Solar & Storage Market Podcast
Solar & Storage Market Series ft Fortress Power New eForce & eFlex Max
(upbeat music) - Everyone, welcome to the Solar and Storage Market series. My name is Eris Dolev, and I'm the Anything Director here at Renville. Today, we're going to be hearing from Alex LePore, a director of sales at Fortress Power about their new E-Force batteries, the new E-Flex Max, Avalon, HV-Line, Envy, and E-Volt Max. We also have with us today Kyle Peace, a Senior Engineer at Renville to share Renville's advanced online quote generation tool. And he will show how to create complicated quotes with full bill of materials in just a few minutes. Before we dive in, and while we're waiting for more people to join, I'd like to give a little background on Renville and some of the products and services we offer. Renville is a U.S.-based solar equipment distributor. We've been in the industry since 2012, and we currently have fulfillment facilities in California and in Jersey and Texas. Our sales staff all have background within engineering or solar installation. Few products, quickly to spotlight here. Now we carry the whole solar portfolio and can beat any price you see out there. We recently had a webinar with Lumen Smart Panels, and we carry their outdoors and indoors models on the shelf. This is a great device to a solar and storage project since it allows you to use the existing maintenance panels and control the loads remotely during power outage or set rules for which loads will continue to work and which ones will be dropped. We are currently having a promotion offering $150 on any Lumen device you purchase. We have plenty of tail sun 405 black modules, which we're offering at the 19 and a half cents when you're buying them with n-phase inverters. We also carry the Hyperion 5.75, high efficiency, top con, n-type modules and the 5.45 modules starting at 25 cents per watt. We have the whole portfolio of n-phase IQ8 series and offering the HM and BLAS at the really low prices. Grow at release their EV chargers, which are UL certified and have 50 amp output. And if you're looking for tea gaskets to make solar array watertight, Blick here has several options for different modules gap size. We are actually now sending samples of these. So if you're interested in samples of the tea gaskets that you see here on the top right, you're welcome to email us at info@renvoo.com and we will send it over to you. Here's our bulk module price list for large volume options and our upcoming offering of solar modules. We carry Zenshine, Canadian solar, Hyundai, Hyperion, Tesla and Solar for America, REC and more. We're sharing in the chat a link to this page. We update it regularly so you can stay up to date with our latest deals for bulk orders. I'll take a minute also to mention the Blick here residential carports. This is a great way to expand existing solar systems for an alternative solution where you cannot install solar on a roof. And when a customer is looking for more added values to protect their cars, for example, it is designed to be assembled by a small crew. It doesn't require any specialized or heavy machinery to install. This is a solar structure and it's eligible for the 30% ITC and possibly the extra 10% for US made products with domestic content. It is modules and inverters agnostic. It is designed and fabricated in the US and made from US source galvanized steel. And it comes with 25 years warranty. How the structure is coming with structural engineer PE stamp, you can install it up to 24 solar modules on it with four columns of six. A two car carport will generate about 10 kilowatt. You can use residential and commercial modules with it with load capacities of up to 48, a compost square foot snow, 215 miles per hour wind load and seismic design categories. Now I'll hand it over to Kyle, a piece to go over the online world generating tool to show you how you can generate quote with four first power batteries in just a few minutes and we'll get started with the webinar after that. All right, can you guys see my screen okay? - You're not sharing the touch. - Okay, let me try that again. How about now? - Yes, we see it. - Okay, all right. Well, yeah, so I work in sales and design here. If you guys are emailing in, there's a good chance you'll get in contact with me if not one of my colleagues. I'm gonna show you this solar design and quote tool here real quick. It's one of my favorite features about our site. So before we get started, make sure you're logged in that you can submit an installer application here or do login at the top right corner. You'll see your name up there to know you're logged in and that just makes sure that you see your account pricing as you go through the tool compare options and it will save that quote to your account for future reference. So you can navigate to that design and quote tool just on the homepage there. And when it loads here, you have start with an option to choose between a full system or a subset. If you already have solar panels or something like that, you could take those out of the quote. But we'll start with a full system here. The first option is to choose your panels. One of the nice features about this page is, if you give a little mint to load here, once the pricing shows up and you choose between panels, you get a price per watt cost metric. So that gives you an idea of the relative cost of each of these options to help decide. The top left one is our default that we always try to push with best price and best availability. And then we have other options if you prefer a different brand or let's say you have a commercial project, you could choose those. But we'll leave it at the default tail sun 405s right now and we'll go on to the racking step. So in the racking, you can choose between a pitch roof flat roof carport ground mount. And then there's a subset of options between each of those under the pitch roof. You have comp shingle, Spanish tile, flat tile, metal roof, flat roof. You can choose between ballasted and penetrating. Same with the ground mount and then the carport. You can choose between different arrangements of the Blicker carport systems. I'll leave it as a default comp shingle for now. We'll do a single row of 10 modules and you can choose between landscape and portrait. I'm gonna leave it in portrait because it's the most efficient for the racking and roof attachments for the module array. And as you make your selections here, you can see them listed under the bill materials and the pricing. You can choose between the roof attachment style. There's a flash foot too and it'll hail an ultra grip as two different options for a comp shingle roof. If you're not sure what that is, you can click on any of these right here. It'll bring up a new tab with that item page and you can read the details and then also review the manufacturer tech docs that we've uploaded there as well. So it's a convenient way to learn as you go. And a final bit, you can choose between the span, between roof attachments, the duty rating of the rail and then the color of the clamps and rails as well. So once you made those selections, you'll see the array sketch get an idea of the approximate dimensions you would have. And we can go on to the next step here, the inverters. So we have micro-verters as well as string inverters with optimizers as options. Under each of the inverter options, we also show the DC to AC power rating. 