What it costs to make power cheap

Home energy has spent most of a decade being sold as a premium product, priced at a margin homeowners would pay for something they wanted. Zach Dell says there’s a better way. He argues that electricity is a commodity, that the cheapest version is the best one, and that getting there means owning the supply chain that produces it.

In this episode, Alfred Johnson speaks with Zach, co-founder and CEO of Base Power, about what it costs to make power cheap. Zach argues the number that matters is the fully landed cost, the parts, manufacturing, logistics, financing, and tax credits added together — and that solving for any one alone gives the wrong answer. 

Together, they dig into why residential batteries are the fastest capacity to add to the grid, why a supplier that works at one unit a day breaks at a hundred, and what last summer’s  sourcing rules did to whether a Chinese part still makes sense. They also cover Texas and Illinois market structure, and growth from 60 people to a reported 650.

Critical Capital is a co-production of Crux and Latitude Studios. Learn more about how Crux is financing the future of energy.