1
00:00:00,160 --> 00:00:05,400
If you think about what happened in
telecommunications, you went from a landline to

2
00:00:05,559 --> 00:00:08,519
a cell phone, and like all
of a sudden, your phone would just

3
00:00:08,560 --> 00:00:12,679
go with you everywhere, enabled people
to do business differently. It changed how

4
00:00:12,720 --> 00:00:15,199
things ran and worked, and then
it just went from there soon as you

5
00:00:15,279 --> 00:00:20,440
got data capabilities beyond just dialed tone. And so there's this same disruption,

6
00:00:20,559 --> 00:00:25,199
the same empowerment that's happening at the
individual consumer level where you're really doing.

7
00:00:25,239 --> 00:00:29,120
With something like take solar, you're
pre buying your energy for twenty years,

8
00:00:29,120 --> 00:00:34,520
and in most markets you might buy
this system and your quote unquote payback if

9
00:00:34,560 --> 00:00:36,560
you bought it with cash would be
like five years, and you don't have

10
00:00:36,560 --> 00:00:39,960
an energy built for the next,
you know, twenty thirty years. The

11
00:00:40,039 --> 00:00:51,759
Financial Survival Network now more than ever, the Financial Survival Network, and welcome

12
00:00:52,200 --> 00:00:56,439
you are watching listening to the Financial
Survival Network. I'm your host, Carrie

13
00:00:56,520 --> 00:01:00,719
Lutz. Eight. We've got a
new sponsor, are coming on for the

14
00:01:00,759 --> 00:01:07,480
first time, Correlate Energy ticker symbol
CIPI, and CEO Todd Michaels is with

15
00:01:07,599 --> 00:01:11,359
us and taught great to have you
on board. It's great to be investing

16
00:01:11,400 --> 00:01:18,560
in the company of them watching what
obviously in the US and the world is

17
00:01:18,599 --> 00:01:26,040
a dramatic energy transition. And you've
been an alternative energy for over a decade

18
00:01:26,079 --> 00:01:30,239
now you and your team, can
you just share with us how you got

19
00:01:30,319 --> 00:01:38,560
into alternative energy and where you see
this whole thing going. It was about

20
00:01:38,560 --> 00:01:42,200
two thousand and seven. I'm originally
from the Midwest. I've lived over all

21
00:01:42,239 --> 00:01:47,120
over the world. Initially in the
late nineties and my telecom career, so

22
00:01:47,200 --> 00:01:51,920
I was building out data infrastructure metropolitan
networks sort of like you know, that

23
00:01:51,959 --> 00:01:55,319
was the emerging infrastructure technology at the
time that was really changing thing. Information

24
00:01:55,319 --> 00:01:59,000
technology stuff like that was my first
career and through that I was in Silicon

25
00:01:59,079 --> 00:02:04,519
Valley and at that point it was
like the clean tech boom one, which

26
00:02:04,680 --> 00:02:07,199
was the people that were in the
silicon business were like, hey, you

27
00:02:07,199 --> 00:02:09,479
know, that's how you make solar
panels. So there was this huge spool

28
00:02:09,560 --> 00:02:15,360
up of the technology businesses in California
looking to get into the hardware to make

29
00:02:15,360 --> 00:02:21,280
solar and I watched that closely.
Wasn't quite interested into the market then,

30
00:02:21,360 --> 00:02:27,400
but as that market started to take
off, I saw the opportunity for different

31
00:02:27,400 --> 00:02:31,680
business models to deform and that was
around how do you finance these projects?

32
00:02:31,680 --> 00:02:36,039
How do you develop these projects at
scale? And so around two thousand and

33
00:02:36,039 --> 00:02:40,199
seven I started a business that was
called Solar Power Partners. That took us

34
00:02:40,280 --> 00:02:45,479
to start a developer owner operator.
So, how would you remove that first

35
00:02:45,560 --> 00:02:49,840
cost barrier to like that million dollars
solar project. How could you basically just

36
00:02:49,879 --> 00:02:55,039
provide the value of that opportunity by
selling people discounted clean solar power at a

37
00:02:55,080 --> 00:02:59,400
fixed price over time. So that
was my first entry into the space was

38
00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:04,120
starting that business. We did about
five hundred million dollars over about five years,

39
00:03:04,199 --> 00:03:07,240
raising various types of capital for that, and ended up selling that business

40
00:03:07,280 --> 00:03:12,439
to NRG, which is one of
the largest traditional power providers in the country,

41
00:03:12,919 --> 00:03:15,520
primarily in coal and natural gas.
They were looking to get into renewables

42
00:03:15,560 --> 00:03:21,479
and that's where my career essentially started
to grow and expand from there. We're

43
00:03:21,520 --> 00:03:27,039
in the beginning phases of this transition. To torture the analogy a little bit,

44
00:03:27,080 --> 00:03:30,000
if we're in a baseball game,
what inning would we be in?