1.25 is a pretty standard rule of thumb to shoot for anywhere around there. And you're doing pretty good at not having too much clipping or having too much inverter in the system. You can also add energy storage. We'll look at these options also for the string inverters here. So for string inverters, we have single phase, as well as three phase 208 and 480 volt as options. And of course, we have fortress power here. And you can choose between their different options such as the Avalon and NV. If you choose the NV, you can then also select between the batteries, the E-volt max or the E-flex max. And I'll leave it as an Avalon here for now. I think it's the interesting option. And at the final option on the inverters page, you can also add a rapid shutdown device or if you need optimizers, just get in contact with us and we can modify that quote as needed. And then on the final page, you can add spare panels. It's pretty common after a few years and folks come back to us and maybe need some modules replaced on their array. Say a hail storm came through or a branch came down on it. And sometimes it can be a real tough search to find that drop-in fit. So it is recommended to have a few spare panels on hand in the worst case scenario. It makes it a lot easier to make those repairs. And then you can also add on cables, connectors, wire clips, PV labels, an aluminum smart charge panel. You don't actually do that in this case with the Avalon because it has one built in, which is a nice feature. And you could also add an EV charger as well. Then hit finish and you'll get this final bill of materials page showing you all of your selections. If you need to go back and change anything, at this point you can still go back and do that, no problem. And then once you're ready to hit generate a project and email me a quote, you'll get a PDF of this quote and it'll also save it in our database so that our engineers can go through and give you any feedback on availability or pricing or configuration that they may have. Also keep an eye out. We do monitor these designs that folks make and do send out promotions and availability and configuration input proactively on that list of new designs we see in our system. So keep an eye out for that. And thanks guys. - Thanks Kyle. Okay, so if you have any questions about these products that we showed or about Forters Power while Alex is presenting, please feel free to ask in the Q&A section. You have a button there, button. And we will get to the questions at the end of the webinar or during the Q&A session. Now you can also email our sales team at info@renville.com for more information and pricing. This webinar is being recorded and we will send you a link in a follow up email in a few days. We also have recordings of previous webinars on the Renville YouTube channels. And we also making podcasts. So if you prefer to listen to it as a podcast, these are also available and we will share links in the email. Without further ado, I will hand it over to Alex. - Thank you so much guys for the introduction. It is fantastic to be here. Hi everybody, my name's Alex the poor. I'm the sales director here at Forters Power. I personally have worked with Renville for about five years, six years now. Whereas I had a long time, I don't know. But what always comes to mind is that you guys really do take good care of your customers. That sizing tool is totally awesome Kyle. I thought that was just really neat. Everything from the racking to the panels and design, I actually might go around in that tool as well. It's like designing some fortress systems. So today's presentation hosted by yours truly is going to come up with a couple different things guys. So we're going to go through first for just power introduction, go through some of our products new and existing, Avalon and the along with teasing some new 48 products that we have the eFlex Max and the eForce. And then I'm actually going to walk us through maybe some different business development ideas as you grow your business. So whether you're a solar contractor calling in or you're just someone who's looking to learn a little bit more about what solar and batteries mean, I'm hoping that this presentation that I'll give you guys today is going to give you more information to work with, whether you're quoting a project or looking for something at your own home. So my slides will be shared. So although note taking is appreciated, you will have these slides and there are links within the slides on some of the content that I'm going to talk about today. So just as the rest said, the other questions in the chat will do a Q and A at the end. Now let's get this thing started. So let's do a little bit of this, a little bit of that. A little bit of that. And there we go. Let me minimize you. All right, Fortress Power, who the heck are we, right? Fortress Power, we've been in business for the last seven years and we're an energy solutions partner that has done over 35,000 installations on five different continents. And since our inception have only seen a 1% failure rate, right? Compared to other companies in the space where it's around four to 6% or maybe three to 5%, our whole flame defame is making very high quality solutions that are still very affordable, right? We'll talk about VPP here in the next couple of slides and how we're participating in VPP or virtual power plant programs. And we make a lot of our own materials, right? We have couple patents pending, couple patents that are approved because we are not a battery seller. We're gonna be your battery partner and that comes with making and supporting our very own products. So we're based outside of Philadelphia. I'm calling in from LA as I run the sales and service team here on the West Coast. So why installers have chosen us since our inception is that we're enabling installers to take on more projects and make more profit. So whether that's through time saving applications with the Avalon, having a differentiated solution to capture more projects, access to different financing and rebate programs, having seven days a week technical support, low failure rates, all of those things are why installers keep coming back to fortress and using our products is because we like to do the right things, right? So keep that in mind. We're definitely not here by accident. We've been here because we like to take care of our folks. I know you broker this kind of aspect of VPP and I only have this one slide, but what I'd recommend, there's a link in the bottom left of this slide here. Click through that and you can get more details on each one of these programs. And what these programs