How solar energy is impacting the industry: Ipsun Solar

Tom Houghton:

You’re listening to “The Building Code.” I’m Tom Houghton.

Paul Wurth:

I’m Paul Wurth.

Tom Houghton:

We’ll dive in with our guest in just a second, but first I’m going to tell you about an exciting new offering that we have called onsite consulting. That’s right. Buildertrend is now offering onsite consulting. It’s a customized training based on your needs for your entire team in your workspace. Our team of highly trained coaches will come to you and train your people on Buildertrend, best practices. If you want to increase your team’s skills and our programs quickly and efficiently then onsite consulting may be the perfect fit for you. Of course, you can head to our show notes at buildertrend.com/podcast and click on the link for onsite consulting to learn more. Today on our episode, we have a special guest joining us all the way from Washington DC, from the company Ipsun Solar, today we’re joined by Herve Billiet.

Herve Billiet:

Hello, good afternoon everybody.

Paul Wurth:

Hello.

Tom Houghton:

How are you doing?

Herve Billiet:

Pretty good, pretty good. In Washington DC, so a lot of things going on in DC.

Tom Houghton:

Of course, nation’s capital, always lots of buzz happening there.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. The company name and your name got a lot of research from Tom there. So I’m glad we’re making them work a little bit.

Tom Houghton:

It’s true.

Paul Wurth:

Ipsun Solar.

Tom Houghton:

Ipsun Solar

Paul Wurth:

I love it.

Tom Houghton:

Maybe let’s dive in first and let’s talk about the name. I know you mentioned it’s a Latin name, so maybe you can give us the background on it.

Herve Billiet:

Yeah. There was a little story behind it. When we first started, we started being called Smart Power. Well, that wasn’t a very smart decision because there’s a lot of companies with the name smart in it, and so we had to change that. And so we changed it to Ipsun Power. Actually, I Googled how you say smart in Latin, and Google told me it’s Ipsun, and I had a little bit of Latin when I was younger and like, that’s not correct. Ipsun actually means yourself. And then I thought about it more. Actually we installed solar panels so people create their own power, your own power. So being called Ipsun Power, that makes sense.

Herve Billiet:

And then now we’re called Ipsun Solar because you want to make sure your name has solar so people can find your services. Because when we were called Ipsun Power, we had a lot of people calling us in the middle of the night at 3 a.m. like, “I need to pay my power bill.” I was like, “Well, you just called a solar company. So more than happy to come install solar,” but we had to change it because we were overloaded with people wanting to pay their bills in the middle of the night. And I’m the guy that’s still 24-7 on the front line. So if you want to annoy me, just call me in the middle night, I’ll pick up.

Tom Houghton:

I love the dedication there.

Paul Wurth:

That’s interesting. We should ask all of our guests how they came up their name-

Tom Houghton:

I like that.

Paul Wurth:

Because that’s a really cool story.

Tom Houghton:

That’s a great story.

Paul Wurth:

So how long have you guys been in business?

Herve Billiet:

About three years now.

Paul Wurth:

Three years.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. And you’ve got a team of people there, but I want to start by talking a little bit more about your background, because you’ve been dancing around the solar industry for a while. Is that correct?

Herve Billiet:

Yeah. Dancing is correct. Yep.

Paul Wurth:

Is that accurate.

Tom Houghton:

He’s a dancer.

Herve Billiet:

So I’m an engineer by education, a master’s in electromechanics. That’s not something that exists in America, but electromechanics is actually a good degree. It’s like taking half the electrical class and half from mechanics. So you don’t know anything for sure, but you know, half of electricity and half of mechanics, and the reason why they did that is because most electrical components have mechanical components, and a lot of mechanical components have an electrical one. So you needed somebody that knew a little bit about both, but just to combine that knowledge, and little did I know that a solar energy system has a mechanical component to attach to different roofs in many different ways, and also has an electrical component. So it was actually a perfect education for that. What got me into the solar industry was, I designed the first Belgium solar car. It’s a good 15 years ago, but that’s how I got into solar.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. Let’s talk about that for a second.

Paul Wurth:

Oh boy here we go. Tom’s got a Tesla and it’s just, cannot go a minute without hearing about it? So, all right take it away, Tom.

Tom Houghton:

I just want to know more about this solar car that you built. So what did it look like? I mean, do you have like pictures that you could share with us, and we can put it up on the show notes page afterwards?

