We are live from the Montgomery County Home and Outdoor Living Show. This is Craig and Kevin with The Homeowner Show. Hope you're all doing really well out there, and we are glad to be here. We are at the Conroe— what's it— Lone Star Convention Center is what this place is called. Lone Star Convention Center, yeah. And, uh, there are all kinds of vendors out here, and we're going to talk about that. We've got some other stuff we want to talk about. We are live. Glad you are with us. How's it going, Craig?
It's going good. You know, we've we've done this event twice now.
We've done the we've done this event twice now, and the third time with this company.
Now with our sponsor True Texas Solar. If you guys if you're watching live, you can see the the really cool solar panel behind us with their logo on it. Love working with these guys. But this year is a little different, man. It's There seems to be a lot more versatility in the vendors that we're seeing out here. I don't know if— I know you haven't had a chance to walk around too much.
Not quite as much, but what I mean, one of the things that I know is pretty much anything outdoor that you're interested, they got— I mean, there's interior stuff around too.
What kind of stuff are you seeing?
I'm seeing a lot of like some of the smaller things that you think about around like leaf guards.
Things like that. And this guy sitting right over here is an internal vacuum system for your home. And so it's things like that that I'm seeing that are, you know, in the past it's always been like bigger contractors, like roofers, home remodelers, home builders, cabinet makers, and, you know, like larger, what I would call like the bigger big ticket items.
You know, and what I'm seeing more of today are actually some of the other things, like the small, and I hate to say smaller ticket items, 'cause like I'm looking at one right now that's like a window company. Windows aren't cheap.
So, but like getting good windows is great for your home as far as like insulation and energy conservation.
We have, um, our home was built in 2000, but they're single-pane windows. Right. And it is a massive energy suck to not have dual-pane windows.
Right, right. So anyway, um, and like, I mean, like right next to us, man, is like these custom chicken coops.
Dude, these things are awesome.
I know, they're cool. Like, I, if I was a chicken, I wouldn't mind living in that.
So, um, And I think we've actually had the guy on the show that builds these.
I think that's David Carr. Oh, is it?
I think so. Yeah, I think those are his. I think we had him back in like our very first year.
Yeah, that was a long time ago.
But I mean, he's been, he's been killing it with these custom chicken coops.
So anyway, I'm, I'm seeing lots of things like that. I, you know, one of, one of the aisles, I actually saw one of my, my nemeses. Oh, Terminex is over there. I'm not going to say anything about them because I don't want to get into a, you know, I don't want to get into a suit, especially right here, right? I don't, I don't want to go to court for defamation, right? So if you want to come talk to me privately, we can have a conversation.
Um, but on this show, no, they're off, they're off limits. But they're here.
Um, I will tell you this, man. Um, you know, for those of you watching the show a long time, you know, you guys know I'm in the pest control industry. I will say this about, uh, Terminix. I've met a lot of their guys that have left that company and then gone on to make, you know, start their own companies.
Sure, they're learning how to, how to do pest control.
And so like they have, they have good training.
They train their guys really, really well. Um, they're, they're higher-ups for sure, right? Um, so, but anyway, um, but also seeing like just landscaping services, seeing furniture, um, but you know, then also like the, you know, the, the usual suspects are here as well, you know, home— there's, there's some home builders, there's some home remodeling, Right. And those are always interesting.
Yeah, there's even, there's even people out there selling like golf carts.
And different things like that.
There's one over here that's got— they make custom spices.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. It smelled really good over there.
I'm gonna have to mosey on by there. Spices are something I have a hard time walking away from.
Well, I know, I know last time we were here they actually had a a kitchen where they were doing cooking demonstrations.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, there's lots of stuff going on. I mean, like, you're not gonna be bored.
If you're just looking for somebody to chat to, there, you know, you're gonna find somebody that's willing to have a conversation with you about pretty much whatever, right, having to do with your home. And so that's, that's why it's great for us to, to be here, because I mean, this is, this is why we do the show. We want to, we want to expose you guys to as much about home improvement as possible. Um, that's right. And this, this is a great opportunity to do that. I mean, it's kind of like, you know, drinking from a fire hydrant. But, um, so dude, that's cool.
It's a retractable hose for the, for the vacuum. Sorry, we're watching a demonstration right now, and that was legit.
That was legit. I mean, we've, we've got the, uh, Roborock at our house, you know, the robot vacuum. Yeah, which is unbelievable, by the way. I mean, the one we've got, one of the really, really nice ones that that like mops and does all— I mean, it does— it's, it's not your run-of-the-mill, um, robot vacuum. It, it empties its own water and refills itself.
It, it cleans the mop before it actually goes. Like, it's, it's not your run-of-the-mill. It's got a massive like docking station and everything. Um, but I will tell you that there's still nothing quite as good. Like, some of these robot vacuums are getting really good with their suction power and things like that, but they're still not quite as good as actual vacuums.
Especially one like that.
We're gonna have to go take a video of that when we get done. That's just legit.
Yeah, it was cool. One of the things I will tell you is one of the ways we kind of combat the, you know, maybe not quite as good as a regular vacuum is ours goes every weekday.
Ours cleans our house every weekday, which is awesome whenever you live kind of out in the country a little bit. You got kids running in dirt everywhere. So that's a positive thing. But you know, there's, there's all kinds of stuff here. And, uh, you know, it's one of those deals where sometimes you don't even know, like, what can I do for my home? I want to, I want to increase the value of my home. I want to increase the, the likability of my home. I want to make my home easier to maintain. And sometimes just walking around places like this gives you ideas, right? It makes you go, you know what, that's something I could do. Or that
I thought that that was going to be an exorbitant price, and, and maybe it's not. Maybe it's a lot less than you thought it would be, or maybe there's financing available, or, um, or just, just an option that you'd never even thought of. Correct. You know, well, and here's the other thing. So like, for example, we, we've got a ton of gutters on our house. I mean, like almost every inch of our, of our, uh, roof has gutters on it, and it's a lot to clean, right? And it, it'll take you a half day to get up there and clean it all out. But, but leaf guards would be really nice. But here's the truth,
not all leaf guards are created equal. So you come to a place like this and you can see the product.
You can see multiple vendors with multiple products and see this works this way, this works that way, and you've kind of got it all in one location to where you're, you're kind of— it, it's— I was listening to a guy the other day talking about like time management, and one of the things he talked about was batching.
Are you familiar with time batching?
So the idea with time batching is you take similar, similar types of things that you do and do them all at the same time. That way you're not, you know, really, you know, splitting up your brainpower or your time. And so this is a good way to time batch. And it's nice outside. Getting out and doing something today.
Yeah, today is a gorgeous day. My issue with time batching is I think it only works for guys with certain brains. That probably is true. You know, if you are, if you're like an ADD brain, it's probably, it's not gonna work.
It's just gonna make you frustrated.
Yeah, because you're not, because the idea is you're gonna get more done in less amount of time because you're focused on the single task.
And, you know, guys that have attention deficit or ADHD, whatever it is, like, you're multitasking constantly.
And so like batching, it's a brilliant idea It is for people that have a certain brain discipline. Most people just don't.
That's definitely true. Definitely true.
Oh, well, dude, I had, um, I had a crazy event happen at my home this past Wednesday. Oh, I was telling you a little bit about it before the show. Yeah, but when, you know, when Beryl came through, uh, people lost trees and limbs and all that kind of stuff.
I'm still sticking with Burl. Burl. Anyway, go ahead.
When Beryl came through, uh, we lost a lot of limbs and parts of trees in the front pasture.
So I was down there for, you know, a couple of days cutting stuff. Just, yeah, just cutting stuff up with the, uh, with the chainsaw, using the loppers to, you know, get, get to where I could even get to some limbs.
So by the time we were done We had a, we had a massive burn pile and it was, it was probably 8 or 9 feet tall.
And, and so we let it— a lot of it was green and so it just would have been a pain in the butt to burn. So we just let it sit out there for a while and dry till we could, you know, actually get to it.
Well, Wednesday night I was like, you know what, today's the day.
I'm gonna knock it out. Um, and it had rained a couple days before, so I wasn't worried about, you know, the fire getting out of hand. Sure. But we had a hose nearby anyway. So I lit that, I lit that booger on fire, and that fire had to, like, when it was at its peak, probably about 15 feet.
Shooting, licking flames up in the air, like the tree limbs are, you know, whipping back and forth from the wind from the fire.
And I'm out there with it, you know, that's like, that's no big deal. Like, I've done this hundreds of times, right? And so I'm sitting out there with the fire, and it's, you know, You know, when you're managing a fire like that, usually what happens is, is the, the middle burns and then you have limbs that kind of sit around the exterior.
You got to kind of put them back in.
Yeah. And so like, I'm out there working the fire, man. I'm picking up the limbs, throwing them in the middle, you know, when it's like actually like not Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego hot. And, you know, 7 times.
And I'm still sweating, but like, I'm in there, like, I've got my gloves and I'm throwing stuff in the fire. And I've been out there like 2 or 3 hours, you know, getting this thing burned down. And I've got my hunting chair, and so I'm sitting by the fire just, you know, kind of enjoying the cooler evening because we've had some cooler evenings, which has been awesome.
And, uh, all of a sudden down the road I see a fire truck, and I'm like, well, that's kind of weird.
And he slows down about 100 yards away from my property.
And I'm like, well, you know, because sometimes they'll send a fire truck when there's like a medical emergency.
And the ambulance is too far away. And I'm like, I hope everybody's okay. You know, I wonder what's going on down there.
Not once thought, I've got this fire going.
And, and so I'm just sitting there, you know, watching to see what's going on. And then I hear some people talking over there. I can't hear what they're saying, but there's conversations. And the fire truck starts turning around. And then he turns around again. And then he comes towards my property.
And then he stops at my front fence and I'm like, is this guy here for me? And so I walked down to the front of the fence and I, you know, give the guy a howdy. He steps out of his truck and says, how you doing, sir? I said, doing fine. And he goes, just wanted to stop and let you know a concerned citizen called in about the fire.
And so that's, that's why we're here. And he goes, but I can see that, you know, you're here, right? You're watching the fire. You're doing what you're supposed to be doing. He goes, are you having any trouble? And I said, no, sir. Everything seems to be under control. You know, I got a water spigot right there. I got a hose hooked up. I'm ready in case anything happens.
And he goes, well, you're doing, you're doing everything right, so don't worry about it. Um, and I said, well, man, I'm, I'm sorry you had to come out here. And he goes, it's what we're here for. Don't worry about it.
And like, so it, it was fine. My, my, my problem— here's my, here's my issue. Okay.
Like, if you're that concerned, why didn't you come over and check it out?
Why don't you just come over?
Like, I, I, and I'm even okay, like, call, call the fire department first.
Sure, call them first, but come check on me.
But then come check on me.
Yeah, I know, I'm with you. We had a similar situation, um, I don't know, it was maybe 6 months ago, and a guy crossed the, the way from us. I, I saw flames coming up from behind his house, and I was like, this is— I mean, it was, it was a big fire, right? And immediately, I mean, it was, it was early in the morning, it was probably 6:30, 7 in the morning.