do in essence, basically, it's different rebate or financial incentive programs in each of these states highlighted to help the end user get access to solar and storage. So for example, in Utah, you'll see the Rocky Mountain Power Utility call has a program called Wattsmart. And in Wattsmart, they give, I think it's $400 per KW when you install our fortress envy inverter, right? So that comes as a rebate that's $4,800 for the end user that helps them reduce their cost and they make the investment into the envy and let's say the fortress power e-ball max or the eFlex max. There are other programs, there's California, there's the Kaizo markets, SDCP in Hawaii and Hawaii, there's the BYOD program on the Northeast, there's the Connected Solutions program. So I always like to mention this because you may be calling from a state that's here, but you also might be calling from a state that's not on this list. And I always like to tell folks below, Arizona APS is doing a VPP program. We're gonna be a part of Colorado Excel energy is doing a VPP program. So the sky is the limit, right? An energy broker, our goal is to help end users, reduce their barriers to entry when they look to invest solar and storage by reducing their cost, giving them that grid and their active capability, right? So again, more than just the battery seller, we have the microgrid controller software to do these sort of advanced integrations. Again, to help our installer sell more and to help our end users, maybe save a couple bucks. So again, go to fortresspower.com, you'll be able to find all the programs are listed in through not only this link, but if you just wanna head there, a lot of information that you guys can lean into. First and foremost, let's talk about the Avalon, right? For those of you that have known fortress, we started the business doing 48 volt solutions. Now two years ago, we saw the need for high voltage because it's more cost effective and efficient. So my whole mantra as we talk about the Avalon guys is gonna be powering more with less. So if you're a homeowner, the Avalon's gonna give you access to more features, more power to control your usage, more energy savings, access to higher return on investment opportunities, all good things. And if you're an installer partner, my goal is to give you more projects with a differentiated solution. So you're not just competing on price, more profits with a product that can save you time and money with the reduced bill of materials and the end goal for all of us, more referrals from happy customers, right? People that are happy with their solar and solar systems that throw that sucker on Google reviews, and then we get that, we get that word about marketing. So powering more with less and the Avalon seeks to do that through the smart energy panel scene here. Now the smart energy panel is an all-in-one solution that has these boxes included into that, right? Your subpanel, it has a load management solution and EV panel in California. Because it's you all certified, you can avoid MPUs or main panel upgrades. It has an AC combiner box. Won't go through each one of these, but clearly the SCP is gonna give you the opportunity to save several thousand dollars per project and just removing your boxes on the wall, air go saving you, let's say 30% on your installation time, right? And so let's take a look, let's take a deeper dive. I mentioned it's a UL certified service panel at UL 67 and UL 1741, meaning that if you're calling in California, you don't need to do a main panel upgrade, which saves a lot of time and money. You can AC and DC couple at the same time. You can AC couple up to 12 kilowatts and DC couple additional PB if needed if you wanted to add some more panels. It also has load management features with 12 single pole or six double pole circuits with the breakers rated at 50 amps to control individual appliances in the home or just set it up as a critical load backup, right? Just have this as backing up certain loads or you can get as fancy as controlling each individual individual load if you wanted to do like peak shaving or a time of use offset if you're calling it from California. It does include a revenue grade meter and you have a generator integrator up to 12 kilowatts. You also have a level two EV charger breaker included into this. So if you're on round three sizing tool and you click that EV charger because you want to buy it, you don't need to have a secondary panel. You can plug right in to the smart energy panel. So it's great for solar retrofitting, new construction or new solar projects where they want maybe something where they either want something as basic as backup or if they want something a little bit more advanced. Okay, all of the monitoring is done through the fortress power app and commissioning. So you can do all of that in program, all the settings through the fortress power app. But there is this local LCD display as well as this can work off grid as you do not need Wi-Fi to have the system operational. So this SCP of the noted smart energy panel is definitely our most differentiated solution here because of those features, cost saving wise along with functionality. So the second part of the Avalon is going to be the battery. This comes with a 15 year warranty, 8,000 cycles still LFP, right? But each 4.9 kilowatt hour battery here is wired up in series. Through this, these conductors that pop off from the side panel. So you can stack up to three minimum, which is 14.7, six maximum for 29.4 kilowatt hours. And then you can parallel multiple stacks together to get as large as 176 kilowatt hours in just split phase for the time being. There is an active heater built into this. So you can install this outside, it is IP 65. And there is a industrial grade battery fire suppression system, right? So that fire suppression system is going to basically be another safety feature with our Avalon battery. Now stackable batteries, as we all know, are very neat because of their easy transportation installation and expansion. So instead of being a four man job with the EVOL Max, which is 400, 500 pounds, this makes it a two man job. Like one man or two man installation job, having a 90 pound battery that stacks up really easy. You plug in the conductors and you're on your way. Still LFP, standard 15 year warranty, and you can floor or wall mount this solution depending on the site that you're working on. So again, kind of name of the game here, powering more or less, modularity and flexibility for your project, don't lose jobs because of site specific details, layouts. We'll talk about that here in the next couple of minutes. And then lastly, we have the inverter. And the inverter comes in two sizes, 7.6 or 11.4 KW with four MPPTs. So if you're a solar designer calling, it gives you a lot of flexibility when designing your strings on the roof. And you can do one inverter for three inverters per one SEP. So you could do up to 33 KW of inverting power, powering one smart energy panel, which is where you have those load controls. There