about, I can really see that the house is connected. ⁓ And so I think it's really important. You've got to take those all into consideration. But you're right. It's a two-hour class, and you can't train on moisture management in two hours. And so I try to focus on the low-risk items and disclose and disclaim on the high-risk items so that people can do more.

Jess Kismet (14:28)

Mm. Mm.

Spencer (14:37)

diligence, do more research and understand where the risks are.

Jess Kismet (14:41)

Yeah, that sounds like a really sort of holistic and effective way. You know, you're giving them actionable things they can do straight away, but also saying also you need to learn more about this. I think that's great. Do you find that in the US this is stuff that like, what's the level of baseline knowledge? Because in Australia, I find it's quite low. So I was wondering if it's the same in the US.

Spencer (15:06)

Yeah.

Well, and you're saying the baseline of NINILA is pretty low in Australia. that, Yeah, you know, I'd agree. ⁓ You know, we get educated in high school and junior high. We learn about subjects like, you know, European history or, you know, how to dissect a frog. And, you know, of course, if you're going to be a biologist and

Jess Kismet (15:17)

Yeah.

The Egyptians.

Spencer (15:40)

that's really relevant, but you know, we never really learn about the place where we spend the most time. The space place where people spend typically the most amount of money. Right. Usually their mortgage is their biggest monthly expense. The place that probably has the biggest impact on the environment that's in their direct control. Right. Forty four percent of greenhouse gases come from residential homes in the U.S., including their vehicles. Right.

Jess Kismet (15:51)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Spencer (16:08)

vehicles and home energy use kind of make up 44 % of the greenhouse gases in the US. So you have these kind of these really critical impacts to home ownership knowledge and you know they never really get an education in that. So I think people come with that low level of baseline knowledge and you know I'd like to kind of light that spark in them.

They're never going to learn everything they need to know to complete a project in four two-hour courses, even though eight hours of homeowner education is a pretty good start. But when I used to do my energy audits and I'd present a report and show them graphs and show them pictures of their attic and show them ⁓ their duct leakage tests, at some point in those conversations, there'd be kind of like this spark that would go off in the minds of the

the minds of the homeowner. And a lot of them became like hobbyists. Like this would become something they were maybe not gonna devote their whole professional career to, but something that they wanted to learn more about. Something they wanted to understand. Something, you know, that was hidden from their view before. was impacting their health, safety, comfort. And now all of a sudden it's kind of something they see and are aware of. And now they can...

Jess Kismet (17:09)

Mm-hmm.

Spencer (17:30)

either do something about it or learn more so they have access to take action. ⁓ people come to my classes who have no knowledge at all and just want to learn and I try to make it engaging and fun and exciting and bring my own energy to the conversations so that they'll ⁓ be engaged. ultimately, ⁓ the numbers speak for themselves. I usually have really good throughput. So, if I have 30 people show up for a course,

Usually at the end of the fourth session, I'll have 27 or 28 of those people still in the room. And that's easy to control when you're in like a physical classroom, but when somebody's on a computer and they can have distractions. So, I think it's about making the content fun. I play music at the beginning of my sessions. I have my own home energy soundtrack with my sweet home Alabama and take me home country. I have a whole,

Sunshine, know, all of my songs are escaping me, What are the best songs we got? I could pull up the playlist real quick. Just found a new one called Power Station by a really cool musician called Corey Wong, who I love. But, ⁓ you know, I got my soundtrack playing in the background. And so I try to make it fun and exciting for people and give them the spark. On the professional side, what I find is that we get people

who are really, really good at specific ⁓ topics. So I get a solar guy who knows solar pretty well. He knows how to size solar, maybe also solar and batteries, but has no knowledge about the building envelope, has no knowledge about energy analytics relating to the bill. And so that's an opportunity to help them become a better professional. And I find that the people I've trained, some of which are, ⁓

sales leaders at solar companies, they really excel. mean, they're top performers. Why? Because who does a homeowner want to talk to? They want to talk to somebody who's pitching one widget or somebody that has a holistic view of their energy ⁓ kind of world and can really provide a plan. so, yeah, a lot of different people show up and I try to add value to all of them. And it's challenging, but what else do have to do?

Jess Kismet (19:55)

And you said before we press record, you you mentioned that you have three children. Do you ever would you ever consider going into schools? Because you mentioned we don't learn about this at school ever. ⁓ And I think it's an interesting little I know that my kids have done projects on sustainability and they would always include things like solar panels and veggie patches and things like that. But there was this whole sort of area that they were missing around. ⁓

just the actual building envelope itself. ⁓ And I was just wondering if that's something that you've thought of, thought of doing.

Spencer (20:31)

Yeah, it definitely is. I submitted actually a grant application with a partnering company about two months ago to do some education in San Diego County for a handful of schools. Let's keep our fingers crossed on that because it would be a great pilot. then there's another. So in California, we have community choice aggregation partners and regional energy networks. They're kind of like these.

emergent organizations that are being, becoming accountable for certain funding that utilities historically were getting for energy efficiency programs, energy education. And in San Diego, we have a new organization called San Diego Community Power and San Diego Regional Energy Network. And they just had a series of RFPs and one of them was around career development. So I was also on, you know, on a

a couple submittals for that and we'll see if those get awarded too. yes, I have ⁓ in about three or four weeks, well, it'll have already happened when this posts, but ⁓ I have a career pathways for home professional course that I'm developing and it's really amazing as I'm building the content. It's like, you know, people think of homes as like, it's like, it's these small things, right? But no, like.

Jess Kismet (21:37)

Hahaha!

Spencer (21:54)

There are so many careers that are related to energy and homes. got software developers, you have manufacturers of technology, have manufacturers of the top HVAC equipment, solar equipment, whole home energy management systems. You have software managers who develop everything from proposal softwares to behind the meter management softwares to virtual power plant software.

aggregation of assets behind the meter, the aggregation of energy kind of behind the meter is becoming this huge game in increasing supply and reducing demand for utilities. saw the ⁓ Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, was talking about how AI is going to require this much of the... ⁓

I think it was like 78 new gigawatts by 2030. I was thinking, wow, this is perfect for my industry. Instead of having to build another 78 gigawatts, let's provide 78 gigawatts nationwide behind the meter of solar storage and energy efficiency so that we free up the power to have super intelligence, which everybody who's using AI these days is pretty enjoying. I know I use it.

you know, daily and it's really accelerates a lot of the work that I'm doing. So, you know, I think it's a very exciting space to be in and there's lots of different ways you can contribute and it's connected in more ways than most people know.