And so I, uh, I tell my wife, I'm like, hey, I'm gonna walk over there and see what's going on. I walk over there, I feel a little bit weird, um, because I like— I start walking around the back of this man's house, right? And I'm like, this could be a little bit awkward, but I really don't care. I mean, I know this guy, he's about 82, 83 years old.
And, um, he might need a hand. He might need a hand. So I'm walking around the back and all of a sudden I kind of see something on the other side of the, the house come by. I walk back to the front and he's in a golf cart and he kind of comes around and he's like, he's like, hey Kevin, what's going on, man? I was like, hey, I'm just checking on you, dude. I just want to make sure everything's fine. Looks like you got a fire going back here. And he goes, oh yeah, everything's fine. But he went on and on about how thankful he was that I came over and checked on him. And
one of the things that was real interesting is about a week ago, he knocks on my door. I'm like, hey, what's going on, man? And he goes, hey, I just want to let you know I got another burn pile, and tomorrow morning I'm gonna be burning. So if you got any— if you got any concerns, just know it's supposed to happen. If you want to come chat and just say hey, you're welcome to come over. And I was like, man, it's just really nice. Yeah, how thoughtful. Take care of your— take care of your friends or your neighbors and I mean, if you need to call the fire department, then call them, right?
But that's, that's my whole thing, man. It's like, if you're genuinely that concerned, come over, right?
Someone may be in trouble.
Like, literally all they had to do was come around the corner and see that I'm sitting in the field with my dog, right? Drinking a cold something.
And that would have been the end of it.
Yeah, I'm, I'm a little upset too. But that's just because I wasn't called to come hang out. Come sit by the—
we sit by the fire and have the cold something.
We had a chat one time by a fire.
We did. That was a big fire. That was a big fire. That was an anger fire. That was—
that was— that was— we're burning like telephone poles and stuff on that.
Don't be telling people we were doing that. We were not burning telephone poles.
Telephone pole-sized stuff.
Yeah, that's right. They were like— they looked like telephone poles.
They did. They did. You could build log houses. with them, I'll put it that way.
we've got a pretty big burn pile too right now because we did the same thing. Yeah, we had— we didn't have any trees down, we had lots of limbs from the hurricane, and same thing, they were green. So we're probably at the point where it's time to start, start doing it. And, and this week might be a good time because it'll be down in the 60s for, you know, for the evening. That'd be nice. Awesome, man.
Yeah. So, well, dude, let's go ahead and give a shout out to our sponsors. Let's do it. Let's start with, uh, Lone Star, uh, Lone Star Appliance Repair Guys. This is— these guys have been our sponsor, our longest sponsor for the show. We are so happy to have these guys on as a sponsor for the show. Uh, just, just an incredible company because right now it's, it's, it's just become so financially difficult for people to replace their appliances.
You know, and, and it's not to say that like You know, I'm not blaming the appliance companies or anything like that, but it's just expensive.
Well, and that— but whenever you say that though, you could very easily spend $3,000 to $5,000 on appliances.
Yeah, I mean, if you want to get like the stackable LG or Samsung, which we have thoughts on those 2 brands specifically, but if you want those, you know, they're expensive and the electronics in them are expensive. The, uh, it's just a, you know, there's, there's a lot going on there. Right.
And, you know, one of the things that is, is just when you have a great company like this that's going to be honest with you about the condition of your appliance.
You know, and actually give you some real feedback like, hey, this is worth replacing, hey, this isn't worth replacing. You know, that they're gonna, they're gonna give you the real-world cost on that appliance.
You know, and, and when you're talking about some of these normal brands that you pick up at the big box stores, A lot of times it is affordable to replace the parts and actually get it back up and running again.
I can't imagine having something like a Wolf brand or a Sub-Zero and not repairing it.
No, I know that would be ridiculous.
You know, because some of those appliances are like $20K, right? You know, like, fix the thing.
I don't care if it's like $3,000 to fix it.
That's like a vehicle. You just, you don't just throw out your vehicle if you need an oil change, right? You know, absolutely. And it's similar once you get to those those type of appliances, you're spending so much money. This is definitely worth just repairing, right?
So, I mean, like, if you, if you need, if you need your appliance fixed, if you, if you're worried about it, maybe it's making a weird noise and you're just like, I want to get out ahead of this thing and make sure that, like, it doesn't break down completely. Yeah, give them a call, you know, 936-647-2364. You can text them, you can call them. Darlene's probably going to pick up the phone, sweetheart. She's gonna get you on the schedule. She's gonna get one of the techs out there and make sure that your home is back up and running the way that all your appliances should be.
So, and then we're, we're here at the True Texas Solar booth at the, at the convention center.
If you're watching live, you can see the logo behind them. Guys, we've been watching them to our left here just engage with people that have questions about solar power. I, you know, I think this is one of the things where people just have the most questions and concerns. Because it's such a big-ticket item.
It is. It's— it— let's just say it, it's an expensive investment. Yes, but there's so many advantages if you do it the right way, right? And, and that, that's one of the things that I believe is the challenge out there, is there's so many people out there just looking to take your money, right? That they're, they're scamming people out of, hey, we're just gonna throw something up on your roof, who cares if it's the right thing, if it's what you actually need, if your roof is actually ready to withstand it, all of those sorts of things. Lone Star— sorry, Lone Star Appliance Repair is what we just talked about. True Texas Solar are out there to really do it right.
it's not so much about earning your business as much as it is earning your trust.
Right. Oh yeah, it's a good way to put it.
Trust is way more valuable.
Yeah, it is. And so So whenever you have a company that comes and goes, let's, let's take a full analysis of what you're doing, what you're trying to do, what's your future goals, right? You know, and you know, here's what's interesting. My brother was actually looking at getting solar not too long ago, and I was talking to Josh. So my brother, my brother lives in Amarillo, but I was talking to Josh, the owner of True Texas Solar, and I said, hey, he's being told this, this, and this. And Josh goes, let me get on the phone with him.
Like, I mean, I'm happy to get him on the phone, but why would you do that? He lives in Amarillo. There's no way that, that you're gonna— that he's gonna be buying solar from you or anything, right? And he goes, no, no, I want to make sure he doesn't get scammed.
And, and I was like, man, like, that is, that is a big concern of his.
Like, he hates scammers. And, and the fact that he would get on the phone with someone that lives in a completely different area just to make sure that they're not getting screwed out of their money and their time and their energy, um, and, and, and that they're not mad at solar. I think that's it too, is like he understands the value of solar. So don't get mad at solar. Let's be educated. And I think that's a big warpath that they're actually on.
Educate well. Let's make sure people don't get scammed. Let's give them what they need and what they, you know, what they can truly buy back their own energy and make sure they're good there. I mean, we talked about Barrel just a minute ago. Burl, barrel, who cares what they call it. We talked about just a minute ago, and, and the people that had solar, they were sitting pretty.
They were fine. If you had a good—
well, well, not just solar, you had to have solar backup energy power.
Yeah, you had your generators as well. I mean, it is, it truly is a whole, it's a whole system, but done right, you never have to worry about being without power.
I, I honestly can't fathom at this point getting a solar system without a whole home battery.
As Like, I just— to me, it doesn't make any sense, right? I mean, unless I was living in an area where, you know, the power company is willing to buy back the additional energy that I produce at a pretty high rate, right? I can't imagine doing it without a battery.
No, I mean, store it, keep your own, right? You know, keep your own. And, and what's cool is you can stack those things and you can have, you can have enough that, you know, you can get through however many days you really want to. Right.
You know, and people think that like if you have the Generac system, you're just good to go. I've seen them where they stack the solar with the Generac with the whole home battery.
And they'll run that Generac to recharge the battery, run the home off the battery, and then just, you know, and then let the, let the solar keep it so you don't have to necessarily be running that, that system.
You know, that generator burning fuel to power your home. Yeah.
And it does get pretty expensive to do that.
But if you can, if you can use, if you can use the, uh, the system the way the system is designed to be used, you're really not going to be spending any more money than you would otherwise. Yeah, you've got everything kind of at your disposal. So that these guys, they know what they're doing. We're probably going to be talking to some of them later, so hang out if you really want to learn a little bit more about solar. We're going to be talking with them a little bit more today, but, but hang out with us. learn more about them. But you can get a hold of them at 936-286-8325, or just come down to the home show.
Yeah, they're gonna be here today and tomorrow.
And tomorrow. So come talk to them. Uh, look, what we've, we've talked about it before, I've never seen a company that has gone out of their way as much as they have to be experts at what they do.
I mean, they, they've got people on their team that are literal meteorologists, that are literally former and actually current NASA employees, engineers, that are working on stuff for them to make sure that they're doing it right. So you're in good hands. Come check 'em out and figure out if it's right for you. And that's one of the things that I think Josh will tell you. Solar isn't for everyone.
But if it is for you, then it can be massively valuable and not cost you any more than what you're spending every day. Right. So I think that's the other thing. It is expensive, but people think that it's out of reach, and really it can cost you the same amount of money that you're spending every day on your, on your energy as it is. So give them a call, 936-286-8325, or just come hang out with us and say hi. If you're—
if you come by soon, come shake a hand.
Yeah, well, we're starting to have some people join us online, so thank you guys for, uh, for jumping on the live feed. Um, Appreciate you guys joining us. Do you, do you want to go see if you can find, uh, a, a guest?
I think we have some people running late. I mean, like that vacuum guy right there could be great. Uh, your buddy, your buddy that does the remodel.
I tried to get him. He's a little— he said, I don't know, maybe next time.
Yeah, people, people think that getting on the podcast is like scary.
It's your beard. It's the beard.
I think it's your mustache.
So, all right, I'll go see what I can do. Coming in nicely. So I don't know how you got that.
I don't know how your wife is living with you right now.
Ah, she's not, not very happy. Uh, guys, we, we have some, some cool content coming up for you guys down the road. I know we've got a, uh, collaboration with Eric G coming up out there, and, uh, we're gonna do a show with him. Uh, always, always a favorite guest to have on the show. I mean, we're both kind of hanging out in the same radio podcast world. And he's just such a fun guest and he's such a knowledgeable dude, um, that we just, we just love having him on the show and going on his show any chance that we, we get the opportunity to. And so we're going to be— we're coming up here pretty quick, we're going to be doing an
episode with him. Uh, also one of the things that we've been thinking about is, you know, we've been doing the show for 5 years now, and one of the things that we've done over the years is product reviews. And what I think would be a lot of fun for everybody is for us to go back through all of the products that we've reviewed over the years and see if we're still using them. Because I mean, 5 years is a long time, especially if it's like a tool or something like that. We've reviewed a lot of Ryobi tools, and I actually— I've kind of changed my tune on, on the way Ryobi has been doing some stuff and the way that Home Depot has been doing some
stuff. It's honestly just a little shady and some shenanigans that they've been pulling. So anyway, Kevin and I are— Kevin and I are gonna be going back through some of the products and things that we've— that we've looked at over the years.
