More Economical Solar Power Maxout Renewables SAFE HARBOR This presentation contains forward-looking statements that pertain to "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. We describe our plans, assumptions, and objectives for future operations, and we make predictions that reflect our best knowledge. These may turn out to be wrong for many reasons beyond our control.
SAFE HARBOR This presentation contains forward-looking statements that pertain to "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. We describe our plans, assumptions, and objectives for future operations, and we make predictions that reflect our best knowledge. These may turn out to be wrong for many reasons beyond our control.
You know what we really need?
More disruptive solar.
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Since 2006, China’s dropped the price of solar panels by a factor of 7, spurring growth in solar power at rates that are nothing short of miraculous. However the rates still fall far short of what’s needed to do anything meaningful about global warming or energy sustainability. The trouble is the rest of the system still costs what it did in 2006, but Maxout is going to change that. Maxout’s breakthrough products cut the cost of moving power from solar panels to the grid by 80%. They will kick away a log jam that is holding back a flood of solar power. That’s what we really need.
Maxout came from a serious effort to put 1 MW solar plants in the ground for $0.50/W. That was a 10x cost reduction at the time. Unexpectedly, inverters were our biggest pain. They ate up half our budget and they go down for weeks at a time taking the whole plant with them. They also suffer from the ‘least common denominator effect’: the lowest performing panel drags the performance of the whole array down to its level. In normal installations, this is caused by aging, shading, fouling: real-world effects. Our main problem was panel mismatch and this was going to cut our plant output by 25%. “Power optimizers” and “microinverters” solve this problem, but we couldn’t afford them. So we were stuck, but not for long.
Conventional optimizers process the full panel power
This much extra power circuitry is not economical
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We realized that the problem with power optimizers is that they process all the power from the solar panel, and you can’t afford to do that.
Maxout’s solution: only process the extra power
All the extra power with 90% lower cost
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We invented a new kind of power optimizer we call ‘the Balancer’ that only processes the extra power that’s available. This architecture change cuts cost 90%. Our core patent on this technology has issued in the US and China. It’s pending in Brazil and India.
The Balancer: a big breakthrough in a small package
Sustainability: No wasted power. No wasted power electronics.
Competition: Solar Edge Optimizer
Sells for $0.48/W
Our solution: Maxout Balancer Sells for $0.16/W
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The Balancer cuts waste. It recovers power that would be otherwise wasted from a PV array, but it goes beyond that. Here’s its competition (to scale): 16x the number of boxes, 16x duplication of circuitry. Their power electronics weigh 16 lbs to our 3.5 lb. Their price is 3x ours. Their cost is 10x ours.
Feature Normal String Enphase SolarEdge Tigo Maxout
Optimize?
Monitor? $ $ $
Low Sun Boost?
Extended strings?
NEC rapid shutoff?
Any inverter? n/a
Any panel size?
Cost savings/W* 0 –$0.06 $0.06 $0.09 $0.24 – 0.32
*Assumes 15% imbalance, 24 x 250 W panels, civicsolar.com list prices, published efficiencies
The Balancer reduces the cost per Watt
These savings won’t go to waste
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The extra power produced by the Balancer is worth about $400 per panel over the system life. That’s tens of thousands of dollars for an array. We plan to price the balancer below $1000, so it easily pays for itself 10 times over. Our Balancer has built in performance monitoring, which costs an extra $500 on most systems. The Balancer has a patent-pending ‘boost’ mode that lets you eliminate an entire stage from an inverter, this saves about $500 and improves efficiency. The Balancer limits the voltage on a string, allowing more panels to be strung together to feed an inverter. This saves about $300. When you add a Balancer to a solar system, you lower the cost per Watt by about $0.30. That’s almost like getting your solar panels at half price. It’s a big deal. The savings won’t go to waste, they’ll go to our customers. Installers, our primary customers, can use these savings how they want: profit more on installs, or pass savings to their customers to gain market share. Either way, a lot more money stays local and not tied up in wasted power electronics on a roof.