Jess Kismet (23:32)

Absolutely. You mentioned earlier as well, or in the introduction, sorry, I mentioned that you are doing some software development of your own. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Spencer (23:44)

Yeah, so I've had like little like independent calculators that I've built. You know, back in 2010 when I ran my own home energy audit company, I actually like had an Excel brace tool where I would take all the energy data and put it in and create graphs on energy usage and energy savings. I used a really cool tool back then called recurve to which was an energy modeling tool. And I've played with

Jess Kismet (23:59)

Thank

Spencer (24:13)

you know, almost maybe not every, but a lot of the energy tools in the marketplace for many years. I helped at Enphase when I was at Enphase, I helped them with some of the initial math on sizing batteries for backup. And as I've had Home Energy Academy as a part-time thing over last seven years and now full-time, I built about 10 or 12 different calculators, calculators for, you know, pool pumps for simple things like lighting upgrades, appliance upgrades.

basic solar and storage sizing. And so, you know, I'm basically building my dream home energy tool. You know, if you picture, you know, ⁓ everything in one, that's kind of what I'm at work building. And so there's a couple of programs ⁓ that, you know, can't be announced yet. Some of them are for kind of utilities, software products that I'm building to support them. But I'm planning, you know, at some point in the future to, you know, launch a tool.

⁓ And so ⁓ I've been chipping away at a prototype. I used this one prototype in a class that I launched last week, now probably three months ago. So as soon as something is available, I will definitely announce it. But just think about, if I wanted to model everything, ⁓ how would I do that? And how would I provide the information in a way that's really ⁓ usable for people and helps them?

⁓ create a plan and helps understand what their goals are and creates a plan that's optimized for what they care about. ⁓ So I have some ideas on how to do that and ⁓ you know ⁓ when it's testable I will let you know.

Jess Kismet (25:56)

That'd be great. ⁓ We can certainly if ⁓ when it's ready, we can we can link it in the show notes, even if it's in the future, I can always add that for future listeners. ⁓ So we're to say, ⁓ I was going to say, are any of these calculators like is it like like for lighting, for example, is it like those sorts of calculators?

Spencer (26:21)

It could be, yeah.

Jess Kismet (26:23)

Cause is any of that

Spencer (26:23)

Yeah, it could be.

Jess Kismet (26:24)

related to building code compliance or is it, ⁓ you know, how does that relate?

Spencer (26:29)

Yeah, I mean,

there's a pretty good amount of tools that are focused on like Title 24 compliance in California, right? Where there's, you know, you have two different paths in California. You have a prescriptive path, which is basically like, check these boxes, create this package. And if you do A, B, C, D, E, F, G, you comply with, you know, baseline energy code. And then there's performance based modeling where you can kind of, you know,

a little bit here to have additional storage, but then you have a less expensive window package and you're kind of balancing different weights of various building elements to go above a threshold. And there's a lot of tools that do that. ⁓ So it's not really focused on that. Again, it's focused on the retrofit market and how do you take somebody's kind of energy profile and help them get to a future ⁓ kind of ⁓

future state, a future home, of kind of a home energy ⁓ scenario where they are, you know, achieving their home energy goals, you know, whether it's efficiency, comfort, decarbonization, right, electrification, and solar and storage.

Jess Kismet (27:44)

Fantastic. ⁓

Spencer (27:47)

I mean, it's

right out of the course, right? It's basically taking the class that I've been teaching and turning it into something that instead of it just being knowledge, it can also be kind of a tool or journey that someone can go through themselves for their own home to see how applying those different choices, those options, those decisions would impact their costs and their savings.

Jess Kismet (28:12)

Yep, that sounds really good. Sounds great.

What marketing strategies have you found most effective when communicating the value of these energy upgrades like the solar, solar storage, load control, those sorts of things.

Spencer (28:24)

Yeah, so, you know, currently I'm not selling upgrades, right? I'm selling education. ⁓ I'm not even selling it. Most of it's for free ⁓ to the people who come and it's sponsored by ⁓ kind of utility programs and regional energy programs. But I've got a lot of experience, ⁓ you know, both ⁓ promoting energy upgrade projects ⁓ as part of my

previous company and also supporting contractors. So I can talk through a few of them. I think the neighborhood approach can be very effective. When I was running my previous company, Energy Integrity, ⁓ the kind local organizations, ⁓ one of them was Center for Sustainable Energy. They had open houses. And after a homeowner would upgrade their home, we'd open up

home to the community. And they would get some additional incentives to participate in that and people loved it. I would invite future prospective customers, people that were maybe on the fence and they would see the work already done and they'd hear from the homeowner who was usually raving about, my house feels like a cave now in the summer. It's so kind of cool and comfortable and in the winter time, wow I'm so

cozy and you know my heat recovery ventilator I can feel the fresh air in my home. feels my home used to feel stale. Those types of communication directly from the customer in the home in which they were performed can be transformational. One of the upgrades we used to do a lot was we would move furnaces from hall closets up into attics and we did it mostly because it's very hard to control the return ventilation.

when it's in a hall closet, you just basically have this vent at the floor. And I've got a lot of different, I call them energy aha moments or energy ⁓ like insights. And one of them is that in cooling climates, climates where you need to ⁓ remove heat from the space, having a return low on the wall is a big no-no. You never really get the heat out of the space because hot air rises, sits at the top of the building and you're trying to cool it down. It's like having this

you know, cup of tea and you're adding ice cubes to it, what you really need to do is take a fresh mug and pour that water into the fresh mug, pull all that heat out, lowers the temperature very quickly. I really discovered this through trial and error, ⁓ like adding more supply into a room and like doing that for a while. And then some old salty HVAC guy who was looking at it was like, we should have a return over by the window to suck the heat out. We're like, that's a good idea. And we did it. And it like was a game changer. It was like immediate.

