Life Stream

Some of the questions posed to Citizenre’s inexperienced Sales Team are best answered by Senior Management and concern details of solar-grade silicon, debt financing, and corporate assets. The following is a response by Dr. Rob Wills, CTO of Citizenre to the Renewable Energy Markets members concerning these issues.

Response to Re-Markets List on Topica.com
Rob Wills et al, Feb 11, 2007

Dear Jeff Wolfe, and fellow Solar Industry members:

Greetings from Citizenre.

We hear your concerns about our business plan. We are responding to your questions and modifying our plans to address the issues that you raise.

At this point, Citizenre is a startup company. We are still putting our management team together. We still have a lot to do. We have not broken ground yet on our PV plant, but plan to do so soon.

Our goal is to revolutionize the PV industry with:
- Successful end-user marketing
- Financing of end-user systems
- Vertically-integrated product line (i.e., integrated inverters)
- Innovative installation methods
- High volume PV manufacturing

The initial marketing program, as stated on the web site, is a pilot. It is showing us what can be done, and in some cases, what not to do. Viral marketing is very powerful, but can suffer from exaggerated claims as the message passes from one person to another.
We are moving quickly to correct misconceptions.

We believe that, rather than being a threat to the solar industry, Citizenre will greatly accelerate its growth.

The ideas behind the business plan come in part from work done by NREL, REPP, and the many NGOs and Environmental Organizations who have sought to commercialize PV effectively. If we do not succeed in our full plan, others will follow our path. At some point, someone will succeed with this plan.

What makes us different is that we are not owned by a multi-national oil or electric company, and so have a different reason for being in business – we want to see solar succeed.

Now the answers to your questions:

Sales Targets

Q: Goal of 100,000 sales in first year. Let’s call it an average $20,000 per sale. That’s $2 Billion of cost incurred. Various interviews have indicated that Citizenre has / is getting / will get (which is it?) $650MM of investment. How does that buy $2BB of installs, year one?

So after year one, we get to year two. Year two has another $2BB of equipment installed. More capital required. Debt markets? Sure, just need to convince them. They will loan against a program like this in maybe 5 years. Right now, you might get 3 - 5 year loans for part of it, but not all of it, and not for the terms needed. I’m actually in the capital markets, although nowhere near this level, and this stuff does not fall from the trees.

A: From this question, it appears that you are blurring the lines between the production facility’s ultimate nameplate capacity and the actual output of the facility during the scale-up of production capabilities.

Roughly nine months after we break ground, Citizenre plans to produce 100MW of PV. There are incentives built in to our construction contracts to motivate an earlier start date – as early as month-6 - and conversely, there are penalties for taking longer. It will take approximate 15 more months to bring the plant online fully. Under this phased approach, we expect that it will take 2 years to fully complete our first facility.

Nevertheless, the capacity we expect 9 months after ground breaking will at minimum produce enough PV for 20,000 systems per year. The target of 20,000 systems/year is based on our assessment of the market which assumes an average system size of 4.5 kWp.

Continuing to ramp-up and bring additional phases online will increase our capacity over the subsequent 15 months. Ultimately, we will have the ability to deliver to about 100,000 homes each year.

Once we prove the feasibility of the first plant, we will duplicate the design and bring more capacity online.

You and others have asked: how is this financed? We have commitments to finance construction of the plant. But as you correctly stated, construction financing does not finance the “Synthetic Power Producer” structure that supports the installation of systems on residential homes. Your estimation of $2 billion per annum is a little high, which is to be expected if you base your numbers on the way that the PV industry does business now. The approach that you should be taking is one that relies on sensible governmental support and more weight towards supply-chain stability, standardization, and operational efficiencies. You may also be overlooking the fact that we have the ability to carry manufacturer’s equity in these financial structures.

The power of Citizenre’s innovative business and financial model has already convinced major investment players of the tremendous opportunity ahead. The first round of investment will be announced shortly along with the plant location; subsequent rounds will underwrite each year’s residential installations.

State Incentives

Q: And Citizenre has said that incentives just get in the way. That’s a good thing, because no state incentive program can put up with this run rate. Outside of CA no one has anything even close, and at this rate Citizenre would deplete the CSI in a couple of years. Ok if it gets the solar out there, but not if it then falls on it’s face.

A: The main incentive that we need is a consistent net-metering law. We will work with the States and new Democratic congress to move towards a National net-metering law.