45
00:03:31,400 --> 00:03:38,680
Really the first ending just getting them
ended bad? Huh? Exactly. There's

46
00:03:38,639 --> 00:03:44,520
it has been ten years of developing
the technology and the business models and proving

47
00:03:44,560 --> 00:03:46,400
that this stuff is competitive and it
works, and it's just that it's a

48
00:03:46,520 --> 00:03:52,439
natural competitor to supply reliable, clean
power to the sector. But you know,

49
00:03:52,599 --> 00:03:55,240
the adoption rate we're talking typically as
sub four percent, you know,

50
00:03:55,400 --> 00:03:59,919
globally, so it's got a long
ways to go. I like the fact

51
00:04:00,039 --> 00:04:05,120
that it's a merger of the energy
space and information technology, so you've worked

52
00:04:05,159 --> 00:04:10,960
on both, so you've kind of
got the bird's eye perspective of this correct.

53
00:04:11,000 --> 00:04:14,280
And for me, I think a
lot of people like to focus on

54
00:04:15,120 --> 00:04:18,120
the solar panels and the technology behind
how this works, but for me,

55
00:04:18,199 --> 00:04:23,560
this is all about the energy markets
and the business model. And if you

56
00:04:23,639 --> 00:04:30,600
think about what happened in telecommunications,
you went from a landline to a cell

57
00:04:30,639 --> 00:04:32,439
phone, and like all of a
sudden, your phone would just go with

58
00:04:32,480 --> 00:04:38,720
you everywhere. It enable people to
do business differently. It changed how things

59
00:04:38,800 --> 00:04:40,959
ran and worked, and then it
just went from there as soon as you

60
00:04:41,079 --> 00:04:46,240
got data capabilities beyond just dial tone. And so there's this same disruption,

61
00:04:46,319 --> 00:04:50,319
the same empowerment that's happening at the
individual consumer level, where you know what

62
00:04:50,399 --> 00:04:55,360
you're really doing with something like you
take solar you're pre buying your energy for

63
00:04:55,399 --> 00:04:59,800
twenty years. And in most markets, you might buy this system and your

64
00:05:00,240 --> 00:05:01,959
quote unquote payback if you bought it
with cash would be like five years,

65
00:05:02,000 --> 00:05:05,120
and you don't have an energy belt
for the next you know, twenty thirty

66
00:05:05,199 --> 00:05:09,519
years. These are these are at
least twenty year plus systems, and so

67
00:05:10,079 --> 00:05:14,120
it's a very very You cannot go
to your local utility and get a fixed

68
00:05:14,120 --> 00:05:17,000
price of energy or work a deal
where you're not going to have rising rates

69
00:05:17,000 --> 00:05:20,959
in the future. So this,
this is really fundamental of how people can

70
00:05:21,120 --> 00:05:25,879
you know, change something that is
core to their daily life. Food,

71
00:05:26,000 --> 00:05:29,040
water, energy, it's everything that
you need to get up and you know,

72
00:05:29,399 --> 00:05:31,680
have a happy life in the day. So for us, this this

73
00:05:31,759 --> 00:05:35,680
is on the same technology curve,
and this is as or more disruptive in

74
00:05:35,759 --> 00:05:40,319
terms of its relevance to people's daily
life. Hey, when you talk about

75
00:05:40,399 --> 00:05:45,800
unpredictable energy rates, I'm here in
Florida. Last year they put in two

76
00:05:45,920 --> 00:05:50,199
or three rate increases. This year
they're putting in two or three rate decreases

77
00:05:50,319 --> 00:05:55,839
as the price that gas has gone
down. It's it's really unpredictable, isn't

78
00:05:55,839 --> 00:06:02,240
it. It's it is so there
are people that there are major industrial users

79
00:06:02,279 --> 00:06:06,360
who have a multimillion dollars annual bills
that are seeing you know, twenty to

80
00:06:06,480 --> 00:06:11,240
thirty percent price bikes and markets like
Texas. Yeah, they call these things

81
00:06:11,279 --> 00:06:15,519
like the polar vortex that happened up
in the Northeast. It put businesses,

82
00:06:15,720 --> 00:06:18,120
you know, that put you know, certain industries out of business. And

83
00:06:18,160 --> 00:06:24,319
so the volatility of energy is a
huge issue for the stability of the economy,

84
00:06:24,360 --> 00:06:27,839
and so the the aging grid,
the billions of dollars that have to

85
00:06:27,839 --> 00:06:30,480
be put into it that has to
then get recaptured through what they call rate

86
00:06:30,519 --> 00:06:36,839
basing. So the local utilities with
the wires who provide energy are given a

87
00:06:36,839 --> 00:06:42,199
guaranteed return by their usually regulatory bodies
for those investments. So of course they

88
00:06:42,240 --> 00:06:46,680
would't they they are when the more
that they have to start investing money that

89
00:06:46,800 --> 00:06:48,800
you take the guarantee of return,
there's a natural increase in rates, and

90
00:06:48,839 --> 00:06:55,040
so the age of the grid has
exacerbating those rate increases. You do have