And actually give a review and a catch-up review as to how those products have held up over the years and whether or not we've changed our mind from the initial review Um, and anyway, so we've got Kevin sitting down. We went and found a guest. Um, we got plenty of room there?
All right, who we got here?
Yeah, this is Nick. Nick, um, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and, uh, tell people what you do and a little bit about your brand and all that kind of stuff.
Morning, thank you. Thank you for having me, Kevin. Uh, Nick Buckhorn, owner-operator of Bumblebee Blinds of North Houston. We offer, uh, Custom window treatments for commercial and residential applications. Anything from blinds, shutters, shades, outdoor screens, drapery, you name it, we have it.
Okay, and it's— so y'all do custom stuff as far as that goes? Because I mean, I know windows are kind of a standard size in many ways, but a lot of times they aren't.
They aren't, yeah. It is a little bit of a finicky business. I think that's why many home builders and other design companies leave it up to the experts because it is almost like tailoring a suit. You know, you're going in for real specific measurements. Sometimes your builders are great with those, right, and the specs are right on, or, you know, you have one window that may look the same as another but actually is an inch or two off. So it's important to get that right so your treatments, you know, look the way you'd hoped for and that customization of the look and really getting what you paid for in that design. open up the space and make it, you
know, make it yours. Yeah, what you're talking about to me is actually like the scariest area of Home Depot and Lowe's in their, in their stores. Like, I go down that aisle sometimes and people are like cutting the blinds and cut and like, I'm like, I know half you guys didn't measure. Like, it's not so custom section. The not so custom section.
It's the— yeah, you've got that Home Depot employee going, oh, I'll help you.
Thanks. They're sitting there cutting it going, I'm gonna see you again.
Yeah, it really is a, you know, measure twice, cut once.
But, uh, somehow— That's not enough. That's not enough.
Well, so we've got, um, at my house, we've got a, uh, our bedroom specifically, we've got some big massive windows that like on a day like today where we're like, hey, I wake up every morning at 5:30, it'd be nice to sleep in a little bit. But we got all the sun coming in. Uh, we'd like something on, on our, on our windows that isn't just curtains. But also, I mean, we don't hate curtains. They just have their own thing, right? So is there a way that we could do maybe some, some blackout, or even not blackout, some room darkening, and also get a decent looking shade that's not just like you know, I guess cut-and-dry blinds.
Oh, absolutely. There's so many options out there now in terms of, you know, both the aesthetic you're looking for but also the functionality. And, um, you know, you have that room darkening or blackening aspect of what you're wanting over your windows, including, you know, automation and motorization to those blinds, which does all the work for you, right? Setting up with your Alexa or your other wireless devices and connecting the whole home with it. The industry's really come a long way and continues to innovate, I'm sure, much like y'all's business. Which automation system are you guys using, or is there one? There's multiple. Bixby, Alexa, Google, you know, any of the ones that— I mean, but the blinds themselves, are they like the Lutron
ones? Are they the— Yeah, there are. It's really dependent on the brand. You know, each brand has their own own kind of proprietary motors or, you know, wireless connections to tie either to one of those hubs or the connections that you're using in your home to control those devices. So it is pretty brand-specific, but comparatively to where it was, you know, 2, 3 years ago, the industry's really changed there. And surprisingly, I heard a stat the other day that the US is actually behind in that motorization. and automation. Oh really? Automizing, uh, window treatments. So I expect the industry, you know, here to catch up some, um, you know, being that everybody's looking for that convenience in their home.
Yeah, like you were talking about.
I mean, I, I literally just know enough to get myself into trouble. The only reason I even know Lutron is because they've, they've reached out to us so many times to be like, hey, can you help promote these? And like, I don't know anything about them. Like, is it, you know, but it's so, it's like the only brand I know of. I mean, like, if you're Let's say you're put— putting automated blinds, and I'm, you know, I don't want to like say that one brand's better or worse than the other one, but I'm just, I'm curious what you would want in your house. Uh, personally, we're, you know, we're Alexa family, and it makes it that much easier there in terms of
control. From a brand standpoint, it's really to each, each their own. We offer, uh, 4 nationally recognized, uh, brands for window treatments, you know, anywhere from top-tier Graber down to more of a white label brand offering that we have to compete with, you know, the Home Depot and Lowe's, but still, you know, an elevated quality over that. Yeah, yeah, that's cutting it there on site at Home Depot. So, um, you know, any, any opportunity to meet the needs of your budget and style, we, we have that, uh, within our wheelhouse of options. Yeah, well, in, in, in talking about like some of these big box stores, I imagine you're coming in behind some people who who have made some pretty fatal flaws
in installation. I mean, what are the biggest mistakes that you're seeing guys make out there that, you know, that are the good reasons to have a company like you come in and install them in the first place? Yeah, you'll see some interesting stuff, especially when it comes to measurements and really setting the expectations. If you, you know, happen to walk into more of the spec homes that may not have things squared up exactly, you have to really set the expectations of what the product can fulfill and, you know, achieving the room darkening aspect or just full coverage of the window. And I think that's where consumers tend to get upset the most is like, you know, you're sold one thing and you're not getting the actual experience that you're looking for. So what we try
to do is really match the product to the need and really help explain, you know, here's what you can get out of this or here are some, you know, Alternative solutions to, yeah, to providing that.
Well, so one of the things that I'm also thinking about is like a lot of people like doors that have windows in them, like a French door or something, you know, similar to that. And I know now you can buy, you can buy some really nice doors that have blinds like in them. But do y'all have any options if people don't have those doors and they, but they've got windows on? Is there anything like that that you can do to kind of maybe shade your doors?
There are. There's, you know, kind of laugh, you know, vertical blinds are still around, but they've actually elevated different products to support kind of that same ease of using, you know, things over that type of application like a sliding door, but they're actually fabric-covered sliders, so they have a little bit more design aspect to them. You can get them You can get them more bare bones as well, but actually offering motorization in those too as well, where they're sliding panels that, you know, recess behind each other and look a little bit better than Grandma's vertical blinds or the other things you had in your apartment during college. So yeah, those are a great solution, you know, on top of, you know, any of the other
motorization options that sometimes people will use for doors as well.
So do they have— do they actually make doors that have motorized uh, windows— I mean, motorized, uh, shades in them?
Um, because I'm just thinking, yeah, I'm just thinking like once you get to the automation side and you start, you start going, hey, I don't have to change my blinds anymore, they're gonna, you know, at dusk they're gonna start closing up and in the daytime they're gonna start opening up on their own, like that winds up being a pretty cool scenario.
It's coming. I mean, the, the vendors are definitely innovating. Um, universal screens are primary outdoor patio vendors actually got screens that'll— not that you'd want to leave them out or up for, uh, this, but they'll sustain hurricane-force winds of, uh, Category 3.
And actually some materials hitting them at a pretty high rate.
But, you know, to prevent from that, they actually offer that type of censoring technology that'll recognize when the wind is, you know, run a little bit high and, and, uh, you know, increase or, uh, recess the screens back to safe positions.
Interesting, man. That— it's just, it blows my mind how far I say we've come, even though we may be behind in implementation. I know a lot of that stuff still is available, even if, you know, we haven't seen a lot of people implement. I wonder what the reason— do you think— do you think— okay, so there are other companies, other countries that may be ahead of us in the automation. Do you think any of that has to do with the size of homes that we're in and the fact that a lot of these other countries, they live in maybe an apartment or maybe, you know, a smaller studio-type home that maybe, you know, you know, 800 to 1,200 square feet, where we're living in,
you know, 2,500 to 4,500 square foot homes? And just the cost to automate that type of thing, is that much more, or is there maybe another reason?
That's, that's probably a big part of it, but I also think, you know, the consumer maybe doesn't recognize that, you know, it's changed that much. The technology's still very new and really hasn't been, I think to your point, been as economical for consumers to utilize that as an add-on or upgrade. And, you know, the dealers that are selling those products are starting to recognize that and, you know, changing some things up on their end to innovate and reduce those costs so that, you know, hopefully more will buy into that idea, but everything is bigger in Texas. So, you know, that is a potential obstacle, obstacle like you mentioned. Are there any like secondary benefits other than just like light control that, that good blinds and good, you know, good window coverings can give you? There are, uh,
you know, in particular a real hot item here, no pun intended, is, uh, solar screens that'll help reduce some of that, you know, heat penetration from your windows. And that's, you know, a popular product for both commercial and residential applications, you know, getting anywhere from 15 to 20% deflection of that heat, you know, which is relative to the type of window you have, but certainly is noticeable when you have those up in those, you know, east-facing type applications and you're getting a lot of that heat throughout the day. And then from an overall resale standpoint, uh, for your home, shutters are actually known to be one of the only window treatments that actually add value to your home in a resale.
So for those that are, you know, considering some of those upgrades before you list your home, uh, great, great addition. And they've, they've come out some great, um, poly or, you know, more manufactured products versus a wood, which tends to struggle in holding up a little bit here in the Houston humidity. Are you talking about like an exterior shutter?
Interior. Okay. Yep. I was gonna say exterior shutters. I mean, like a lot of people don't even like, they don't have those anymore. It's like, no, you don't see those much except, you know, maybe the East Coast. They still have some of that stuff.
But we got them on our house.
Do they, are they functional or are they? Yeah, that's, that's when I see them, they're architectural. They're never, they're never like foldable, collapsible.
There is one out by our house, but theirs is, um, It's vertical and it comes out and then it, you know, they can just collapse it back in.
Is it more like an awning kind of a deal?
It is. It looks like an awning, but it is a true shutter.
Well, so to that point, whenever you're talking about shutters, like, I mean, again, I'm still kind of thinking about my own home, but those can be pretty darkening as well. I mean, if you get the right kind, I mean, the thing that I like about shutters is they are They are, uh, more full coverage than anything else that you can get as far as blind goes.
They are. They're going to have a lot more closure, and then the trimming in of them, it's going to be much tighter in your window casing than, you know, that hand-cut blind or even a custom blind where you're going to have some light gaps between. So they do help out with that a lot. And just the visual of them, it makes it look like a lot more finished look to your window casing and, you know, almost, you know, framed up to where it definitely looks nice and adding a different touch to your home, especially if you've got, you know, those kind of bare window casings that a lot of the newer homes have.
Yeah, so, so are those, are those typically just like shutters that are, that are stationary, or do they then hinge open?
You can, you can order them multiple different ways in terms of the layout you want to have them open, you know, left to right or right to left, or individual shutter openings. So you have that flexibility and still being able to open them up, clean your windows, do all the things you want to do, let light in, and then still control the slats too for, you know, that minimal light adjustment.
There is one brand that we are just now partnering with that I was on a call yesterday that said they are offering an automated shutter now, which is interesting.
So that's, yeah, pretty impressive because they tend to be a little bit more of a heavier product, but But I think with some of the composite materials that are coming out, we're finding ways to add motorization to that as well.