So anyways, we move these furnaces to the attic. We'd improve comfort and we take these hall closets that were previously being used just for a furnace and we convert them to an extra closet, right? Which would have shelves and you know, some storage. Yeah. And where else can you like create an extra, you know, it only 10 square feet, but 10 square feet of like storage in the middle of a closet. usually the homeowners were thrilled. So they take the new homeowner to the closet and show them look.

Jess Kismet (31:30)

Storage!

Spencer (31:46)

Here's my camping gear closet. And they'd be like, whoa, that's pretty cool side benefit. So, you know, I think the more they can see, feel and touch the upgrades themselves and see the real benefits, ⁓ you know, they're going to be encouraged to explore their own projects and figure out how they can make it work for themselves. ⁓ You know, I think generally homeowners are typically skepticism, you know, rule based. They're very skeptical. They're very... ⁓

pessimistic about what's possible. They think someone's trying to sell somebody something at some point and they are rarely kind of coming from, I know the numbers are gonna work. Like I can see what's possible. And the numbers will work. What I mean by the numbers working is, you know, really the solar industry took off in the United States because there was this certain moment about maybe 2008, where these companies like Sunrun, Sunpower,

What was the other big one? I guess it was Solar City back then that became Tesla. You know, they created this lease PPA model where the monthly payment for the solar was less than the savings. Right? So they were able to, you know, come up with a structure, especially in California and the states where energy costs were high. And before we were required to kind of add a battery, which adds costs because the net metering

agreements, the way we could sell energy back was really, really, it was one to one ratio. So everything we produced, we got full retail value for. ⁓ You know, at that moment in time, you could really take someone with a $400 energy bill, finance the system for 12 or 15 years, eliminate their bill, right? And they would pay, you know, $280 as a monthly payment. And that's just, you know, wow.

I save $120 a month instead of investing that $280 or whatever my monthly payment is to the utility. I'm paying that to pay off my own system. I'm saving the environment. It really was a no-brainer for many, many customers. You can do that same thing with efficiency too if you choose the right upgrades. You can't always do it for every upgrade, but there's certainly certain upgrades where the numbers will pencil. I talk about the low-hanging fruit.

There are low hanging for opportunities in every home. Some are bigger than others. So I think when it comes to marketing, getting people to want to learn what those are for their own home, you know, is super effective. know, I've done ton more work to do there. You know, we moved into a new home community and we had a PSPS event, which is a blackout event. And so,

in the process of getting batteries. The home didn't come with batteries, it came with solar, but it didn't come with batteries. In the process of getting batteries installed, and I did a, you know, outreach to my community and said, look, I'll have an open house. And I invited, you know, I happened to, you know, have a fancy, you know, presentation to give, and I invited my community, and I had like, you know, 15, 20 people come right over, and we did this cool presentation, and I know a few of them move forward. So I think...

know, community engagement is very powerful. ⁓ And, you know, everybody knows these days that brand building and being consistent online with content is ⁓ really valuable. ⁓ It's hard. I even am full time now as an educator and getting that weekly YouTube video out, getting the weekly newsletter out, getting the posts out on adding value.

⁓ It takes this kind of real consistency and it's something I'm working on but I think for any company that's focused on engaging a community, it's not going to be one touch and they're going to be all on board. They have to hear the message from many angles, many times, till something clicks for them that makes it worth it for them to take the time to learn more. And once they do, typically if you have the right ⁓ solution set, if you have the right offering,

you can start to solve problems and when somebody solves one problem, you know, they're hooked. I have people that did energy audits and upgrades on their first home and they're, you know, they get it, right? They're forever converted to be this kind of home energy nerd or savvy homeowner, right? They bought their second home and they're calling me right away and saying, what can we do here? And this is what I'm thinking. And, you know, they're excited about taking everything they learned from their first project and apply it to their second. So,

Jess Kismet (36:15)

Thank

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Spencer (36:34)

It's that first engagement that's an ongoing challenge and I think ⁓ showing them the numbers, making it very clear that there are possibilities. They're not stuck with what they happen to have now. There are real solutions, some of which don't cost a ton of money. Those kind of insights can get people engaged.

Jess Kismet (36:58)

Mm-hmm, for sure. I think knowing the numbers is absolutely crucial. And that's something that we're not very good at here in Australia. And the example you gave of solar is exactly the same here. ⁓ That became an absolute no brainer. And now there's solar panels everywhere. ⁓ But yeah, the you know, what we struggle with, you know, I do the air leakage testing, I do the blower door testing. And to sell that, it's sort of you're selling an idea, you're selling, well, you will have ⁓

Spencer (37:13)

Yep.

Jess Kismet (37:26)

lower energy bills because you're reducing your air leakage by this percentage. But at the present moment, we don't have numbers associated with that improvement. So I think if someone, that's going to be me or someone else, if someone could work out what that saving actually is, I think that the message would spread a heck of a lot quicker. ⁓

Spencer (37:46)

I will let you know as

soon as I have something that can support that.

Jess Kismet (37:52)

And would that be applicable across the globe, your calculators?

Spencer (37:59)

You know, ⁓ every climate zone is very different. Every utility rate structure is very different. You know, there's certain principles that are universal and that could probably be applied immediately. But, ⁓ you know, I think for a tool to really be effective, you got to get the numbers right. You know, even if they're based on certain assumptions and certain, ⁓ you know, models, you know,

Jess Kismet (38:05)

Mm.

Mm.

Spencer (38:29)

the foundation of the math has to be based on real values. And so, I know a lot of, there's a lot of companies in the US that are working on various tools and most of them focus regionally. They focus on a small area first, they get it right for that area, then they expand. So I think I'll probably take a similar approach. I'll probably start, I might start in just Southern California or I might start in just California. But,

You know, I think there are some universal principles that can apply to ⁓ every home. ⁓ offline, I'm happy to talk to you about maybe how we could do some back of the envelope math to get you started.