is a transmitter built into this, the module level rapid shutdown transmitter, it's an AP smart transmitter. But if you have another preference, you can certainly replace that with another product of your choice. So the free box is dang, we have the SEP, we have the battery and then we have the inverter. And this is gonna come as a package and the minimum size being an SEP with 14.7 kilowatt hours within a 7.6 kilowatt inverter. All available through Renvue, you can obviously use and size this through their sizing tool. And this is again, high voltage solution that uses the kind of load control features to give you some more differentiation as you go out there itself. As I mentioned, all of the kind of programming and commissioning warranty registration and support is all done through our app, right? So iOS or Android, you're logged onto the Fortress Power App. And if you're an installer, you have your app where you do all the commissioning, the homeowner will have their app where they can do monitoring. And also from an installer standpoint, you'll have access to fleet management to see all your jobs. So this link here is a video. When I send out this slide, you'll be able to watch this video and you'll be able to see it basically goes through the whole commissioning process is around eight minutes or less because we obviously take some time to explain everything. But things from that scheduling battery charging and discharging, setting up the individual circuits on the breakers here, how they're used when they're used on or off-grid. Several of those online features to speed up your commissioning time and also obviously a lot of the programming is done through the smart energy panel app as well for the, I call it the Fortress Power App. So I'll send this video out for a sake of time. I won't watch this whole video with you guys, but it's also on YouTube. If you want to go to YouTube, you can look up the Avalon commissioning via the app and you'll be able to find some more resources there. Pretty neat. I'm able to do it and I'm not an engineer. I still recommend you go through training and everything, but it's very intuitive, I will say. And you can do all these applications. M3, M2, NoExport, Microgrid, Load Management, all these applications. You can set up the Avalon system form. Okay. So we talked about space saving, right? In the Avalon system, because of its stackable form factor, the smart energy panel and the inverter, compared to like an Enphase system, which has changed the game in micro-inverters, we're sending you guys around a third of the space, maybe two thirds of the space in just on the wall space, or Enphase, this system here on the right takes up quite a bit of space, 10 to 15 feet. The Avalon system is really only around five to 10 feet, if not less of space than it takes up on the wall. So this design saves wall space. You're not going to lose projects because I can't fit X there. Right now, you can say, well, it's maybe a little bit of a tight fit, but I can fit the Avalon system there and still adhere to three feet spacing from doors and windows. Let's say you're calling it from California. That's certainly a big issue here. So Avalon system, very compact, save you some space, get you more deal. Here I've included a competitive analysis of the Avalon versus the Tesla and the Enphase solution. You'll see a lot of green and where we kind of check the box in terms of some of the features we have, the scalability, AC/DC coupling, the warranty coverage, so on and so forth. So again, my goal is not to go through every single one of these with you guys, but to share this with you to review at your leisure and show you why we can be your differentiated solution to help you close more jobs. - Alex, I think that there are two questions that are relevant here. So maybe we'll tackle them now. Michael is asking, what is the depth of the Avalon system? - The depth, exciting. - 10 inches, maybe less. Like the depth, like if it's sitting up on the wall, not the height, the width is like 10 inches or so. - And Lauren is asking, how many inverters can be installed in far a little? - With the SCP, you can do three. So the three inverters with one spine energy panel and then the corresponding amount of batteries will be three. Anything else? Nothing much cheaper now, we'll be rich later. - All right, sounds good. Thanks for the question, guys. Don't be shy as well. Throw the questions in there all good. So our whole thing, I guess, we're a complete lifecycle support. So you know, supporting Renvoo with system design and financial law to make sure they have all of our information. We have financing options through PowerPath to offer a 25 year loan with an extended 25 year warranty, being integrated on a hardware and software side, leveraging revenue from BPP services, having seven days a week support. Again, we want to be your partner. We're not just a battery seller. We're going to support you through every step of the way. And we did partner up with Open Solar, sorry, Rez, but we did partner up with Open Solar recently. They have a very kind of similar platform. And I want to just mention, there are, you know, certainly several resources. All the Renvoo is probably my favorite as of today, like, wait, wait. Oh, our training team, take a second. Please scan this QR code from me here. I'll give it a sec. In that training, you're going to go through an hour and a half worth of training. You're not going to take a quiz. If you're an installer, you're going to get a certification, right? After you get that certification, you do your first install. You'll get access to different sales incentives that we have, co-marketing incentives, lead generation, priority service. So there are real tangible benefits to becoming a certified Avalon installer with us. All denoted as Avalonian is the name I came up with, to becoming an Avalonian with us, to help us grow your business with this product. So I'll give you guys 30 seconds or so. Please scan the QR code, start the process, and then what I'll do is I'll move into phase two of our presentation, which is 40-able. We're all scanning, everything's good, we're good, we're good, we're good. All right, thank you for scanning. Let's move on. 40-able, I mentioned that's where we cut our teeth in this industry, right? So what I'm going to highlight today is the three products in the middle with that nice big box. We do have the Evolve Max, that's one of our flagship products, I'm sure most of you, if not all, have heard about the Evolve Max. Today I'm going to focus on two new products, and the Envy, right? The Envy inverter is an eight, 10 or 12 kilowatt inverter. AC/DC coupled, split phase or three, phase 208. I'll talk about the E-Flex Max, the second generation of the E-Flex, which has some pretty unique features. And then we'll talk about the E-Force. We're at RE+ last week, we did a formal release of the E-Force, which is going to be our newest, latest and greatest 40-able solution. So with all these products, you can use these