The transcription of the video is below.

Justin’s background and road to Energy Toolbase 

Kerim: All right. Hi, everyone! This is Kerim, Kerim Baran with SolarAcademy. Today, I am with Justin Hammond of Energy Toolbase. Justin, welcome. Good to have you here. 

Justin: Hey, Kerim. It’s nice to be joining you and to be joining your audience.

Kerim: Yeah. And we are both here in Soquel in the San Diego region. But we’re on Zoom, obviously. And today, we’re going to talk a little bit about Justin’s background and then dive into Energy Toolbase, which has been one of the key players on the software side for resi, commercial industrial solar plus storage solutions over the past decade, plus. And Justin is the new leader for their enterprise services team. 

But before we go in there, Justin, tell us a little bit about how you ended up in renewable energy and also with Energy Toolbase.

Justin: Sure. So my background is in civil engineering, and I’ve been a part of the solar and storage industry for, gosh, got in it in 2010. So 14 years now, all of which has been non-residential. So designing and developing, you know, projects for both the public and private sector. So I’ve a lot of experience responding to RFPs, also a lot of experience sitting at tables with C-level decision makers. 

And it’s interesting. It’s pretty neat because I actually got my start in the industry working for a solar and storage contractor based in San Diego. And that’s where I met John Gurski, who was the founder of Energy Toolbase. So I had the opportunity to work directly alongside him before he ventured off to start coding Energy Toolbase. 

So here I am, you know, joining Energy Toolbase last year. It was pretty neat, being able to kind of bring things full circle and have the opportunity to work with him again, after all these years.

What is ETB developer? 

Kerim: Great. Wow. That’s awesome. And for viewers’ benefit, Energy Toolbase, I believe, has been around since 2014-ish and has really established itself as the go-to platform, software platform for EPCs, installers, developers to calculate their ROI, return on investment calculations mainly because they had the biggest database and real time information on hundreds of utilities, great information on energy or electricity pricing, which is obviously, one of the key inputs in calculating the return on investment for these assets.

And so, and along the way, Energy Toolbase has been acquired by a public company, Pason Systems, which has traditionally operated in the oil and energy sector and has been serving its client base ever since.

And so Justin, you’ve been around and you also have used the product, I assume, in your prior positions. So tell us a little bit about that software product that you’ve used. And then how does that tie into your current enterprise services activities with Energy Toolbase? 

Justin: Yeah, happy to do so. And, you know, you touched on the point of the tariffs. For those of us who have been in the industry for a while, remember feeling the pain of having to maintain spreadsheets and you know, track changes in tariffs and the hassle that was. 

It was pretty cool because John, as he was going through the beta phase of Energy Toolbase was able to work with the contractor that I was at, to test that product and kind of give us a first look at that product, which was, as you know, it quickly became the gold standard, within the industry for avoided cost analysis. 

You’re absolutely right. We were founded back in 2014. So right, turning 10 years old this year. And it was originally founded as that, you know, the software platform for modeling and proposing the economics of solar and storage projects. And so really, that product is now better known as ETB developer today.

Kerim: Developer, yup.

Justin: It’s still our flagship product, but for the first five years of the company, that is just what it was until 2019, when the company was acquired by Pason Systems, as you mentioned. And ultimately, we merged with one of their subsidiaries called Pason Power.

And so Pason Systems, as you mentioned, they’re a billion-dollar publicly traded company on the Toronto Stock Exchange, an energy services and technology company that had taken their core technologies of control, system software, data aggregation, data monitoring, and applied that to energy storage, again, through Pason Power.

Now, the parent company, Pason Systems, recognized the opportunity there to take the energy management system with Pason Power and merge that with Energy Toolbase’s modeling platform to market the ability to model, control, and monitor assets. 

So now today we have a suite of products that takes you through every step of a project’s lifecycle. And so that just allows us to bring more value to the industry. 

And so again, now, in addition to that, ETB developer for monitoring, we have our Acumen EMS, intelligent control software. And so it’s hardware agnostic. And it just is really making for the most accurate bankable storage investments out there because now, there’s no disconnect between what you’re modeling and what you can expect to see in the field. Because the same dispatch simulation logic that is in Energy Toolbase’s developer platform is the same algorithm that’s in Acumen that’s in the field. 

