The 2024 Montgomery Home & Garden Show with True Texas Solar

Good morning, everybody. This is Kevin and Craig, and we are at the Montgomery County Home and Outdoor Living Show in Conroe, Texas. How you doing, everybody? Welcome to the show. We're glad you're here. Thanks for joining us. We got a lot to talk about, don't we, Craig?

Absolutely, man. We've been, uh, walking around and checking stuff out. Uh, then there's a lot of really, really cool vendors at this thing. Yeah, there— I, I didn't realize how big this show was.

No, I didn't either. I mean, there's everything from, uh, you know, remodeling, you know, outdoor living as far as like, like deck building, pergolas, porches, those types of things. But then there's, there's heating and air conditioning, there's pest control, there's, uh, like even they're like right across from us, there's someone that does like Therapy, like, like massage therapy. Yeah, massage therapy. They've got like water features over here. I mean, goodness gracious, it's massive.

There's a tiny house down there.

What? Yeah, I missed it.

And yeah, and the chicken coop.

I didn't see the chicken coop.

I think the chicken coop's gonna be more popular than the tiny house, but because it's a cool-looking chicken coop.

It is, it's big.

And probably like the world's biggest hot tub. Oh, it's like a lap pool that they brought in here, man.

I saw that. Yeah.

The chainsaw guy at the end who does—

Oh, he does the art.

He's going to do a live one at 1:30 today.

Yeah. Well, and so did you— went all the way down there?

Yeah.

Did you see the guy making pot roast?

No, no.

He's doing like a live cooking demonstration.

Yeah.

And I was, I was, I was propositioning him. I was like, you're going to have like some free samples of that, like, or maybe bring some down here because, yeah, like, we'll talk about you on the show. We're here for 2 hours, man. We're going to get hungry.

That's right. That's exactly right. But no, there's, there's I mean, I'm guessing, I'm complete guessing, there's probably, there's probably 100 vendors in here.

Yeah, easy. There's also another room with about probably another 20 or 30.

It's like right over here, right?

Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, somewhere.

And they've got campers out in front. Like, there's all kinds of stuff here. So y'all, if you are in the Montgomery County area and you are in need of just looking for a contractor or a home service type of company, this is a great place to go because the— I mean, I saw roofers and gutter people. Like, right now my gutters need work. But, um, this is a great place to kind of vet people. You get to talk to people face to face. And oh, by the way, there are also solar people here too.

Oh yeah, if you haven't figured that out from our backdrop, or if you're listening to the audio, you can't see it, so you should be over there subscribing on YouTube. That's right, that's right. But yeah, we, we, we are here with True Texas Solar, um, and we got, we got our buddy Josh, who you've actually been on some of our remote episodes before. So, uh, but you invited us to come sit at the booth, uh, and I think we got the best seat in the house, man.

I think so.

We got— we're right here in the corner where all the traffic's coming through. We've had several people stop by and wave and— or give us the, uh, the suspicious side eye, which is my favorite.

right. Yeah, we do draw some attention. The lights help, you know. But, uh, but yeah, so, um, that, that, that's my whole shtick. Just like, get here, show up, because I, I'm telling you, man, you're gonna— they're probably giving away stuff all over the place too.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, there's a lot of raffles. We're doing a raffle as well for a free portable generator. There's other people giving away—

Is that the one sitting in front of us right here?

Yeah.

What, what is that?

It's a, it's a dual fuel, uh, 5,500-watt, uh, portable generator. So versatile, take it with you camping, use it for your home, keep your fridge going during an outage. Yeah, kind of situations.

And it's a, it's a dual fuel, what is it? It's gas and what?

And propane.

Gas and propane. How do people win it?

Um, just coming in. And so we have a raffle here with a little QR code. Uh, all we ask is for one of your electric bills. So you give us an electric bill, give us a chance to show you what kind of system we for you at no cost. It's no, no obligation, um, and you get entered to win a free generator.

That's awesome.

Yeah, so you find out if solar works for you.

Yeah.

And you get a chance to win a generator.

Absolutely.

Win-win.

Yep.

Can't beat that deal.

Not at all, not at all. And also, just to let people know, the showtime's from 10 to 5, uh, Saturday and Sunday.

Right.

We'll be here today and tomorrow.

All right.

Um, and also I'll be doing a live presentation in their presentation room today at 11:30 and tomorrow at 1:30.

And what's the presentation on?

So it's a lot of probably what we'll cover here. I don't know how in-depth we'll go, but it's just kind of—

So we get a sneak peek.

Yeah, that's exactly right. So it's just covering a lot of the solar truths and kind of shining light on some of the shady practices that are happening and just really seeing the solar solution as a way a means of backup, uh, grid independence, rather than just be 100% you're gonna save so much money and save the world while doing it, kind of speak.

Yeah, which, I mean, I'm, I'm glad you mentioned the showtimes because we're actually here an hour early. Um, so if you're watching this live, uh, you still have time to get up here because it hasn't opened yet.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, we kind of got to come in and see how the sausage gets made, so to speak. Um, but yeah, so we're, we're in here, but like, you won't be able to see us for about another 45 minutes if you're waiting at the door. But yeah, if you're listening live, you still have time to actually get down here and actually meet us in person. Come meet Josh and the guys at True Texas Solar. But I want to, I want to get into this, these deceptive and predatory practices that you're talking about, because I hear— I think this is what we hear because we've talked to a lot of solar people over the years and solar stuff has changed in the course of 5 years that we've been doing the show.