Jess Kismet (39:13)

Yeah, that was awesome. Also, you mentioned the experience of doing your open home. You had people in your home, you gave them the presentation and experiencing firsthand. That firsthand human experience is pretty powerful. We actually have every year in Australia, we have what's called sustainable house day. So every year homeowners apply to this ⁓ organization.

to open up their home for public viewing. So that happens once a year. Yeah, it's a really effective community event. And some houses have, you know, 50 up to 100 plus people through each home and that's all over the country. So people get their maps out and they map out all the houses they wanna go to on the day. it's, you know, it's fantastic.

Spencer (39:41)

Great.

Yeah.

Yeah, we have home green home tours. Those are super interesting. The other thing that's I think is an opportunity that has not fully been explored is really meeting customers at multiple points of interaction. So if you're a solar company, when is somebody going to be thinking about solar? Well,

One obvious time would be, they just bought a home. Okay, that's pretty obvious. Another maybe obvious time is, hey, they just bought an electric vehicle. Right? Okay. They just bought an electric vehicle. They're now going to have higher electricity costs. Interesting. You know, if I went around all the dealerships in Southern California right now and asked all the salespeople who are selling electric cars, how much they really understand about kilowatt hours,

and cost of kilowatt hours and energy efficiency of the vehicles and how purchasing that electric vehicle impact the customer's electricity bill, my guess would be the numbers would be very, very low. Be very, very low. So if I was a solar professional, I'd be creating relationships with those people and teaching them about how solar impacts the cost effectiveness and savings associated with electric vehicles.

map the same thing for HVAC and for, you know, insulation. And I really would love to see more cross-pollination of home energy professionals working together. And, you know, it's hard to have a whole home energy company. I had one for six or seven years. The part of the story I didn't tell is the reason I ramped down energy integrity in about 2016 is I wasn't making a ton of money. I was working very, very hard. I was crawling around attics.

I had thrilled customers with five-star reviews who were loving the results of their home. I wasn't charging, you know, ⁓ like I wasn't the cheapest. I was definitely charging like a reasonable margin, ⁓ but managing crews that are doing insulation one day, air sealing the next day, HVAC the next day, windows the next day, solar and storage the next day. It's very hard to scale that. It's hard to... ⁓

it's hard to systematize that because the learnings you get day one can be forgotten day five. You have to retool your vehicles. Sure, you could own seven different companies, but there's economies of scale when you have one thing that you're doing and you're getting better and better and better at that, right? ⁓ And so, I don't know if the dream home energy projects are gonna happen from.

you know, these big companies that do everything. They may happen from, you know, more collaboration or they may happen from homeowners that phase their projects. But I do think that, you you ask about how do you market, you know, I think partnerships are a very, very powerful way to, to find customers at the point in which, you know, the choices they're going to make are going to have a difference, make a difference for them.

I used to ⁓ do these energy audits and people would have me come into the home they just purchased. ⁓ And often the first thing they did would be paint all the walls. Right? They paint all the walls. know, painting the walls can cost three or four or $5,000. And in existing homes, typically the walls are not insulated at all.

And you got to be careful about insulating existing walls, especially for moisture. But if you have a weep screed, right, and you're in the building papers intact, you can effectively dense pack an existing wall with cellulose. ⁓ And if moisture is an issue, you can use actually more moisture resistant products as well. So, you know, I'd go into these homes right after they just, you know, purchase them. They'd want an energy audit.

and they would have just painted everything. And it was like, ⁓ man, if I was just there one day earlier, right? Or, you know, they had the HVAC guy install the new system and they took all the ducks and they hung them from the ceiling, which is the, you know, hottest part of the attic instead of burying them below the new insulation that they going to install. Or they just blew in a ton of insulation and they didn't air seal below the insulation. They just blew in. And so, you know, it's...

It's those missed opportunities that finding the customer at the right time and giving them the right information is just this big opportunity. It's a big opportunity for contractors to increase their scope. It's a big opportunity for homeowners to get better results, right? And it's a big opportunity to have just more satisfied high performance homes and, you know, have projects not be these kind of like Frankenstein's like be more of a thoughtful, you know, kind of, you know, whole kind of

⁓ solution that actually really works for the homeowner. So I think the more we can collaborate and the more we can partner so you have the right players at the table at the right time, the better result the homeowner is going to get.

Jess Kismet (45:25)

Yeah, that way collaboration keeps coming up for me and my job as well. You with that collaboration, there are so many missed, ⁓ crucial missed steps in, I work in the new home market. So ⁓ yeah, just the collaboration between all of the teams that have to work on a new home project is so, crucial. And traditionally, and architects haven't worked super well together. ⁓ And that is something that is improving very, very slowly.

Spencer (45:49)

Totally.

Jess Kismet (45:55)

⁓ But it's so important. Collaboration is just so important. We can't stay in our silos. We have to share information with each other to get the best outcomes. So kind of we wanted to talk in this discussion about how to actually communicate with homeowners to ⁓ get this message out that this sort of thing is important. ⁓ home upgrades are possible, home upgrades and energy upgrades and

trying to impress upon homeowners the importance of doing this stuff and that they can actually do it. ⁓ Have you noticed in your work shifts in what the homeowners are actually focusing on what they're caring about? Is it more about comfort? Is it more about money? So these calculators that you're talking about, they're gonna give people ⁓ numbers and dollars that they can think about, which is important. But are you finding that it's mostly like a...

Spencer (46:51)

Yeah.

Jess Kismet (46:53)

A carbon emissions issue? Is it a money issue? Is it a comfort issue? What are you finding?

Spencer (46:58)

Yeah, it's a great question.

⁓ I think different people come to it different ways. ⁓ Back when I used to do these energy audits and upgrades, what I would find would be that a lot of people kind of opened the door with dollars and cents in mind. They wanted to see the savings. They wanted to improve ⁓ and reduce their energy costs. They wanted to stay comfortable while reducing their energy cost. And as we would investigate and find health and safety,

and comfort issues and kind of ask more questions to get kind of deeper into what they really care about. You know, more than 50 % of the time it really was comfort related. You know, sometimes it's even like marriage family counseling related, like the husband and wife would have a fight over the thermostat. And if they could just solve that problem and that only costs $200 a month and not...