And so we’re again, it just makes for very accurate performance, the extent to which we’re so comfortable that we’re able to issue performance guarantees and compensate you for any disparity in savings there might be. And when it comes to those savings again, Acumen is an intelligent – 

Kerim: So you’ve become the underwriter for a third party EPC-built system. And you guarantee the performance of that system. 

Justin: Correct.

Kerim: Wow. 

Justin: Correct. 

Kerim: I did not know that. Okay. 

Acumen EMS™: control software to maintain consistency between modeling and field results

Justin: Yeah. The Acumen EMS, it’s responding to a number of different signals to maximize savings. Right? So it’s tracking your behavior. It’s using AI to learn your behavior. 

That’s right. So it’s monitoring the behavior of the system. It’s taking into account changes in the usage profile. It’s also factoring in signals from changes in your utility rate. 

And so we have a full-time utility rates team, which is monitoring and updating utility rates and then feeding that information into our Acumen EMS, so that we are constantly optimizing for any changes in the tariff and optimizing to your specific tariff.

And then, in addition to that, it’s also responding to signals related to grid service programs. So it’s co-optimizing for all of these to really maximize the return on your investment. 

And then in keeping with all this in terms of transparency, accuracy, and just successful deployment of clean energy systems is our ETB monitor solution.

And so that’s where, in real time, you’re able to view the behavior and performance of your assets. And when it comes to performance, it’s not just, you know tracking kilowatts and kilowatt-hours. We’re looking at the performance from a dollars and cents perspective. 

Kerim: Yeah.

Justin: And so again, the utility rates that are going into Acumen EMS, they’re also being applied in monitor so that you can, yeah, we’re able to quantify the savings contribution from both the ESS and the PV. 

And then really just to give you the ability to at a glance, determine the health of the system and the health of the investment. Right? And really focused on that the bottom line savings value. 

So that’s where we’re at today and we are about 70 employees strong right now.

Kerim: Right. Very nice. 

The role of the Enterprise Services team in relation to Energy Toolbase’s software products

How does the enterprise services team tie into these various different products that you talked about? I assume those products you talked about the traditional ETB, original SAS product and the EMS or the management system software and the Acumen product, these are sold as software modules, if I’m assuming correctly. Or is that part of the services offering to be able to use these?

Justin: Yeah, great, great question. So the modeling controls and monitoring software can all be purchased a la carte.  

The enterprise services team is its own distinct service. And so we are, simply put, the consulting arm of Energy Toolbase. And so over the years we’ve definitely provided consulting services to VIP clients, but we decided last year to formally productize it and make it available to everybody.

 And so we are working with a lot of corporates, a lot of developers, vendors, financiers, and by extension, working with their clients who are just a very diverse group, right? You know we’re dealing with anyone from Fortune 500 companies to mom-and-pop shops, but happy to help them all alike. We’re doing that through our two main types of engagements where we’ve got, namely, site optimizations and portfolio assessments.

Kerim: One question before you dive into those types of engagements, who is your counterpart at these companies? Whether it’s a Fortune 500 or a mom-and-pop or a big tech company, do you deal with usually the CFO and whatever falls under him or her type of organization? Or are you dealing with facilities? I’m just curious. 

Justin: All of these, all of the above, usually somebody who’s championing the project. Sometimes you’re dealing with a committee of people, but yeah, it’s a little bit of everything.

Kerim: Got it. Interesting. Very, very cool. 

The two approaches of Energy Toolbase to optimize clean energy projects

So you were saying there are generally there are two types of engagements that you do with your client base. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Justin: Sure. Yeah, so we have the site optimization engagements, which are typically where we’re looking at a single campus or a single facility where we’ve got a meter or a handful of meters that we’re looking at. And this is our, it’s a fully white-labeled, on-demand design service where we are taking into account, customer guidance, customer input, any kind of inputs and assumptions they may have, and then coupling that with our local utility and incentive knowledge to provide a researched, validated, optimized, really series of designs for our clients. 