Mm-hmm.

But like one of the things that we hear back from our audience a lot is like they've lost trust in a lot of the solar business because they've heard about or have a friend that, you know, got taken advantage of or it wasn't explained to them well and then they ended up, you know, upside down or, you know, however that happens. So like in your experience, like what have been some of like the biggest, you know, I don't— I hate to say lies, but I mean, that's what it is.

I mean, scams.

Yeah.

That's the problem with our industry. And so if I can back up and kind of give you the position that got me into this, it would open my eyes to it. So I come from a very technical background. For the last 18 years of my career, I designed and engineered smart homes from that perspective.

Yeah.

So everything I did was, you know, thousands of wires in a home, you know, everything's Wi-Fi network, enterprise network level. And so when these homes lost power, you know, they couldn't turn lights on 'cause there's no light switches on their walls. Everything's automated, voice controlled, you know, proximity, you know, sensors. And so their homes don't work if they don't have power.

Oh, that's got to— I hadn't even thought about that. Like, I've never— not even thought about the fact you can't turn your lights on if you're in full automation if your power goes out. That, that's—

You have to have redundancies in place.

Yeah, you have to.

Is, is that because like the system needs to be like rebooted, or—

It's because the entire system works off of network. It's, it's, you know, IoT, the whole home. When you talk about security. A lot of their doors are access control doors, right? Because—

Real quick, you said IoT, and there's probably a lot of people that have no idea what that means.

Internet of Things. I know something.

Yeah.

And so, so everything's connected through the internet, you know, cameras. A lot of them will have biometric, you know, thumb readers on their doors. They don't actually even have keys to open the doors. They just put their thumb, or when their phone gets close enough to the house, it As near-field communication.

Yeah.

And it will just unlock the door whether, you know, husband or wife or children walking.

I noticed he didn't say NFC that time.

Yeah, on purpose.

I knew he was.

I knew he was.

And, and so, so whenever people, you know, have this house built this way, you have to back it up, not just with a generator, because if you do a generator, you have the elapsed time where the system goes down for a few seconds, a few minutes, and then it comes back online. So you have to have a battery to bridge that gap. And so I was going out and seeking solar companies to come and assist me in that portion. So I would, you know, design the system, I would spec out what we need based off the information they provided me. And then I had homeowners coming and getting very upset when they hit their first outage and the batteries weren't even

enough to handle the house load, to shift the load onto it, immediately throw the breaker. And I started, you know, getting these customers that say, hey, you said as a bonus I was also going to get, you know, this much money a month, or my bill was going to be reduced to this, and it wasn't happening.

Yeah.

And I'm like, okay, there, there's a disconnect here, so let me jump into the industry and figure out how to bridge that gap. Because these are also homes that are, you know, 4,000, 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 square foot homes. So these aren't, these aren't little, you know, tract homes or spec homes. So with that, those kind of solutions, they weren't able— this industry blew up so quick and was flooded with, with, you know, people that were educated on pitch and not educated on technology. So we ended up, you know, seeing the, the, the niche in the market that wasn't being filled, being bridged and gapped. So we dove into it and we started researching. We, you know, opened this company in March of 2021, so we're just at a 2-year mark. And, and so we

each year we just kept digging and digging and clawing at to get to the facts 'Cause we would hear something from a competitor or we'd hear something from one of my previous contractors I worked with. And we said, how can we go after this head on and reveal it all? Like see what's true, what's not, and really deep dive. And that's kind of what began this journey.

Hmm.

So we basically started looking at the things that we thought and we were saying when we first opened, you know, you're gonna get a 30% tax credit. and that's going to help lower your bill, or that's going to be money in your pocket. You know, whenever you go to file your taxes, you're going to get X amount back. And just for round numbers on these larger homes, say it's a $100,000 project, you're going to get $30,000 back at the end of the year when you go to file your taxes. And then we had, uh, um, you know, more information provided through finance companies and, and reading online and doing our research as we should. that those are all based off of your liabilities. You know, if you're on a fixed income or retirement, you're not taxed.

You don't have the liabilities, you know. And, and so there's a lot of places that we started to see it, it didn't fit everyone.

Yeah.

It wasn't for the entire community can get this. And then if you're a 1099 self-employed or, or something of the sort, you have to pay taxes at the end of the year. So this will go in lieu of that. So now you don't have to come out of pocket that 30%, whatever amount you had, that can go in place of it, but you're still not getting that money back.

It's not money you can go spend on groceries.

Correct.

Correct. So the only place it really comes back to you is if, you know, and I do have to say, I'm not a CPA. Legally, consult your CPA on this advice. But the 30% tax credit really applies to a W-2 employee that has been paying taxes in all year. And, um, and what happens is the amount that the tax credit is applicable to your liability, you will receive whatever you paid in as a refund. That's, that's where it really works. Or if you're a, you know, a business owner or an enterprise, you know, you have several different avenues of income and you do have that tax liability that you would be coming out of pocket at the end of the year, right? This would go in lieu of it. It still doesn't mean you're getting that as a check in the mail from the IRS.

So what does that Okay, like, I hear what you're saying, and I'm— I am by far any type of financial expert. In fact, I am the opposite. So, um, when it comes to all of that, what does that really equate to? Because I mean, I, I know it's different for everybody, but, um, and, and different, different employers do different things with taxes and etc., etc., etc. But like, whenever someone comes in and says, for example, you're gonna get a 30 Tax credit on this. What kind of dollars does that actually equate to typically?

