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Geoff Ferrell got involved with residential construction through a friend on a mission to build healthier, more energy-efficient and more sustainable homes. "He was looking for a nerd to help him wrangle all these new technologies and bring all these things together to produce a fundamentally better home," Geoff said.
Then the friend shared a phrase Geoff has never forgotten. "He said, ‘insulation is sexy.’ I thought about it for a second and said, 'You might be right.'"
"It turns out insulation is sexy because of what it does and how it's applied," he said, explaining insulation takes the bare bones of a house and makes the structure livable.
Since that lightbulb moment, Geoff has worked to transform more houses into homes with everything from insulation to the latest energy technologies.
Geoff is vice president of the virtual power plant (VPP) and commercial and industrial (C&I) project business at sonnen, a German-based global energy storage provider. A VPP gives access to the storage capacity of an asset to provide services to the grid. In this way, homeowners and service providers, like Shell vis-a-vis sonnen, can pool the collective power of smaller distributed energy resources to mimic a larger, central power plant.
"A virtual power plant is software that can communicate with a set of assets and swarm control them to do whatever you want them to do. In this case, you want the power plant to absorb or supply energy at a specific power rate and have very, very fine control," Geoff said.
"It is fundamentally taking a bunch of small assets, aggregating them to be able to communicate with them very quickly, and asking them to supply products to the energy market."
Royal Dutch Shell invested in sonnen's energy generation, storage and distribution ecosystem in 2018. It acquired 100% of the company in 2019 to expand its residential smart energy storage and energy solutions.
A pioneer for intelligent lithium-based energy storage, sonnen offers customers energy storage and digital energy services like the sonnenBatterie, which optimizes residential solar power and supplies energy at night using stored solar power generated during the day.
It advanced the energy market by combining technology with new business models for a decentralized energy system.
In today's podcast, Geoff talks about how he evolved his role from a buyer of sonnen products to one of its top executives in the U.S.
Before joining sonnen in 2020, Geoff was chief technology officer at Mandalay Homes, where he championed technological innovations in home building and building science. Mandalay Homes is an energy-efficient production home builder in Northern Arizona, and Geoff helped it win the U.S. Department of Energy's Zero Energy Ready Housing Innovation Award 12 times.
Geoff has experience in energy management, environmental building practices and, importantly, using sonnen's residential products. He weaves that knowledge through today's conversation, which stretches from his birth in Las Vegas through "falling in love" with residential construction and nurturing his interest in solar and battery storage.
Join us for a great discussion about Geoff's evolution from a potential pilot to a solar warrior bringing cutting-edge renewables and energy storage to the world.
BOOKS MENTIONED AND RECOMMENDATIONS:
NOTEWORTHY QUOTE:
“I think what’s going to really happen is, the market is going to become very competitive, very nimble. And it’s going to drive the cost of generating energy down, which again, ultimately is a win for everybody.”
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ABOUT THE HOST OF SUNCAST:
Nico Johnson is the creator and host of SunCast, consistently rated a top solar podcast in the clean energy sector. The content of the show is geared towards listeners looking for insights on where the markets are headed, how to position themselves or their companies, and what today's market leaders do to stay ahead of the pack.
Nico is an Investor, Executive Coach, and 16-year veteran of the solar industry, having led development in the US and Latin America for global companies like Trina Solar and Conergy.
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