And so what we do by default is we always provide a PV design, a hybrid design, and a standalone storage design. And then, when it comes to the portfolio analysis, that is more of our market level analysis.

And so oftentimes, we’re working with organizations that have a national footprint. And we’re helping them to rank their facilities and to help prioritize where to invest their financial resources first, when it comes to clean energy,

Kerim: Yeah, where to put the solar and the battery, solar only, or solar plus battery or battery only because they have warehouses or retail outlets or data centers across, you know, probably 10 different states and different rates and different solar resource and all of that, you know, I figure like that. 

Justin: Exactly. Right. Yep. 

Kerim: Yeah. And do you do that? I guess, manually, but also at the same time, using your own software tools probably.

Justin: We’re certainly leveraging Energy Toolbase’s developer. And again, all of our engagements are supported by our utility rates team. And so they’re some of the most knowledgeable people when it comes to rates in the entire nation. And so they’re helping to do all the research, you know, we’re looking to –

Kerim: But it’s such a, I mean, you know, I have an industrial engineering background so it’s such an optimization exercise to run that multivariable math problem, essentially, with so many different inputs across so many different locations. That said, that must be quite an intellectual exercise, each engagement.

Justin: Yeah. Oftentimes, what’s happening is we establish a project archetype that we can apply. We’re kind of grouping by a certain facility type, and then we’re able to use as a benchmark within each territory to a town.

Kerim: That makes a lot of sense. 

Key considerations to optimize the economics of a commercial solar+ storage project

I assume you also have a nice ecosystem of EPC partners who use this tool alongside you guys as the project owners that will own and build up asset at the very least, and maybe own and operate it, as well. 

And then you mentioned your ability to underwrite the production guarantee on those. You’ve got to have full trust into the EPC teams that are doing the job on the ground. So there are some really complex relationships there. 

Can you talk a little bit about how that satisfies the customers’, I guess, anxiety and all that? 

Justin: Well, you know, there’s certainly commissioning and diligence that goes into making sure the installation is done properly. And then, by all means, you know, we are –

Kerim: – And you guys have a team that does that from Energy Toolbase’s side to do the guarantee. Like, you’re not going to guarantee a project without doing that, I assume. Correct?

Justin: Correct. Yes, we’re working hand in hand with the installers to make sure that the installation is done properly. 

Kerim: Yeah.

Justin: And then, we are hardware agnostic when it comes to, you know,
Acumen EMS, but we found that as we establish these partnerships, it’s where we’re in bed with them for the life of the system. Right? So we do a lot of diligence on our end, when it comes to field testing and making sure that there’s going to be a proper amount of communication and there won’t be any issues there. 

Kerim: So what are some of the key considerations that go into optimizing the economics of a commercial solar plus storage project? Should we just go through those elements now? Maybe also as we do that, or afterwards, you can dive into a case study and show us a working sample. 

Justin: Happy to do. Yeah. As you can imagine, there are a number of considerations that go into right sizing a solar system, but typically, once you get into it and you start peeling back the layers of the onion on a project, you usually find that there’s one or two things that you can can target or that helps establish a threshold for the project size. 

So whether it’s a space constraint where you’ve got X amount of footprint to work with and you can only fit so much capacity in that footprint. Or say, a billing constraint where let’s just say you were able to offset 100% of your energy that sets your max system size. 

But it can also be a function of the local net metering app or a utility and connection cap, or also being influenced by local incentives and grid service programs and things like that.

Kerim: Yeah.

Justin: So these are all things that our team takes into account when we’re walking through these engagements.

An example of Energy Toolbase’s site optimization deliverable

Perfect. So this is an example of our site optimization deliverable. And so, again, you want to think of this as a comparative analysis. Because what we’re doing is we’re showing you really three designs – a standalone storage design, a hybrid design, and a PV only design. 

And so here, the summary page, it’s a nice layout of the key financial metrics. You can easily compare the payback period, the internal rate of return, the present value, and the difference in countbacks and annual savings. 

And then for each one of these runs, we can expand. Obviously, you could download this as a PDF and have a hard copy if you like, but for each one of these, we then go into fine detail in terms of “Hey, well, we can just walk through each one of these.” Let me actually jump over to the hybrid design here.