So solar, you're looking somewhere, you know, between a real good size system that— and I'll lead into that answer in just a moment— but most people are sizing these systems grossly undersized. So they'll come in and say, I can give you a system for $20,000, $30,000, you know, and run your whole home's power off of it. And, and that's That's on problem A. So, excuse me, so once we, we go into seeing, um, the systems that are being sized wrong, to get it really sized where you need it, you're probably looking more like $50K to $60K, and that's just for your solar solution. Once you add in your battery, if you want to add the trifecta of having a generator to get truly off-grid, grid resilience,

independent power creator, own your power, not lease it, then you're probably looking at getting close Close to $100,000. Okay, so that's, that's for an average home, say between 2,500 and 4,500 square foot. If you have a smaller home, you're going to be on the lower end of those spectrums.

Let me ask you this because you, you mentioned it. In Texas, is it, is it even possible to live off-grid?

Absolutely. Yeah, I have about— I think right now we're at 5 clients that do not have a pole coming to their home.

Really?

Yep.

Wow. And how does— because, you know, when, when we've looked at it at our house before, I mean, like, that was something that interested us. And but we were told that you can't— once you are attached to the grid, you can't, you can't back away from it.

Yeah, once you're attached to the grid, you can't remove it. Now there is a workaround: don't pay your bill. Once you get the disconnect, once you get the disconnect, let it disconnect. Don't pay pay to reconnect. So don't pay your bill, get the disconnect, pay your bill so it doesn't affect your credit, but you're not paying to reconnect.

Because once you're— I mean, you're still paying a grid fee even if you're not drawn from the system.

Correct.

Yeah, right.

And, and I would say this too, in, in reality, like for my home, I'm gonna operate off-grid, but I'll still have the grid as another line of defense for, for whatever scenario, you know, a tree fell and smashed my panels, right?

Sure.

you know, a squirrel came and chewed on some wires and disconnected me.

I can handle that for you.

Yeah, I'll take care of that. You know what, guys?

So in those cases, I still like to have, you know, some way of, you know, buying from the grid as an emergency backup.

Yeah.

So, okay, you didn't— he didn't get that. You interrupted him.

I did interrupt him.

I'm sorry.

Okay, so going back to my question, which is way more important than yours.

I'm playing the part of the squirrel.

That's true.

In the show.

That's true. So, so you're talking like, let's say it's, you know, $80,000 to $100,000 for a system, uh, realistically, um, for, for that, technically I'm looking at that, if it's $100,000, I'm looking at going, I'm getting $30,000 back. Yeah, but if I'm not paying $30,000 into taxes, correct, then I'm not getting anywhere near that back.

Correct, correct. So it— there is some cool, you know, the incentive is still good. Like, I don't want to paint that the incentive is not good, it's just understanding How do— how it applies to your tax use scenario.

Okay.

So if, if you say every year you pay $10,000 in, right, whether you're paying it on your W-2 check every week, every biweek, whatever your salary is paid at, and, and you have a $10,000 liability you've paid in towards at the end of the year, and you have $30,000 coming as a tax credit, what happens is you get $10,000 back and a refund if you paid on it as a W-2 employee all year. And the other $20,000 would roll over for 5 years.

Okay.

So you could take $10,000 every year for 3 years if that's your normal tax situation and receive that $30,000 over time. But where the predatory part comes in on that is people are saying you're going to get this all up front, you're going to get this all up front, and then they're also not telling you a part about the finance where they're saying they're applying it to the loan and saying you're going to buy down $30,000 of this loan once you get that. in January or February to show you a note that's only, you know, $130 or something, when in reality it should be more like $180 or $190 because that tax credit's not being applied immediately and you don't know

if you can apply it in, you know, February or March when you receive your return. So it's a very, it's a very predatory pretense being set up that the customers are being, you know, wrongly educated.

And once you finance it, Paying it down is not quite as easy as people might think. I mean, for example, like, let's say that you go buy a $50,000 car and— but you've got to trade. But instead of trading, you, you go ahead and buy the car. Instead of trading it, you go sell a previous car, right? You can't just go back to the finance company and say, can we— we can redo my terms because I want to now give you $25,000 of this car that I just sold. You can pay the loan down, but you, but you can't renegotiate the terms. You're—

Sure, they'd be happy to at a 29%.

Sure, that's exactly right.

But you can't like come back and go, okay, maybe, maybe your payment was, I don't know, uh, $900 a month. You go pay it down $25,000, your payment's still gonna be $900 a month. You can't, you can't renegotiate that without, like you said, some sort of, you know, refinance of some sort.

Yeah.

I can speak a little bit to this. I mean, because I think where people have a misunderstanding about how this works is most people, if they're W-2 employees— and again, I'm not a CPA, I just know enough to get myself into trouble— most people who are W-2 employees set up their checks to have enough withholdings to where they're not paying tax at the end of the year.

Right.

Whereas if you were doing something like this where you have a massive tax credit, what you would want to do is set your paycheck up to have as little withholdings as possible. Because the reason people do that is so that they don't owe a big chunk at the end of the year.

Right.

Right? So in this case, you could actually keep a lot of your money, use it throughout the year, and then use that tax credit at the end of the year to apply to that big chunk that you would usually pay if you didn't have those withholdings. And so it's just, it's just setting yourself up right. You know, if you're gonna do a big move like this where you have a like solar that has a big tax credit, you can, you can use that to your advantage to now have more cash on hand month to month because you're not withholding that from your check anymore.