Yeah, so on those more composite materials, are they— do they have like texture to them or are they just completely smooth?
There's different variations to that. They still will have a very, you know, wood-like look to them. The benefit though too with some of the brands that we're working with is, you know, despite them being Dang near, you know, just, you know, you can't destruct them in terms of damage.
They're providing best-in-class warranties to where your dog chews on it or something else, they'll replace them, no questions asked. So, okay, uh, pretty impressive what they're offering. So it kind of makes it a no-brainer, especially with the unknowns of wood and more of that composite type wood potentially warping or having issues if you've got too much humidity coming Right.
Interesting. That's really, really good information. What have we not asked you that you think, okay, we should probably mention that?
Well, I'm more curious on my side, you know, thinking innovatively why there hasn't been more of a partnership, I guess, in the solar world with window coverings too, and thinking that, you know, there's got to be something down the road there that's going to benefit folks and, you know, having their shades down while they're gone with maybe some type of solar application on the back and, you know, charging their home up. That's an interesting one. Yeah, yeah, seems like there's room to— well, you know, I actually, um, was it you that was telling me about the membranes?
Yes, I learned about, uh, um, some people from, I think, Harvard and Yale that have just developed, and it's, it's available. And I don't know, you know, how widespread, but it is a, it is a 2 mil thick, um, solar panel.
And it is literally can be applied to anything. It's almost like a window tinting, huh? You know, so you could, you could put it on the top of a car, you could put it, uh, you know, on, on windows. There's, there's a lot of, a lot of things. My, my guess is one of the things that is challenging in, in the window shade scenario for like solar would be most of the time whenever you see a solar panel it's got to be facing a certain way at a certain angle, those sorts of things. And we're just wondering if maybe there's, um, not the— the application hasn't come far enough to be able to get there. But with this type of technology that you can
literally, you know, just apply it to a window or apply it to the top of a vehicle, or, you know, just— I mean, you have a metal roof, you can just, you know, apply it to the top of a metal roof. And, uh, they're, they're Some pretty cool things coming. So who knows, we'll see what happens in the future.
That's impressive. Yeah, yeah. I would imagine with window treatments, I mean, people who are, who are interested in solar are going to be more energy conscious, you know. And like, yeah, you know, any, anything that can reduce the amount of heat entering your home where you're not having to run the air conditioner as much is going to be beneficial in the long run to the— I mean, just the longevity of your panels and the, you know, if you have a whole home battery, having to pull from that as much. I was gonna say, one of the things I've heard and read a little bit about with some of the automated blinds is some of the health benefits of developing a healthier sleep cycle.
Where, you know, the blinds are, you know, you can automate them to open when the sun comes up so that you're getting your body used to that cycle of natural light. waking you up in the morning, or, you know, especially if you, if you have that east-facing bedroom, you know. And so like, and I don't, I don't know what all of, all of that is, but I know, I know that it's really good to have a healthy sleep rhythm, um, and that you can, you can have your blinds— I mean, because used to, back in the day before, you know, blinds were ever invented, that's how people woke up in the morning. The sun come through the
And, and anyone that's ever gone camping knows this. I mean, like, you know, when the sun comes up, it doesn't matter if you got 3 hours of sleep the night before.
You're waking up. Um, and, and so I, I've, I've read a little bit that, like, automated blinds can, can, can really help with that. Because what a lot of people, you know, you think about guys that work overnight, you know, they need, you know, you, you know those guys because they've got the, uh, aluminum foil wrapped wood on the outside of their windows, you know, keeping, keeping the heat and the sun out in the morning so they can sleep through the day and go to work at night.
Um, so there's, I mean, like, there's, I think there's something to that.
That is a tough routine. Yeah, I can't imagine being on one of those off schedules and not having something like that to, to help, you know, keep protecting that cycle of sleep that you all need. And especially, you know, for things like nursery applications too, and for babies that need those 12, 13, 14-hour sleep cycles. Yeah, absolutely helps for those applications. But in my house, we have a tendency get woken up by our dog every morning in his cage.
There you go. So I'm from, I'm from Florida originally, and one of the things I, I picked up on really quick at beach houses is you have those, those wider planked shutters that you, you would— they would use them almost to like open the windows, and you would use them to keep the sunlight out but keep the breeze moving through the house. And I don't know if that's like anything you've ever come across, but like it works, especially like ocean breeze where it's constant. It really keeps the temperature down in the house without having to run the AC. And so like, like one of my favorite things used to be like literally the middle of the day, just taking a nap in a room with those, with those big wooden blinds keeping the sun out, but that breeze, it was almost like a fan
blowing on you. So I, I think a lot of people just don't even realize how efficient those things can actually help the home be. And, and you know, create, create some cool environments that are a little more natural. There are plenty of, plenty of applications for it. Yeah, I think, uh, you know, those lake house opportunities like you mentioned, beach house, right, to have that type of environment where you can enjoy the, the cool of the day once we get it every couple days here in Texas. But nothing like, you know, having that experience when it's a nice day outside. Oh yeah, open up and still being able to guard against some of the light so you can get, get a couple Couple winks in here and there during the
afternoon. Well, I would imagine around here, Lake Conroe water-facing clients should be a good staple for you. I mean, if nothing else, I mean, the sun bouncing off the water up at the house, man. I mean, like, you gotta— you know, no one wants to be sitting in their back patio blind. Had one stop by our booth today building a brand new house with 17 windows out there. There you go. Looking to do exactly what you just described.
Well, in that vein, man, I mean, thank you so much for sitting down, but do you want to let everybody know if they have any questions about, you know, blinds, shutters, automation, any of that kind of stuff, how do they get a hold of you? Absolutely. Yeah, thank you again for having me. We are located in Tomball over there off of Huffsmith, Corville, and McAfee, and happy to answer any questions you have either over the phone, through our website, or through an in-home consultation. Easiest way to find us is on the web. bubblebeeblinds.com/northhouston or out here at the Home Show if you're planning on coming out today. Yeah, it'd be good. I mean, you guys are here today and tomorrow, correct? Today and tomorrow.
We're offering a Home Show sign-up offer of $500 off, um, any orders of $5,000 or more through the end of October. So great opportunity if you're looking to do, you know, some nice upgrades to your home to take advantage of that offer while you're out here at the show.
Thank you so much for sitting down with us.
I, I learned a bunch. I did too.
Yeah. I mean, I don't think we've ever done like—
All right. Nice to meet you.
Yeah, that was good, man.
Yeah, man. I mean, so much, so much. I mean, again, like, this is why this show is great, man. Not just because we like it, but because there's literally like a bottomless void of information of stuff that you just don't know about when it comes to your home.
That's right. But we were talking about, about windows earlier.
And about how I've got single-pane windows in my house and we're trying to figure out, like, there's, there's multiple ways you solve a problem. One of the ways to solve our problem is to replace the windows and get dual-pane windows. That doesn't solve the problem of light though.
It just solves the problem of maybe some energy efficiency. But if you can get a product that solves both the energy efficiency, or at least combats it, and the light issue that you're trying to just kind of control a little bit, this is an excellent way to do that.
And at a price point that'll be much more favorable to what most people are willing to spend.
So, yeah, really good stuff. Well, uh, we are gonna get the vacuum guy on. He is waiting until, um, his partner gets back.
leaving their booth, uh, completely unmanned. Do you want to, uh, try to find— you want me to go find someone else? You want to get one of these solar people?
All right, we'll see what we can do. We're hoping to get, uh, some more people on the show and, uh, really just try to, try to continue to give you guys some value. So I think one of our solar guys is gonna sit down, which is awesome. So come on in, man. Put these headphones on, get as close to that microphone as you can.
That's it. May have to— maybe more comfortable to hold this.
I can, I can give you a little bit.
Yeah, because it tends to pull a little bit.
So, all right, there we go.
Awesome. Tell us your name.
My name is Will Arvance. I'm with True Texas Solar.
I focus mainly on commercial projects and project management, project development, things like that. We're branching out into the commercial space both on the solar front as well as on the roofing front, and so they need someone with more kind of commercial experience. I come from the utility business.
So building power lines and towers and all of that stuff. So I'm just bringing that knowledge in for this slightly larger scale systems that they're used to installing, but we're not utility scale yet. So it's just small to medium-sized commercial.
What do you mean by utility scale?
So the number one state in the entire United States for solar installation is not California, it's Texas.
Number one. Now if you look at the volume of solar installation that's going on, it's utility-scale solar. So the utilities understand that they could control their costs. The utilities understand that we have this amazing resource called the sun, and then we have tons of land that's not being utilized, and they're putting in large solar fields everywhere. Now, that's not necessarily something I appreciate. I was born and raised on a farm. I saw a lot of farmland converted into utility solar fields.
It's sad to see. It's heartbreaking, and it doesn't have to be that way.
Literally, we have roofs all across this state, these large commercial buildings, huge commercial buildings with, you know, 20, 25 feet up in the air with no trees. We could provide all of the power for the entire state if we just covered the surfaces of commercial buildings that are already standing with solar power.
But we're not. The utilities are doing it. The utilities are taking advantage of the tax credits. The utilities are taking advantage of scaling large solar. And so now we're buying up farmland. I say we, I mean the larger utilities are buying up farmland. They're leasing out land. You're seeing cattle and beautiful grazing land turned into these graveyards with nothing but solar panels on them. And we ask ourselves, Well, why is that happening? Well, it's happening because the utilities want to control the entire asset. They want to control power production. They want to take power production at an incremental 2, 3 cents per kilowatt-hour and sell it retail at 15, 16, 17 cents per kilowatt-hour.
They are completely fixing the market, and we're just letting them do it because we've convinced ourselves that solar solar isn't affordable. We've convinced ourselves that solar is ugly. Who wants that on their roof? It's like, it doesn't have to go on your roof, pal. Go on a ground mount. Or let's put them on all these beautiful large commercial buildings that the roof has never really seen anyway. Put them all on that and we could produce enough electricity to carry this state for the next 10, 20 years.
And that's awesome. In fact, we were, uh, we've talked about this before, that, um, the, the church I'm at, We, we just got solar on our church, and, um, it's a, it's a pretty large facility, and it's 100% running off of solar at this point. But it does, it does cover the majority of the roofline, but it's so high up that people don't notice.
They don't notice. They don't care. It's not ugly, right?
It's just, it's just already a metal roof up there. And a lot of these roofs actually have a, um, what do they call— they're like a flat Flat roof. Yeah, with a, with a parapet. Yeah, like a 4-foot wall on it.
It's a parapet. You never see it. And so all we do is we go in, we utilize all the space of that roof, we install the solar, and then that business owner, assuming that they own that property, right, they own the building, they're able to build that at 50% subsidized by the federal government through tax incentives. So, so you're able to offset your electric power, you're not having to pay for power anymore, you're able to take advantage of federal tax credits that will offset up to 40 to 50% of the cost. And that's not even talking about the grants that are available as well. We help companies apply for grants. And now you have a 30, 35-year product on your 50-year roof
that you're not using anyway. It's not doing anything.
