How to accelerate rooftop solar & household batteries in the US

How can the US make it easier, faster, and cheaper for homeowners to install rooftop solar? In this episode, Sunrun CEO Mary Powell shares her vision for boosting not only residential solar, but other forms of residential electrification too.

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David Roberts

In Australia, one out of three households has solar panels on the roof. In the US, it’s one out of 25. That probably has something to do with the fact that in the US, rooftop solar is twice as expensive, twice the hassle, and takes twice as long to get installed.

Why is the process so broken? And what could be done to make it smoother and faster?

To discuss these and related matters, I went to the source: Mary Powell, the CEO of Sunrun, the nation’s largest residential rooftop solar company — or more accurately, the nation’s largest residential electrification company.

Before taking the top spot at Sunrun, Powell spent more than 20 years in leadership at Green Mountain Power, Vermont’s largest power utility and a nationally recognized pioneer in clean energy. Sunrun brought her on to help the company move into products — batteries, EV chargers, virtual power plants — that were once thought the province of utilities.

I talked with her about how to speed up the rooftop solar interconnection process, the role of net metering, Sunrun’s move into vehicle charging and VPPs, and the future of distributed energy.

All right, then, with no further ado, Mary Powell of Sunrun. Welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.

Mary Powell

Oh, my pleasure. I was looking forward to chatting with you.

David Roberts

Mary, I'm looking at my notes here and I have — let me just count real quick — one million questions to ask you. So, we're going to have to move quick here because I've got so much. But just by way of framing, I was in Australia recently and was listening to them talk about their rooftop solar success story there, the sort of rooftop solar miracle. So the US is at, I think, something like 4% rooftop solar penetration. And Australia is up around 30%, 35%, something like that. One out of every three households, mainly because it is two to three times less expensive and way, way, way faster to get on your roof there.

Most of what I want to talk about are in different forms. How can the US process be made cheaper and faster? That's kind of, I think, the theme of our discussion here today. But before we get to the reality of why things take so long, let's talk a little bit about perception. So I guess Sunrun is now the biggest residential solar company in the world — I know, in the US.

Mary Powell

Yeah, certainly in the US. Yeah, we're the largest, not just residential solar company, but we are the largest in the combination of solar-plus-storage. So we really see ourselves as a clean energy lifestyle company, and we're really well positioned to meet customers wherever they are on their clean energy journey and help them transform their lives to something that's more affordable, certainly something that's cleaner. So we have solar, we have storage, we have sophisticated electric panels, we have EV chargers, and of course, we have that amazing partnership with Ford on the F-150 that you can use to back up your home.

David Roberts

Going to get into all that later.

Mary Powell

Good.

David Roberts

But I assume as part of what you do, you do a lot of consumer research, a lot of talking to homeowners. So the first thing I'm interested in really is what do US homeowners say they want when they come to you? Why are they now installing rooftop solar and batteries? Why are they doing it? Or perhaps even more to the point, what do they say about why they're not doing it? What are the sort of pain points you hear about from customers?

Mary Powell

So the reason customers are going solar, and increasingly, as I said, solar-plus-storage in California now we're up to probably about an 80% attachment rate. So customers that are going solar really want the benefits of storing their energy as well and having the resilience and the comfort and the peace of mind that comes with that. Back to what I'm hearing from customers: It's so interesting. I would say for so many years, largely it was an industry where customers were enticed to go solar to save money, so they knew they could save money off of what they were paying their utility.

And Dave, that's still true. I mean, in every market that we sell in, the cost per kilowatt hour that you generate on your roof is lower than the cost you're paying your utility. So many customers still find the value of savings to be very appealing, but it really has evolved over time where so many customers, I talk to customers every single week as well as I've worked in our stores and I've been in customers homes. And increasingly what you're hearing is that they just want stability. I mean, I've heard so many customers have said to me, "Mary, like, it's fine if I save money, but honestly, I just want greater independence and I want stability.

I want to know that the price isn't going to go up of the energy that I'm getting." And of course, you also have so many customers that want solar energy because of the clean energy attributes. But so many customers now are really enticed around the energy independence we can provide. And then, as customers increasingly adopt electric vehicles, that makes them painfully aware of what they're paying on the kilowatt hour basis with their utility. So that also then entices them to really want to go solar.

David Roberts

So what do they say is stopping them then, the ones who are not pulling the trigger?

Mary Powell

I would say back to your opening. We don't make things easy, not Sunrun, but in the country, we don't make it an easy process for customers. And then I think for many customers, I've heard many customers who come back to us later because they say, well, it just feels like such a big decision and a big project, and then when they realize, "Oh, actually, I don't have to put any money down, it gets installed in a day." In many cases, we now can install up to two homes in a day. So they're starting to see it's not a big infrastructure project.

But I think for many customers, they initially maybe feel that it does. But also to your point that you started our conversation with, there's a lot, particularly in some parts of the country, it's a very onerous process and a long process, and some customers just drop out along the way.

David Roberts

I think because there's only 4% penetration in the US, it's still somewhat of a novelty to most people, I think. Most people probably don't have a really good sense of what's involved. So maybe just