Jess Kismet (47:46)

my goodness, Yep. ⁓

Spencer (47:54)

are you about what temperature the thermostat's gonna be at? That's worth it, right? So, you know, ultimately, being present with the customer and not pushing your own agenda, but really being in a state of discovery, like over in their world, asking questions and authentically being curious. You know, I think the biggest thing that gets in the way of sales is people selling.

Jess Kismet (47:57)

Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Spencer (48:22)

They want to sell something and so that's their focus. And even they try to solve a problem in order to get the sale. If you can just let go of your own personal objectives and it has to happen if you're selling energy upgrades, it doesn't happen once. You can't just leave it at the front door. You have to keep letting it go. Like, ⁓ here's an opportunity to sell something. let me just kind of ask the question and put that aside.

Jess Kismet (48:46)

Mm.

Spencer (48:52)

⁓ and really be in the state of ongoing discovery, you end up really connecting with the homeowner and ⁓ supporting what they care about. And it changes from home to home and from homeowner to homeowner. ⁓ But when you really understand their pain points, I mean, it's so simple to just provide a solution and just to be unattached on whether or not they move forward with you.

I would always say with homeowners when I used to sell in the home, I want to give you the best value possible tonight in terms of the education, the information, the time we're going to go over everything. ⁓ And of course, I'd love you to choose me to complete these projects. But if you choose somebody else, I want you to be equipped, empowered, and informed so that you get the best value from them as well and you get the best project. And that was authentic for me. I wouldn't want them to choose me, but...

I tried to kind of let go of the outcome and just trust that in the end, if it was meant to be, it was meant to be. And it ended up being, I was really effective. And if you kind of count it from a sales perspective.

Recently I think ⁓ homeowners have been coming to a lot of my classes and asking a lot about electrification ⁓ because they're interested in technology. They're interested in having a positive impact on our environment, reducing their kind of on-site fossil fuel usage.

And that's the upfront interest. And then they need the numbers to back it up. So they want to do it. They're interested in making these positive changes, even for electric vehicles. And they just don't understand the numbers. And the numbers, in most cases, pencil. Now, what I mean by that is driving an EV is going to be less expensive.

than driving a gas vehicle straight up. If you're using energy from the grid, it's going to be less expensive. If you're using energy from the grid at night and you have an EV rate that has kind of a low rate, we have time use rates here in the US and they charge less for energy usually from 12 to 6 a.m. or 12 to 8 a.m. And so if you can charge at that lower rate, it's way more cost effective.

If you can charge on-site from solar directly from the sun or even from a battery, I people say, you know, I'm not going to fill up a hundred kilowatt hour EV with a, I'm not going to fill up a hundred kilowatt hour EV battery with a 20 kilowatt hour battery. That makes no sense. But the truth is that most, if you think, if you do the math in terms of, okay, if I drive 12,000 miles a year, which is kind of average in the U S of what people drive and divide that by

365, I think it works out to about 30 or 40 miles a day. I don't have my calculator and I'm usually pretty good about, you want to work it out? What's 12,000 divided by 365?

Jess Kismet (52:04)

I'll work it out.

Spencer (52:13)

I think it's 40. Yeah, so it's 32 miles a day on average. If you have a pretty consistent driving pattern, 30 or 40 miles per if you have ⁓ an EV that gets three miles per kilowatt hour, that's really only 10 kilowatt hours to top off that EV. Maybe it's 15 kilowatt hours. So anyways, if you charge from your own solar and storage, if you charge from solar directly, which you can do if you work from home and you can charge

Jess Kismet (52:15)

32.9.

Spencer (52:42)

directly when you have extra solar instead of selling it back for lower value to the grid. ⁓ All of those opportunities will save you more money than using gasoline. And then same thing with a heat pump in certain areas, in certain climates, there's exceptions. One of my favorite things about heat pumps is ⁓ when you go to a heat pump, you get a free air conditioning.

It's kind of a two in one. And if somebody's cooling, let's say they have a reasonable size air conditioning bill and they have an old air conditioner, 10 sear, 11 sear, 12 sear, 13 sear, and they're going to upgrade to a heat pump. The cost from them converting from their natural gas usage to electric usage on the heating side, it can vary. It might be a little bit more with a heat pump if they're in a warmer

climate like San Diego, which doesn't get super cold at night, the efficiency, the COP on that heat pump is going to go up. So they're going to get better efficiency from the unit. If they're in a colder climate, they're not going to get as much efficiency from that unit. So, you know, there's just not as much heat in the air. So it takes a little more energy to get that heat from the air. But, you know, let's say, take the heating and say it's a wash or it's, you know, relatively close.

And I have a whole course on that which shows the numbers and runs through the, you know, what actually does converting a therm to a kilowatt hour look like under these different scenarios. But, you know, the cool thing is you go to that new heat pump and you all of a sudden went from a 13 sear air conditioning to an 18 sear air conditioning for free, right? That was thrown in there. And if their cooling bill was, you know, $2,000 a year for their air conditioning and they just upgraded their air conditioning and got the heat pump.

basically they got the more efficient air conditioning for free. So now they save money in the summertime cooling costs. Some of that could go to the increased electricity costs for heating. And then of course they just eliminated natural gas usage, probably their most substantial natural gas usage. And in California, we have cool incentives. We have incentives where if you cap your gas meter, if you actually close your gas meter off, you can get these rebates.

that are pretty significant for electrification. you know, again, it's the whole home, right? If you just look at the heating side of things, the numbers aren't going to pencil as much. And so people may get interested in one thing, but then they may have concerns that are in the way of them moving forward. And so trying to really get to the heart of the matter of the key concerns that are in the way of people taking action and solve those problems from a technology perspective, from a

Jess Kismet (55:00)

Mm-hmm.

Spencer (55:29)

education perspective from ⁓ you know, from basically a math perspective. ⁓ You know, that's really where we can derive more value from these systems. You know, virtual power plants have the potential to add additional value because you're now monetizing some of these energy savings devices in various ways at certain times. And so, you know, all the technology that's kind of being introduced

when used in concert can really help the homeowner get over these barriers that are in the way of them achieving their home energy objectives and the things they were originally interested in.

Jess Kismet (56:08)

Yeah. Do you ever have anyone come to you with health concerns? I mean, this is sort of more into the moisture area, which is where my focus is. So my question is, do you ever have anyone come to you with any mould issues, with any chronic inflammatory response symptoms and wanting to fix that?