91
00:06:55,120 --> 00:06:59,399
the input risk like gas, or
you do have the regulation that's taking certain

92
00:06:59,480 --> 00:07:04,199
sources of offline, and so it's
this giant mix of just chaos and then

93
00:07:04,319 --> 00:07:09,120
Frankly, you just have you know, increased weather issues that are bringing the

94
00:07:09,160 --> 00:07:13,759
grid down. So those two things, unreliability and increased costs, you know,

95
00:07:13,800 --> 00:07:16,879
creates uncertainty for both residential and commercial
customers. And that's you know,

96
00:07:17,040 --> 00:07:20,560
that's one of the key things that
our technologies and our solutions solve. And

97
00:07:20,639 --> 00:07:25,720
obviously it's going to cost trillions of
dollars, probably to at least a couple

98
00:07:25,800 --> 00:07:30,079
of decades for this transition to take
place. I got a question for you,

99
00:07:30,720 --> 00:07:38,720
if not for the government's generous incentives
to get business is homeowners to transfer

100
00:07:38,879 --> 00:07:43,000
over to change their energy mix.
If you will, would you still be

101
00:07:43,040 --> 00:07:47,079
in this business. I've been in
it before we had these amazing incentives we've

102
00:07:47,079 --> 00:07:51,800
had every This is what a lot
of people don't know. Every form of

103
00:07:51,920 --> 00:07:58,519
energy in our US economy is subsidized
by the government. Fossil fuels, add

104
00:07:58,519 --> 00:08:01,720
it for years, renewables, got
it. You can pull up reports and

105
00:08:01,759 --> 00:08:03,920
find out what the mix has been. The mix has been shifting, you

106
00:08:03,959 --> 00:08:09,839
know, from where the subsidies for
fossil have been shifting slowly to renewals,

107
00:08:09,879 --> 00:08:13,079
but it's not been dramatic, and
there's still from the actual volume we still

108
00:08:13,079 --> 00:08:16,560
get a very small piece in the
renewables phase. And so yes, any

109
00:08:16,600 --> 00:08:22,120
new technology, anything that the society
needs to sort of make a pivot,

110
00:08:22,399 --> 00:08:28,879
is going to require some form of
government intervention. So organically the original tax

111
00:08:28,879 --> 00:08:33,799
insteadis even state incentives got this industry
going in markets like California, New Jersey

112
00:08:33,840 --> 00:08:37,679
where there was more state subsidy to
make things happen. Those went away,

113
00:08:37,720 --> 00:08:41,080
like the state level subsidies went away
like five plus years ago, and now

114
00:08:41,120 --> 00:08:46,279
the federal government has just simply said, we're going to maintain this tax credit

115
00:08:46,600 --> 00:08:50,320
to give the runway for the ballance
of these things to scale up. And

116
00:08:50,360 --> 00:08:54,480
of course now they're incentivizing things like
on shoring of the technologies. We're going

117
00:08:54,519 --> 00:08:58,919
to set up factories to build all
these batteries, EV chargers. You know

118
00:08:58,960 --> 00:09:01,960
that that infrastructure push is creating hundreds
of billions of dollars investment to create the

119
00:09:01,960 --> 00:09:05,679
manufacturing, which you know is a
couple of things. It's job creation,

120
00:09:05,720 --> 00:09:09,960
but it's also like we have real
supply chain risk with you know, certain

121
00:09:11,039 --> 00:09:15,799
markets like Asia which is political times
where you know it's good to have these

122
00:09:15,799 --> 00:09:18,240
things on shore. They've been doing
this city and in other industries like chip

123
00:09:18,279 --> 00:09:22,200
manufacturing where you know, not having
chips and being relied upon chips out of

124
00:09:22,240 --> 00:09:28,360
China is a real problem right now, correlate, it's got three avenues to

125
00:09:28,480 --> 00:09:31,799
capitalize on the trend. Can you
just go over the for us, explain

126
00:09:33,279 --> 00:09:37,799
how each one works and its profit
potential. Correct. So, you know,

127
00:09:37,320 --> 00:09:41,399
for us, the O our current
anchor is is solar technologies. You

128
00:09:41,480 --> 00:09:46,720
know, we're organically out there's enough
demand. We're organically originating those projects,

129
00:09:46,759 --> 00:09:52,279
developing those projects, and we're taking
fees development fees that we get really quickly.