Herve Billiet:

Yeah, totally, totally. So the idea came from a student at our university, and at university they built a car in the Netherlands. It wasn’t Belgium, but one of the students at our university joined the team in the Netherlands to build a solar car. And there is a championship every two years, people all over the world build a solar car, and then they ship it to Australia and they race it. And then that race over time. First, it was a bunch of amateurs and you just have an ordinary car, slap a solar panel on top, and call it a solar car. And then as things progressed over time, just like industries mature.

Tom Houghton:

Did you actually end up racing I assume too?

Herve Billiet:

Yeah. We shipped the car to Australia. I remember talking to DHL. I was like, “Can you please ship it for free?” And then they actually eventually said yes, so that was very nice. So now 15 years ago, I’m still thanking sponsors. I just mentioned DHL and there’s the other ones we still sponsor. So Makita, for example, he was one of two manufacturers, right? The company I like to buy Makita drills and impact drills, we buy a lot of them. And I still ask my guys to buy Makita just because of Makita helped us at a time. They gave us a catalog, like you just get whatever you want. And so many years later I’m still a Makita fan because of that.

Paul Wurth:

That’s great.

Tom Houghton:

There you go. Let’s fast forward to today, and so you guys are now based in Washington, DC, you kind of service the whole DMV area there correct?

Herve Billiet:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tom Houghton:

How many installs are you doing? Give us some more background on that.

Herve Billiet:

Yep. Yep. So we’ve grown quickly. The solar industry in America is really maturing fast. It’s picking up. When I did my first residential systems like a good 10, 15 years ago, it was really expensive. And you basically had to find a hippie with money, like somebody that really wanted solar for whatever reason, and that was it. And there were not too many hippies with money I could find. So I was living in Alabama at the time. It was my first solar company. So I had just three solar installations in a full year time. That was it. So couldn’t run the business. Now, many years later I started Ipsun Smart Power. And then in three years time, we grew from just me and my co-founder Joe, where we just did everything ourselves, like the engineering, the design, the sales, just everything ourselves to now we have 20 people full time, and we’re still hiring aggressively though.

Tom Houghton:

That’s awesome.

Paul Wurth:

And what’s a typical install for you? Is that residential, commercial? Do you have a typical job that you get?

Herve Billiet:

Yep. Yep. We’re working in three different markets, Virginia, DC, and Maryland. So they’re all a little bit different. So to answer your question about the typical job, I would say like a standard residential, that’s our bread and butter installing residential systems. We do that everyday now, and then we do also commercial. We also have a utility scale project going on. So those are those massive big fields that you see. That’s really changing it. So when we just got started, I mean, you installed a few solar panels you’re like, “Why am I doing this?” As the mission, we want to fight climate change. But installing a few solar panels is not going to make a dent in anything. Just like with a solar a car. But the idea of that solar car was to start doing some lobbying. I approached, we went to see the energy minister at a time in Belgium and said like, “We should do something about climate change.”

Herve Billiet:

I’m not sure that they listened at the time, but anyway, it was like a statement what solar can do. And so now installing solar panels, yeah one or two panels is not going to make a difference, but you do this over and over again, every single day of the year, with more and more crews and more and more people that can afford it because the price crashes, it dropped 90% the last five years. So whereas in the past, everybody just plugged in their home to the grid, right, and just pay utility bills every month, everybody pays them. That’s it, that’s a utility. You’re stuck, you pay your phone bills every month and you pay utility bills every month and electricity everybody used it, and there was not really an option. Whereas now you might as well put solar panels on your home and produce your own power. You don’t have to pay a utility anymore.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah it makes sense.

Herve Billiet:

It was pretty cool.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. I think that’s great to point out like again, how the industry is changing so much and solar is becoming way more accessible because of price dropping, but also the panels themselves are getting more efficient, correct?

Herve Billiet:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

So that way, because I mean, I’m thinking about Washington DC weather, I’m thinking about Omaha, Nebraska weather. It’s not California, where you’ve got sunshine 300 days out of the year plus, right. But you’re still able to produce a lot of good energy off of these solar panels, even in climates where they’re not seeing the sun every single day of the year.

Herve Billiet:

That’s true. That’s true. Now let’s keep in mind that the first big nation to install solar big time was actually Germany. It’s not too sunny over there, so we in Washington, DC, we have 40% more sun than you have in Germany. So even your worst case system that you install in Washington, DC is still going to way, way out produced a system in Germany. So a lot of people ask also about shading. “Hey, I have a shading, I have a tree here. Would that be problematic?” So you would have a tree that literally covers 40% of your array before, and you would still be the same as like a perfect system in Germany. And like you said, the industry is changing is maturing. So 10, 15 years ago we installed… solar panels were so expensive that whenever you install it, it was an optimum system.

