Fundraising

Dandelion co-founder is back to help you electrify your home for less

Comment

Man carrying a solar panel on a roof in Southern California.
Image Credits: adamkaz / Getty Images

In the nearly 20 years that James Quazi has been a climate tech founder and operator, he’s seen a lot. From solar to geothermal, energy audits to energy storage, he’s had a front row seat as homeowners have sought to slash their energy use.

He’s also been able to observe what makes those startups successful. “You have to be able to model energy systems to a high degree of accuracy, and you have to be able to finance things,” Quazi told TechCrunch. “It just always comes up.”

He’s taken those observations to heart, starting a company that hopes to speed the electrification of homes throughout the U.S. by helping homeowners choose and finance the projects that make the most sense for them. Called Balto Energy, the Southern California-based startup has been operating stealthily, and Quazi recently shared details on the new venture exclusively with TechCrunch. To get off the ground, the startup raised $1 million from KDX, Leap Forward Ventures and others.

Most recently, Quazi was living quasi-retired, having served as CTO at Dandelion, the home geothermal startup that spun out of Alphabet’s X division; before that he was an executive at SolarCity. But after he started studying a recent change in California’s solar power incentives for homeowners, he couldn’t stay out of the game. 

The new regulations, known as NEM 3.0, lengthened the amount of time it takes for solar panels to pay off, but it significantly reduced the payoff period for solar panels when installed alongside a battery. The goal was to encourage consumers to store more of their solar power for later, but it had the unintended consequence of dragging down California’s solar market.

To Quazi, the solution to installers’ woes came quickly to him: They needed to branch out beyond just solar panels. Many have also begun installing batteries, yet Quazi knew they’d also have to consider adding to their roster other electrification projects like electric vehicle chargers, heat pumps and heat pump water heaters. “We found that some of those contractors are interested in doing other portions of the work,” he said. 

But solar panels are one product with a very straightforward sales pitch: They’ll save customers money on their electric bills. Homeowners could stand to save even more money with heat pumps, too, but the math behind the pitch gets a lot more complicated.

Today, most solar installers haven’t ventured beyond rooftop panels and the occasional battery. That has forced homeowners to turn to a menagerie of contractors, from electricians to plumbers to HVAC specialists. To fully electrify, they have to be willing to serve as a de facto general contractor, envisioning each job as a part of a system.

“We still don’t have, like, a great tool that coaches homeowners through what that experience would be,” Quazi said. “There isn’t a holistic view of it.”

Quazi hopes that Balto is that tool. Many homeowners’ electrification journeys start with solar, which is where Balto is starting, too. For homeowners, the technology is mature, and the financial benefits are widely known. For Balto, there are a large number of solar installers who might benefit from additional work outside of installing new panels; the startup will charge them a fee for access to the platform, which includes various sales tools. In the future, it’ll be available to other trades. “We were very adamant that we want a path that is agnostic of any contractor,” Quazi said.

Balto functions as a sort of decision tree for homeowners to help them decide where they’d like to start and which projects they’d like to tackle and when. Are they only interested in saving money? Then a relatively simple solar-plus-battery installation with an EV charger might be the answer. Or maybe they want resiliency during extreme weather or natural disasters? In that case, they also might want to electrify more of their home, including heating and cooling, hot water, and even cooking.

“You have to help people understand what the options are and what’s the best one for them,” Quasi said. To provide recommendations that make sense, Balto models energy usage for a home using customer-provided utility data.

All those projects, though, can be expensive propositions. Solar panels alone tend to cost tens of thousands of dollars; the same is true of heat pumps. An all-in electrification plan would be far more. That’s a hefty sum that most homeowners don’t have, and with interest rates being high, they wouldn’t be jazzed about financing it, either.

Quazi thinks he can ease the burden by offering a form of financing that he said is not a loan. “For a residential project that’s financed through a loan, a lot of benefits actually fall on the ground. There’s a bunch of trailing things that we think we can monetize,” he said, including depreciation and renewable energy credits that it sells to other companies.

That’s because Balto would be owning the solar assets for a period of time, making it the entity that receives the credits. Some of its revenue would come from that revenue stream, and it would direct another portion of it toward reducing the interest rate on the financial instrument it offers customers. “While you might take out a loan today [for solar], and if that loan is 20 years, the interest rate could be 12%. We’re looking at half that or less,” Quazi said.

We’ll know in a few years if Quazi is right, that creative financing is what’s really needed to speed the electrification of American homes. He’s hoping that, when that time comes, “infrastructure that pumps combustible gases in the people’s homes” will fall out of favor. “It’s one of the things we’ll look back and be like, ‘That was crazy. We shouldn’t have done that.’”

More TechCrunch

Ola Electric, India’s largest electric two-wheeler maker, saw its shares rise as much as 20% on its public debut on Friday, making it the biggest listing among Indian firms in…

Ola Electric surges in India’s biggest listing in two years

Rocket Lab surpassed $100 million in quarterly revenue for the first time, a 71% increase from the same quarter of last year. This is just one of several shiny accomplishments…

Rocket Lab’s sunny outlook bodes well for future constellation plans 

In 1996, two companies, Patersons HR and Payroll Solutions, formed a venture called CloudPay to provide payroll and payments services to enterprise clients. CloudPay grew quietly over the next several…

CloudPay, a payroll services provider, lands $120M in new funding

The vulnerabilities allowed one security researcher to peek inside the leak sites without having to log in.