130
00:09:52,320 --> 00:09:54,120
You know, these projects take about
a year and we're giving those fees

131
00:09:54,159 --> 00:09:58,360
over you know that year horizon over
time, and we're talking our average transactions,

132
00:09:58,440 --> 00:10:01,039
you know, two million dollars.
But on a portfolio basis, we've

133
00:10:01,080 --> 00:10:05,799
got tens of millions of dollars and
projects you know, usually in some form

134
00:10:05,840 --> 00:10:09,240
of construction phase. And that's that's
that's the beachhead. That's what pays the

135
00:10:09,279 --> 00:10:13,120
bills, keeps the business growing.
Secondly, works, you know, we

136
00:10:13,200 --> 00:10:16,919
are expanding and adding batteries, we're
adding an electric vehicle infrastructure. You know,

137
00:10:18,159 --> 00:10:20,000
there's new sources that demand, which
are these cars that need to be

138
00:10:20,039 --> 00:10:24,200
charged that are swapping fuel sources and
so that's driving up electrical use. And

139
00:10:24,360 --> 00:10:28,360
to facilitate putting that infrastructure in,
we're doing these things called microgrids which combine

140
00:10:28,399 --> 00:10:33,360
these technologies and so that and what
that, what that effectively means is that

141
00:10:33,399 --> 00:10:37,559
those transactions are now getting you know, two, three, four x and

142
00:10:37,679 --> 00:10:41,240
size. So instead of it being
a two million dollar project, the average

143
00:10:41,240 --> 00:10:43,759
deal size of a microgrid is ten
to one hundred billion dollars. So our

144
00:10:43,799 --> 00:10:48,960
average job and frankly, the efforts
to develop a ten million dollar project is

145
00:10:48,000 --> 00:10:52,960
not technically a lot of different than
the complexity of of developing one hundred billion

146
00:10:52,960 --> 00:10:56,200
dollars projects. So you get these
huge accounts of scales from a from a

147
00:10:56,240 --> 00:11:03,159
revenue and margin perspective. And then
three, there's a huge opportunity to work

148
00:11:03,240 --> 00:11:09,759
with decade old businesses that are doing
good work but don't have sophisticated systems and

149
00:11:09,879 --> 00:11:15,559
processes, ability to raise capital project
finance team to help fund their projects.

150
00:11:15,840 --> 00:11:20,919
We're bringing these shared resources and either
working in partnership with people like us that

151
00:11:22,919 --> 00:11:26,559
are on smaller scale but need our
leverage, and we can basically bring those

152
00:11:26,559 --> 00:11:31,399
contracts and those pipelines into us and
share in those revenues. So it's a

153
00:11:31,440 --> 00:11:35,480
way to lever up the business,
or we acquire those businesses they join us.

154
00:11:35,519 --> 00:11:39,440
We acquire those that ibatah more traditional
roleuplays that you might have seen in

155
00:11:39,480 --> 00:11:45,799
other industries, but for us,
the role up opportunity for businesses unit is

156
00:11:45,879 --> 00:11:50,120
unique because this is not about just
you know, firing people and ringing out

157
00:11:50,159 --> 00:11:54,360
efficiencies. These are businesses that are
growing thirty fifty, one hundred percent per

158
00:11:54,480 --> 00:11:58,279
year. It's more about how do
we really find the efficiencies to maintain the

159
00:12:00,200 --> 00:12:03,159
right even on margin percentages, but
how do we actually double their revenues with

160
00:12:03,240 --> 00:12:07,519
our fuel and so that's those are
the three core ways that we can you

161
00:12:07,559 --> 00:12:11,679
know, exponentially grow our business the
next few years with the opportunity in from

162
00:12:11,720 --> 00:12:15,480
the bus I want to get into
micro grids more. But first, there's

163
00:12:15,480 --> 00:12:20,000
a lot of companies out there kind
of trying to do the same, have

164
00:12:20,120 --> 00:12:24,240
the same goals as correlate. You
know, what do you think your competitive

165
00:12:24,240 --> 00:12:28,519
advantages? Why? Why are you
going to be the one in ten years

166
00:12:28,559 --> 00:12:33,039
that everybody looks back in and said, gee, it was trading at seventy

167
00:12:33,080 --> 00:12:35,080
eighty cents a share. Why I
knew about it, why didn't I do

168
00:12:35,120 --> 00:12:39,840
it? There's a lot of people
out there, but there's a there's not

169
00:12:39,919 --> 00:12:43,799
many people who have proven that they
can scale a business and at what we

170
00:12:43,919 --> 00:12:48,000
do at the higher end of things
on the Project financis the ability to raise

171
00:12:48,039 --> 00:12:52,320
institutional capital to know that you have
the right you know, team and history

172
00:12:52,360 --> 00:12:58,320
there. There's there's an extreme amount
of tribal knowledge and relationship and trust and

173
00:12:58,440 --> 00:13:03,200
frankly track record require to attract this
capital to go out there and scale the

174
00:13:03,200 --> 00:13:07,519
business correctly so that this you know, there is a huge fight for talent,

175
00:13:07,639 --> 00:13:11,759
and the talent that enables us to
grow this business reliably and better than

176
00:13:11,799 --> 00:13:16,720
others wants to be working for our
management team that we have done this in

177
00:13:16,759 --> 00:13:20,000
the past. Like now there's this
unprecedented opportunity of growth that's in front of

178
00:13:20,039 --> 00:13:24,440
us that yes, there's going to
be new players that come in that will

179
00:13:24,480 --> 00:13:31,559
grow, but our ability to do
that much more sophisticated and more profitably with

180
00:13:31,600 --> 00:13:33,879
our technology solutions that help us you
know, do things better, faster,

181
00:13:35,080 --> 00:13:41,159
cheaper, plus attract companies to join
us again through that acquisition move is really

182
00:13:41,200 --> 00:13:45,200
the key is really the key will
wait to do this because to be effective

183
00:13:45,240 --> 00:13:50,080
and this just distenttralized distributed energy world, you have to aggregate the market.