Right.

So, so let me, let me ask you a question then, Josh. So let's say that I, I were to come be like, hey, come put solar on my house, but I'm trying to figure all this out. I don't, I don't understand all this. You're not a CPA, you don't understand all that either. I mean, you may understand it, but you can't You can't legally advise on it. Do you have people that you can point me to that you say, you know what, this person is, is someone that understands the solar system and can help you negotiate that in a way that would make sense for you, maybe both from a finance place but also even from a tax place?

Yeah, yeah, there's, there's quite a few. I mean, one, I don't know if I should plug them, but I'm going to.

They can send us a check later. It's all right.

Bill McGee here, here in Conroe, Texas. I've been using him for about 8 years, um, and when I started having customers come up with these questions, I came to him with it. Um, name of his company is Tax Expert— or excuse me, I said that wrong, it's Taxpert.

Taxpert.

Yeah, he makes it in.

I've heard of him.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, so he, he— I brought, I brought a couple of my clients to him and said, hey, they're getting a different, you know, side of the story from, from from what you and I have discussed, can you go through it? And now those are his clients.

Okay.

So he's done very well at it. He understands it. And honestly, the form is very simple. It's a single-line form. It's not a bunch of, you know, real difficult entry. It's like, how much did you pay for renewable energy? Put the total in, you know, and then you go down and it has a few others if you did any other efficiency upgrades, you know, doors, windows, appliances, etc., AC units. And you go through and fill out anything you spent money on that would go towards a credit could receive, and then it gets submitted with your taxes.

Sure, that makes sense.

So one, one other thing I did want to cover about the finance. So this is the other part that is, is it's not necessarily predatory, but it's the industry standard that most people are not aware of. And, and I can't talk to a customer about this when I'm doing the sale because of what the bank— my stipulation with the bank is. But in an application like this, I can just educate on it.

Okay.

So the way it happens is solar loans, you can't go get a solar loan at Bank of America, Chase, you know, you can go get a home improvement loan, but you can't go get a solar loan, a renewable energy loan is what I should call it. And so there's these specific banks set up around the nation that saw the chance to go after quick money fast and, you know, make their pockets fat. And so what they've done is they've uh, inserted what they call a dealer fee. And so if you go out and you're buying a $100,000 system from us, and, you know, generator, battery, solar, the whole kit and caboodle, and then you, uh, go to finance it, it now

inflates between 30 and 40% to use a solar loan. That's the dealer fee we have to pay.

Dang.

We can't tell you it's a dealer fee because it's our fee, it's not the customer's fee. But the only thing we can do to cover that is take that $100,000 job and I'll make it $130,000 or $140,000.

Geez.

And charge you that. So that, that, and what they're doing is they're selling you a beautiful interest rate at, you know, 3.99% or 2.99% in this market where everything should be between 8% and 10% right now. So you're paying this dealer fee to get down to a 3.99%, 4.99% deal. And so what people don't know about that loan, and they sign it every day, is that they're paying upfront, you know, a huge cost to finance that deal. And, and it's in the long run going to cost a lot more money than choosing a higher interest with no dealer fee.

Yeah.

So we've pivoted away from all traditional solar loans in, in this market, and we went with the old San Antonio Credit Union, which is now called Credit Human. And then we have another option called Capital Good Fund, which are for lower income and kind of fixed income individuals. And both of them have a $799 no dealer fee.

Right.

So what you pay, $100,000, $50,000 for this system, you can— when you finance it, that's the same amount that's on the loan. If you go to— I'm not going to mention the other banks' names, but if you go to any of the 5 or 10 big solar banks, you're going to see that they have you know, one price for cash and a much larger price for finance. And that's what's happening in this industry right now.

I was, I was gonna pull up— I have a loan calculator here. And so like on the— like on— so you're saying like, okay, so like a regular one's gonna be like $100,000. What's like a typical interest rate that you guys are getting on?

7.99%.

7.99%? Over how many years?

20.

20.

All right, let's see. So your payments on that— oh, come on, go get rid of the ad.

Wait it out.

All right, it's going.

There we go.

Okay, so your payment on that typically is going to be $835.82, correct? Okay, so let's do it the other way. You're having— let's put your tax on there. Let's say $140,000, right?

Yep.

At what interest rate for the—

Uh, that one would be a 4.99%.

Okay.

Over 20 years?

Yes.

Okay. Yeah, so you're paying $923 for a lower interest rate on a sneaky fee. And I think this is something a lot of people don't realize. When, like, when stores are running like 0% interest rates, like, they're getting the cream on top by adding that.

Yep.

And by adding a top-end amount to that product or whatever it is, you're just not discounting it.

Or there's all kinds of ways that they can build in ways to get their money, right? They're not gonna lose their money, right?

No.

Yeah, so you're paying— one, you're paying more. That's not only like in total amount, but your monthly payment's gonna be higher, which is what I assumed it was gonna be.

Yeah.

So you're like— it's almost like a lose-lose situation, like $100, like more than $100 difference on that. And so like you guys have just decided like, well, that sucks for our customers.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

And we can't— and like you're saying, like, like when you're having like a person-to-person conversation, you can't even tell them that?

No, it's, it's, it's by our contract with the bank that we cannot discuss the dealer fee with them because it's not a fee to them, it's a fee to us.