Maxout’s market subsegment: Residential Solar Installers
US Market: 1680 MW*($300M)
60% Annual Growth
Third-Party Owned
User Owned
560 MW* $90M
Initial Target Market: Local User-Owned Systems
80 MW ($13M) *SEIA 2015 Estimate
California
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The global opportunity is in the millions of Balancers per year with double-digit growth. We are not limited to the US residential solar market, but it is huge and growing 60%/yr. We will start with user-owned systems because this is an easier market to enter than third-party owned systems, which require ‘bankability.’ We will initially restrict our efforts to a 2-hour drive so we can train and sell directly to installers, and then expand geographically. In 2017, we will enter the market for “third-party-owned” systems to ramp sales.
1.2k unit sales
6k unit sales
11k unit sales
31k unit sales
2015 2016 2017 2018
Go-to-Market Plan
Direct to select local top-tier installers
Online Distributors to smaller installers
Direct to all CA top-tier installers
Direct to third-party owners and financers
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Our first market sub-segment is select top-tier installers within a 2-hour drive. There are more than 200 candidates. We expect to create sales accounts with 30 the old fashioned way: direct sales, training, providing promotional material, accompanying on client visits and assisting with early installs. Installers are loyal to brands, so this hard work will pay dividends, but we will look for more leverage to grow our sales. We will reach out to smaller installers through online distributors. We are already in discussions with civic solar, a leading one based in San Francisco. We train them and they train installers. We will also train at meetings and tradeshows and offer workshops for installers. The Balancer’s momentum and maturity will convince third-party owned system installers, like SolarCity and SunRun to adopt us. They will be a great customer because they do hundreds of thousands of installs and care about economics.
• Incorporated Delaware C Corp (Oct) $165k self funding
• Filed core patents (Balancer and MINI)
• 1st gen prototype (basic function)
• 2nd gen prototype (incorporated DOE feedback)
• 3rd gen prototype (eff. & cost optimization, algorithms)
• Filed 3 more patents (circuit, algorithm, data display)
Here’s what we’ve achieved to date. We’ve taken a breakthrough technology from a blank page to UL and field testing. There’s feedback from the Department of Energy, testing, algorithm development, and more invention. Invention time is over, it’s time for business.
Dr. Eric Cummings, CEO and Founder PhD Aeronautics, specialist in system design, power electronics, software/firmware design Founder: Cool Earth Solar, LabSmith Renowned Sandia scientist, Caltech Clauser Prize winner
Strategic Partners One Cycle Control, Power Electronics Control Plastics, Injection Molding and Manufacturing
Advisors Kevin Daugherty, Volume Manufacturing, Operations, and Solar Biz. Management Jim Diestel, International Marketing consultant, Biz. Dev.
Kirsten Pace, COO and Founder MS Mechanical Engineering
Co-founder: Cool Earth Solar CEO LabSmith, Sandia Project Manager
The Maxout team
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I’m the CEO and a serial entrepreneur in the solar energy and high tech space. Kirsten Pace is our operations person. She is CEO of LabSmith and an experienced mechanical engineer. We have advisors in key areas: marketing and volume manufacturing We have good legal representation. We have key strategic partners to fill our other gaps.
Key Collaborators
Testing
Tech
Channels
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Our key collaborators are helping us with testing and technology. This is our test site at the Oasis. We are also working to cultivate productive channels to installers.
The Maxout MINI • 1/15th the weight • $0.04/W • User serviceable
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By the way, remember how we were working on the inverter problem? The Balancer is part of the solution and the MINI is the rest of it. A 1-MW version will be the size of a washer/dryer. It saves 15 tons of steel and that saves over a million gallons of fresh water and 30 tons of CO2. It comprises an array of inverters that work together. When one goes down, the rest stay up. You unplug it, pull another one from the shelf, plug it in and it’s back up. We package the parts that fail as waste-minimized consumables, so you can fix the broken inverter yourself as easily as replacing batteries. It’s the way inverters should work and it’s an industry changer. We have 3 core patents pending in the US and China.
You know what we really need?
More disruption.
Maxout Renewables
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At Maxout we know the climate clock is ticking and vast economic opportunities are in reach: it’s no time for incrementalism. Maxout is committed to energy sustainability through technical breakthrough and serial disruption. With the Balancer, we put power optimization on the right track. With the MINI, we will put inverters on the right track. And we are just getting started. Join us in the fight!