184
00:13:50,440 --> 00:13:54,000
You're never going to grow doing the
onesie twosie deals. It takes, there's

185
00:13:54,039 --> 00:13:56,799
too much time and money involved in
that. You have to know how to

186
00:13:56,840 --> 00:14:01,159
find efficiencies. And that's what our
team has perfected. And now this linear,

187
00:14:01,399 --> 00:14:05,159
with this this demand in front of
us, and with the clear incentives

188
00:14:05,240 --> 00:14:09,080
and frankly predictability on supply chain,
there's nothing going to stop us to grow

189
00:14:09,120 --> 00:14:13,559
this really quickly. And you know, you look at the multiples were tracked

190
00:14:13,559 --> 00:14:18,960
by Raymond James. You look at
the multiples for the businesses. We have

191
00:14:18,080 --> 00:14:22,639
large cap stocks, frankly businesses that
I started. You look at Clearway,

192
00:14:22,080 --> 00:14:26,120
you know they're trading at twenty x
multiple. You look at the mid cap

193
00:14:26,159 --> 00:14:28,759
stocks, there's really one or two
players that are out there and they're doing

194
00:14:28,840 --> 00:14:33,480
quite well. We're the only small
cap stock that has our pedigree in our

195
00:14:33,519 --> 00:14:37,840
team, and so our ability to
see those types of multiples is very real

196
00:14:37,919 --> 00:14:41,240
based upon what we have right in
front of us. So you really are

197
00:14:41,320 --> 00:14:46,039
the institutional memory of this industry because
you've been at it the longest. So

198
00:14:46,559 --> 00:14:54,440
yeah, So getting back to microgrids
decentralized energy trend. Can you just briefly

199
00:14:54,559 --> 00:15:01,480
summarize what a microgrid is, why
it's important, and why everybody on the

200
00:15:01,519 --> 00:15:07,720
planet seems to be pursuing them.
The microgrid is a series of distributed energy

201
00:15:07,759 --> 00:15:13,559
technologies that allow you to make a
choice to be on the centralized grid or

202
00:15:13,679 --> 00:15:18,360
not. You can essentially, if
the grid goes down because of a weather

203
00:15:18,440 --> 00:15:22,279
event or because there's price signals that
says that's going to be really expensive,

204
00:15:22,639 --> 00:15:28,120
you can choose to go off the
grid to operate your own with your own

205
00:15:28,200 --> 00:15:35,279
sources of generation and storage and managing
your loads. And the reason that this

206
00:15:35,679 --> 00:15:39,759
is happening at such a rate now
is because to the prior points, energy

207
00:15:39,840 --> 00:15:43,919
rates are going up, the ability
and the cost effectiveness that generate your own

208
00:15:43,919 --> 00:15:48,440
power is here. You know,
where else can you take something like solar

209
00:15:48,480 --> 00:15:52,720
that has no fuel input risk,
and so to say, the long term

210
00:15:52,799 --> 00:15:56,519
cost of that kill one hour,
it's three cents. When I'm in the

211
00:15:56,519 --> 00:15:58,120
grid, it's going to be sohere
between, you know, ten to thirty

212
00:15:58,120 --> 00:16:03,279
cents on a long term basis,
like I have no escalation of volatility,

213
00:16:03,679 --> 00:16:07,360
and so the ability for people to
have that hedge. Just from a pure

214
00:16:07,399 --> 00:16:11,600
operational perspective, if you're a business, it's you know, if this was

215
00:16:11,639 --> 00:16:15,440
an early adopter thing, now this
is like pure economics says, you add

216
00:16:15,480 --> 00:16:21,120
in the microgrid component to it.
Where you now you have markets like huge,

217
00:16:21,360 --> 00:16:25,639
massive markets like California, fifth largest
economy of world, or Texas which

218
00:16:25,720 --> 00:16:30,360
is just growing leaps and bounds.
You know, there you have grid issues.

219
00:16:30,519 --> 00:16:37,000
The grid goes down in California because
there's massive wildfires or there's not enough

220
00:16:37,039 --> 00:16:41,799
generation to meet capacity, and so
people are you know, residences and businesses

221
00:16:41,799 --> 00:16:48,879
are going to microgrids to have battery
backup or solar plus generate plus battery backup

222
00:16:48,919 --> 00:16:52,360
to keep them going to run their
businesses, not to lose their economic opportunity

223
00:16:52,480 --> 00:16:56,440
or to not be down with power
for several days. So there's the need

224
00:16:56,519 --> 00:17:02,559
to maintain your lifestyle, to remain
your digital connectivity, to run your infrastructure,

225
00:17:03,080 --> 00:17:07,799
to live your normal life. It's
frankly, it's a requirement in markets

226
00:17:07,839 --> 00:17:11,799
like the southeast and the West right
now, and occasionally up in the Northeast.