Again, this is this is a completely white-labeled service. You can see our logo there, but to whatever extent you’d like us behind the scenes or in front of the scenes, we’re happy to play that role. And so we can be happy that – 

Kerim: Well, that could be the brand of an EPC company there instead of Energy Toolbase…

Justin: Exactly right. You know, we found that it’s about 50/50. Some people like to have us, they just want to see their logo. Other people kind of like the idea of co-branding and leaning on our expertise, as well. So either way, we’re happy. 

Again, a lot of these, if you’re familiar with Energy Toolbase, a lot of these charting components, a lot of these graphs are going to look familiar. This is just a template that we designed for the enterprise services team. It’s a little customized, has a little more information. And yeah, pretty much, you know, as we’ve got the nice summary here, again, of the key financial details, system sizes, usage profile. 

So we’re giving you a sense of the snapshot of your tariff information, cost by month, kind of giving you a sense of what, you know, a feel for your usage profile, from an example, a sample month. 

Kerim: I’m going to pause you for a second, Justin. I have one curious question here. How many like EPC partners in your ecosystem are using this? I mean, if you could share using the traditional Energy Toolbase SAS products, software products. Has been around for a decade. 

And also, how many are starting to use this enterprise services team’s, support from you guys? And also curious, how many are then selling your production guarantee along with all of these services to their end customers?

Justin: Yeah, great question. So we have about 2400 active accounts. So not all necessarily EPCs, but to give you a sense – 

Kerim: – mostly EPCs and developers, maybe. Who else would that be?

Justin: Financers. Yeah, financiers. 

Kerim: Yeah. 

Justin: And this is a relatively new division within Energy Toolbase. We’ve got the clients that we have had. It obviously, represents a fraction of our user base, but the clients we have engaged with have become repeat clients. And what we’re finding is that some of these clients are actually looking to, you know, they just want to maximize the amount of face time they have their clients and kind of offload the burden, this more, what would you call it? The tedious work to our teams. So kind of filling in as a part of their process entirely. 

Kerim: And then how many are using the production guarantee? Is that a newish service or is that something you guys have been doing for a while? Because this is where the real value is, if I am seeing it.

Justin: Yeah, and so when it comes to our storage systems, we always provide a production guarantee. So that that just comes by default. So just kind of continuing walking through this, obviously, we’re recreating the utility bill. 

Before we get started, what we’re doing is we’re making sure that you’re on the most favorable rate schedule pre-solar, and are in fact, eligible to be on the rate schedule you’re currently on.

So we’re checking those things. But obviously, as we’re going through the design, we’re looking at opportunities to do rate switches to maximize energy savings. And so here again, one of our core tenets, as a company is transparency. So you can see very detailed, very transparent when it comes to where your charges are coming from and where your expenses are.

And then obviously, here it’s, you know, you’ve got the utility bill before, utility bill after, and a nice little breakdown of where exactly did the savings come from? How much is attributed to solar? How much is attributed to the battery? Again, a nice little snapshot of the savings breakdown here. Again, just kind of a month to month type of visualization of that.

Aspects of Energy Toolbase’s Enterprise Service engagements. Monitoring and other post-installation offerings

Kerim:  And these services that you’re offering as part of the enterprise service team, is that an ongoing engagement for an EPC company or an end user or both, one or the other or both? And/or is that like a two-month engagement while the project is being built, while the asset is being built? And then is there a monitoring component to like an ongoing, “Okay. This is what we had predicted. This is what we guaranteed. And then this is what happened in year 1, year 2, 3, 4, 5 and so on.” Can you talk a little bit about that, too?

Justin: Yeah, sure. So when it comes to these engagements, typically, the way it works is we’ll have somebody reach out to us and say, “Hey, we’d like to partner with you on this project.”

We essentially issue an intake form and then take that back, digest it as a team, memorialize our understanding of the project with the client. Before we jump into it, take an initial pass at it, and then hold a design review meeting where we go over initial findings and give the client the ability to make any adjustments, or any edits that they would like to see.

And then we issue that final deliverable and that usually concludes the scope of the enterprise services engagement. Now, that said, you know, we are – 

Kerim: How long does that take from start to finish, usually?