And you're more energy efficient because solar panels basically will absorb all the sun. So your roof isn't getting heated like it was before. So you just put a shade structure. Many companies, they don't have the roof, enough roof space. So we put in carports. Employees, customers love parking their car on these hot Texas summers in a carport. Well, you see carports everywhere. What do you don't see? You don't see solar panels on those carports, right? Why not? You built them anyway. Just throw some solar up there and, you know, take advantage of what's being produced naturally through the sun at a fraction of the cost.
And many times I think— correct me if I'm wrong— but many times you can roll the cost of, of building certain structures into these, these deals. Is that correct?
Absolutely. So here's a deal that we're currently working on. There's 2 crazy deals, right? And I call them crazy because we get weird stuff. Like, we don't build normal stuff. We build the weird stuff that everybody else goes, I don't want— yeah, I don't want to touch that. So we have a customer, he bought 20 acres in Conroe.
And his goal is to convert that into business centers and then to sell off those properties to commercial for commercial uses. Well, there was a 5-acre retaining pond on that property, and he didn't realize that he couldn't backfill that pond and use it as extra space because it's a fire water retention pond. And so now he's got 5 acres of space that he cannot use. You can't build on it, you can't do anything because it's restricted area. So we, you know, approached him and said, have you thought about solar? He's like, well, what do you mean? We could build a floating solar platform and then you can sell the power that you produce to your
tenants and you become the utility. And he's like, I didn't think about that. I was like, yeah, and we could cover it up to $1 million with a REAP grant, a Rural Energy Efficiency Grant that we got from the federal government. You get a 30% federal tax credit and you get 10% in addition to that for domestic product. So like we're using US-made American product, and you get depreciation of that asset because that's a business asset. So as a business, you could depreciate your trucks, your tools, your equipment, right?
And so now he's looking at space that he would not have otherwise used, putting something insane like a floating solar field on there, which is very doable and very affordable, all for 50 to 60% offset of the COVID And of the cost, and now he's going to be the utility providing power to his tenants.
And then he can do all that in 5 acres?
All that in 5 acres. So you could fit a megawatt per every 2 acres. A megawatt is 1 million watts, so that is enough power to feed this building for probably 5 years because this building is not where we're at the expo. You're talking lights and air conditioning. That's the biggest loads. Now if you're talking about manufacturing, right, glass manufacturing, steel, aluminum, you know, refining, any of these real higher-end loads, yeah, you're gonna need a lot more power than that.
But that's the beauty of this thing. To get more power, you add more panels. To add more panels, you just add structure. So the, the second company that we're working with now, they're diesel mechanic and manufacturing. They manufacture like diesel parts, okay? And they also do service on them. They wanted a carport so that their mechanics can work on their vehicles, right, without being directly in the sun, because they're, they're getting busy.
So we built a huge carport for them, all American-made steel, put it in, slapped solar on top, and now he gets the 30% federal tax credit on the whole structure that he would have put on anyway. He would have done it anyway. And then he gets depreciation, 10% domestic. It's like who wouldn't want to do something like that?
Yeah, especially if you like, you're providing your own power. Like, I mean, like, I mean, tax credits alone would probably be worthwhile. Yeah.
Um, well, what people don't— what, what, what I, what I want all of our listeners to, to hear, and, and your potential customers, is I want them to hear the fact that it doesn't— this is a big thing that Josh was talking to me about one time, is like, we don't want to do this if it doesn't make sense for you, right? It has to make sense. And what makes sense— and this is one of the things I loved about his approach, and, and yours as well— is that what doesn't make sense is for your energy cost to go up. That is what doesn't make sense. Your energy cost has to at minimum stay the same, and it at maximum save you
money, right? And, and so that's the thing, that you're gonna be paying for this energy one way or the other anyway.
You're gonna pay for it anyway. Why don't you find a way to, to increase, um, optim— or optimize, I guess, your space? Make sure you get more shade where you need it, give more comfort to your employees, and, and ultimately you're, you're doing things in a way where the sun is providing the energy more than anything else.
So, I mean, take your standard business that runs a gas station or something. Their power bills are about $2,500 Right, so I see you got your phone.
Pull out your calculator, we're gonna do some basic math here. So your basic convenience store is $2,500 a month, so type in $2,500.
Multiply that by 12, which is 12 months in a year.
That's $30 grand a year, and then multiply that by 25 years.
It's a quarter of a million, 3 quarters of a million.
3 quarters of a million dollars. You know how much Our installation is, once you get offset of all of the costs, we're looking at $250,000. Okay, so we've just put back into that business owner's pocket $500,000, assuming electric rates don't go up for the next 25 years.
And of course they will. So even if the utility said, you know what, we're feeling really good, we're feeling really confident about everything, we're just going to charge you the same price from here for the next 30 years. if you sign this document? Yo, you'd sign it because you know, right, that that is one cost that you can control. You can now budget around as a business owner, and you know that that cost is only going to go up along with everything else and with inflation. That's what we're doing with solar. We're saying you're going to pay this one-time price for this equipment. It's going to perform for 25, 30 years and have this amount of production, and you are controlling that
cost for the next 25, 30 years. years.
People understand this whenever it comes to, to things like, um, mortgage rates, right?
A fixed mortgage rate is way better than a variable mortgage rate.
Same thing on a loan on a car, any types of loans. People understand when it comes to lending money, fixed rates are way better, way better than any type of variable rate. And what we're doing with our energy cost is we are, we playing a game that we assume we have to play.
That requires variable rate.
And that variable rate will never go down. It just won't. It will go up. And so what you're saying, it makes so much sense whenever we put it into that, that context, is we are controlling the rate. We are fixing the rate for the next 25 years.
You're getting more control over one of the single largest line items in your monthly budget as a business, electric cost. Yeah, that runaway, right? Like, that's only going to continue to push higher and higher and higher. And then what we're going to see here very soon is take CenterPoint, one of the largest utilities here in Texas. They're now being sued to the tune of $100 million from all these businesses that lost power.
They should, they should be sued, by the way.
week to 2 weeks, they lost customer, they lost revenue. Many, many businesses can't bounce back from that.
If you're a small mom-and-pop running a little, you know, a restaurant, you can't be out of business for 2 weeks. You just can't because you, you don't have enough margin built in already. You're already relying on customers coming in, and now you have no power, you can't operate. You just spent thousands of dollars in beef that go bad now because there's there's no refrigeration. So what do you do? Well, there's a class action lawsuit. Who's going to pay for that? Is the utility going to go into their pockets? No. They're going to say, well, we have to do this. We now have to make these upgrades. They're going to go to the regulators and put their business case for why they have to raise rates. The
rates will go up 40, 50%. And we've seen this with case studies with other utilities all across the United States where there's been fires, there's been things like that, and they're saying, hey, if you want want a more reliable utility, we're gonna have to charge more money.
And the regulators go, yeah, because it's a— it's not a convenience. Electricity is not a convenience. It was a convenience 100 years ago. It's not a convenience now. Right? It is an existential part of our livelihood.
And we all have to pick up the tab now.
Yeah. And, and one of the things that, that I find is, is like, for example, at my house, and we, we've got, we've got property. So, so, My rates are probably higher than other people just because of the size.
Number of buildings. And, you know, kids leave lights on.
I'm familiar. I'm familiar.
Yeah, but, you know, one month, you know, go back to April or May, our electric bill may have been $160, $180. In August, it was $365. So Again, there's a couple of things that I'm looking at here. For a lot of people, that would be an insurmountable change.
That would be an amount that we would go, that's more than double what I'm getting paid to pay my bills.
That money's gonna come from somewhere, and it's probably gonna come from one of the costs that they can control, like food.
Like food, exactly. And so now we're gonna, we're gonna have, we're gonna be eating ramen noodles or, you know, peanut butter and jelly, and now we're gonna— our health is gonna go down, right? So there's lots of ways that this gets impacted where, let's say that we put in a solar system, um, you put in a solar system, you know, month to month to month to month to month, this is a— you're essentially getting a loan, right? And you, you will know it is this much money.
It is like your car bill. It is this much money every single month. You can better plan and better budget for things whenever you know how much it's, it's going to be every single month. And this, this— I'm talking residential, but commercial is even more.
Yeah, it's magnified. It's magnified.
Just because of the scale. And so—
And we don't know any better. Like, since we were born, we've been paying for electricity to a utility.
Since every single one of us was born, that's been the only model that has existed. And then enter solar, like commercially available solar for residential, you know, 20 years ago. It was so expensive and only these enthusiasts had it. And so now we have an option to the utility that we've never had before in our entire lifetimes, right? And it's right there and it's finally come down enough in price to where it makes sense. And I don't invest in solar, and I didn't go into the solar business because I'm a green freak, I think it's gonna save the Earth, or, or any of this. I've— the reason why I went into this business is because we are going to face an existential crisis in the near future. There's going to be some
domestic terrorist event, some cyber attack, Something on the grid. Our grid is so fragile as it is already because our grid was built for the population at the time it was built, which was what, 30, 40 years ago?
And what does it take to enhance the grid to bring it up to the demand that we now have on it with all these businesses and all these people moving in? It's going to take decades to build that, and it's going to take millions upon millions of dollars. So we are at We're at an amazing point in this whole cycle where we're right at the cusp. The grid has never been more fragile. We've never had more load on that grid. It's only going to get worse. And now we're running out of options on how to offset that. So this thing is going to break. And when it breaks, it's going to break big. Like we
saw the freeze 2 years ago.
We've already seen it break a couple of times.
Yeah. And that is affecting Hundreds of thousands, I think over a million people were affected with Burroughs. People died. People don't understand this. For some people, it's not a convenience. You have diabetic medication that needs to be refrigerated or you die.
Okay. You have people that have invested thousands of dollars in beef and they live far away, so they just can't make that drive and that investment is gone. You have people that are living off of medical equipment, CPAP machines, things like that, where it's like, if you don't have those services, you are putting yourself in a very, very difficult position.
Sure. One of the things I think a lot of people don't even realize is how novel electricity is in Texas.
I mean, like, a lot of people don't realize the reason that we even have electricity in Texas, that was Lyndon Johnson.
I mean, that was his, that was his whole campaign. Yeah. And so like, and that was 60, 70 years ago. That's in the big scheme of things, that's nothing.
And so like electricity in Texas is a relatively new thing. And so, and so now you compound that with like everyone's talking about like how fragile the system is and it's like, yeah, it's, it's still, we're still figuring it out.
You know, and solar I think is going to be a big part of that. Now I think it's kind of thrown a little bit of a monkey wrench because everyone's been You know, like, oh, we need coal, oh, we need nuclear. And, you know, I'm, I'm a big proponent of nuclear, but like, it's, it's next to— it's not cost prohibitive, right, for them to build those things anymore.