in several applications, whole home backup, off-grid, commercial, mobile, railway, marine, telecommunications. The sky is the limit when it comes to our 40-able solution. So the Envy 12 kilowatt is a 12 kilowatt off-grid inverter, can go up to 18kW to the AC loads in 21kW of PV, scalable to 10 units, 10-D3 phase compatibility, is out-to-rate and has that 200-ant pass-through. So it's a very robust inverter, very cost-effective and certainly allows us to support you guys when you install the fortress Envy in our battery, you're avoiding finger pointing, you're just going to get one company, one hand to shake and it is a very high quality solution. This was a product we released again two years ago or so, so we have a lot of these deployed in the field as is. We do have a 10 and an eight kilowatt version, the 12 seems to be the most popular because of the cost per kilowatt. But nonetheless, we do have smaller inverter sizes, depending on the size of the PV that you're building. - I have a question here. So I mean, with 18 kilowatt AC loads, why do you call it the 12 kilowatt inverter then? - Good question, because when the grid goes off, it can continuously pass 12 kilowatts of power. It's not going to pass 18 kilowatts of power when the grid goes off. That's the surge, that's the max grid connected. Off grid is 12 kilowatts of continuous power. So that's why it's envy true 12 kilowatt, not just envy 12 kilowatt. - You got it. - You're sorry, good question, good question. So it's now, we could market it as an 18 kilowatt inverter, but as you know, we've always been a little bit more conservative and pragmatic. So we named it the true 12 kilowatt because when it's off the grid, it delivers 12 kilowatts of continuous power, although it can go higher when grid connected up to 18 kilowatts. - When you're comparing it to a solar 15 kilowatts, let's say, how does it compare? - Great question. So it does compare more with the 15K versus the 12K. It's lesser the cost. It weighs also probably 20 to 30 pounds less than the solar 15K. Yeah, like I said, a lot of it maybe is just, you know, you have one hand to shake when you install the NV and the fortress batteries because it's one app, it's one monitoring platform, one call to Alex or the fortress power support team. So there are tangible cost and kind of install benefits, but there's also just the, it's gonna make your life a little bit easier when you need support. Good questions. Appreciate you. EflexMax, second generation, right? Still 5.4 kilowatt hours. You have that included heat sink, right? That's what that ridding is. It's a aluminum casing with this ridding that's gonna act as a heat sink to help manage the temperature of the battery when installed outside. As the name implies, it's very flexible with its install. It's a wall mount floor standing or where you have a server access system that you can install it into. A couple of key features though that you'll probably seeing right off the rip first, the terminals are covered, right? So you have this terminal cover that's gonna make sure that the terminals are not exposed to cover it when you install it outside. Secondly, there's a 300 amp bus bar included on the top of the battery, believe it or not. What does that mean? It means that when you want to install four Eflex Maxes, you don't need another combiner block to land them onto. You can land the Eflexes right next to each other, right? With that included bus bar, you'll see what I mean in just a second. And then lastly, there's a 125 amp breaker on the front that can be locked and tagged out. So the Eflex was general on Eflex Maxes, what we're providing now. And it still has that same very high quality temperature mitigation, sizing, prismatic cells, BMS, yada, yada, yada. But now you have some other features to help with your install time, reducing your combiner costs, and also having that 125 amp breaker that can be locked and tagged out. It's also a little bit cheaper than the Eflex, believe it or not, at least today it is. We have a couple of nice deals coming out that we're gonna be working with with Renvue. So you're gonna want to check out those. I'm gonna not mention them to keep you guys excited. But we do have some new promotions coming up for the Eflex Maxes that you're definitely gonna want to go to Renvue.com and check out. And then we have the Eforts. Wow, we've put them a long way with batteries, right? For those of you who've been working with me for a few years now, we've come a long way from the LFP10. And the Eforce is gonna be our new kind of residential model. Before anybody asks, no, we're not getting rid of the Eflex Max today, okay? We will still have the Eflex, don't fret. But eventually, you know, we're gonna, you know, get rid of that and we're gonna go in with the Eforce. And the Eforce is three piece of equipment sort of kind of. So you have the battery here. Each battery is 9.6 kilowatt hours, this gray box at the bottom. You then have a product here called the Eway. And the Eway comes with a 750 amp bus bar, guardian communication and wire management solution to do all of the wiring from the inverter through the Eway to the battery to help with your cable management. So as you can see, you could do up to two batteries or up to three for a scaled size of 28.8 kilowatt hours of capacity with the Eforce. It's still a left key, it's 40 able. Excuse me, 40 gable. But we've got some feedback of the years, the Eforce Max is big and expensive. This is a little bit more modular for California folks, keeping you under that 20 kilowatt hour cap, right? And still scaling up relatively high to that 28.8 kilowatt hours of capacity. The question I typically get at this point in the presentation are Alex can I parallel multiple 28.8 kilowatt hour units? You most certainly can. You just need an external bus bar from Blue Sea or Reliance as an example. Go to FortressPower.com. We have some new videos on this. We have the spec sheets are online. You can check out the Eforce product. We're very excited about this. We are certainly taking pre-orders now as we are getting some stock in. It's gonna be you are listed here in the next couple of weeks. So we are totally excited about this product as the latest integration or innovation at Fortress and in terms of large scale LFP batteries outside of the Eforce Max. Now this box up here is where the inverter is gonna like just to be clear. So the inverter, eBay, and then the battery down here. Okay. So some projects that we've worked on since 2009 to be got plugged in with SEPTA. They did around 1000 systems to keep their train stations running pretty neat. We also did Navajo Tribal Utility Project where they did around 100 off-grid solar battery systems with the E-Vault Max. Pretty awesome. We've done VBG, which is the Puerto Rico Department of Housing where they had the envy and the E-Flexes. The E-Vault Max is used for this project. This is an old school one, right? They have the external bus bar here. You'll see that here on this picture on the right. And then