Spencer (56:25)

I mean, I...

Yeah, I mean, there's, know, one of my favorite case studies was a woman who, you know, we just went in her attic and the attic was just, I mean, it was nasty. It was just gross. And we upgraded the insulation, you know, we cleaned everything out and sanitized everything and air sealed everything and re-insulated. And, you know, she swore like my sinus problems that I had are all gone. Right. I'd say it's,

Jess Kismet (56:40)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Spencer (56:59)

more the exception than the rule because people don't necessarily go, know, unfortunately in the US, ⁓ you know, we got a lot of different over the counter medications. got, ⁓ you know, prescription medications that are designed to solve these different symptoms. So people usually go automatically to that before they'll go and look at like, hey, how's my house and the environment I'm living in impacting my health until they see like,

Jess Kismet (57:25)

Hmm.

Spencer (57:28)

visible mould on the wall. ⁓ And at that point, they're usually calling like a moisture expert, not a home performance expert. But ⁓ you know, I think there's a huge opportunity there to make the connection and provide more education. I have a mini course I put together on indoor air quality and you know, just connecting the dots in terms of, you know, what makes up indoor air quality. you know, I think I

Jess Kismet (57:54)

Yeah.

Spencer (57:55)

created like a simple, know, here are the five, you know, five, like, you know, key distinctions about indoor air quality. It's like, source pollutants, it's, you know, ⁓ outside air quality, it's indoor air quality, it's, ⁓ you know, it's basically ventilation from the outside to the inside, it's,

dilution of the air on the inside, it's filtration, and it's kind of like a walkthrough in terms of like, what does that really look like? And what are the key systems that impact each one of those? So, you know, that's part of my goal. I want to kind of maybe get somebody engaged because they want to save money. And next thing you know, they are learning about, you know, home comfort. And next thing you know, they're learning about air quality. So, you know, if I can, yeah, if we can kind of...

Jess Kismet (58:48)

It could be a

moment for somebody like thinking, ⁓ maybe that's the issue. Cause I know that the Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome is not well known and the medical fraternity doesn't understand it as far, know, from what I've heard and they don't understand it. And so for the homeowner, sometimes it's their personal drive that gets them those solutions rather than help from the outside.

Spencer (59:19)

Yeah, you know, ⁓ every aspect of providing education or providing solutions is an opportunity to support someone in producing a result around something they care about. And when you do that, when you empower somebody to produce a result around something they really care about, and the only way to really do that reliably is to have integrity in your work, to know that what you're saying is based on

Jess Kismet (59:37)

you

Spencer (59:49)

foundational information that's solid and trusted and also to be responsible for what's not said that you need to say in order to communicate what they need to hear to be responsible for the whole project. We talked about that a little bit earlier when you said, are you responsible for the moisture when you're educating about building envelope stuff? So you got to kind of like try to cover all these areas in a way that empowers people to make good decisions. And when you do that and they produce a result,

Jess Kismet (1:00:04)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Spencer (1:00:17)

you build trust. And if you build trust around comfort, and you continue offering great value, and I'm not just saying this for myself, I'm saying this for anybody who's selling solar, anybody who's selling HVAC solutions, anybody who's actually providing solutions, as you build that trust, you're able to bring more value to them and continue to help in other areas that are related. And somebody that might have been really skeptical about,

my attic is impacting my health, you know, after you've already saved them money on their energy bills and then they hear it from you, they might be like, this person I trust, right? So I think you just got to do great work with everything you do. And then it'll kind of continue to build an audience that really can count on what you say with integrity. And then you just got to deliver. You got to make sure you're actually speaking the truth and.

Jess Kismet (1:00:48)

Mmm.

Mm. Mm.

Spencer (1:01:15)

saying what you say based on science and real experience and with integrity.

Jess Kismet (1:01:21)

So a key aspect of your work is electrification, reducing energy efficiency, reducing peak load to avoid service upgrades ⁓ and strain on the grid. We have a lot of issues with power outages here when we have heat waves in Australia. So how is this work that you're doing ⁓ improving that sort of peak load and strain on the grid?

Spencer (1:01:46)

Yeah, this is a really, really hot topic. ⁓ And ⁓ it's something that I've really enjoyed working on for years, and it's kind of evolved. originally, my first kind of entrance into this kind of peak load thing was to avoid having to upgrade a main service panel. Upgrading main service panel is a huge cost. It takes a lot of time. And I didn't even.

make the connection between the grid. even as a contractor, if there was any way I could avoid having to upgrade a main electrical panel as part of a solar project, I would do it. And there are a lot of different tricks. You can derate main breakers or you can, there's a technique called the Hawaiian tie-in where you can kind of move loads into a sub panel and then you can use the main panel as a bypass. I'm not going to get into all the technical nitty-gritty, but I've been doing this for years and

And as I got more experience working at Enphase and started to collaborate with some of the product team there, I learned more about a technology called Power Control Systems. And Power Control Systems is basically a software enabled current limiting technology. And it has lots of applications. know, one kind of way you could think about it is in a very simple application. Imagine you have a certain limit on how much solar you can get on.

a main electrical panel and how much you can backfeed to that main electrical panel. And it's based on this total solar system size, but you have an east-west facing roof. And so even though it's based on the total solar system size, in practicality, you're never actually going to be producing at full output for both the east and west facing array at the same time. So if you can model that and you can create a software limit that is lower than the

total output of the solar system, right, then you can effectively get more solar on that main electrical panel without exceeding its backfeed capacity. Same thing's true with solar and storage. If you have solar and a battery, technically in an AC coupled and AC connected configuration, both can output to the grid at the same time. You'd have to add them both in the backfeed calculations, the

calculations in terms of how much energy you can send from the opposite direction of the bus bar, right? You have the energy coming in from the grid, you have energy coming in from solar and storage. You can't put too much energy on that bus bar from both directions because the main breaker, which is designed to protect the main bus, the actual electrical components of the panel, is being bypassed, right? If you exceeded that main bus capacity, you ⁓