So just take the sources of power that we use currently, right? We have natural gas electric cogeneration stations. That's a big piece, right? We have solar. Okay. We have natural gas. Okay. Now imagine that we need to bring a brand new facility online. What's that going to take? It's going to take 10, 15 years of permitting, sourcing, huge O&M costs, right? Because now you have to have people to run it, to maintain it constantly. Talk about nuclear, it even takes 20 or 25 years to bring a nuclear plant. Solar, we could put up a field in a year. And I'm not a proponent saying that solar's it. I think we need more energy independence, not less.
We probably need a nuanced combination of— We do.
It needs to be a balance. We should be building nuclear, new nuclear plants that are super safe and statistically very little risk associated with that.
And we should be bringing on new natural gas cogenerations. We should be increasing our grid production and our grid management to the, to the same rate that we're increasingly putting more and more demand in load on it. Otherwise, it's going to break. I mean, it's no difference than when you were 25 years old. I could stack weights on your shoulders all day, right? And now, if I was to stack those same weights, you're like, man, I'm, you know, 10, 15 years old.
You're like, I can't handle it. My body's breaking down. I can't handle it. But that's what we're doing with our grid. It was built, you know, 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago, which is why we see all these poles and all these lines loose and overgrowth, and we're putting more weight on it now. Not the same amount of weight. Yeah, more weight. We got data centers coming in, AI's coming in, we're building stuff for crypto guys. I mean, it's ridiculous.
Those are massive, massive energy hogs. Well, and not only that, I mean, you, you start looking at, you know, Elon just announced that not now— not only is Tesla going to be headquartered here in Texas, but he's also bringing SpaceX over. Yes, Boring Company's coming over here. And like, I, you know, I don't, I don't know about you, but I think rockets probably pull a lot of power.
Yeah, it's slightly different. They're not running on solar yet. We haven't quite figured that out yet.
Well, let me ask you this though, and I want to circle back around to some of the commercial buildings because I have some questions about that. But like, I know on the East Coast, one of the alternatives that they're really like investing heavily in is offshore wind.
And are they, are they doing anything like that in the Gulf? I mean, because I know that there's a lot of hullabaloo around that. People are saying like it's, it's affecting the whales, it's affecting the fisheries, and then there's people that are pushing back against that saying like, no, like that's just your opinion, that's not— there's no like research or fact behind that. I mean, do you know about anything?
So, so there's pros and cons to offshore wind. Uh, one of the pros is that we tend to have a lot of wind offshore, right? Right. But what's the con? It's the base feasibility of doing the install, maintaining it, because you're having to disrupt a lot of ecosystems to put that in there. And then you're causing risk while the thing is running. You got birds that are migrating and stuff, and it has to be far out enough, right? Like an offshore oil well. But those are built on floating platforms. This does not float, right? And you're running—
You got to put a pylon in the ground.
Versus just taking what already has been built, like this building here that we could probably fit 2, 3 megawatts on, which would be enough to run your homes for 5 years.
Okay, let's start there so that we don't have to invest millions and millions of dollars more trying to put something where it never belonged in the first place, in the middle of the ocean. or never belonged in the first place. Like, like plowing these fields of fertile, beautiful grassland and grazing land and just putting solar fields out there that the utilities are owning, that the utilities are going to produce, take advantage of the tax credits and pass the cost on to the consumer.
Well, what I was going to ask about the commercial buildings is I know, I know one of the hangups with homeowners is You know, you can, you can build a system, put a system on your home where you're gonna have energy independence, right?
You're still gonna have that grid charge, right? Because you got— I mean, like, either because that house was already connected or they, they require that you be connected, right? Is that the same in the commercial space? I mean, like, or are some of these buildings big enough where they don't necessarily have to be tied into the grid?
So commercial definitely has to be tied into the grid, and, and the reason is, is because most commercial buildings have heavy equipment equipment that they have to pull a certain amount of amperage in order to run those machines. So what we're—
Is solar just not there as far as—
So here's what solar does. All solar does is produce the electricity, but you're talking about, you know, what's actually going to push that current, what's going to meet that load demand. So you're talking amps, right, and not just voltages. So solar in and of itself is not going to produce the type of amps that are needed to run equipment.
So that's where you have to have secondary, like batteries. And the batteries are getting better, uh, every single year. They're getting cheaper and they're getting more capable. And then it's the same thing with generators. So we're not just saying, oh, just put solar panels everywhere. It's like, no, if you're a business that wants to be self-sustaining, you're going to have to have a combination of generation, of storage, like batteries, right? And alternate generation like a generator, right? Because generators do a great job recharging batteries because we have a lot of sun here, yes, but when those storm clouds move in, we could be cutting our production by 60-70%, and so we may not be able to keep up with the demand.
Which can happen for days.
It can happen for days. And so that's where you have the generator that just pops in. Instead of that generator running 24 hours a day, or just downright failing because, you know, even though you've maintained it, it's still an engine, right? Now you're only running it for 2, 3 hours a day just to top off the batteries because maybe solar could not fully charge them, and then you're, you're back in business.
Yeah, the reason I ask is because I'm, I'm, I'm beginning to notice a trend where businesses are not necessarily wanting to buy older buildings, right? They're wanting to build their own, you know, custom for their business, and I'm just wondering if it if it's more cost-efficient to do it on the build side than it is on the retrofit side?
Really not, not much. The only difference is this, and this also applies to residential construction as well. If you're building a house and you know that you want to put solar on and you know that you want to have batteries and generator, okay, build me a beautiful A-frame. Build me a beautiful A-frame like a barndominium where I could just put a single array of At the perfect tilt to capture all that sun south-facing, and then we don't have to worry about trying to work around all these little nooks and crannies of your roof and sneak in a panel here and sneak in a panel there. Now we have, you know, a loss of production because this panel is getting shade from this tree, but this panel is doing okay.
Same thing with businesses, except what we see more with businesses is we don't see the ornate roof complicated structures. We see flat roofs and A-frames all day long, right? Because those roofs were not necessarily designed for solar in mind, but they're standing 20, 25, 30 feet off the ground, and there's very little trees that are around. It's like the perfect opportunity, right?
And, and does elevation have anything to do with it? I mean, like when you're talking about like a tall skinny building.
Yeah, you know, you just want to get away from anything that could cast shade, right?
So if you're talking about buildings that are right next to each other and you have a 3-story building and a 1-story building, there's going to be some shade factors that we have to factor in on that. But looking at is it easier to do a retrofit or new construction, really, it's— they're both pretty much the same. Now building codes are going to be different, so electrical wiring, maybe certain electrical panel upgrades would be needed, But that's minor. We're just talking about surface for solar panels, and then everything else just comes down to the wiring. And that's pretty standard amongst most commercial buildings.
Yeah. And when you were talking about the utility companies wanting to put them in fields rather than on buildings, is it for them, is it like a cost thing? Is it easier to—
So think of it this way, I could lease your roof roof space, right, and put solar on it. But now I don't own the structure that the solar panels are on, and I'm kind of leveraged by you at that point, right? And I'm kind of leveraged against you as well because that's my equipment on there, right? So it creates a relationship that isn't optimal for either parties.
And so when they go and buy land, That's their way of just owning the whole thing.
Right? They own what happens to it. They're able to control all the various environmental risk factors, et cetera, et cetera. And that's why they're also leasing the land because these people are like, hey, I got land. It's not doing anything for me. Maybe it's right next to a substation. Yeah, I'll lease 50 acres for 50 years and we'll just do it that way. But you take Utilities want to have more ownership, more control, and they don't like to rely on anyone else, right? They want all of that control.
Well, so one of the questions I've got, have you, uh, shifting gears for just a moment, have you seen some of this new technology that's coming, come out with, uh, super thin, um, like 2 mil thick solar panels that's come out of some of these universities?
Yeah, they are are using flexible solar panels right now on RVs. So you could go online right now, buy an RV solar kit that's flex. It rolls out and Velcros to the top of your—
Your van. Like, solar panels, that technology, the only thing that makes it rigid is the glass and the aluminum that we have to do if we want it to withstand some of the hailstorms and stuff that we see here. But it's just the solar for the solar cells, a very thin sheet, right? Which is why that technology isn't getting any better. It's not getting different, right? All they're doing is finding more applications and different things to do with it. One of the most unique things that we're seeing now, it's not really out there yet, um, they're just going through proof of concept, is solar panels on streets. So bear with me.
Bear with me, right? Right, right now we have the Clear an area, we put sand, we pound it down, we put on asphalt, and then we go and we paint it, and then we have to do the whole thing over and reseal it every so often. So in certain cities, in certain places where they're experimenting with like this on university campuses, they're just solar panels that get sun all day long, okay? And then they run off of LED. So let's say that you need to turn right on this corner. It's just an LED, right, that shows that. Let's say that you need to reroute traffic because of an accident. LED lights reconfigure, and now you're rerouting traffic.
So, and that's all those panels are there to power?
That's all they're— what they're doing is they're feeding whatever structures are coming off. So where do we see most of our commercial buildings off of highways and mainways, right?
Now, is it super expensive right now? Yes, but that stuff's gonna get cheaper. You could still drive trucks over the stuff, but it's what can we use that we already have in place to put solar versus having to buy up land, take up different, right? There's so many options that we already have. And my point is, let's start there. Let's stop letting the utilities drive us when it comes to our electric power because there are other alternatives that we've never had in the history of our lives like we have now when it comes to electricity.
When you were talking earlier about Texas being the largest, I think, like install state, I mean, the largest, number one in the country. Is— so have you, have you been out Vegas and seen the solar fields outside?
I mean, so like we have desert areas, right?
And even in Texas, is there, is there a good argument to be made to put solar fields there?
And here, and here's why, right? Because we haven't figured out how to send electricity without wires. Okay, so where is all the electric infrastructure in Texas? In habit— in, in In metro areas where there's habitation.
That's what I was trying to say. So if you drop a big solar field out in the middle of, you know, the desert, then you have to figure out a way to connect it to the closest transmission substation or transmission lines. And then you're looking at a lot of loss in power because it's got to go miles and miles and miles. So it's not cost effective to do it that way. I got you. solar fields are right next to substations, which happen to be right next to highly populated areas.
Gotcha. So where's Nikola Tesla when you need him, man?
No, Tesla did it, right? Like, Tesla did it. He figured it out. Edison bought up all of his patents, right, and locked them up in a safe where we have no access to. I mean, this started with Edison. If, if you want to read, you know, Tesla was really a free market libertarian. guy, right? He was like, I just want to do it for science. I just want to do it for the love. I, you know, let's just see how we could push the envelope. Edison came in here. It's like, wait a minute, I could monetize this. Yeah, I could monetize this. So, I'm going to force this guy out, right? Pick up all of his
patents, sit on them so that I can create a grid that is forever going to be putting money in my pocket. And the same business model exists today.
Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, a lot of people don't realize he— I mean, like, he came up with a way to actually collect electricity out of the air.
