The first reason why customers buy the YouSolar PowerBloc is an obvious one: people hate losing power. But the supply of electricity that we have been taking for granted is becoming less and less reliable as power companies struggle to cope with storms, heat waves and wildfires. With homes increasingly electrifying, everything depends on power – not just the lights and fridge but also the cooktop, heat pump and vehicle charging.

YouSolar has sold a $264,000 PowerBloc to the owner of one of the most iconic houses on California’s Big Sur coast. When we met with the customer at his home to seal the deal, three magnificent California condors circled in the clouds above the property. Why would a homeowner consider spending more than a quarter million dollars on an energy resilience solution? Sure, who wants a multi-million dollar home with warm soda in the fridge? But the primary reason for purchasing this PowerBloc was fire protection.

The dawn of the age of electrification in the late 19th century saw a standoff between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. Edison promoted Direct Current (DC). Westinghouse swore by Alternating Current (AC). As the two electricity magnates disparaged each other’s technology as inferior and unsafe, the confrontation escalated into the War of the Currents.  Westinghouse emerged victorious, and the world’s power grids were built on Alternating Current. But the paradigm of electricity generation, distribution and consumption is changing rapidly.

Ice storms in Texas and blizzards in the Northeastern United States have been regular occurrences that bring down power lines and cause outages. The most recent winter freeze in the southern United States left thousands in Texas without power. In California, electric utilities have been challenged to keep the power on during summer and fall due to wildfires and heat waves.

The adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) is growing exponentially worldwide and their triumph over the internal combustion engine looks almost inevitable. But some skeptics are still not convinced. The most-voiced concern has shifted from range anxiety to the availability and cost of the raw materials needed to make batteries the central piece of this mobility revolution. But high battery costs would not only put the brakes on EVs. They could also slow down the transition to decentralized power that YouSolar is pioneering.

Amidst a recovering stock market, solar tracking company Nextracker went public at a $3.5 billion valuation last week. This marks the largest IPO of the year and shines a sunny light on public market appetite for climate technology.

The world has about 8 billion people. We have built a fantastic world. We can see a black hole in the center of our Milky Way, and the Apple Watch will call 911 when we wipe out on the ski slope. We have built this stupendous world by burning coal, oil, and gas. It is a very reasonable question to ask how we can power our future now that we must immediately and drastically cut carbon emissions to protect the delicate thermal balance of the atmosphere. Solar surely will not be able to entirely power the modern world, right?

Sustainability think tank RMI publishes an ongoing series that explores how demand for fossil fuels is peaking, or has already peaked in many countries and sectors, and will soon enter a phase of accelerating decline. One article in the series provides a fascinating and entertaining history of past energy transitions. Its central argument is this: Once an energy source reaches its peak, its decline into irrelevance is inevitable and only a matter of time.

The New York Times recently published an article with a title that may have made the cover of an exuberant 1960s issue of Popular Mechanics, “Could Air Someday Power Your Flight? Airlines Are Betting on It.” It was accompanied by the utopian graphic shown below of a plane emitting flowers

After the recent winter storms in California, a potential customer, named Andy, reached out to us. He already has a 6kW solar array and a backup solution consisting of two Tesla Powerwalls. Andy’s total cost for the combined system, which he purchased in 2021, was $64K, including installation and before-tax credits.