One of the things provided by our large dedicated customer-base is a significant lobbying base. We expect that we be able to change state and federal policy using this power.

Beyond the necessity for reasonable net-metering laws or a blanket national net-metering law, we will help advocate for 1) meaningful renewable portfolio standards; 2) carbon and other green-house gas taxes; 3) the push for a distributed portfolio standard to capture the economic and national security benefits that the distributed nature of PV provides; and 4) the continuation of renewable energy subsidy programs that place more emphasis on production.

Financing

Q: Where’s the money? No one invests $650MM without some PR, an announcement, etc. And no one receives $650MM without an announcement, PR, etc. This is the most stealth money I’ve ever not heard of.
Understand that $650MM is a very significant percentage of all the money invested in solar to-date. Who are the investors?

A: The investors are large, well-known financial institutions. We will announce their identity and the location of our first manufacturing plant shortly.

Financial Model & Solar-Silicon Cost

Q: I’ve seen various people’s attempts to figure out Citizenre’s financial model. No one has made it work. Even if we get the proposed federal tax credit, the numbers do not work at any reasonable cost for equipment, sales and G&A. The only way it works is if Citizenre is somehow able to lose on each sale! Not a great business model, but could help to get solar out there faster. PV costs money. Without long term silicon contracts (and those cost additional huge money) then Citizenre will be paying well over $60/kg of silicon. This puts a floor price on your modules. You’re not buying glass and aluminum any cheaper than anyone else. So your product cannot be that much cheaper. Yes, you can cut out the middleman and slash the installation budget (perhaps), but you cannot get to half price out of the box, or even in a few years.

Where are you getting silicon? Do you have signed and sealed non-cancellable long term contracts for 200 to 500 MW?

A: We understand the solar-grade silicon market thoroughly. We also understand that secure long-term contracts cost $60 to $90/kg now, and that the spot market price is near $200. We have made arrangements for supply stability at the SG-Si level as well as for the other raw materials that are necessary in the production of PV modules. And although the cost savings are not tremendous – based on our bulk purchase, they are lower than what the average plant in the industry now pays. This is simply economy-of-scale.

SEIA and Legislation

Q: Is Citizenre a member of SEIA? Are you contributing money toward the hiring of very expensive lobbyists? Are you working to get legislation passed that helps the solar industry? Or are you riding on the work and money of others?

A: Yes we are a member of SEIA – and ASES, SEPA, IREC, and ACORE. Yes, we are working to get legislation passed that helps the solar industry - once again, a large customer base will be the most powerful tool that the industry has ever had for policy change. We will devote a considerable part of our profits to supporting SEIA and the other organizations in their legislative efforts.

We are indeed following the work of many who came before us – going back to Bill Yerkes and Arco Solar, the foundation build by JPL, Sandia and SERI (now NREL) and the contributions of all the manufacturers and installers who have brought us to where we are now. Most of our senior management has been in the solar business for more than 20 years.

AC Modules

Q: We’ve never had a good, inexpensive, reliable AC module (I.E. micro inverter). Why now? What’s new and different and makes this unit good?
How many hours of field testing has it gone through? Tough environment on the back of a module. How many hours has it been on the roof?

A: Please check the definition of “AC Module” in the NEC. (I helped to write it). I agree that putting an inverter on the back of a module is a bad idea – we don’t plan to do that.

We are still in the development stage for this part of the system, but do have prototypes running. We have one of the most experienced inverter design groups in the country – we can make this work. Nevertheless, the prototype may have unanticipated problems in manufacturing, in getting into commercial scale production, particularly at the volumes we anticipate needing. Thus, we have created a contingency plan for the bulk-purchase of inverters if we see production delays.

Q: I assume product is at UL for testing (both PV modules and inverters). If not, CitizenRe cannot make the dates they are promising to their customers of September installs, since not only does the equipment need to pass UL, but it also needs to the be manufactured in volume. Please provide proof that equipment is at UL for testing, and an estimate of certification date (I realize that’s hard with UL, but everyone has a schedule).

A: UL’s own estimate for passing the full set of 1547.1 tests is 3 calendar months. The module plant start-up will be approximately 12 months, so we will have enough time for field testing.