And, and can we talk about it now because you're no longer under contract with them? Is that the—

No, we can talk about it because I'm not doing a transaction with you.

I got you. Okay.

If I'm doing a transaction with you, then it's a different conversation.

Oh man, that is so shady.

It is. It is. And, and so the, you know, so once you look at, you know, they're applying the tax credit to that, you know, it came out to— what was the amount on the first?

The one, the first one was like $820,000.

And the second one was like $940,000. $940,000. So they're taking that $940,000, taking $30,000, and basically saying you're buying down that loan to get it to a lesser— maybe it's a $750,000, you know, whatever, whatever the math comes out to be. That's what they're doing to show you on your— when you go to sign that contract in the home You know, high-pressure tactics, right? Sign right now, sign today. Don't ever sign today on solar. It is a big investment. You need to learn about it, educate yourself, get 2 or 3 quotes so you can really understand the differences in the market. So anybody that's trying to get you to sign a solar deal today and it

looks great on paper, do not do it.

Okay, so let's just, let's just break what you said down just for a minute, because what I heard you say was Hey, go check out my competitors and see if they can beat me.

Absolutely.

Because— and, and so there's, there's two— there's only two reasons you would say that.

Yep.

Number one, because you want people to have peace of mind. But number two, because you feel very confident that you're still going to beat the competition, or that you're going to be able to crush them with the ability to go, look, did they tell you this? Did they tell you this? Did they tell you that? Is that what I'm looking at?

Yeah, exactly. So being able to educate, that's really what our whole focus is in our community. Like Montgomery County is my home. I went to the same high school my mom did here. You know, my father has 4 generations of Tejanos, like Tejas, Tejanos. Like this is our home. This isn't just, I'm opening up shop and I just moved here from California or Utah and I have a bunch of solar scammers going out and taking over the market. That's not my goal. So my goal is to build something here in this community that my kids can inherit.

Right.

And so when I'm looking at this, I'm looking at long-term, 25, 50 years from now. And so everything I portray is to educate on how this industry works. And so I go out and I do this through these, explaining all the stuff we've talked about on the show so far. And if I've done that correctly, when you go to a competitor, I only have 2 in Houston that sell like me. There's only 2 guys and I love them. They do good business. And everybody else I've met, come across, or worked with, or gotten— went and took over their systems that weren't complete, whatever situation, you know, we're seeing— I'm sorry, I lost where I was going with the thought, but we're seeing, you know, a big problem that we need to fix. And so by me

sending somebody to a competitor, I'm able to say, hey, here's what you need to know. Here's the real truth. Here's how much it should really cost if you're going somewhere. You know, this is what your system should be sized for your home, a real sizing. And I'll talk about sizing in a minute. And, and so when I go to a customer, a potential client, or even somebody that's already been taken advantage of and explain to them how, why they should get out of the contract before it's too late, um, you know, it, it is correcting locally the, the industry and it's growing education for our community. So it's not even just for me to make money and run a business. It's so that people can quit getting scammed and taken advantage of by

undereducation.

Yeah, and I think that it's really important to understand. I mean, because what a lot of these solar companies are coming out and talking about is, look, you can simply replace your current cost of electricity by using this system. And so now you're basically replacing your same cost you're paying, getting the same type of service that you had, and over time you'll own your own power.

Yep.

Um, so I'm, I'm curious, do you agree with that, with that idea?

Uh, I— hi, it's a hybrid thought there. So it— for me, if you just put solar on your home It can save you money in an idea that we cannot 100% commit to because the way it works with just solar on your home, the first thing is if power goes out, your home does not run. If you just have solar, it will not continue to run. You have to have a battery or a generator to have off-grid capability.

You have to store that power somewhere and then it has to be fed to your home somehow. It's not directly tied to your your light switch.

Correct.

Okay.

So there's a reason for that too, is if the power is coming off your home, you're not using it, it has to go somewhere, either a battery or to the grid. If the grid's down, you don't have a battery, there's nowhere for that power to go. It's a fire hazard. So they automatically, if the grid goes down, they turn off. And that's to protect our linemen. You know, they're out there, you know, working their butts off when somebody, drunk driver hits a pole or weather comes through and crashes the line. You know, they're out there working on that. If you're sending power back in, you know, it's a big harm to them that could, you know, injure them badly.

Right.

So, so that, that was the, you know, first thought about the, the panel. So now if you have these panels on your home, and the, the whole sell, the whole pitch with that idea is that you're going to be able to net meter, which means you're going to use your utility company as your battery, and you're going to send power to them when you're making excess. And then at nighttime when your system's not working, you're gonna buy that power back. The first big issue there with our, you know, locally here, you know, Entergy, MidSouth, Sam Houston Co-op, CenterPoint, none of them buy back a true 1-to-1. They'll claim to be a 1-to-1, but say I'm paying 11 cents a kilowatt-hour and then I'm going to sell back to them, they give me 11 cents a kilowatt-hour, and then at

night when I need to buy it, there's also a a delivery charge. They mask it in all kinds of different acronyms, you know, WCPA charge, you know, TDU charge, you know, there's all these different charges. Those equate to the same amount as the bill, sometimes even more than the energy use portion of the bill.

Hmm.

So, so now if I'm selling it to them at 11 cents and I buy it at 11 cents, but now I get another, you know, 4 to 8 cents in a delivery charge, that's not a fair deal. Right?

