In this fifth video in the 6-part series on multifamily commercial solar, John Davis of Cal Solar Inc and Kerim Baran of SolarAcademy talk about ways of approaching adding energy storage and EV chargers to a solar system in a way that makes it lucrative in the multifamily solar space.

The entire interview with John can be viewed here.

Transcript of the video:

Kerim Baran of SolarAcademy: Seems like there’s no clear cut way or cookie-cutter way to implement these whether it’s solar plus storage the storage part or the EV charger part because – I mean I know there are multiple, at least three perhaps four, different use cases for batteries and also more than two ways to implement EV chargers and charge for it.

John Davis of Cal Solar: Right, right.

Kerim Baran: So it’s kind of interesting that we are at this transition inflection point of all these solutions kind of coming into our lives but there is no yet winning format per se, though there are really high returns for investors no matter which way you go.

John Davis: Yeah.

Kerim Baran: Which is really the interesting aspect of all of this because just doing the back of the envelope math with you on some projects I know that there are very reasonable uh RR, return rates, for investors on these kinds of projects.

John Davis: Yeah, there’s a reason why the utilities make so much money. It’s not because they’re giving us deals every day. So getting in on part of the revenue stream, it’s pretty significant you know. And one thing that I would add to that is that you mentioned that there’s no real clear-cut sort of way of doing it.

Kerim Baran: Yeah, no cookie-cutter format yet for right storage and EV charger solutions, yeah.

John Davis: However, I do feel that there is kind of like a crescendo and a kind of a baseline entry point that all portfolio properties should have. You know, like that low hanging fruit of the common area of meters. If your portfolio doesn’t have that it’s like, “Okay, you’re behind the times in California.” From my perspective is you do need to get caught up. From there I think the conversation of tenant billing has to be had for multi-family and it can be done in a high ROI option where you own the asset, you take full benefit of it. Or you could do it in no-cap x way where you spend nothing and you’re renting a roof and you’re just generating additional income. That can be layered in with roof repairs so you can then bundle your roof and your solar, get all that off of your balance sheet and start to generate that as a profit center versus a cost center.