227
00:17:11,839 --> 00:17:17,160
So if it's cheaper, if it's
more reliable, why would not people

228
00:17:17,200 --> 00:17:21,680
do this? And typically it's been
an economic argument. But because this asset

229
00:17:21,799 --> 00:17:26,000
class has proven itself to lenders and
banks, there's financial vehicles for remove all

230
00:17:26,000 --> 00:17:29,640
the cost. You don't have to
come up with, you know, thirty

231
00:17:29,640 --> 00:17:33,440
thousand dollars for the home, or
millions of dollars to convert your plants.

232
00:17:33,759 --> 00:17:37,240
If you just want to get a
twenty percent discount of power at no escalation

233
00:17:37,640 --> 00:17:41,359
and give a guaranteed reliabilion uptime,
that's your offer versus looking at your alternative,

234
00:17:41,359 --> 00:17:45,640
which is your current grid access,
which is unreliable, cost more and

235
00:17:45,759 --> 00:17:51,039
is very volatile, or you know
more than compounding at seven percent per year

236
00:17:51,519 --> 00:17:56,119
is very rare. Your example of
where Florida's rates have gone down, there

237
00:17:56,200 --> 00:17:57,799
might be times in a cycle of
a you know, you look at a

238
00:17:57,799 --> 00:18:03,480
thirty year period, compounded average um
you know, increase on electricity is seven

239
00:18:03,519 --> 00:18:07,759
percent, right now, that's the
compounded you know, that's the kager.

240
00:18:08,079 --> 00:18:11,119
It might go down one year because
of some change, but on a compounded

241
00:18:11,160 --> 00:18:15,640
basis, it has never gone down
since the seventies period. So this fits

242
00:18:15,680 --> 00:18:19,480
in. Well, I noticed you
just entered into a one hundred million dollar

243
00:18:19,920 --> 00:18:26,720
joint venture with the Edge Renewable,
and that's for microgrid development to how does

244
00:18:26,759 --> 00:18:33,640
that kind of work. So one
of the key things that limits local developers

245
00:18:33,680 --> 00:18:37,160
who basically they know that local industry, They know how to kind of put

246
00:18:37,200 --> 00:18:41,640
the technical components of a project together. But to the to the point year,

247
00:18:41,680 --> 00:18:42,880
a lot of people don't want to
pay for that up front expense on

248
00:18:42,880 --> 00:18:47,920
the system, so you have to
go get third party capital that's going to

249
00:18:48,039 --> 00:18:52,720
essentially own an operator. But many
times they're the project buyers that are going

250
00:18:52,759 --> 00:18:57,880
to provide that economic value proposition to
that end customer. They want the developer

251
00:18:59,279 --> 00:19:03,519
to finalize all the engineering, go
through all the utility hurdles and agreements.

252
00:19:03,559 --> 00:19:07,400
They want you to get the project
to what they call shovel ready, so

253
00:19:07,440 --> 00:19:14,279
it's ready to go. This capital
enables these local developers to get those uh

254
00:19:14,640 --> 00:19:18,759
those those projects that are that are
conceptual through engineering to a place where they

255
00:19:18,759 --> 00:19:23,000
can be built and fully financed and
then be completed so that you know,

256
00:19:23,079 --> 00:19:27,279
they can they themselves can get some
fees and they can build out their book

257
00:19:27,279 --> 00:19:32,720
a business for the customers this vehicle. Again, it takes people who've worked

258
00:19:32,759 --> 00:19:36,839
on the institutional side of managing this
capital, managing that risk. We have

259
00:19:36,960 --> 00:19:41,359
the governance and the processes and the
technical acumen to work with those developers to

260
00:19:41,599 --> 00:19:45,680
understand the customers application, to make
sure we build at the right price,

261
00:19:45,720 --> 00:19:48,960
to make sure that system is going
to perform, and frankly, after it

262
00:19:49,000 --> 00:19:52,920
goes in, how are we going
to manage that asset. So there's a

263
00:19:52,920 --> 00:19:56,599
whole asset management aspect to this.
You know when you build your house,

264
00:19:56,799 --> 00:19:59,640
when you build a brand new house, you don't you don't not paint the

265
00:19:59,640 --> 00:20:02,960
house, replace the roof in ten
years. These are thirty year assets.

266
00:20:02,960 --> 00:20:06,640
So having people like us in the
mix that are that are going to be

267
00:20:06,680 --> 00:20:10,319
there to make sure that the systems
own, operate and work correctly. For

268
00:20:10,400 --> 00:20:14,400
these long term investors, it's a
requirement. So this fund, we'll get

269
00:20:14,400 --> 00:20:19,440
projects from concept to completion, and
that allows us the opportunity to participate to

270
00:20:19,480 --> 00:20:22,200
sort of say we're going to want
to own and operate that project yourself.