Typically, if you had no solar in storage, the main breaker would just throw. But when you start backfeeding it from the opposite direction, if you have a ton of solar in storage and energy from the grid, now you can feed more than that main bus has capacity for. So anyways, you think about solar and storage. ⁓ well, most of the time, solar and storage isn't operating at the same time. You're usually charging the storage in the daytime with extra solar capacity, and you're providing the storage to the loads

in the evening when the solar is not charging. So if you can kind of model that a bit, you may not have to add them both together. You could have a software limit where it's kind of like either or and the blend of those doesn't have to be maximum capacity of both of them. So that's another application of power control systems. There's an even more advanced application called dynamic or bus bar power control systems where you're now

monitoring how much energy is coming across that bus bar ⁓ with a to see how much is coming from the grid and how much is coming from solar and storage so that the additive amount of those amounts never exceed. So it's basically protecting them. So there's this kind of power control systems. But I also got introduced to a really amazing group called the Power Group. It's kind of a consortium of different leaders in California.

There's a multifamily leader, a guy named Sean

from Redwood Energy and another gentleman named Tom Cabot and a ton of different people who really started looking at power efficiency, right? So power efficiency.

is very different than energy efficiency. Energy efficiency is using less energy over time. Power efficiency is using less peak power. So you can think about a hybrid heat pump water heater. It's going to use much less energy than a standard electric water heater. But the hybrid still has resistant heaters inside of it, which can peak the output. And so a hybrid...

Jess Kismet (1:06:24)

Mm-hmm.

Spencer (1:06:44)

electric water heater is going to be very energy efficient. It's going to save a ton of energy, but it's not going to be very power efficient because you still have to have the power capacity for that resistive element. It's kind of like a heat pump with backup strip heat, right? That backup strip heat, very power intensive. So they started to look at different technologies. Now they have like a 120 volt heat pump water heater available.

There's companies that are putting batteries, like there's a company called Copper that's putting batteries in their oven ⁓ so that instead of having the peak draw from the oven being pulled from the grid, they're slowly trickle charging the battery with a low amperage. And then when they need a large amount of current, they just have that battery capacity on demand. ⁓ So you got...

Jess Kismet (1:07:37)

So appliance by

appliance, these appliances have got their own batteries. Wow.

Spencer (1:07:41)

Yep.

Battery enabled appliances. So you got a lot of different techniques to you got software controlling solar and storage to make sure you're not overloading the panel. You got new appliances, new electric ⁓ electric appliance that you're adding that are power efficient. There's ways you can interpret the code. So the code historically uses prescriptive thing where you add everything up.

There's actually a new, well, I wouldn't say new, but there's a piece of the code that people are using more frequently now, which is a performance-based part of the code where they actually look at the interval data to see the power. So you could really dial in how much you need. And it turns out that most homes can run on a electric with solar and storage, almost unlimited size on a 100 amp electrical panel. And a lot of these wires are buried underground. ⁓

Trenching them can cost tens of thousands of dollars. five or six or seven homes in a neighborhood add electric vehicles. ⁓ Next thing you know, the transformer for that neighborhood needs to be upgraded. There's big weights on that. If all the transformers are upgraded, you got substations and wire. So it's this kind of upstream effect and there's a lot of different technologies. have a ⁓ four hour course that I do just on power efficiency.

these different techniques and technologies. One of my favorites is they have smart loads like an EV charger that'll monitor the total ⁓ current coming in from the grid. And if the grid exceeds the main panel capacity, it won't turn off the EV charger, it'll just back it off a little bit. So it'll back the current down. So you're always working inside of the main service panel ⁓ and just making maximum

kind of you're using, you're taking the resources that are already available and making maximum utilization out of those. Because if you're electrifying and those electrification measures are impacting the grid and there's a lot more investment needed to keep the grid, kind of have the grid keep up with the power demands, where those costs can eventually go? They're going to go back to the consumer.

you know, those great infrastructure investments need to come from somewhere. So they get passed back to the consumer in the form of higher energy bills, which makes, you know, energy efficiency in solar and storage more cost effective. you know, it's not always feasible for every homeowner, ⁓ you know, to make that investment. you know, it's a big passion area of mine. It's something that a lot of really, really smart people are working on in California.

And ⁓ I think you're going to see a lot of innovation from a technology standpoint and just an approach standpoint over the next few years around that.

Jess Kismet (1:10:47)

Well, it's certainly a big learning area for me. This ⁓ conversation has been fascinating and I'll probably go back and listen to all of this again myself. It leads on to my next question about what would your perfect energy efficient, low grid drawer, ⁓ what would your perfect community look like?

Spencer (1:11:13)

Ooh, ⁓ community or home or both?

Jess Kismet (1:11:18)

Well, I think community,

because I think you can't, you you can upgrade one home, but I think the ultimate goal is to, is to, you know, roll that out over multiple homes, right? And you were saying about the knock-on effects of all the infrastructure costs. So let's go with community.

Spencer (1:11:29)

Yeah.

Okay, cool. One of the ideas that one of the co-founders at Enphase, a gentleman named Raghu who is super inspiring, shared with me is this idea that energy prices basically should be a transactional open marketplace where you can buy and sell energy within a community for

kind of whoever's going to benefit the most in that moment. So for example, you know, an ideal energy community might have a series of nodes around that community. And those nodes have certain limitations. It could be transformer limitations. It could be wire limitations. It could be energy draw limitations. And so, you know, having a

It really does benefit your neighbour when you have extra power because that power goes to the neighbour. doesn't, you know, if you're producing power, if you're spinning your meter backwards and your neighbour is using power, it doesn't impact the grid. It doesn't go all the way through the, you know, transformer all the way up back to the substation, all the way, you know, to the power station and all the way back down. It's local power. So a way where, you know, people could transact

energy locally within their own community. You could talk about behind the meter, you could talk about behind the transformer, where you're actually transacting energy behind the transformer. Maybe there are costs for the infrastructure that has to be managed and installed. But right now, we think about a microgrid in the US.

as being this small grid, we talk about it on a home by home basis. Like when you install a full backup system in your home, you have a switch, ⁓ it's called an MID, a microgrid interconnection device that can disconnect from the grid from your app. It can disconnect from the grid when the grid goes down and your home is considered a microgrid, the solar and the battery and your loads. It's its own little power plant and energy is being used locally. Well, you could think of a microgrid behind the transformer and

Could a community own all the wires and electrical infrastructure behind the transformer? Could that be owned and maintained by that community? And could the energy be transacted locally behind the transformer inside of that community? So I think that's probably where, if you're looking at like an idealistic

know, grid that's kind of where things could go. I am sensitive to, you know, the benefits and the ⁓ needs of the larger utility grid. There are costs to maintain that. Having a larger grid, you know, that can, you know, what if there is, you know, five or six or seven non-sunday days in a row, having that power available is, you know, for critical infrastructure, there is a cost to that.