Manufacturing Plant

Q: Where is the PV manufacturing plant and where is the inverter manufacturing plant? Ground must be broken by now. How about some photos of construction? A 500MW plant (with only 100MW built out in the first year) is not a small place. It’s also not cheap. My best guess is about $200MM for phase one. Of course, we have another numbers problem here.
If the plant is only built out to 100MW, and you sell 100,000 systems at 2kW each (would you sell smaller, on average?) then that requires 200MW of capacity. It just seems like Citizenre’s statements throw out big numbers, but the big numbers do not match each other. That means that the numbers are just being made up, that there is no plan. Please indicate what the real installation goals and manufacturing capacities will be for year one and two.

A: As stated above, we have not broken ground on the manufacturing plant; what’s more, we will not even be able to break ground immediately after the location is announced. We will have, however, a fast-track permitting process and hope to begin shipments at a rate just over 8 MW per month roughly 9 months after ground-breaking. That means delivering nearly 25 MW to the industry in Year-1 alone. The scaling up of the plant to 500MWp capacity over Year-2 will give us another 250 MW in addition to the existing 100MW. With the announcement now expected by mid-March, that places the first installations in December 2007. Translated to systems, this gives us an estimated maximum of 5000 installs Year-1, 70,000 installs Year-2.

The numbers may not “match up”, as you put it, because there are other parts to the equation that either have not yet been described, or may never be, because they represent proprietary solutions that reduce our costs well beyond the industry’s current experience.

Installation

Q: I hear that the installs take half a day. Amazing. Even with AC modules (so no inverter hook up per se), one still has to rack and install modules. I could believe a day in some areas (1 story, low slope roofs, simple electrical entrance). But this means that the systems must be sized to avoid main taps, cannot be on tile roofs, and have to be within 20 minutes of the shop. It takes time to simply get the ladders unstrapped from the truck and leaned against the house. Telling people half a day is, in my opinion, completely unachievable, except for a very small (two panel?) system that has UF wire connecting it to a breaker. (UF wire for 20 years outside?)

A: We know how much work goes in to a conventional PV installation. There are ways, however, to cut the installation time dramatically using clever design, standardized components and lifting equipment.

The half-day install is for small systems (2kW and the like). Larger systems will take longer. At the size most customers will require – 4 and 5 KWp, we expect that the installation time will be a full day. We allow for this in our business models.

Sales Training

Q: The CitizenRe site indicates that the sales people need to go through training before selling, as do the installers. All well and good, however, the sales people that we’ve spoken with do not, basically, know a thing about PV. Shading analysis? Building permits? Bill analysis? Nothing. Just sign up now and we’ll get you solar in September. How is CitizenRe going to correct this?

A: The first roll-out of the marketing plan is a pilot. We have learned much from this.
All current and new sales people will undergo a much higher level of training. Many present sales people will drop out because of this.

We are just as committed to ensuring the survival of the solar industry as you. We understand the necessity for each of our associates to have a high level of core knowledge and will institute this requirement this month.

One point to note, nonetheless, is the different roles our sales and installation people have. Even when trained to the new standards, the independent sales associates are not expected to do a shading analysis or deal with building permits. Citizenre’s model anticipates that different types of customer interactions require different skills. The sales associates are adept at building customer relationships and explaining the product at a basic level. The nuts and bolts of the installations, however, will be left to the installers who have completed NABCEP training and certification, as a minimum.

For the customer, there will be on-going reality-checks with regards to delivery time and business plans. For example, we are integrating a new tool on our web site to predict actual site review and delivery times. Part of the training will be to help the customer understand the issues that may arise – even the risk that customers may not receive a system if all of our requirements are not met.

Q: The site also indicates that the sales strategy is pure MLM (multi-level marketing - think Amway). Yes, this marketing method can work, but it can also have a life of it’s own and create major problems for customers in terms of fulfillment. How is CitizenRe going to avoid the problems inherent in this sales method? I saw that in a few states, sales people are prohibited from buying more than about $495 of “sales aids” in the first 6 months of their employment. How much does the average sales person outside of these limiting states purchase in “sales aids” in the first six months? Is this a major revenue stream for CitizenRe at this point?

A: We prefer to call this “Direct Sales”. We do not emphasize the multi-level aspect (the purpose for signing up is to sell solar, not to enlist downstream sales reps), and are taking steps to make sure that the sales royalty stream is fair.