271
00:20:22,319 --> 00:20:26,279
We can help get that project sold
to an investor, and that investor is

272
00:20:26,279 --> 00:20:29,359
going to buy that system because they
know that that's what we've been doing for

273
00:20:29,359 --> 00:20:32,599
the last decade and they know our
assets are good. That's the bottom length.

274
00:20:32,880 --> 00:20:37,039
So it's kind of one stop shopping
for a very complicated process that has

275
00:20:37,079 --> 00:20:41,319
a lot of moving parts that would
be very difficult even for the larger,

276
00:20:41,480 --> 00:20:45,759
more sophisticated companies to kind of pull
this off. So they need to bring

277
00:20:45,759 --> 00:20:51,480
in a third party to make this
happen. Absolutely, and we have an

278
00:20:51,480 --> 00:20:55,400
awful lot of customers who you know, our ideal client typically has one hundred

279
00:20:55,400 --> 00:21:00,440
plus physical locations across the multiple states, and so you know, even the

280
00:21:00,519 --> 00:21:03,440
largest sort of internal energy teams for
customers might have like two or three people

281
00:21:03,519 --> 00:21:07,880
managing at one national grocer store chain
customer which I will not name my name,

282
00:21:08,279 --> 00:21:12,440
that has two thousand plus locations,
they have three people managing all the

283
00:21:12,519 --> 00:21:17,200
energy projects across the entire country.
You take that amount of time they could

284
00:21:17,200 --> 00:21:21,680
stand on each location, it's it's
never realistic. So we have that national

285
00:21:21,680 --> 00:21:26,960
infrastructure to help support both the customer
and there maybe regional developer to get those

286
00:21:26,960 --> 00:21:30,160
things done. So it's it's it's
you know again, what we've been doing

287
00:21:30,279 --> 00:21:33,039
in the in the systems and process
that we have to meet the opportunity.

288
00:21:33,240 --> 00:21:37,759
I've become a bit of an electrical
utility geek when it comes to looking at

289
00:21:37,759 --> 00:21:41,680
my bill and going online. The
system we have here doesn't work too good.

290
00:21:42,079 --> 00:21:47,200
Sometimes it'll tell me what I'm spending
per hour or per day. But

291
00:21:47,559 --> 00:21:52,000
there's nothing more opaque in this universe
than an electric bill, and most people

292
00:21:52,079 --> 00:21:56,880
just look at the number and it
looks okay, yepay pay the bill.

293
00:21:59,119 --> 00:22:02,799
You have to really educate people on
what it is they're paying now, because

294
00:22:03,279 --> 00:22:07,519
for the most part, they're clueless. Sure, I see the challenge there.

295
00:22:07,559 --> 00:22:08,759
I mean, I try to figure
it out myself, and I think

296
00:22:08,759 --> 00:22:14,359
I'm pretty astute, but I can't. So I guess a lot of what

297
00:22:14,440 --> 00:22:18,519
you do is education. Well,
it's funny. We used to do a

298
00:22:18,559 --> 00:22:22,119
lot of a hand to hand combat
insulting type of education. That was one

299
00:22:22,160 --> 00:22:26,799
of the barriers to like to getting
people to do opportunities to believe the math

300
00:22:26,880 --> 00:22:30,400
and then proceed in our programs,
you know, we diffuse a lot of

301
00:22:30,440 --> 00:22:33,599
that with providing all the capital and
sort of giving them a contract that's really

302
00:22:33,599 --> 00:22:37,160
clear. You get that essentially almost
risk free in terms of the value trade.

303
00:22:37,519 --> 00:22:41,400
But however, you know, now
with things like AI and technology,

304
00:22:41,440 --> 00:22:48,680
we literally have services where we capture
digital information off that digital meter that goes

305
00:22:48,720 --> 00:22:52,079
into the cloud. AI will read
pull all that data out the bills.

306
00:22:52,440 --> 00:22:56,480
It'll scrub it sort of saying,
hey, is this bill right? It

307
00:22:56,480 --> 00:23:02,000
will look at certain things to determine. We find that thirty percent of bills

308
00:23:02,079 --> 00:23:04,680
are inaccurate, and so just this
like this bill, audit, this bill

309
00:23:04,759 --> 00:23:08,519
recapture as a service as a starting
point to even understand how to like design

310
00:23:08,519 --> 00:23:12,799
a project. We'll find money that's
free money. And a lot of times

311
00:23:12,799 --> 00:23:17,920
people don't know you can go back
years. Somebody can go back and regulations

312
00:23:17,920 --> 00:23:21,680
sort of that you can go back
years and reclaim those bad charges, like

313
00:23:21,680 --> 00:23:25,400
people maybe build wrong for three years
and never knew it. And so we're

314
00:23:25,559 --> 00:23:30,440
we're oftentimes finding dollars there for the
customer and our process, you know,