Justin: Five business days, on average. 

Kerim: Okay. Yeah. 

Justin: Obviously, some of it depends on the availability of the client to make that design review meeting. But it’s five business days, is our state of turn around.

Kerim: Got it. And then once the project is up and running, is there a post to go live date component to any services that you provide?

Justin: When you say post to go live date, can you elaborate? 

Kerim: Yeah. Like once the project is up and running, is there an annual, review or assessment that you connect with the EPC and/or the end user on various aspects?

Justin: Yeah, great question. So we don’t have a formal annual check in per se, but that’s where our monitoring system comes into play. 

Kerim: Right.

Justin: We’ve got a monitoring system. It’s going to be there to provide any sort of alerts as to, you know, systems being offline or any kind of issue there. And then also provide the visibility into again, the help with the investment at any given instant, where you can jump in and view the status of the system and see what’s been performing from an economic standpoint.

Kerim: It’s just a hunch. And I might be totally wrong, but it might be worthwhile to offer a relatively low-priced check in meeting service on an annual basis or maybe every six months with the clients just so they get to touch base with you guys and also talk to an expert in terms of like looking at their monitoring system, rather than looking at it alone in their own silo, not really knowing every detail because they do that maybe once or twice a year.

But if they do it with you guys on a Zoom call and you guys comment, it can help with their ongoing education as well as some recurring revenue for you and staying in touch with them, hearing their feedback for additional product ideas. Just a thought for John and team, John and Adam and team, you know?

Justin: No, absolutely. And you’re right. You know, it’s different, you have different levels of interest there, you know of post installation. And so depending on who you’re working with oftentimes CFOs are really keen on and diligent in terms of tasks in the system versus say perhaps a house of worship or something like that.

Kerim: Anyway, please continue. I didn’t want to cut you off there. 

Justin: Sure. So, again, it’s just a very detailed and thorough assessment of both technologies, the PV system. We’ll get to the ESS system here in a second. 

Again, we are doing this for soup to nuts. So we are also putting together the layouts, again, based off of your guidance. We’ll ask where the perspective solar locations are, if any, but then, obviously, we’re following the international fire code PV installation guidelines so we are well aware of the edge roof offsets, the access pathways, and certainly taking into account, you know, as you can see here the screening around the rooftop equipment here, so the shading. We’re taking that into account. 

But to just give you a sense of the type of quality when it comes to our layouts and the thought that goes into our designs, you know, obviously here being mindful of the bio soil. 

And then moving on the, again, the ESS system, very detailed, you know, down to how many times a year the storage system is cycling, breakdowns in terms of the energy output and demand savings from PV and ESS.

And then, of course, you know, the incentives and the rebates that have been factored into the project. And again, here, you can see this is very straightforward cash flow table where again, you know, identifying all the key inputs, your utility escalation rate, discount rate. All of these things these are things that our client can provide input on, as well. 

So if they wanted to see something different, by all means, but yeah, this is really the other piece of it in terms of this template that makes it unique is this appendix section where again, we are detailing every little bit of this and including notes, not just the key values, but also the notes that went into the design in terms of, was there any sort of implications from NEM cap or the rate tariff notes that you can see here.

And so, if you needed to it’s to help address, again, full transparency. We don’t want this to be a black box, like oftentimes happens. And then in addition to that, lastly, we’ve got the glossary of terms. It’s always nice to know you’re speaking the same language and a lot of these can be helpful when you’re speaking with the end user and those clients. So that is it in a nutshell.

Kerim: That concludes our demo of the new enterprise services. And thank you, thank you for that, Justin. And thank you for this wealth of information and the depth you provided around the new enterprise services team that has been formed to extend those VIP services to all ETB clients out there 

And I look forward to doing more solar conversations with you in the future, maybe diving into more of the economic value, monitoring the energy controls, and maybe how to model demand response and similar types of topics that are all relevant –

Justin: That sounds great. 

Kerim: – to these types of solutions. 

Justin: You bet. 

Kerim: Thank you, Justin, and talk to you soon.

Justin: Thanks, Kerim.