SunCast

Buildings consume an enormous amount of energy. We have plenty of technologies that could make them perform better. So why is the real estate industry often so slow to adopt them? Dermot Sweeny has spent decades confronting that problem from the architect’s side. When he couldn’t convince clients to try a radically different approach to office design, he bought an older building and proved it himself. More than 7 million square feet later, that willingness to test ideas in real buildings has become central to how Dermot and his son Aiden evaluate new technology. In this episode, Nico explores how they turn promising ideas into technologies that developers are actually willing to use, including: 🔹 Why real estate’s resistance to change makes real-world proof so important 🔹 How a 2–4% increase in upfront cost can produce 30–50% reductions in energy costs 🔹 Using buildings as proving grounds for new technologies before asking clients to take the risk 🔹 Where building-integrated solar, wastewater heat recovery, advanced windows, energy monitoring, and smarter HVAC fit into the equation 🔹 Why occupant comfort, fresh air, daylight, and flexibility can be economic advantages—not just sustainability features 🔹 How lower operating expenses can translate into higher real-estate value For energy entrepreneurs trying to get new technology deployed, this conversation offers a useful look at what happens between having a better idea and convincing someone to actually put it in a building. Hit play to learn why the building itself may be one of your biggest untapped energy assets. Are there other technologies you’ve scouted on the frontlines of the Clean Energy Revolution that you think we should be covering here on SunCast? Hit us up - [email protected] with your feedback & recommendations. If you want to connect with today's guest, you’ll find links to their contact info in the show notes on the blog at https://suncast.media/episodes/. Our Platinum Presenting Sponsor for SunCast is CPS America! You can learn more about all the sponsors who help make this show free for you at www.suncast.media/sponsors. Remember, you can always find resources, learn more about today’s guest and explore recommendations, book links, and more than 950 other founder stories and startup advice at www.suncast.media. We'd love if you'd leave us a 5 ⭐ rating & review and it's never been easier: https://www.ratethispodcast.com/suncast Subscribe to Valence, our weekly LinkedIn Newsletter, and learn the elements of compelling storytelling: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/valence-content-that-connects-7145928995363049472/ You can connect with me, Nico Johnson, on: Twitter - https://www.twitter.com/nicomeo LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickalus (00:00) The 1,200 Space Heaters Under Desks Anomaly (01:03) Welcome to SunCast: Commercial Buildings as Energy Systems (03:08) Inventing Underfloor Air Distribution and Passive Cooling (07:30) Integrating Daylighting, Perimeter HVAC, and Glare Control (12:21) Bridging Economics, Venture Capital, and Real Estate Decarbonization (17:31) How Lowering Operating Costs Boosts Real Estate Value (20:11) Designing High-Performance Buildings from the Ground Up (25:07) Overcoming Real Estate Risk Aversion with Proven Performance (30:05) Cleantech Venture Investing and Wastewater Heat Recovery (33:53) Submetering Analytics, Predictive Maintenance, and Advanced Dehumidification (37:47) Deploying Building-Integrated Photovoltaics on Urban Facades (46:01) Navigating Net-Zero Residential Real Estate and Heat Pumps (53:10) Overcoming Landlord-Tenant Split Incentives to Drive ROI (58:23) High-Performance Buildings in the Energy Transition

In Australia, residential solar and storage can be installed for about $2 a watt. In the U.S., a comparable system can cost more than twice that. Why? Barry Cinnamon was curious enough to go to Australia and investigate. What he found challenges the simple explanation that America's solar price gap comes down to permitting, labor, and other “soft costs.” Australia offers a useful counterfactual: what can solar cost under a very different set of market and policy choices? And which of those choices would we actually want to make in America? In this Tactical Tuesday, Barry and Nico unpack the cost stack and the tradeoffs behind it, from tariffs and domestic manufacturing to financing, interconnection, incentives, and policy stability. Expect to learn: 🔹 Why Australian solar and storage can cost dramatically less than comparable U.S. systems 🔹 Why soft costs explain only part of the price difference 🔹 How tariffs, financing, manufacturing policy, and regulation affect what customers ultimately pay 🔹 The harder question underneath the comparison: are we optimizing for the cheapest energy, domestic manufacturing, American jobs, or some combination of all three? Australia isn't necessarily a blueprint for the U.S. But it gives us a fascinating benchmark for asking what we're paying for, why we're paying for it, and which tradeoffs we're willing to make. Listen to Part 1 of our conversation with Barry Cinnamon. Are there other technologies you’ve scouted on the frontlines of the Clean Energy Revolution that you think we should be covering here on SunCast? Hit us up - [email protected] with your feedback & recommendations. If you want to connect with today's guest, you’ll find links to their contact info in the show notes on the blog at https://suncast.media/episodes/. Our Platinum Presenting Sponsor for SunCast is CPS America! You can learn more about all the sponsors who help make this show free for you at www.suncast.media/sponsors. Remember, you can always find resources, learn more about today’s guest and explore recommendations, book links, and more than 950 other founder stories and startup advice at www.suncast.media. We'd love if you'd leave us a 5 ⭐ rating & review and it's never been easier: https://www.ratethispodcast.com/suncast Subscribe to Valence, our weekly LinkedIn Newsletter, and learn the elements of compelling storytelling: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/valence-content-that-connects-7145928995363049472/ You can connect with me, Nico Johnson, on: Twitter - https://www.twitter.com/nicomeo LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickalus (00:00) Comparing Australian and US Solar Installation Costs (02:05) Investigating Australia's Low-Cost Solar Model (03:17) The Australian versus US Solar Cost Breakdown (04:21) Why US Federal Policies Drive Higher Costs (05:44) Energy Cost Priorities versus Domestic Manufacturing Jobs (07:33) Key Levers to Lower US Solar Prices (08:55) Evaluating the Sustainability of Door-to-Door Sales (09:44) Australian Battery Incentives and Homeowner Behavior (11:16) Key Takeaways on Solar Tariffs and Incentives