So we need to account for that and that's not as simply said as simply done as what I just said. But there are certainly opportunities to create kind of more local transactions. And I mentioned it from like a power cost and power usage perspective, but also power efficiency. So what if these five neighbors all want to add electric vehicles? Well, maybe.

you know, if only three of them were counted, not all five, you could do it without spending that $30,000 on the Nutri-Transformer. That's a lot of money for that, you small neighborhood. Or maybe it's $80,000. And so is there a way for those five EV chargers to communicate? So, you know, one starting at 9 p.m. and the other one starting at 12 p.m. There's probably plenty of capacity. It's just a matter of...

kind of the orchestration of all the different energy users, seeing the big picture and working in concert. And so, you know, I think there's a lot of innovation that's going to be possible there. And especially when we get vehicle to grid and vehicle to home, ⁓ you know, as a kind of really a new, the new and probably the largest local generation device ever kind of implemented.

that distributed energy generator that's now the biggest battery that any home's ever had ⁓ and able to actually connect and provide energy locally, that's a huge asset. And there are a lot of people working to start to figure out how that's going to be managed and how that's going ⁓ to benefit the ⁓ energy grid overall.

Jess Kismet (1:16:47)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That was a lot of information there. I'm going to have to go and do my research, my due diligence on that one. I did, I did.

Spencer (1:16:58)

Yeah, well you asked a big question, hopefully you said community. If you would ask Homer,

I would have talked about radiant heating and cooling and HRVs and ERVs, so.

Jess Kismet (1:17:09)

Well, you know, I think, ⁓ you know, I know about that stuff already. ⁓ So I guess I wanted I kind of went big picture for that reason. ⁓ Perhaps the listeners would have, I mean, they would have benefited from, know, that that maybe maybe just if you could briefly just cover what would you do for if you had to design your perfect time? Let's do it.

Spencer (1:17:14)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, one of my dreams is I really want a freshwater swimming pool. I really want to. We don't have a swimming pool at our house now, but I really want a freshwater swimming pool that's ⁓ filtered, you know, probably with an RO filter to fill the pool and then ozone.

Jess Kismet (1:17:37)

hahahahah

Spencer (1:17:52)

and maybe ultraviolet light to keep that water as fresh as like a freshwater lake. That's like a dream that I have. You know, of course it would be heated with a heat pump. That'd be powered from, you know, on-site solar and storage system and also augmented from solar pool heating. That's outside the home. The home, I really love a company called Misana. They have a radiant heating and cooling panel that goes on the ceiling. It's not just heating, it's also cooling. And you think about,

Jess Kismet (1:18:08)

Of course.

Spencer (1:18:20)

I thought radiant heating's only on the floor. ⁓ Technically, ⁓ radiant heat from the ceiling is super, super effective such that the floor temperature will only be one degree different from the ceiling temperature. you know, right now I live in a home that's pretty high performance. We ⁓ two by six walls with two inches of rigid foam on the outside for our wall insulation.

Jess Kismet (1:18:32)

Wow.

Spencer (1:18:50)

only double pane windows. I'd probably want, you know, probably walls with rock wool, six inch rock wall with four inches of polyisofoam and, you know, maybe an R, like a U value of 0.15 on my windows, you know, triple pane, triple OE and radiant heating and cooling and a big solar and storage on-site system. And then

you know, a smart panel that's basically managing my loads and everything, you know, I've thought about, yeah, an HRV for fresh air, you know, having the fresh air coming into the HRV, be fully filtered with, you know, a HEPA filter, have that controlled. have fires in Southern California, so have that be able to be turned off and recirculate the air inside if the outdoor air. I'd love to have kind of some sensor system that says,

Jess Kismet (1:19:26)

at HRV.

Yeah.

Spencer (1:19:48)

Is outdoor air better than indoor air? If it's better, give me outdoor air. If it's not better, give me recirculated indoor air. So gadgets and gizmos are plenty, something like that.

Jess Kismet (1:19:56)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah. Sounds excellent. Okay, so the final question that I ask everyone that comes on the show is what is the one thing that you want people to know? You do a lot of educating, but if you had to distill it down to one thing, what would that be? One piece of advice.

Spencer (1:20:19)

Anything is possible for yourself and your life.

Jess Kismet (1:20:24)

Fantastic. With the right information and the right people on your team. Anything is possible.

Spencer (1:20:26)

I'm gonna it.

Yeah, yeah, with the

right context, with the right view of life. I wouldn't say right, if you really, there's so many things. People, here we go through life and all this stuff happens and we make mistakes and we try things that don't work and a lot of those things can

weigh on us as evidence for why we can't accomplish something or can't do something. And I think ⁓ if you can bring a context to life and your work that all of those things were just barriers along the way to discovering what's possible for yourself. And I happen to be working in the domain of

you homes, what's possible for your home and your family and the environment you live in. You know, I think that's a place that you can apply that principle. But if you're really asking me the question, I would say, if I want people to take something away, it's really that anything is possible for, you know, for yourself and your life.

Jess Kismet (1:21:48)

fantastic. Thank you, Spencer. This has been a fascinating and ⁓ intricate and very informative discussion. So thank you for coming on the show. really appreciate your time.

Spencer (1:21:49)

So go for it.

Super fun conversation. Thanks for all the great questions and the opportunity to connect internationally. ⁓ definitely my, could be my first, definitely my first international podcast. So thank you again for having me.

Jess Kismet (1:22:14)

You're so welcome.