Herve Billiet:

The solar panels were oriented towards the south. It was like the perfect system, no shading, no nothing. And now solar panels are so much cheaper and the price or solar project is just labor, insurance, and design work. It’s not just the solar panels anymore. So now we get that solar panels to roofs that are east facing west facing. And we start even installing north facing, which just a few years ago was like, if you did that, you were like a moron, you don’t know about the solar industry. That’s a no go, you don’t do that. But now solar panels are so cheap that once you take on a project, once you start construction, you’re on the roof. If you do one side of the roof and the other one is facing north and not like a steep incline, might as well put it on the north face. So the industry is changing rapidly. Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

Let’s talk a little bit about your industrial project you said you’re working on. Is that to do something like community solar?

Herve Billiet:

We would like to. The one I mentioned like a five megawatt is in Virginia. Community solar is not legal, not authorized. Yeah. And then although the utility calls a community solar project in mind, but normally, a community project is a couple people get together, pay for solar company to install solar on the field or wherever they can find it, and then you can distribute that power to people that want to pay for it. Right? That’s a community solar. People get together, pay for solar, and then they can distribute the energy to whoever wants to pay for it. And that’s allowed by state legislations like Maryland, for example, that’s allowed, but in Virginia, it’s not allowed so you can’t do it.

Herve Billiet:

And then there is something called community solar Virginia, but it’s the utility that owns the system, gets it built, and then upcharge people to use solar power. Whereas solar probably is actually cheaper, little maintenance, it’s usually cheaper than regular power, but then utility here calls it community solar power, does everything themselves, and up charge customers for it. So it’s not entirely, they use the branding of community solar for that one.

Paul Wurth:

Take us through the economics of it all. And what I mean by that, we’ll just shoot for the middle. So if I own a home and I don’t know, six panels or whatever, you let me know what that is, and what does that save me, what does that cost me? And do the States have different, what would they call those, rebates?

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, there’s a federal rebate.

Paul Wurth:

There’s a federal rebate and then there’s state.

Tom Houghton:

Depending on the state.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. So take us through that, a little bit of that.

Herve Billiet:

Yep. So you have the federal tax credit. That’s a 30% federal tax credit on the entire solar energy project. So whatever the cost of the project is, you can claim 30% the next year that you file your taxes. Now, a little hint that 30% is going to go to 26% next year and 22% and then zero it’s for residential projects. So it stays flat at 10% for commercial projects. Being in Washington, DC we will see if we can change that or not. We’ll try.

Tom Houghton:

You guys are on the front lines there, doing the work for us.

Herve Billiet:

Pretty much. Yeah. That’s a federal tax credit, and the goal of that tax credit is really trying to give the industry a way to mature faster, and that federal tax credit is when you fill out the form, you’ll see it’s about fossil fuel gas and a lot of other stuff, including wind and solar. So it’s not something that’s created for solar. It’s there for plenty other industries and solar is part of that. That’s one thing. And then each state has some different incentives or regulations. The easiest one is Virginia, they don’t have anything, that’s easy. There’s nothing.

Herve Billiet:

Then you have states like Maryland and DC and plenty other states across the United States, it’s that they provide incentive. Usually it’s something called a REC renewable energy credit, or when it’s specifically for solar it’s called a solar renewable energy credit like a SREC, and it’s a market just like the stock market that fluctuates in price. And for every megawatt hour of power that you produce, you receive one SREC and that SREC can have a value and usually it’s around… Well, the market fluctuates it’s all over the place. But depending on which market you are in DC it’s around $250 for one SREC, in Maryland it’s around $20 now, earlier this year was around $8. So it goes up, it goes down. And in Virginia, there was no market at all, it’s zero.

Herve Billiet:

So every time you produce that power, you can sell it. And so it’s incentive that the state puts in that says, “We want to have more clean power,” and they force utilities to pay for that. So the utility has an option either to install their own thing and they do something about the environment or they pay a fee to everybody that did install solar for them.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. And what’s a typical install in one of your States?

Herve Billiet:

Yep. Usually you’re looking at around an eight kilowatt system, an eight kilowatt system is 8,000 Watts. Let me quickly take a calculator here. 8,000 Watts and a typical solar panel is 215 Watts panels, so that’s around 25 panels that you put on average.