When Charlotte Meerstadt put solar on her Amsterdam home, the numbers made sense. Then Charlotte moved to the U.S. and rented out the apartment. The solar panels kept doing exactly what they were supposed to do: producing cheap, clean power. But, while the tenant received the lower utility bill, Charlotte still owned the panels and had no clear way to capture the savings her asset was creating. That mismatch revealed a bigger problem hiding across rental housing and distributed energy: the person who can invest in clean energy is often not the same person who gets the financial benefit. Under 1% of rental rooftops have solar. Now put that next to 49 million rental units in the U.S., including roughly 23 million apartments, and you start to see the size of the opportunity Charlotte Meerstadt stumbled into. In this episode, Charlotte, Founder and CEO of Fram Energy, joins Nico to explain how she turned that insight into a company helping property owners, developers, and energy asset owners measure, bill, and collect the value their projects produce. She also shares how early customer conversations shaped the product, why real-world complexity can become a moat, and what she had to unlearn as an engineer to become a founder. Expect to learn: 🔹 Why solar savings get complicated when owners and tenants try to split the value 🔹 How meter data can become revenue asset owners can collect 🔹 Why billing, tariffs, permissions, and customer trust matter after the system is built 🔹 How customers pulled Fram from rental solar into larger energy transactions 🔹 Why Charlotte believes founders should keep removing themselves from the equation This episode might help you see the business model problems that can hold back otherwise strong projects. Are there other technologies you’ve scouted on the frontlines of the Clean Energy Revolution that you think we should be covering here on SunCast? Hit us up - [email protected] with your feedback & recommendations. If you want to connect with today's guest, you’ll find links to their contact info in the show notes on the blog at https://suncast.media/episodes/. Our Platinum Presenting Sponsor for SunCast is CPS America! You can learn more about all the sponsors who help make this show free for you at www.suncast.media/sponsors. Remember, you can always find resources, learn more about today’s guest and explore recommendations, book links, and more than 950 other founder stories and startup advice at www.suncast.media. We'd love if you'd leave us a 5 ⭐ rating & review and it's never been easier: https://www.ratethispodcast.com/suncast Subscribe to Valence, our weekly LinkedIn Newsletter, and learn the elements of compelling storytelling: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/valence-content-that-connects-7145928995363049472/ You can connect with me, Nico Johnson, on: Twitter - https://www.twitter.com/nicomeo LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickalus (00:00) The Rental Rooftop Solar Gap (02:14) The Landlord Split Incentive Problem (05:05) Evaluating Workarounds for Rental Properties (07:43) Identifying a Scalable Market Opportunity (12:38) Leveraging Stanford Network for Early Traction (15:14) Early Entrepreneurship and Formative Upbringing (22:45) Raising Venture Capital as a Solo Founder (28:46) Turning Hardware Dependencies into a Moat (31:06) What Engineers Must Unlearn as Founders (38:31) Converting Interval Data into Tenant Invoices (44:22) Utility API Integrations and Compliance Hurdles (51:52) Expanding Beyond Residential to Commercial Settlements (55:42) Disciplined Market Focus and Saying No (1:03:00) Achieving Zero Churn Through Customer Trust (1:08:09) Founder Delegation and Stress-Testing Independence