315
00:23:30,519 --> 00:23:33,559
related to our deals, and that
just becomes more ways that they can invest

316
00:23:33,599 --> 00:23:37,160
in their infrastructure, you know,
raise their income. It sits. It's

317
00:23:37,440 --> 00:23:41,720
to your point, it's super complicated. You have to use technology to do

318
00:23:41,759 --> 00:23:47,079
the work efficiently, and uh,
you know nowadays it's it's it's an opportunity

319
00:23:47,160 --> 00:23:49,319
for us to help the customer but
also make a little bit of margin through

320
00:23:49,359 --> 00:23:55,559
those services. One of the things
I love is the ability with the micro

321
00:23:55,720 --> 00:24:00,079
grid using time of use billing,
you can sell the battery up. It's

322
00:24:00,079 --> 00:24:04,640
the cheapest rates at two one thing, and then you go and use it's

323
00:24:04,759 --> 00:24:11,559
your time shift, whereas here residential
it's seven or eight cents per kilo an

324
00:24:11,599 --> 00:24:15,759
hour at the cheapest time, and
it's twenty five cents at peak hours.

325
00:24:15,119 --> 00:24:18,680
So even if I had the ability
to do that, I could cut way

326
00:24:18,720 --> 00:24:25,480
back on my electric bill. Absolutely, there's there are many opportunities to shift

327
00:24:25,640 --> 00:24:32,119
when you use things to and really
the emerging market this is where you hear

328
00:24:32,160 --> 00:24:37,759
a lot of storyline around as renewables
or these systems go on the grid that

329
00:24:37,640 --> 00:24:41,279
they actually mess the grid up.
It's it's really funny you're getting you can

330
00:24:41,279 --> 00:24:45,640
put me on record for this five
years from now. Like we're already starting

331
00:24:45,680 --> 00:24:49,160
to see the utilities requesting that more
these technologies get deployed in certain ways.

332
00:24:49,880 --> 00:24:56,039
They are willing to pay top dollar
two consumers, not just your net metering,

333
00:24:56,079 --> 00:24:59,039
and you know typically if you're paying
ten cents and you generate back,

334
00:24:59,079 --> 00:25:00,799
they're gonna give you ten cent.
And there's but there's been a push for

335
00:25:00,920 --> 00:25:06,079
utilities that change how that works because
it's it's driving the people more and more

336
00:25:06,160 --> 00:25:08,680
towards things like solar and batteries,
and so in some markets that are that

337
00:25:08,720 --> 00:25:14,039
are somewhat combative, there's some friction
there by. However, there's also these

338
00:25:14,079 --> 00:25:18,400
emerging markets, like in the northeast
Texas where you're seeing as this is.

339
00:25:18,480 --> 00:25:22,240
You can type this into your Google
searchlight. Some Tesla solar battery customers,

340
00:25:22,680 --> 00:25:26,839
you know, during these heat peaks
and texts, they're getting paid one hundred

341
00:25:26,839 --> 00:25:33,079
and fifty dollars a day type of
energy because they need those resources to support

342
00:25:33,119 --> 00:25:36,519
the GRIDAD it's amazing. It's a
it's a money it's a money making opportunity

343
00:25:36,559 --> 00:25:40,599
for those that understand it. Yeah. I was thinking of installing a system

344
00:25:40,680 --> 00:25:45,000
myself and getting it, but in
Florida you can only it's net meter any

345
00:25:45,079 --> 00:25:48,240
yeah, and selling energy back.
But I say, yeah, when when

346
00:25:48,240 --> 00:25:52,200
the grid's down and my neighbors don't
have any electric, how much will they

347
00:25:52,200 --> 00:25:57,440
pay me to stick a plug in
my Uh? It's accurately there, Yeah,

348
00:25:57,480 --> 00:26:02,519
it's uh. And there's real stories
of that. Our CFO has A

349
00:26:02,640 --> 00:26:06,960
has a one of those systems in
northern California, and there are definitely the

350
00:26:07,039 --> 00:26:11,400
stories when the grid is down,
people are over there utilizing his system and

351
00:26:11,640 --> 00:26:14,880
willing to come up with some trade
for it. It's kind of funny.

352
00:26:15,000 --> 00:26:18,839
Yeah, well, hey, it's
it's really exciting. I'm really happy to

353
00:26:18,920 --> 00:26:23,599
be working with you and the rest
of the company and see unfolds. And

354
00:26:23,799 --> 00:26:30,519
I suggest everybody go to Correlate Energy, Correlate dot Energy c O R R

355
00:26:30,720 --> 00:26:36,200
E L A T E dot Energy, find out more, sign up for

356
00:26:36,240 --> 00:26:42,880
notifications and on the ticker symbol on
the OTC markets is c I P I

357
00:26:44,440 --> 00:26:47,799
taught. Really appreciate you coming on
and we'll be talking with you again real

358
00:26:47,839 --> 00:26:57,279
soon. Excellent, Thank you,
Mining Stock, Wealth