Paul Wurth:

Does that power the home a 100% throughout the year. What does that look like?

Herve Billiet:

Usually not, and that’s because people consume just a whole lot of power and homes usually are two stories high. And so you consume a lot of power on an actual small surface. So solar is fantastic and efficiency goes up all the time, but you need a surface for that. Usually the limiting factor is the size of the roof. So when you look at a home and there’s only so many solar panels that can fit on that roof, that’s it. That’s really the determining factor.

Paul Wurth:

Do you guys, in your sales process, do you have your own salespeople?

Herve Billiet:

Mm-hmm (affirmative) yep.

Paul Wurth:

So do you guys go through a whole ROI thing with them? Hey, if you spend X amount here, you’re going to save X amount per year, that cumulates over the years.

Herve Billiet:

Oh yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely. Many years ago, I had to find that hippy with money, right. That was our typical customer, right? Right now it’s just anybody that pays a utility bill and now wants to save money. So it’s like pretty much everybody. The reason why people go solar is not just to save the planet. It’s nice, it sits in people’s mind, like, oh yeah, that’s nice to have, but the determining factor, honestly it’s the money. You save money and you don’t have to do anything. Once you install solar, there’s no maintenance, there are no moving parts, you don’t hear it in, there’s no smell to it.

Herve Billiet:

So at first people are excited about having solar and you receive a little app, and you see how much you produce. And then after a while, well, you produce power every day. So after a while, people get bored by it, which is a good thing, right? It works every day and produce power for your day. You don’t have to do anything. So, after a while people stopped checking the app, because it’s going to be the same as the previous day when you produce power, same as the previous day.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Are you doing one product or do you have a couple of different options for people?

Herve Billiet:

Yeah, we have different options, but we try to minimize it so that we have a standard solar panel and a high efficiency solar panel. There’s a price difference, of course. And Oh, actually in the back here, you see this black thing?

Paul Wurth:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Herve Billiet:

That’s the standard solar panel that we install. And just like you have a general contractor that buys the bricks to go build his home, we just buy solar panels to go, and we design them and go install the solar energy system.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s when I saw, I think he made me watch this from your idol, Elon Musk. He did a whole thing on the roof panels, like the actual tiles, not these huge things where the entire roof is solar. Is that something that we should expect in the near future, or would that be exclusive to Tesla or is that going to be something that everybody can-

Herve Billiet:

We are a Tesla Powerwall certified company.

Paul Wurth:

Oh okay.

Herve Billiet:

But that solar is not part of what we install, but knock on wood. I hope he succeeds. It’s a fantastic product. Right now it’s about, I think, seven or eight times more expensive than what we do. So price wise not quite there yet. Still need to find out ideas that not a hippie with money, but at least somebody that really wants a really nice solar energy system, the price difference is right now it’s just massive.

Paul Wurth:

It does speak to one of the issues with solar, which is, I mean, for lack of a better term, it’s kind of ugly, or it used to be when they used to be really big and clunky. They’ve got much better, but there is definitely an aesthetic it adds to your roof that some people may not want. So that like these tiles and I don’t know, put the YouTube video on the show notes.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah we’ll put it there.

Paul Wurth:

Those are really cool.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah it’s good. The whole industry is trying to elevate. Like you said, the panels are advancing and we’ve got Herve on video. And so we can see this black panel, which doesn’t look like the old Johnny Five panels where they’re like multicolored.

Paul Wurth:

Johnny Five?

Tom Houghton:

Johnny Five, no?

Paul Wurth:

No.

Tom Houghton:

You don’t know that reference?

Paul Wurth:

What is that?

Tom Houghton:

The movie “Short Circuit,” it features a robot called Johnny Five. Anyway, panels are making a lot of improvements. And so I think visually it is getting more appealing, and also future buyers, when they’re looking at homes, if they see a home that obviously is a net zero, or at least has a lower bill, that’s definitely a good selling point for a future owner.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. I’m into that. Are you exclusively renovation remodeling, or are you doing some new construction as well?

Herve Billiet:

We’ll be doing some new construction, but there are more existing roofs to be worked on, to add solar than brand new construction, at least where we live, where we operate.

Tom Houghton:

Sure. Let’s talk about how you’re managing your projects, because obviously you’ve got this big team now you’ve got a lot of stuff going on, the industry is growing. Let’s talk a little bit about how you’re overseeing all of that.