Security bugs in ransomware leak sites helped save six companies from paying hefty ransoms

Featured Article

A comprehensive list of 2024 tech layoffs

The tech layoff wave is still going strong in 2024. Following significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, this year has already seen 60,000 job cuts across 254 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Companies like Tesla, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Snap and Microsoft have conducted sizable layoffs in the…

A comprehensive list of 2024 tech layoffs

A new “beta rabbit” mode adds some conversational AI chops to the Rabbit r1, particularly in more complex or multi-step instructions.

Rabbit’s r1 refines chats and timers, but its app-using ‘action model’ is still MIA

Los Angeles is notorious for its back-to-back traffic. Three events that promise to bring in millions of spectators from around the world — the 2026 World Cup, the Super Bowl…

Archer to set up air taxi network in LA by 2026 ahead of World Cup

Featured Article

Amazon is fumbling in India

Amazon’s decision to overlook quick-commerce in India is now looking like a significant misstep.

Amazon is fumbling in India

OpenAI’s GPT-4o, the generative AI model that powers the recently launched alpha of Advanced Voice Mode in ChatGPT, is the company’s first trained on voice as well as text and…

OpenAI finds that GPT-4o does some truly bizarre stuff sometimes

On Thursday, Box filled in a missing piece on its AI platform when it bought automated metadata extracting startup, Alphamoon.

Box adds crucial piece to its AI platform with Alphamoon acquisition

OpenAI has announced a new appointment to its board of directors: Zico Kolter. Kolter, a professor and director of the machine learning department at Carnegie Mellon, predominantly focuses his research…

OpenAI adds a Carnegie Mellon professor to its board of directors

Count Spotify and Epic Games among the Apple critics who are not happy with the iPhone maker’s newly revised compliance plan for the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). Shortly…

Spotify and Epic Games call Apple’s revised DMA compliance plan ‘confusing,’ ‘illegal’ and ‘unacceptable’

Thursday seeks to shake up conventional online dating in a crowded market. The app, which recently expanded to San Francisco, fosters intentional dating by restricting user access to Thursdays. At…

Thursday, the dating app that you can use only on Thursdays, expands to San Francisco

AI companies are gobbling up investor money and securing sky-high valuations early in their life cycle. This dynamic has many calling the AI industry a bubble. Nick Frosst, a co-founder…

Cohere co-founder Nick Frosst thinks everyone needs to be more realistic about what AI can and cannot do

Instagram is rolling out the ability for users to add up to 20 photos or videos to their feed carousels, as the platform embraces the trend of “photo dumps.” Back…

Instagram is embracing the ‘photo dump’

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Anyone paying…

Lyft ‘opens a can of whoop ass’ on surge pricing, Tesla’s Dojo explained and Saudi Arabia pumps $1.5B into Lucid

Flint Capital just closed its third fund at $160 million. Its has a unique strategy for finding its limited partner investors. 

Flint Capital raises a $160M through an unusual fund-raising strategy

Earlier this week it emerged that the DPC had instigated court proceedings seeking an injunction against X over the data processing without consent.

Elon Musk’s X agrees to pause EU data processing for training Grok

During testing, Google DeepMind’s table tennis bot was able to beat all of the beginner-level players it faced.

Google DeepMind develops a ‘solidly amateur’ table tennis robot

The X account announced that its Premium+ subscription would now be “fully” ad-free, leading some to question how this change would affect creator earnings.

As X sues advertisers over boycott, the app ditches all ads from its top subscription tier

Apple has further revised its compliance plan for the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) rulebook, which, since March, has forced it to give iOS developers more freedom over how…

Apple revises DMA compliance for App Store link-outs, applying fewer restrictions and a new fee structure

The rise of neobanks has been fascinating to witness, as a number of companies in recent years have grown from merely challenging traditional banks to being massive players in and…

Chime and Dave execs are coming to TechCrunch Disrupt 2024

If you visited the Wikipedia website on mobile this week, you might have seen a pop-up indicating that dark mode is ready for prime time.

How to enable Wikipedia’s dark mode

The home security company says attackers accessed databases containing customer home addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers.

Home security giant ADT says it was hacked

The Looking Glass Pro has a 6-inch display and a foldable base. It shows spatial images like those created with the Apple Vision Pro and iPhone 15 Pro.

Looking Glass’ new lineup includes a $300 phone-sized holographic display

TikTok’s latest offering is capitalizing on the app’s ability to serve as a discovery engine for other media — something its users already take advantage of by sharing short clips…

TikTok partners with Warner Bros. to become a discovery engine for TV and movies

Cocoon is a new startup built on the belief that greener steel production and the creation of concrete slag doesn’t have to be an either/or proposition.

Cocoon is transforming steel production runoff into a greener cement alternative

SoundHound, an AI company that makes voice interface tech used by car companies, restaurants and tech firms, is doubling down on enterprise services by playing consolidator in a crowded market.…

SoundHound acquires Amelia AI for $80M after it raised $189M+

Seeking mental health support is a complex process, but some founders believe that using AI to formalize techniques like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can help folks who might not have…

Feeling Great’s new therapy app translates its psychiatrist co-founder’s experience into AI

The U.K.’s antitrust regulator has confirmed that it’s carrying out a formal antitrust investigation into Amazon’s ties with Anthropic, after Amazon recently completed a $4 billion investment into the AI startup.…

UK launches formal probe into Amazon’s ties with AI startup Anthropic