Germany has turned plug-in solar from a fringe idea into a mainstream energy product found in millions of homes. And the biggest lessons for the U.S. aren't really about solar panels. They're about making solar easier. In this Tactical Tuesday, CraftStrom Co-Founder and CEO Stephan Scherer shares what nearly a decade in the European plug-in solar market taught him about how a new energy category actually scales. Simplicity matters as much as technology. Germany had to simplify registration and remove requirements that made a supposedly plug-and-play product harder to adopt. Policy needs to separate different problems. Electrical safety inside the home and how much power a system exports to the grid aren't the same thing—and Stephan argues that conflating them could unnecessarily limit the U.S. market. And perhaps most importantly, the category scales when it becomes easy to buy and easy to understand. In Germany, plug-in solar eventually moved beyond specialist channels and onto mainstream retail shelves. This is a focused excerpt from my longer SunCast conversation with Stephan. If you want to understand who's actually buying plug-in solar in the U.S., why the ideal customer surprised even him, and whether solar could eventually become something we buy like an appliance, the full episode goes much deeper. Episode 952: Plug-In Solar Is About to Change Everything | Stephan Scherer Are there other technologies you’ve scouted on the frontlines of the Clean Energy Revolution that you think we should be covering here on SunCast? Hit us up - [email protected] with your feedback & recommendations. If you want to connect with today's guest, you’ll find links to their contact info in the show notes on the blog at https://suncast.media/episodes/. Our Platinum Presenting Sponsor for SunCast is CPS America! You can learn more about all the sponsors who help make this show free for you at www.suncast.media/sponsors. Remember, you can always find resources, learn more about today’s guest and explore recommendations, book links, and more than 950 other founder stories and startup advice at www.suncast.media. We'd love if you'd leave us a 5 ⭐ rating & review and it's never been easier: https://www.ratethispodcast.com/suncast Subscribe to Valence, our weekly LinkedIn Newsletter, and learn the elements of compelling storytelling: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/valence-content-that-connects-7145928995363049472/ You can connect with me, Nico Johnson, on: Twitter - https://www.twitter.com/nicomeo LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickalus (00:00) The Scale of German Plug-In Solar (00:16) How Germany Scaled Balcony Solar (01:50) The Direct-to-Consumer Plug-In Model (02:15) Establishing European Plug-In Regulations (02:53) The Rapid Market Adoption Curve (04:22) Selling Solar in Everyday Supermarkets (04:48) Simplifying Utility Registration Processes (06:52) Eliminating Locking Plug Interconnection Barriers (08:22) Accelerating Adoption with Zero Sales Tax (09:11) Democratizing Solar Through Mainstream Retailers

The best technology does not always win. Sass Peress has spent nearly four decades learning why. Since entering solar in 1988, he has built companies, introduced new technologies, sold hundreds of thousands of solar products, backed ideas that worked, backed at least one that did not, and learned firsthand what separates an exciting invention from something customers will actually buy. One of his most useful distinctions is between “bleeders” and “leaders.” Being first can mean paying for every lesson the rest of the market gets to learn from you. The companies that survive know how to stay tenacious without becoming stubborn, change direction when the evidence demands it, and stop falling in love with their own technology. Sass and Nico dig into the early entrepreneurial experiences that shaped him, why “claims are packaging,” what selling 250,000 solar chargers taught him about finding the right customer, and why great salespeople sell outcomes rather than features or pain. They also explore supercapacitors, the changing power needs of AI data centers, and why evaluating any energy technology requires asking a deceptively simple question: under what conditions does this actually work? Ultimately, Sass keeps returning to an even simpler standard for entrepreneurs: Say what you know to be true. If you build, sell, finance, or evaluate emerging energy technology, this conversation is full of lessons earned the expensive way. Are there other technologies you’ve scouted on the frontlines of the Clean Energy Revolution that you think we should be covering here on SunCast? Hit us up - [email protected] with your feedback & recommendations. If you want to connect with today's guest, you’ll find links to their contact info in the show notes on the blog at https://suncast.media/episodes/. Our Platinum Presenting Sponsor for SunCast is CPS America! You can learn more about all the sponsors who help make this show free for you at www.suncast.media/sponsors. Remember, you can always find resources, learn more about today’s guest and explore recommendations, book links, and more than 950 other founder stories and startup advice at www.suncast.media. We'd love if you'd leave us a 5 ⭐ rating & review and it's never been easier: https://www.ratethispodcast.com/suncast Subscribe to Valence, our weekly LinkedIn Newsletter, and learn the elements of compelling storytelling: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/valence-content-that-connects-7145928995363049472/ You can connect with me, Nico Johnson, on: Twitter - https://www.twitter.com/nicomeo LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickalus (00:00) Outsized Growth in a Defensive Solar Market (01:54) The No Shortcuts Strategy and Response Speed (04:58) Building Content for a Forever Company (06:56) Using Content and AI for Internal Operations (12:57) Quality Execution and Answering Real Customer Questions (14:39) Speed to Response and Post-Install Engagement (17:09) Structuring High-Value Customer Referral Programs (21:46) Community Partnerships and Content Recycling (25:52) Strategic Policy Adaptation and Safe-Harboring Supply (31:42) Bringing Meta Ad Strategy In-House (36:56) Multi-Channel Syndication and Executive Thought Leadership (39:30) AI Integration Versus Original Human Creativity (49:04) The Actionable Customer Story Assignment