Herve Billiet:

So Buildertrend is a big part of that. I just think that right before these podcasts, we have 137 ongoing projects. So I’m glad Buildertrend keeps track of that for us. And when we use Buildertrend, it’s a really large software, but it doesn’t look overwhelming. So it’s very manageable, and now some parts of Buildertrend that we don’t, don’t use, and then we started using it over time. There are some parts of Buildertrend are still a bit unknown to us. And the other sections that we use continuously. For example, one thing that we do the key differentiator compared to a lot of other companies is we send out a weekly update to our customers, and every Tuesday, entire ops team sits together and we go over all our projects. So I just mentioned, we go over 137 projects on Tuesday, and we use those daily logs-

Paul Wurth:

Daily Logs yeah.

Herve Billiet:

That we send out. And then it’s not just for us internally to know where we are with all our projects. But then if you just have a little toggle, like inform customer, then they will see that update too. So we went from having just internal updates every week to just inform the customer. So we just write it a bit nice, like in full sentences, but it’s really short and people appreciate it. Many times they’re like, “Oh, thank you.” And sometimes things take a long time in the solar industry where you’re waiting on permits because yes, we pull permits for everything and do everything according to the books and every regulation, sometimes it takes time. And so if you don’t really have any progress, you’re waiting on the permit for a few weeks, in DC some times a month, two months, it’s good that a customer sees like, “Okay, they still know about me, they didn’t forget.” And it’s like being the same update on three weeks in a row, like waiting on permits. But that one little sentence makes all the difference, knowing that a customer is aware that we are working on it.

Paul Wurth:

That’s good to hear. We talk about that all the time. I think even on these airwaves, we’ve talked about how we recommend once a week summary to the homeowner, no matter how much it is, a touchpoint to touchpoint and they appreciate that. So it’s good to confirm that you guys are applying that.

Herve Billiet:

Absolutely, that’s a key. I mean, this is super important because in the end, if the customer is happy, it’s because there’s been a lot of communication too.

Tom Houghton:

So Herve, we’ve covered a lot of stuff today. Just to try to wrap it up and kind of look towards the future what are you seeing in the industry, what are you excited about? We talked a little bit about the Tesla solar tiles for the roof. What’s something that you’re really excited about that we’re going to see coming down the line to consumers.

Herve Billiet:

I think batteries, batteries are going to be part of just every solar installation that we do. So a lot of those Tesla Powerwalls, that’s one thing. At the same time, what I’d like to see in the solar industry is that solar becomes part of just a regular construction, it’s part of every architect, designing your home and Buildertrend is a construction software. I don’t think a lot of solar companies use it, but solar is construction. And so I think it should be integrated in just a regular construction project, and the exciting part to me about a solar industry is that solar becomes just another construction business, like another one. And so it would be part of the general industry. So it’s kind of strange to answer the most exciting piece is that it becomes very boring and regular. That’s my answer actually.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah that’s great though.

Tom Houghton:

That’s good.

Paul Wurth:

We’d love to have you in our space.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah more mainstream.

Paul Wurth:

That is construction.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. That’s good. Awesome. Well, Herve, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. We’ve obviously covered a lot. We appreciate you bringing your industry experience and sharing that with us. And don’t forget to check out our show notes page, we’ll list a link to your website, to your company. We’ll link in those videos, to the other products we talked about as well, just so you can check them out, and thanks for sharing your experience.

Herve Billiet:

Yeah, absolutely. I feel like I didn’t speak enough about Buildertrend. I really wanted to get the message across is that you guys have really fantastic software.

Paul Wurth:

No that’s good.

Herve Billiet:

It’s fantastic.

Paul Wurth:

Like we said, we appreciate that, but I think the listeners love hearing about your unique story and you definitely have a good one. You probably shouldn’t have dropped that you’re an authorized Tesla dealer, because Tom’s going to like personally email you questions. So just get ready for that.

Tom Houghton:

What kind of car do you drive?

Herve Billiet:

Chevy Volt?

Tom Houghton:

See he’s in the EV family. That’s good.

Paul Wurth:

If he throws out diesel Suburban, that would be the curve ball of the year.

Tom Houghton:

Okay Herve we’re going to let you go. Thanks so much for being on the show today.

Tom Houghton:

Love what you heard? Don’t forget to rate and subscribe to our podcast so you can hear from more guests that will benefit your business. Also, please check out our show notes page for more information on what we discussed on this episode. You can find it at buildertrend.com/podcast. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time on “The Building Code.”

Paul Wurth:

Appreciate you.