Co-Founder Justin Lopas (@JLopas) says Base Power has to have two completely different business models because states like California don't let customers choose their electricity provider:
"For the most part, but not in all of Texas, it's a retail choice market. What that means is, you can choose who you buy your power from."
"So outside of batteries, and we offer this without a battery, you can sign up for our service and we sell you power. So if you use 1,000 kWh in the month, we sell you 1,000 kWh and that's what we bill you for."
"In the non-retail choice markets like California, we don't operate in California yet, but places like El Paso is an example where we operate. In those markets, you can't choose where you buy your power from. PG&E is the only game in town. If you want electricity, that's it."
"So in those markets, we partner with the utility. We still put the battery on the home. We own the battery, but the utility controls it, and then they pay us for access to the battery. So that's how we recoup the cost of the battery so to speak and that's our business model in those markets."
Video
Molly O’Shea (@MollySOShea)
BREAKING: Base Power Raises $1 Billion Series D, Hitting $13 Billion Valuation & Launching "Base Core"
First-of-its-Kind Home Battery Built in the USA
$2.5B+ in total funding to date
Co-Founder Justin Lopas (@JLopas) gives us a Factory 1 tour in Austin, Texas
Founded in 2023, by Justin & Zach Dell (@ZachBDell). @basepowerco designs, manufactures, & installs home batteries that back up the house & support the grid
Just 10 months after their Series C, this round was led by Micky Malka's Ribbit, Addition, Valor Equity Partners, & JPMorganChase's Strategic Investment Group, with participation from Altimeter, D1 Capital Partners, Sands Capital, Coatue, Layer Global, & Energy Impact Partners
Base’s major existing investors are re-investing, including Thrive Capital, a16z, Lightspeed, Trust Ventures, CapitalG, & more
"It is so critical to bring manufacturing back to the US, especially for critical infrastructure."
"It's a vertical integration thesis. We can cut down cost. We can reduce lead time. We can change the hardware much more quickly."
We Cover:
› Base Core, 40 kWh with a 20 kW inverter, roughly 3X a conventional home battery
› Whole home backup, installed in under an hour
› Fleet past 500 MWh, over 100 installs a day
› 200+ MW of utility partnerships with El Paso Electric, Austin Energy, & CoServ
› Factory 1 built in 6 months, targeting 4,000 units a week by year end
› 100% US and Mexico supply chain
› Batteries installed around data centers to offset interconnection load
𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
(00:00) Justin Lopas, Co-Founder & COO, Base Power
(01:06) Base Power raises $1B Series D
(02:26) Meet Base Core
(05:42) Demo: Whole-home backup in action
(07:06) How Base Power's business model works
(08:55) Inside Base Power's Factory
(11:28) Why Base Core is 3x larger than other home batteries
(12:05) Inside the manufacturing line
(13:23) Can humanoid robots build batteries?
(14:13) Why Base Power manufactures its own batteries
(15:47) Inside the robotic assembly line
(18:09) How lithium-ion batteries work
(21:40) Scaling production to 4,000 units a week
(22:33) Installing 100+ systems a day
(23:03) COO or Electrician?
(23:53) From oil rigs to Base Power
Video
— https://nitter.net/MollySOShea/status/2084270564873490686#m