There is no cash contribution required from a sales rep – just time and a willingness to learn about solar electricity. We actively discourage sales reps from spending their own money for advertising (although a few are). We have several cooperative marketing agreements with non-profits and other companies to drive customers to us. These qualified leads are given to our associates to respond to – without charge. We have refrained from bringing this channel online and from starting our PR program at this point specifically because we know now that our sales team needs another level of training. We want to make certain that the first interaction customers have with the PV industry is a good one. As a last point, unlike MLM organizations, we ask for no money from our sales associates, and do not sell advertising or training materials.

Another way of putting this is that your grandmother could tell her friends about the possibility of solar electricity, and qualify leads. It’s the franchised installer who makes the final decision as to the viability of the site and system size.

A Threat to the Solar Industry?

Q: And the most fundamental question is, is CitizenRe out to put all other solar businesses out of business, since who will “buy” a system when they can just pay the electric bill at whatever level they are at?
($0.07 anyone?) Yes, we’ll all be able to install for CitizenRe. Not the profitable business we’ve all been trying to build. Especially if we’re only going to get paid for 1/2 day per job! But more importantly, if CitizenRe succeeds in stealing all the customers for the next 6 months, then fails, we’ll have the double hit that many dealers will go under (no sales is bad for business) and then CitizenRe will not deliver (from what I see, highly probable). So here we are with one firm playing Russian Roulette with the entire industry, and perhaps the future of the US.

A: We understand very well that there is a great deal at stake here, and that Citizenre’s actions will have significant ripple effects for the industry and for the country.

We share the conviction that widespread solar implementation is an urgent part of the solution. It is not our intention to put the rest of the solar industry out of business—far from it. However, it IS our mission to change the trajectory of the solar and distributed generation industry. We plan to bring solar into the mainstream in a way that has never been possible before.

We understand that we are committing ourselves to a strategy that has some very big risks. Is it our intention to “play Russian roulette with the entire industry”? Of course not. Do we understand that competing against this strategy is going to be very difficult for the bulk of the existing industry? That it will inflict upon them the need to dramatically change their own business models in order to survive? Yes, we understand that. Yet we also know that the future landscape of the solar industry can’t be predicted with any certainty. In that sense, all of us – big companies and small, old and new – face the same challenge. We must all do the best we can to anticipate the future’s competitive challenges, and either adapt and survive, or fail in the attempt.

If Citizenre does not move ahead with its business plan, others will follow. The solar industry is about to change in very positive ways. There will not be a shortage of jobs – quite the contrary – there are opportunities in this business model for all of us, and many new people. We need people to handle logistics and distribution. We need a network of good installers ranging from large contracting firms in city areas to “one-person” shops in more remote areas. Our first PV plant alone will employ 1600 people.

Conclusion

Ok, that’s a good start. Nothing hard to answer here, nothing that takes research on the part of the company. Just real hard questions that will tell us if there is anything behind the smoke. Thanks for your time in answering this Rob.

And thank you for asking. Now I would like to ask you a question:

Is it better to try for a quantum leap that results in PV power costing less than retail electricity? Or should we sit back doing business as usual, letting the government tell us they are supporting solar while they spend many times the annual SAI budget every week in Iraq.

Please give us a chance to move ahead and to succeed. There is a huge amount of effort that has gone into forming Citizenre.

It’s easy to attack a new idea, and to be fearful of the consequences of change. There are many in the industry who support us wholeheartedly and look forward to a time when PV has cost parity with other forms of electric generation.

There will be plenty or work for all of us. Solar Energy is abundant.

Dr. Robert Wills, P.E.
CTO, Citizenre

For your information, if you would like to understand more about our business plan, we would recommend beginning with the following documents:

“Solar Energy: from Perennial Promise to Competitive Alternative” (Greenpeace/KPMG)

“Financing Large-Scale Increases in PV Production Capacity through Innovative Risk Management Structures and Contracts” (REPP), and

“What the Solar Power Industry Can Learn from Google and Salesforce.com” (The Topline Strategy Group).

All are available on the web via Google search.

Ecogeek reports on an Australian man’s invention for tracking the sun using a motorless tracking device. It uses a hydraulic system powered by the sun.

The device works by absorbing heat from a combination of increasing ambient air temperature and direct solar radiation to provide an expansion of a liquid at a controlled rate. Increasing hydraulic pressure drives the mechanism until sundown when the liquid cools and contracts allowing gravity and a small spring bias to return the array to the morning position.