Yeah.

So, so that, that's one of the first things that, you know, okay, so I'm making all this energy and I'm giving it to you and I'm getting it back. Um, it's not a fair deal, but it kind of still works in some applications. I can still do this, but that plan is not promised tomorrow. So these companies are going out there and telling people, you know, that you're going to save this much over 25 years using net metering. You don't need batteries. You're, you're good to go. And whenever you come around to you know, 2025, maybe 2030. Who knows when they're going to change, but they will. We've already seen it in California with NEM 3.0 going into

effect. Um, you know, they only buy back, uh, uh, you have to store 4 credits to receive 1 from them now. So they've completely killed their net metering market in California.

Hmm.

California sets a lot of the roadmap for the rest of the nation, and Ohio's now taken after them with that same NEM 3.0 3.0 going into effect with their grid. So we're going to see this going into more and more states. But overall, you know, for a company to tell you you're going to save X over 20 years, 25 years, whatever the lifespan of the products and loans are, is a, you know, a pipe dream because we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. We don't know what's going to happen in 10 years. So for me to go to my client and say, I'm going to save you this much money by just putting solar on your house and You know, you'll never have another electric bill, run the other way because

that's just—

Yeah, so, so that brings me to my next, because I, I assumed based on everything you're telling me, I'm— and, and Craig's throwing out numbers like, you know, $800, $900, and my electric bill even at its, you know, I, I live on acreage, so even at its peak, you know, it's like maybe $500 a month even, you know, at its peak.

So Kevin, Kevin's listening to that and we talked about it last episode, his mortgage just went up $900.

It actually did. But the— so, so where's my value? Because if I'm, if I'm paying, you know, $800 or $900 a month, but I'm only, you know, spending on, on average, let's say $250 a month on, on my power, that's a big discrepancy.

Yep. You know, so, so that number is on a house that's probably paying more like $400 a month. You know, just, just that's getting into your larger homes. And that's also a home with the full off-grid capability. So with the trifecta. So let me explain the trifecta a little bit. So what we do is we put on the solar panels on your roof or ground mount, and these can be applied to business and residential. So everything I'm talking about applies to both industries. So, so that you can put solar however you position it, roof or ground or carport or whatever you imagine, then you need to put batteries into your system. So now you have battery backup and then you have a generator as your last

line of defense. So if you have a cloudy week, a lot of people don't talk about rain, you still get power on a cloudy week, but when it's raining, you're getting nothing. You're getting very little power.

Rains a lot here in Houston.

Exactly. So now they, you know, that's another point that needs to be, you know, set the correct expectation with our clients. And so when you have the trifecta, the way it works, sun comes out, charges your battery, runs your home. Battery picks up in the late afternoon, early evening, goes into, you know, immediate power generation. It's called self-consumption for your home. And then if the grid was down in that scenario, the Battery, say it lasts to midnight, 2 AM, 3 AM, there's a gap, right? The sun ain't out at 3 in the morning.

Right.

So we need to bridge that gap. The generator will turn on, recharge the batteries in just a couple of hours, and then turns itself back off when it gets to a certain level and you go back to running off of battery. And then in the morning, the sun comes out, recharges your batteries, and that recycle can happen over and over and over as long as you have those 3 in play.

Okay.

So that's selling grid independence. That's selling a fixed price for my power for the life of the system. And so that's our goal, is to really not just say I'm saving you a lot of money. It's, hey, let's get you grid independent. If we look at what's happening in Texas especially, we got Tesla moving here, Apple moving here, Samsung moving here. We got, we got huge gigawatt factories for solar moving here from, from all over the world to produce in Texas right now because of the incentives they're getting for manufacturing here. So we have, I think the stat I looked at last week was about 1,000 people a week moving to Texas. And it's more than any other state in the

country right now. Our grid currently cannot support the amount of people we have here.

Right.

They're estimating, you know, it would be— I think it was they need another 5 gigawatts of power just to catch up the backlog of power needed to run our grid. And the manufacturers can't even produce enough renewable energy, whether it's solar or wind turbines, you know. So they're turning on old coal plants right now to keep this grid alive. And so with, with all that happening, we have to hedge against the reality of that we have a bad grid. Like, it's, it's not supporting our, our communities, you know. That's where we're seeing these rolling blackouts, or if somebody goes down, they're down for hours or days, and it wasn't even a storm.

Yeah.

It's just the grid failed for whatever reason. So all these things considered, that's, that's where we're trying to build the value, is keeping you, your home secure, safe, and backed up. And if you can save some money, if you can use net metering, if you can take the tax credit, those are bonuses, but that's not the meat and potatoes of what needs to be discussed.

Right.

So that's the position we've really taken in the market because we've discovered all that other stuff is the fluff that the scammers use. So let's separate ourselves from that and really see what do people want. And as we go into, you know, different, uh, you know, elections, right? Uh, war, potential war, um, you know, cyber attacks. We, we use, uh, EMP-hardened equipment.

Yeah.

So, you know, we're thinking about those kind of things as a value add for our clients. You know, we don't know what's coming tomorrow.

Yeah.

Let's be prepared. Um, it may never happen, hopefully it doesn't, but you were prepared. And for the little outages in between, your family was safe and, and y'all had AC and heat like we had in the big freeze, you know, you had your stuff still working. That's, that's the value. And even if you were looking at the price of, you know, a $400 bill and now we're at $800, $900, you're getting independent. You're not paying that electric bill. I'm not saying I'm saving you money by net metering, but you're not paying that heavy electric bill, right? You have a little amount for just being connected to them, for being a member or A client of theirs.