we have some other different home applications from, you know, something as large as 96KW, 150 kilowatt hours here on the right to something like here in the middle, which is a E-Flex Max with the envy. Now I wanted to mention how you see how there's no external bus here, right? They look like they have some unistrot. Looks like they're mounting it on the unistrot. And then they're landing all the connections right internally here on the battery. So that's what I was telling you guys about. You don't need an internal bus bar with the E-Flex Max. You have it built right here on the unit and look it makes your cable nice and neat, no cable theme besides this conduit running down here and here, but it's going to really simplify your installation. And then you have over here the envy with the E-Flex Max. No, the lights do not come with this. They built this. Don't ask me please. I do not have lights, but it does look good, I will say. But yeah, here is an envy with an E-Flex Max through on the right hand side. So different home applications for you guys to review at your own time. And like I mentioned, we have the app. So everything with the app, it can be programmed manually, but we do have the app for monitoring, setting up your applications, looking at the power flows, all that sort of thing, one app to manage all the applications and the projects that you guys work on. It's all coming from Fortress. Ooh, okay, that's residential. So now we're going to pivot and we're going to go to C&I. Now I do want to take a second. Are there any questions in the chat that I'm missing that I can address about residential or I jump into C&I quickly? - Yeah, there is one from Ireland asking about peak shaving with Avalon and with a 48 volt solutions. - The question being, can you do it or? - Yeah, I mean, does it support peak shaving? - Yeah, for sure. In the Avalon, you would just set it up as an application to do peak shaving. So yeah, you can do that because of the software that we have. The NV, it's a little bit trickier. You can do it, but you have to set up, it's a specific setting that you set up in the inverter with the battery. The Avalon, you can set up as a pre-configured setting. The ND, it's a little bit, it's honestly a little bit more work that you need to do to set up. It can do it conceptually, but there's a little bit more behind it than just like setting up the right schedule and then having it discharge like you would in the Avalon. Does that make sense? I hope so, at least. - That is true, for now. - All righty then, well, we can go to C&I. So, the pretty circle thing I showed you earlier, right? Full life cycle support, before just Bower. We can support you guys in the full life cycle when you guys do C&I projects. So, that's our whole value proposition. As Forger's as a whole, I'm gonna show you this same slide from earlier for the use of all the medium C&I projects. And the products that we have here gang is gonna be the East Fire and the East Fire Mini. The East Fire is a 125 kilowatt power system, 280 kilowatt hours with a microgrid controller, scaled up to one megawatt of power at 4.2 megawatt hours. A lot of where I see this being used for is for pictuating applications, backing up commercial facilities, title 24 projects, things like that. So, this is filling the gap between residential and utility from a power class size to fit those projects in between that there aren't too many solutions out there. Now, you see that we include that microgrid control cabinet because it is what's gonna do all the monitoring and dispatch of the battery for your example, peak shaving applications. You have that same fleet management approach for remote, excuse me, operations and maintenance and reporting. And because we have our own microgrid EMS, you don't need to source that elsewhere when you pick up your next commercial project. Now, this is three phase AC coupled only, 480 volt. So, you still need a PV inverter here to AC couple into this system to then use the 280 kilowatt hour battery, which has liquid cooling and then microgrid control cabinet, which does this, which is all the brains of the system. Might be thinking, Alex, this is the big system. Dang strain it is. It is a big, big battery. If you're looking for something a little bit smaller, you can look at the little sibling to this, the Eastfire Mini, but it's a three phase 208 AC or DC coupled, right? 30, 60 or 90kW with storage ranging from 81 to 266 kilowatt hours comes on the palate as one very large box. If you're an RE plus, it's big, it's a big box, but it's very flexible and modular. If you wanted to 208 volt or 480 volt, not 480 volt, AC at 60 Hertz. And similar to the Eastfire, you can do several different applications, microgrid applications, backup, off-grid, peak shaming, TOU, et cetera, et cetera. So I've seen this used on a call at the Oprah Winfrey home, the very wealthy people that have more money than they know to do it. I've also seen this used for municipalities, grocery stores, schools, hospitals, nonprofits, charging stations, several applications that this can be used for because of its pre-wired format along with the software there. And that allows us to communicate with those distributed assets on site. Again, three phase AC/DC coupled, little bit smaller, 30, 60 or 90kW, 81 to 266 kilowatt hours, and you can parallel three of them. And it comes with HVAC cooling, not liquid cooling, HVAC cooling in this one big, beautiful box. If you put RE plus, you saw it, it's a big box. It's a big box. Right it was, you saw it, it's a big box. 1040, oh, we got some time. All right, so that's C&I. I want to touch on that briefly. C&I is a totally different beast than residential. My feedback for you guys, talk to Fortress Power about your commercial opportunities, work with Renvue and Fortress on your commercial opportunities. It is not the same as a residential backup panel. There is a lot more involved. We have a whole department dedicated to C&I projects and development. Work with Renvue, work with Fortress. Between the two of us, we can help you get your projects across the finish line. So just a final note on C&I, 'cause it is very different in several different areas and arenas, do your due diligence, work with companies like Renvue and Fortress to help you with that. Let's pivot, let's talk about sales. Let's talk about business development in our industry. It's no secret the last two years have been Tupper Solar between California and M3 policy to interest rates. We'll touch on that too. To just, we have an election year coming up, a lot of uncertainty there. So my goal is that with Fortress Power, I want to grow your business. And so how I do that is we got to change the perspective team. We got to talk about how six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years ago, solar was more resiliency, right? Critical load panels, solar would pay itself off. The cost of power wasn't high. Interest rates weren't crazy. Today's world is not only just resiliency, 'cause that's still super