Yeah, he, he had a field of light bulbs that would power just from, um, all the electromagnetic and electric static in the atmosphere. Yeah, especially when you're looking in, in humid areas like Texas. Oh my gosh. Yeah, and like transferring electricity without wires. I mean, we're still using the same technology today that we used 150 years ago. Poles and wires. Nothing has changed. Transformers. Not much has changed there either. Yeah, it's like we've just accepted that. We're not pushing the envelope on that.
I don't know. Maybe it's because there's a huge cabal cartel of utilities.
No, never. And maybe they're in the pockets of government, right? Or government's in their pockets and they regulate this stuff and they force it down our throats to where we have no other option. And we're literally connected to these big entities through real strings that happen to be wire.
Yeah. And, and, and there's really very little recourse, and it's one of the reasons we're having these lawsuits because there's not a lot of recourse.
What are you gonna do? I mean, because, because here's, here's the thing. There is— there, there could be a scenario where like, look, if you don't like it, then we will turn your electricity off, right? If that's what you want. Well, you can't do that. That's unreasonable, right? I have to have the electricity. So, you know, I was, um, uh, a long time ago, probably probably 25 years ago. I was down in Trinidad, off the coast of Venezuela. We were doing, doing some stuff down there and staying in the homes down there. They're built to— like, they literally are built with holes in the homes so that air can go through them.
And we were actually just talking to a window guy, a window shade guy, and Craig was talking about the idea of like opening windows on this side and this side and get some airflow going through there. Well, here's the deal. Our homes, especially in places like Houston, we are not built that way, right? They're built to have to have air conditioning, right? And if you don't, you will die.
Yeah, you have a mold problem, you'll literally die.
You will literally die if you don't have electricity in the homes that we are building. We are building things in a way that require it, so we have to figure this out. And Unfortunately, right now our option— it feels like for most people our option is just to pay the electric company, let them raise our rates when they want to, let them—
like, it's not like we get a vote, right? I mean, there's no representation on the utilities side.
And you also, most of the time, you don't have options, right? Most of the time it is—
it's the only player in town.
It's the only player in town.
Yeah, I mean, it's like the only legal monopoly.
Yeah, it's the only legal, and there's actually a definition, you can look it up, it's called natural monopolies. Natural monopolies are monopolies that the government has allowed to form in order to have more control over that industry or over that sector, which is what we see with the utility space, which is why it's not like cell phones where it's like, if I don't like AT&T service, I just hop over to T-Mobile.
It's like if, if you're in the CenterPoint area, CenterPoint's your utility.
You don't have any other option.
There's no other option. Like, that's it. And, and if they're doing a piss-poor job managing their, you know, construction projects and reliability projects and their budgets, okay, and so they have to come back to us as the customer, charge more money, like, what's our recourse for that? Complaints? Yeah, suing them? Right, to be mad, to stomp our feet. Like, we've never been more vulnerable as a society when it comes to the threats to the electric grid than we are right now because we're becoming more electrified as a society.
Not less, which means that the vulnerabilities that still existed 30 years ago, 20 years ago, that will still exist 20, 30 years from now are only gonna be more critical because we're becoming less and less reliant on things things, on power sources of yesterday, and on things that we could live or not live without. Remember where TV was like a luxury? I grew up in a home where we had one TV.
Right? Now we got 5, and every kid has their own Netflix account, and everything's on demand, right? Well, we're going more that way, right? Our first computer, we had one computer. It was the family computer in the center of the room, it was a beast, right? It was a huge thing, and we all had to like take turns on it. And now it's like everyone has one in their pocket and then a Chromebook or something like that. So we're not going in the direction that we would need to be going to reduce the risk of exposure that we have as a society for when the grid goes down.
Well, and we have like this— there's like a false sense of like a non-monopoly because there's so many different companies that you can buy You're— but it's—
they're just a middleman.
They're a retailer. That's all they are.
What really irritates me about this is, one, is just the lack of attention that people have to what's actually being done to them, right? And in that, you know, if you— you know, I can remember back in the day, if you only had, uh, one cable company that you could pull from and that cable company sucked, yeah, people threw an absolute Absolute fear. Because they didn't have access to their entertainment.
You know, and they were more— that was more of a concern and more of an attention that they gave to than where they were getting their actual power from.
And they would never make a stink about that, but like, by God, if we can't watch Price is Right, you know, it becomes a fight. And it's like, this is part of the problem, is like people aren't genuinely concerned about the things that really at their core affect them.
And, and how people don't miss it until it's gone, right? So, if you shut the lights off, okay, for 2 hours, everyone's like, okay, that's an inconvenience. You shut the lights off for a week, it's like, okay, now we got a problem. You shut it off for 2 weeks, people are dying. This is a critical emergency. Someone is gonna get fired, go to jail, do something, right?
And so, we've become so relaxed and so accepting of piss-poor service. Like, utilities are the one service where the reliability gets less, right? The quality of your customer service gets less, but you pay more.
Like, what other business would that be tolerated? If you gave me worse service every single year and it just got worse and your quality started to go down, but then you were charging me more, I'd go next door to the next guy because that business won't stay open very long.
But with utilities, it is what it is.
Yeah. So I think that there's a couple of things here. I think that there's— and we talked about this a minute ago, about how Josh does a very good job of education. And it's a big deal because what I find is so many people, they look at— you mentioned it, you kind of touched on it a minute ago. A lot of people look at solar and they go, well, I don't want that. I don't care that much. Like, I'm not a tree hugger. What's— it's— it— what we're talking about here is a revolutionary idea, but it's not a revolutionary idea that is like a negotiable, right? It is— it is an area where you have to make a choice, right? Are you going
to continue to allow someone else to control the way you get your energy and charge you however much they want to. In fact, uh, it wasn't too long ago, and Craig and I are on a co-op, and actually we, we kind of like it. We're with MidSouth.
MidSouth. We're— I'm with MidSouth.
We actually kind of like them. They do, they do a pretty good job. And even, even during the hurricane, I mean, they, they were—
they had better incentives for solar, but you know, whatever.
Yeah, well, I mean, overall MidSouth's more reliable long-term than like a center point, right? Like, like, we get tons of these little blips, but it's never more than, you know, a few minutes.
That's right. And, and overall, they do a very good job. They actually do care about their customers, right? Like, they're— it's a co-op, so, so there's at least a little bit there. But, um, what I find is that even, even in those, those scenarios, we wind up seeing so many people that just don't get the fact that you are still relying on someone else to tell you how it has to be done every single time.
And you're on their schedule. That's exactly right. If you want to build something new, you're on their schedule.
That's right. So like, let me give you an— let me give you an aside to what I think this is akin to, and that is gas prices. Yeah, like whenever you talk about fuel, when you talk about gas in general, you and I cannot control how much we pay for gas, but we have to have it. And literally, we have no alternatives unless we go with an electric vehicle. That is our only recourse right now to get past—
Which I think every home should have. Like, I drive an F-250 diesel, right? So it's not the most economical, but I think in terms of reliability, everyone should have some kind of electric vehicle as part of their fleet. Because imagine this, right? The grid crashes, domestic terror attack, which people don't know, but that actually happens quite a bit. You can look it up. 2 years ago in North Carolina, there was a sniper who took out a substation transformer. 500,000 people were out for 2 weeks. Metcalfe, PG&E over in California, a sniper took out a transformer. Believe me, they never caught the guys because their cameras are turned inward. They're not looking for a guy—
Yeah, 500 yards out, right? it's disrupting to that service for a long time because transformers aren't something you just pull off the shelf, right? So when the grid finally does go down, gas pumps won't work.
And gas goes bad. So yes, do I have a gas and diesel? Yes, gas and diesel. Do I want an electric vehicle? I do for the fact that I have solar and batteries, and when the grid finally does go down, my diesel is going to run out pretty fast. and I have no place to go to get more when there's no electricity available, you know, and whatever I have stored is only going to last so much. Whereas if I'm generating my own power, I plug in my car, I'll be the only dude on the road.
And so that's part of my point here is there's actually— I've seen a couple of memes going around recently of people going, hey, you know, congratulations on your electric car. You realize that you're using you know, natural gas to actually power it. Yeah, thing is like, it's— you're, you're in this— you think you're saving the planet, but you're actually still using, right, these alternative fuel options in order to fuel your vehicle.
But here's the solution. You truly want— you, you buy an electric vehicle because you— if, if, if your reason is because I truly want to get away from the environmental problems that are caused caused, which by the way, there's battery issues too.
Oh, battery issues. There's cobalt mining, that's dirty mining with a bunch of— there's so many kids dying in the fields trying to mine cobalt.
And you can't dispose of them. We're gonna run out of lithium. It's not a—
it's a non-renewable resource. So there's, there's a lot of issues. People are working on it. Here's the— here's my point. The way you get around all of that is to have solar on your house. Yeah, you have solar on your You're producing the energy that feeds your car. You're not using natural gas to produce it. You're not using coal. You're not using nuclear.
You don't even need the grid at that point because you still need the grid to charge your car if you don't have your own power supply on site.
Right, like the most worthless car is an electric vehicle that's plugged into the wall that's powered by the grid. That is the—
Worst vehicle. That is a brick.
How many people are doing that? Everybody's doing that.
Everyone that has one is doing that.
It's funny because again, going back to the hurricane, people are going, oh, how about all you EV people right now? How are you getting around? You know, and I get it. It's a great question unless you have solar. Yeah, if you have solar, you got a battery, you've got everything you need, you've got the power.
And most cars are now coming with bi-directional charging, which means that your car is your home's backup power source. You can run your home for 4 or 5 days off of a 90-kilowatt battery that's in your car. MidSouth, we got to go back because I have to pick on MidSouth.
So 2022, in 2022 in the summer, natural gas prices spiked.
And then what did MidSouth introduce to their bill?
They slapped on— all of us got it. They slapped on a $200 roughly, maybe even $250 surcharge to to power their natural gas plant.
Yes, so it's the WPCA charge, the Wholesale Power Cost Adjustment, which essentially doubled. It's still on our bills.
And natural gas rates are at the cheapest they've been in 10 years, and that's still something I'm paying for. And as a solar customer, I still have to pay for that. That's not offset. So talk about a utility— it's like, if you're doing the right I get that natural gas prices spiked and you had to recover from that.
I get that. For a moment.
But then take it off, especially when gas— natural gas prices are at the lowest they've been in years. Right now, that is just money going right into their pockets.
Right. Absolutely. That's the way it goes. And so there's got to be it. There's got to be a way to fix that. Yeah, there's got to be a way to go, look, we can't continue to— and again, This is— there needs to be some accountability for that.
And I don't know what to do, but the fact that we are a co-op, there should be some accountability.
It's gonna take members raising hell in order— so I'm going to Bluebonnet's co-op meeting here at the end of the month.
And what people don't understand about electric co-ops is that you do have a voice as a member. Now, you don't get a vote necessarily, but you have a board and you can raise hell and convince people people to do something.
