Aaron Nichols sits down with Deep Patel, Founder and CEO of Gigawatt, to explore how we can return to the original promise of the solar pioneers (power to the people). They discuss how the industry shifted from selling energy independence to pushing complicated financial products, the growing DIY solar installation movement, and how off-grid systems, coupled with technologies like Starlink, are creating economic opportunities worldwide. You can connect with Deep on LinkedIn here. Listen to this episode here, or on: * YouTube * Apple Podcasts * Spotify Expect to learn: * Why the solar industry drifted away from its counterculture roots * The red flags consumers should watch for when buying solar today. * How DIY solar kits are empowering tradespeople and curious homeowners to safely build their own code-compliant systems. Quote from the episode: “I think the biggest thing making a difference is we’re going to have cheap and extremely efficient energy storage. We finally cracked the code on how to store electricity. That was the missing link in solar, and now it’s a reality.” — Deep Patel Transcript: Aaron Nichols: Deep, before we talked, you sent me something that I thought was awesome. I’m just going to read it word for word because it just felt like such a cool manifesto. But you said, “If this transition is going to last, we need to return to the original promise of the solar pioneers. Power to the people. Real independence through ownership, transparency, and systems designed to serve homeowners and renters alike, including simple and accessible plug-in solar.” I would love to hear you expand on what you meant by that. Deep Patel: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Aaron, first of all, for having me on your show. I’m really glad that I get to tell this story about our mission statement. My business partner, Jeff Spies, and I had basically traveled up into Humboldt, California. He had introduced me to a bunch of solar pioneers that have been doing solar and battery storage since the late 70s. And these folks were basically living off the land. They were homesteading up in Northern California and they were living off grid. These were some of the first people in the US to have residential solar. I was really thrilled about their story and very interested in it. I realized what they were doing was a counterculture movement that was happening up there. They were saying, “I want to generate my own power and I want to own it.” Those were some of the first people that were installing solar panels on their homes. I feel like in 2006, when the industry first really started becoming more commercialized and capitalistic, we went away from those roots. Everything became about TPOs and PPAs and AVLs and all of this jargon, dealer fees, and this and that, right? People started coming into this industry and turning solar more into some type of projected financial savings. I felt like that went away from the roots of where this industry first started, which was freedom. It was owning your own power. It was resilience. And there’s a lot of companies like ours out there that are still sticking to that mission of bringing that power back to the people, where they get to own their own solar and storage. They can avoid all those dealer fees and do it a different way where they can maintain full control and transparency of the process. Aaron Nichols: I had a really cool reminder of that. My then-fiancee, now wife, got me a stay in an off-grid yurt for Christmas, and we rang in the New Year in that yurt. We had to hike three miles in to get there. And when we got there, it was a fireplace, and then a solar array that fed into a battery bank, and we had everything we needed. We had lighting, could run the electric stove. I mean, it was such an awesome off-grid independent experience. I’ve been blown away by the creativity that people can exhibit using solar energy and the ways that they can set up things like that. I’ve found that as solar is becoming less of a hippie sort of green thing and more and more people get interested in it, that all of those things are actually very interesting for conservatives. All of those reasons that people loved solar back then are why people who are more right-leaning love solar now. Deep Patel: Yeah, absolutely. And I think solar is one thing our divided country can all agree on is to own your own independence. It’s a very free market. To own your own power is something that, whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, resonates with both sides. Our country is founded on independence. I think this message is something that brings everyone together. Aaron Nichols: Yeah, it’s so true. You also wrote that solar has drifted from selling independence to selling financial products. Do you think that shift was a mistake or do you think it was necessary to get the industry to where it is today? Deep Patel: I think at a certain time period, it did make a lot of sense. Cost of panels, batteries, inverters, and things were so high at one point. And to go solar was just so challenging. None of the banks would want to even lend you money to do it. But now the prices of hardware and soft costs have gone down substantially. I mean, they’re still pretty high, but they’ve substantially gone down since then. Lithium battery prices are really going down fast. There’s a lot of banks that are comfortable now. You can just go out and get a HELOC or some type of regular loan, like how people typically finance typical home improvements. That’s the cheapest form of money they can use to improve their homes. Now that you can do that, the need for all of these specialized financial products that kind of trap people into these long-term financial instruments are no longer necessary. They can own their own power, and it’s easier now than ever. Aaron Nichols: I think that’s a particularly interesting point because you actually spent some time in the finance world as well before you came to be the awesome solar entrepreneur that you are. So as someone who’s been in the finance world, what is it that makes you uncomfortable about the way you’ve seen finance and solar mix? Deep Patel: I just think the way it’s being pitched. As we know, these companies have sales groups that go into people’s homes, knock on their doors, and it’s a very complicated instrument. I could see a CPA understanding it. But when you’re talking to regular folks, there’s a lot of jargon and complications; they might not understand what they’re signing up for. And then there are dealer fees involved in these financial products, which are massive. These dealer fees add tens of thousands of dollars into the process to get a person instant financing, when they can just do a little bit of work to save tens of thousands of dollars and actually own it. So I think that financing has its place, but if it’s quick financing with a bunch of junk fees involved, I don’t think it’s a good thing for the end customer. Aaron Nichols: It’s not always easy for someone who’s shopping around for solar to tell the difference. I mean, we work really hard at Exact to make sure that we’re partnering with very ethical firms. But not every solar company is like that. So what are some red flags that you think people should look out for? Deep Patel: I would say high pressure is a big red flag. Like, “close it now at the kitchen table” kind of thing. False, extravagant promises, like, “Hey, everything’s covered for a lifetime.” Those embellishments of what’s realistic are a red flag. If it sounds too good to be true—like nothing’s ever going to go wrong, you just sign here, we’re going to take care of everything, and everything’s guaranteed—the world doesn’t work like that. It’s over-promising. A lot of these independent sales agents just want to make some commission, and it’s really easy to over-promise things to get someone to sign. As a consumer analyzing something, you have to ask: can they deliver on these promises? Is this grounded in reality? Aaron Nichols: I’m very lucky I grew up around a bunch of skeptical old Italians. So I grew up around a bunch of people that nobody was gonna sell anything to. Good for some things, bad for others. Sometimes I’m a little too skeptical. Deep Patel: Yeah, for sure. It’s good to be skeptical when you’re buying something, when you’re going to sign a $60,000 contract with a company. Aaron Nichols: Yeah, definitely. So I’d like to switch gears a little bit. I’m a big fan of interesting stories that solar enables. I think one of my favorite ones that I like to tell is that we built an off-grid system for a school. The company I work for, Exact Solar, is right in greater Philadelphia. The system powers a greenhouse with an off-grid system, and then students use that to grow produce that they either prepare for staff and parents in an on-site restaurant or sell in a local farmers market. Having had so much experience with the off-grid market, what are some of the coolest stories that some of the kits you sell have enabled? Deep Patel: Man, our kits are basically going everywhere. We have some US government projects where there are off-grid needs—having embassies or special facilities that have power reliability concerns. There are water pumping projects where customers are pumping water for treatment facilities or infrastructure. There’s been an off-grid school as well, here locally, I think in Joshua Tree. This school is completely off-grid, and these kids go to a school powered by an off-grid solar system. So we have a wide range of off-grid customers over the 20 years, but a lot of our customers are grid-tied, and they now want grid independence. Even though they’re connected to the grid, they just want to own their own power and store it. They don’t want to sell it back to the energy company; they want to be able to self-con