important, right? Because of outages and things like that. But also people want this equipment to also work for them, give them some sort of return on investment, right? The PV does not pay itself off by itself anymore, especially in California. Cost of power are only increasing through several rate hikes in major utilities across the US. Interest rates are high, they're getting better, but they're still high. And you now have more utility involvement. I.e. energy broker, energy services. So you have to change your perspective now. Batteries are, this is not your grandfather's battery, right? These solutions, these battery smart energy panels are because of the change in the customer need and expectation and you need to know what solution to provide and who your customer is to move them from, hey, I just want to back up some loads and this is the commodity business to then ROI and resiliency. This is the value add business, right? I'm going to save you some money. We're going to cut you off from the grid, right? So you don't pay a lot of high power and we're also going to have this thing work for you rather than you work for it. So change your perspective, change the way you're thinking about your business or if you're a homeowner, think about the way that you perceive solar in batteries, right? Solar in batteries are not just for backing up your lights, they can be used for several other things. And so why do we see this change? We talked about the cost of power in the US. This is just over two years, it's a little outdated, but you'll see it's incrementally growing. It does not include a recent rate hikes since 2022 in California, Arizona, Texas, Washington, Georgia. I can name several states. Customer needs are different because of the technology. You have inflation and interest rates and like I mentioned, there's technological advances of smart technology is making the energy landscape different for contractors and energy users out there, right? Not your grandfather's battery. Different technology requires different ways of thinking. So I want to hear from you guys, right? I've been yapping around here for a while now. So I want to hear, we have this poll. If you're a contractor, can you please list some of the common objections to why someone would not choose to invest in a solar and battery system? If you're an end user calling in, tell us why you don't want to buy the thing. Tell us why you have always looked away to a different technology or just went with the generator. I'm interested to hear your answers. I'll give you guys a minute, go through this. And if you have another N, other, please drop that down. We'll take a look at the results quickly here. It's interesting and curious as well. I think I'm not allowed to vote. Whoops. Give you guys a minute. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. And here we have cost, technology uncertainty, timing, no perceived need, lack of trust and other. All right, we're doing all right. All right, let's close the poll. Can we close the poll, please? All right, and then where can I, I can see the results. Perfect, this is very intuitive. So the first one, cost, eight out of 10 people said cost. That's why someone would choose not to invest. That's interesting. That's really interesting. Technologic technology uncertainty. That's a good one, timing, always, always there, not the right time, no perceived need. Definitely wanna know more about this one. Maybe it's market based. This is a very interesting one, no perceived need. We had one person say lack of trust and one person say other. So it seems to me cost is the biggest thing as why someone would choose not to invest in solar and storage and also the idea of not having a perceived need. Now, what if I told you, hang on with me here, what if I told you that we can create these crises, crises, into opportunity? And how we're gonna do that is we're gonna reframe the conversation, look, it's like I already knew what you guys are gonna pick. First, take objections and create them the opportunities. It costs too much. Well, that's because the value of what this is gonna provide you is worth that cost. It's like why someone would invest into a mutual fund, right? It's a high cost, but the value, the long-term value is why you invest. Cost will always be an issue, but reframe that into, well, yeah, it's expensive, but take a look at what this can do for you over the time, whether it's load management features, whether it's cost reduction features, fear of voiding future cost raisings, let's say from utilities, right? Pitching value when the cost objection helps people's psychology realize, wow, it's not just a bunch of money, it's something that's more. Technology use social proof. If you're a contractor, show off your jobs. Shoot, isn't that the easiest thing? Take a picture, take a selfie. I did this, I did this, right? Thanks, I'm not a rookie, I know what I'm doing here. Timing, loss aversion, goes back to that cost thing. What is the benefit, cost benefit analysis of the cost of waiting versus the cost of being proactive? Typically, the cost of waiting is more than the cost of being proactive nine out of 10 times. The cost of being proactive is a higher upfront cost, but it is a delineation. The cost of waiting starts low, but then goes high, especially with the recent right hikes, new programs, some of the utilities that help recoup their revenue because of more deployed solar. Need, create via education and urgency. These folks don't know anything about what's going on in the energy landscape, but the good news is they got folks like you, right? So you can tell them, well, here's what's going on in the state. Here are some of the policy that's coming through. Here's how the utilities are gonna increase their rates. Here's how many outages we had in the past year. Create indeed via education and just that genuine need of supporting your customers with look, I'm not just trying to sell you. I'm trying to prepare you. Change the dialogue of your conversation. That's gonna help you be more successful rather than just want a battery to back up some loads. Great, no, go into there, ask those pain points and then via education, creating urgency about some unforeseen thing in the future. That's how you can create a need. That's how you get them interesting and trust social proof times too. These are my jobs. You wanna hear from the customer. I get that sometimes at fortress with new installers I bring them. Do you have any installers that you've worked with? Can you send me their name for sure? Send the contact, they have a good chat. Hopefully they speak well about us. Typically they do, but sometimes just having that law of social proof can go a very long way, whether it's new technology and that uncertainty or building trust with your customer. Guys, you guys know as well as I do? You never install a customer and never hear from them again. You're gonna hear from them. Whether positive or negative, I would prefer that it's a positive conversation. I love this thing. Use me