The fact that we have rolled over and allowed this WPCA charge to stick around, given the justification that they gave us for why they applied it in the first place, that just shows how disinterested we are as a people. We need to show up at those meetings at all the co-ops and demand better service, or demand that, hey, you justifiably raised the rates, but it is time to wipe that out now because it doubled people's utility bills.
And again, it goes back to one of the reasons that my bill did— one of the reasons, it's not the only reason. Yeah, but one of the reasons is because we got this charge. I know, this ridiculous charge that we have, we have no recourse for.
No recourse for, man. That's it. It's like you got to eat that hard turd and you're gonna smile and like it and say thank you because That's it. We have no other option. But now we do, right? Now we do. And, you know, solar technology, the systems, they're only going to get better. I think the future, if I could look into the future, what the future is going to be, it's going to be a series of microgrids that get built.
So now you have a community like Conroe where as a community they go in, they pull resources, they maybe build a small solar farm in some part of the area, they put in batteries, and now it's a closed system where they don't even need the grid anymore, and everybody is being fed off of that, and it's not connected to any other microgrid so that if there's a cyberattack in this microgrid over here that totally wipes them out, or domestic terror, our show goes on.
Right? So there's things that we could be doing to make our, our communities more resilient, to make our society more resilient, but in my opinion, The number one threat to our society right now is a vast charge towards electrification without us putting in the infrastructure to support it. Like, that is an equation that is going to be very, very bad one day.
I'm actually surprised that we haven't had a natural gas car hit the market yet. I mean, as many people that have natural gas coming to their homes where, I mean, like, you could literally be refueling your car at home rather than going to a gas station.
We've had all these technologies. The first electric vehicle, I think, was introduced in the early 1900s.
Right. It's like, this is not new technology.
It's, it's what regulations—
it's regulations, right? It's just like Standard Oil and all that. It's not that we didn't have this technology. It's that, you know, people were paid off to kill it, to hold the patents, to bury them so that they could set up their whole cartel and force us into a single option that made them billions of dollars. And now we're starting to figure out, oh, it doesn't have to be that way.
But they've put so much fear and doubt in everyone's heads where it's like they don't know any other way. I mean, we rent homes and we own homes. People that rent rent want to own. And why do you want to own? So it's yours, right? Because you hate paying the bill for somebody else.
Yet that's exactly what we're doing with power. We don't own our power. We're renting it from the utility. We're constantly putting money in. That calculation that you just did, just do it for your own home. $250 a month, right? Once you add it up, you're like, man, I'm in the $150,000-$200,000 range, right, of my money that I have given to the utility for having unreliable power.
And no asset to get a return on.
Yeah, nothing. You don't own it. You're just an eternal renter of your electricity.
Have you guys seen the videos of the Tesla truck that the guy's putting them through their paces?
And like just how like undurable they are. They broke the frame.
Well, yeah, I watched it. It was doing an F1 F-150 pull. It was trying to pull off an F-150 off of some berm it got on, and it totally broke the frame.
Like, well, so I gotta do better, Elon. Gotta do better, bud.
A car guy that I was talking to said— are we about to lose it again? No, I don't think so. Well, yeah, I think it's going. You wanna go see if you can get it?
Just have my kids sit there and hold it. He's got to be put to work somehow.
Yeah, but, uh, the, uh, what a car guy was telling me about it is part of the problem— there it goes, there it goes, there it goes— uh, is that they're so heavy.
Yeah, and so our roads aren't built for that. So can you imagine like a multi-level parking structure with nothing but EVs on it?
And so So like one of the, you know, one of the best arguments for an EV truck like that is, you know, you're not, you're not having to do oil changes, you're not having to buy gas. What this guy was telling me is like, look, you're going to make up the difference in that just in tires.
Because tires that we have right now, 6 months, I think you need a new set of tires. And like, you want to talk about something that's gone up a lot?
look into rubber and what's happening with the rubber trees. Now, call it climate change, call it whatever, but we are heading into another crisis where we are going to run out of rubber pretty soon because these rubber trees are not able to produce as much volume as what the demand is, right? And there's less and less acreage for these rubber trees to be produced. They don't grow everywhere, right? I mean, imagine a world without rubber. That is a very scary—
Yeah, yeah, yeah. How many pieces of medical equipment have some rubber component? How many pieces of normal equipment have rubber gaskets? Like, that's the only way to do it, right? It's like, oh, your car's done, you can't drive it now because no gaskets. Yeah, and I find the O-ring—
And when I imagine we don't really have like an economical synthetic.
Yeah, it'd be like silicone or something that's probably going to be very expensive that we're not set for mass production. But yeah, I mean, going back to your EV thing, yeah, you're absolutely right. I don't think that everyone driving an EV is the answer. I, I think that it's smart that EVs have a part of the energy infrastructure because imagine a grid where everyone's plugged in at night and then you could actually offset the load because you're pulling from your car battery.
Instead, and then you're, you're supercharging it or something like that during, during the day.
It's probably healthy for those batteries too.
Oh yeah, because now you're cycling and it's healthy for the grid because it takes the stress off. I mean, the most stress the grid had, you know, recently was the big freeze where, you know, there was so much demand and we had this amazingly harsh storm event happen that disabled natural gas valves from cycling and opening up and releasing more natural gas. So it's like you, you froze the source of fuel that would have produced the electricity, right? Well, batteries have operating temperatures too, okay? And, and, and in very, very cold, you need to warm that battery up to run it. So they're not going to be up in, you know, the Panhandle during a storm working very well.
And you're probably not going to see them all over Canada, right, where they're— or Idaho, where we get a lot of snow. But there's a place for them and there's a use for them. And, you know, large-scale transportation, trucking, I think that'd be a great market, right?
Especially for these short hauls, right? You get— you have battery-operated short hauling and you're recharging those vehicles with solar back at your commercial building. You're going to cut out your diesel fuel costs. And those things are very heavy. already as it is. Yeah, there's a market for that, right? But everyone having an EV?
Not on my watch, pal. Not on my watch. You know, they can be 4-wheel drive all day long, but like, if you're too heavy, you're just gonna sink.
Yeah, you're gonna sink. Well, I mean, the torque though, you gotta— the torque values on that, right? Elon Musk put it this way, it's like, would you run a printer off of a gasoline engine, right, for your It's like, no, you know, no, because man, the efficiency of electricity. So I get that cars can be more efficient, right? If you utilize more efficient energy sources, like I get that, but there's always gonna be a give and take. There's always gonna be, right? What do we do with all the existing infrastructure that we currently already have? Are we gonna convert every single gas station into an EV charger? It's like, no. Right.
And they don't want that.
And they don't want that. And so it's a disservice to car manufacturers for governments to arbitrarily put these silly deadlines and mandates on them on when they have to have fully switched over to electric vehicles. Like, that's asinine.
No one's going to come— yeah, it's fine. No one's going to comply with that either.
We're gonna find the cobalt. We're gonna find—
It's just virtue signaling.
I mean, like, we're gonna say that we're doing this so that everyone will just, like, think that we're virtuous and ethical and holy and righteous and, you know, like, and no one really cares.
The country with the most EVs on its streets is China.
Okay. Do we consider China an environmentally friendly and conscious—
No, it's like one of, like, other than India, it's like one of the most polluted areas. Yeah.
So what I think has happened is certain industries have taken over the narrative and demonized a very good option for generation, for power, and have removed it from the public psyche so that we're conditioned to live without it.
And nuclear is the same way, right? Everyone wants to point to Chernobyl, and it's like, okay, nuclear plants 50, 60 years ago are different than if we would build them today, right? I mean, the footprints are so small, it's super efficient. Our waste management, you know, has gotten so much better. It's like, not in my backyard though, right? Like, I don't want that nuclear plant in my backyard. It's like, okay, but what are your alternatives, right?
Well, not only that, I've actually been over there, and like, what they all predicted was going to happen didn't.
Right, it didn't. There's— they're growing vegetables there. Yes, there's people that are like actually cultivating agriculture over there, and you're like, wait, I thought that was not supposed to happen for like 200 years, right?
I mean, there, there is some like downstream stuff that happened that's not good. I mean, you had a lot of, uh, people, uh, I met kids over there that, you know, had obvious effects as being like a second generation away from the effects of it.
And you saw things like reverse freckling.
You saw things like kids having one blue eye, one brown eye, stuff like that, like slight genetic mutations, mutations that occurred because of it, but will probably be gone in 2 generations.
And most of those didn't seem to have other health, adverse health. Well, it doesn't mean that they don't.
That was like 60-year-old technology that we're talking about.
Like, not nearly having the controls that we have today, the monitoring capabilities, the automation that we have today. You're talking about operating things manually with valves.
And now we have actuators and all these things where it's like, now we have AI systems, right, that I'm sure can do predictability models and figure out what's the highest risk of this and then making sure that there's automated controls to help prevent that. Like, there's so much more that we can do.
And I think we're just going the wrong way. We're trying to push it where it doesn't make sense, like electric vehicles mandate 2030, all that stuff.
And then we're not supporting it where we really need it, right? Which is there should be subsidies, right, that, you know, businesses can take advantage of for like low financing if they want to finance their solar system, right? Instead of paying the market rate because it's going to help the grid as well as help that business, right? Like, why wouldn't you subsidize that with like a low-interest, long-term loan? It's like, no, you have to go get a new construction loan at 15% with a 5-year note on the payback. And it's like, yeah, you know, some of these businesses, they can't afford to do it right away, even though it's long-term, it would benefit them greatly from a bottom line perspective, right? But many can.
Yeah, well, man, is there, is there anything solar-wise we haven't covered today you want to make sure we, we get out there today?
Man, I think we have gone through the gamut. I mean, pretty soon I'm going to take out my tinfoil hat here and we're going to start pulling out the ham radio and we're going to start broadcasting some real stuff.
That could be fun too. Yeah, well, we, thank you guys, we ran the ad already, but you want to tell everybody how to get a hold of you if they've got any questions for commercial or residential?
So, uh, True Texas Solar, we're here in We are in Conroe, we are local, but we service the greater kind of Texas Triangle, right? We're not going to turn down work in DFW or Houston or Austin. But you could check us out on truetexasolar.com. You can give us a call at 936-286-8325, which I'm really glad that he was turning because I could— I didn't memorize that number and I read it right off of his shirt. So I had some help there. But yeah, give us a call. call and we will help you think through your project and we will tell you if it's not a good investment for you. We will tell you do not
run for the hills if it's not going to meet your needs.
Absolutely, man. Thank you so much for sitting down with us.
All right. Very, very good.
Do we, do we have time or does, or do we need to shut her down?
Well, we're getting pretty close here.
All right. Let's shut her down. Thank you guys for, uh, if you're out there and listening. Thanks for, uh, the time. And, uh, man, I, I think you probably learned something if you've been, uh, kind of listening the last hour or so. And, uh, we're here all the time, really, always on Facebook. You can find us on YouTube. You can find us on Tuesdays through our podcast. And, uh, we're everywhere. The Homeowner Show. Thank you for joining us. Until next time, we'll see you later.