Grid fees.

Grid fees, usually $25 to $50 a month. But the rest of that electricity you are creating by yourself as a generation, a microgrid.

Yeah.

So that, that's the value. That's the design of what we're trying to help our community achieve.

Well, and a lot of this is like just redundancies for your home, right? I mean, like emergency kind of stuff where like, you know, hurricane comes through, knocks the grid out for a couple of days. You know, you want something to run your refrigerator and your lights. And for some people, they want the minimum, right? Like, here's what I need. They don't like, it'd be nice if I could have my air conditioner, but I don't necessarily need that. And you guys can design those kind of systems where like they, you know, they have the kind of battery that can turn the lights on, run the appliances, you know, and keep people afloat.

Absolutely.

I'm actually curious, did you get hit by the, what people are now dubbing the cyber attack of 2024?

I did. Yeah, I did. Yeah, that—

without— okay, I was giddy. I loved it.

I, I have this conversation with my wife all the time. Like, I'm a man's man. I love being in the woods. I love building and thinking and—

Yeah, absolutely.

I love, you know, I love nature. I love foraging, uh, teaching my kids about that. I was a Boy Scout, you know. I went all through different, uh, uh, styles of, of, you know, survivor classes and stuff. So I like, I don't want to say anything bad, but like if apocalypse happens, you know, war, you know, I would hate the outcome of that, but I would enjoy being a man again.

Yeah.

Not worrying about, you know, the job, right? The insurance payment and whatever. Like being able to be out there with my family, like, okay, we got to make it. You know, this is life now. Um, I get giddy about things like that too.

Did you? So like, if you're, if you're like that one, I was like, when it happened, I was like, All right, today's the day.

Yeah, you got your bug-out bags?

Yeah, that's right. All the days that my wife has picked on me— why do you have that stupid thing? Like, what, what, really? You're gonna— yes, today, today is the day. But like, and like, here's, here's the thing, like, our— still today, Kev, like, our number one video on YouTube is that Nova flashlight.

Oh, oh really?

That thing was amazing.

Have you seen these?

Yeah.

Oh yeah, the, the solar-powered. Oh, they're so freaking cool. I've got it in my truck right now. I love that thing. Yeah, my son, my son, my son thinks it's a taser. Well, he's like, you know, the, the flashlight where you can shock people? And I was like, that's not what it is, bud.

It's not gonna shock you, it's gonna burn you. Those are two very things. Those things are different.

Well, here's the thing. When I explained it to him, he's like— I was like, buddy, it's not, it's not gonna shock anybody. It's for starting fires. He goes, Could you still kill somebody with it?

I was like, I guess.

I mean, it's a blunt object.

I mean, I've only—

sorry, Kevin, come here a second.

Tell me if this hurts and how long it hurts.

Any scar left behind?

For people that don't know, that Nova flashlight has— what is it called? The, uh, it's tungsten. Yeah, the— yeah, it'll, it'll light a fire.

Oh, I thought you meant like the, the break glass.

Yeah, no, it's got, it's got that function on it where you push a button and plasma— yeah, it's a plasma. It's freaking amazing.

Super bright.

Yeah, it's amazing. Well, I— so I, I hear what you're saying, and I think that, um, people that truly are interested in owning something— I mean, that, that's the other part of it, is like after 20 years that payment does go away.

Yep.

And now you really are off-grid with the exception of, you know, maybe running your generator from time to time.

Yep.

Um, and depending on how you have that set up, if it's natural gas or whatever it is you've got going on. So, um, you know, you're at that point, it— I think for a lot of people that, like, like us, we, we settled down and we're not moving again. You know, we, we bought the house we wanted. On acreage, if you're going to be there for 20 years, it's probably going to be worth it for another 30 years.

Oh yeah, after that, 30 to 35 is the expected lifetime of it, right?

And at that point, you're not— you're also not paying for the entire thing anymore. You're replacing panels, but it's not going to be nearly as expensive to replace panels. And oh, by the way, the cost of panels are continually going down and will continue to go down over 30 years.

Yes. Yes, you are right. You hit all those nails on the head.

Yes.

And so, so the right now for solar market, because what's happened is these, these scammers are getting caught up, right? The big— there's some big national brands that got accounts frozen. I think it was about February of last year. They were talking to people with, you know, 100,000 sales reps across the state. And it's catching up. And their attorney generals are getting involved in individual states, regulations going in place like in San Antonio right now to protect companies like us that are doing it right and weed out the other guys and really protect the community. And I'll keep circling back to that, but that's the ultimate thing we're trying to do. And so the way San Antonio has done that recently is you cannot sell solar in their

utility if you are not a licensed electrician.

Ah, interesting.

So you have to carry a Texas electrical contractor license, which we do. So they've flushed out about 90% of the competition in San Antonio right now.

That seems weird that that's not like a state thing.

Oh yeah, it should be.

I mean, like, you're dealing with massive amounts of electricity.

Okay, well, get Eric Goranson on this because now we're going to talk about like people that can put roofs on houses. You know, you know who can put a roof on a house?

Everybody.

Anybody. Like, my son in Texas, at least my 9-year-old, could go put a roof on someone's house legally.