as a reference. Can I leave your review? That's all what we want, right? That ties next into like differentiation, positioning, adding value, right? Differentiate your business from other competitors with different value-add products like smart load management products, Avalon. The Avalon technology is very flexible and you can compete on other things than price, right? A lot of batteries are just really cheap. It's easy to make a cheap battery. You know what's tough to do? To make a high-quality battery that has service. That's the challenge. The easy thing would make a white label from China, that'd be easy. But to service these batteries, to give that support, that is what, that's where the real value is. Compete on other things. Just like in you and your business, there are solar companies that have just thrown glass on roofs. Do they stick around? I'll let you guys answer that. Expand your clientele. Capture word of mouth referrals. Capture a growing market. Streamline your installation. With products, Avalon, through better customer experiences, reducing your truck rolls, monitoring, right? Reducing boxes on the wall with smart energy technology like the SCP that is going to remove the customer aesthetic and space concerns. I don't like how this thing looks. Well, let me remove boxes on the wall. Let's make this thing look a little bit better. We know aesthetics are important for end users. Believe it or not, I recently reaffirmed that through conversations at RA+. So, removing boxes on the wall, having the features and functionality from the hardware standpoint. But then, the business development standpoint of the lead generation, those sort of things can add true value to you guys. We talked about marketing. There's a couple of marketing approaches. Content marketing, law of social proof. Published projects, education, news, blogs. That's the things I want to see when I go to a website, right? Advertising, using SEO. Maybe you could use targeted ads for pain points in your region or state. Leveraging educational content, asking for referrals. That's an easy one. Do you have someone who'd be interested in this? Yes or no? Social media marketing and then influencer marketing, right? Using video customer views, employee interviews, become your own influencer, right? Become some, take a video of you and your installer, buddy, partner, whoever, doing the install. How do you like the system? What's been the best part of the install so far? How do you like working here? Things like that, just give that layer of personability to folks that the customers just don't think that you're just a solar company trying to sell them something, your real people trying to add value to their life. - I also wanted to add here. So if you're making videos of installations, we will be happy to post them on our channel as well, and give you exposure for our audience, which is pretty big and worth doing. So if you have videos like that that you want us to share a talk with us. - What's up? That's all I got. 1052, right on time. I will open up for some Q&A as a quick refresher. My presentation included the following. An Avalon debrief, we went through all the features of the Avalon, we then talked about the already able. We talked about the envy, the e-flex max, excuse me, and the e-force. We then also talked about the commercial products we have here. We talked about energy services just a little bit, and then we talked about business and sales development strategy. So this was a PACS presentation. We also have the folks from Renvue demonstrate their value from a site, their sizing tool that they have, the products that they carry and support as a partner of Fortress Power. So again, both set of slides will be shared out. Same thing with this reporting that you have this, and you can review this at your leisure. And I'll stop sharing, and then look at the questions in the chat. Let's see. - Well, Alex, I have one question. I might have missed it on your e-force section earlier. Does that have the UL 9540 yet, or is it still in process? And is it going to be inverter agnostic, or do you have a set of inverters that you're looking at pairing with? - Really good question. So UL 9540 is coming, I think the first or second week of October. So within the next month, we'll have that. And then the second question, inverter compatibility. For now, at least with like the first call at the batch, it's going to be just the envy, 'cause we've confirmed the communication now. You could probably still use this with third party inverters. It'll just be open loop communication. - Got it, cool, thank you. - Yeah, exactly. So closed loop to be determined, you could still certainly use it in open loop calls. Just like our eFlex Max or eFlex. Yep, good question. - Then you, Michael here is asking, leave the dental for storage projects that are approved for in school in New York City. - All right, Michael, I don't work in New York at all. So what I'd like for you to do, Mr. Bennett, is email the gentleman, Bill Doherty. He's my each code director at the house. I cover the wet code. Email Bill Doherty, ask him that same question. He can hopefully help you with kind of our NYC approval. I just don't know. And I don't want to say anything that might not be correct. Hey, Jeff, how are we doing? So Jeff's point, good question. Having four residential offerings is kind of confusing, right? How and when do we offer them? Here's how I've seen it. The Avalon is great for grid type projects where customers want some more features, right? They want the load management features. Maybe they have more costs involved that they want to offset. So they want to use the Avalon for load management features. The 48-ball I could more foresee in terms of folks that want to do more of a kind of critical load backup, certainly off-grid, have the ability for simple kind of load backup. It's certainly going to be maybe a little bit more budget friendly going with the 40-able, just how the market's trending. So I think it's kind of two products, the Avalon and 40-able. You choose the Avalon for grid tide, that customer base that wants maybe some more features. Maybe they just want to have a grid type system, AC and DC coupling. And then the E4, so the 40-able, maybe more for off-grid, folks that want a more budget friendly system, right? And then they can use that to backup that critical load panel, right? Less features, a little bit more cost effective, but still high quality, would be some of the feedback I put for you, Jeff. Good question, though. Well, if everybody have more questions, this is the time to ask it using the Q&A. If you don't, we will close it here. Thanks, Alex and Kyle for co-hosting this webinar with me today. Thank you, everybody, for participating. Our team will work on the recording and send a follow-up email with a recording and more information about everything we discussed today in the following day or two. Have a great rest of your week, everybody. Thanks, guys. Thanks, guys. Thanks. [MUSIC PLAYING] (upbeat music)