Yeah, it's, it's one of those things, man. Like, I, I love and hate regulations because, like, I mean, like, it affects your industry, it affects my industry. Um, and, and really, for me, the most frustrating thing about regulations is when we have regulations in place and then there's no one checking on them.

Yeah.

You know, and it's like, okay, like, you can, like, you can tell me that I have to play by the rules, but when you guys don't enforce them on guys who aren't That's what pisses me off.

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

And that, I mean, like, that happens in my industry. I know it happens in just about— I mean, like, you know, because any— we, like, when we talk to plumbers, when we talk to electricians, when we talk to AC guys, I mean, they're always talking about, like, chucking a truck. And it frustrates them because, like, these guys show up and yeah, they can do the work, but, like, they're not licensed, they're not insured, and, and, and they're able to undercut everybody.

And there's other things that go along with that because what winds up happening is, yeah, they can do the work, but did they do it right? Right. Because, because what will happen if, like, if, if something— like, let's, let's take worst-case scenario. Let's say that you had work done on your house and it resulted in a fire and your house burns, whether it's to the ground or not, right? Um, you do have insurance. Well, guess what the insurance company is going to do? They're going to come do an investigation. And whenever they do their investigation, they're gonna go, hey, it looks like you recently had some work done on this house. Who was it done by? Oh, it wasn't done by a

licensed person. We are not insuring this.

Absolutely.

Yeah. So we, we run into more additional problems. And then here's the other thing that it does. I know you deal with this all the time, Josh, and, and, and Craig as well, is like, now our, our industry gets diluted with people that think we're scammers.

Yep.

And so now we have to go in and educate people. No, we're not a scam. No, I am not. I'm here to help. I'm here to, you know, my goal is not to take your money. My goal is to help you. And that the difference in those 2 types of people are massive, and it really winds up affecting the entire industry.

Yeah, couldn't have said it better.

Yeah, and I'll, I'll tell you guys this. I don't need— I don't, I don't think I've talked about this in the show. I, I have a little bit of inside knowledge on some insurance stuff that's coming down the pipeline. I don't know if you've heard anything about this, but like, I have heard, and I think State Farm has already done this, and like, I could be wrong, so don't like reach out to me, State Farm, if this is untrue. But I've heard that State Farm has already started pulling back on even offering roofs as part of their home insurance coverage.

Oh my goodness. And when that happens, that is going to be a massive problem.

Well, and then what I've heard that the insurance industry as a whole is already starting to put into place a plan over the next year to pull that out as an offering.

So what's gonna happen is now Texas is gonna have to step in and they're gonna have to regulate it.

Yep.

Well, they're gonna have to regulate roofers and give— make licensing a thing before insurance companies are gonna actually allow them to work.

No, this is not Texas. This is like nationwide.

Oh, wow. So, even in places where it does require a license.

Right. And the reason, I mean, like, a lot of people don't understand how this works. Like, insurance is backed by massive banks, and a lot of them are in Europe, Lloyd's being like the biggest one. And they're looking at the numbers going like, you guys have been consistently losing money on these policies for like the last 10 years. And they're like, we can't, we can't continue to fund these things. And so it's like we have no choice but to like— and so like those companies are taking away that option from people like State Farm and Allstate, and, and, or at least like giving them a heads up like, hey, 2025, this is just not going to be a thing anymore. And so they're having— they haven't started communicating it to

the, to the clients yet, but like it's coming. And particularly in places like Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Gulf Coast states where like hurricanes hit all the time.

Yep.

Like they're just going to take them away.

This is already happening in the commercial, uh, realm. Um, so one of the big things that's happening and it's affecting churches right now more than anything is they're getting dropped from their policy.

That's exactly—

yeah, because, uh, and this is happening all over, y'all. This is not, this is not anything that is, um, uh, Who knows if that might happen. Uh, the church that I'm a part of, just, they got canceled by their insurance because we are in a quote-unquote, uh, disaster zone.

You're in an alley.

Yeah, even though, even though the church I go to does not, um, it's never had an insurance claim for anything related to a hurricane, but because we're in a hurricane area, they dropped us and we're here's what happened. In order to get insurance again, you have to go with very specialized companies that will do it, and it's typically double, if not triple, the amount that you were paying. And so, you know, you gotta— you got a commercial building that's paying, I don't know, let's just make a reasonable number, $25,000 a year on insurance. Now it's going to $50,000, possibly $60,000 or $70,000 or $75,000 a year for insurance.

Sure.

And this affects Every single thing that we do. And so what you're talking about is the exact same issue, but it's happening on residential.

Yep.

I've seen the, the residential. So the other part they do is all the roofs are warrantied for— some of them are 30 years, 35, you know, 40 years, depending on what brand and what system you purchase. But what they do, the insurance companies are trying to do right now to negate that, is they're saying you have to get the roof replaced at 15 because that's the true life expectancy. So after you hit that 15-year mark, you'll start to get nasty emails, get your roof replaced or we're gonna drop you. Yep. So they don't even let it go to the life of the warranty. They, they're hitting you at year 15. They start to send it around year 12, year

15, they're giving you the threats, year 16, you're gone.

And this is a problem for you because you've got equipment on top of the roof.

Correct.

And now that equipment has to be— you got to pay for it to come down. Yep. And And then you got to pay for it to get reinstalled. And so there are issues that are related.

So we say if you're between that 8 to 10 year gap and we're going on with solar, we actually have you sign a waiver if you decide not to put a new roof on because we're— we need to protect ourselves against that. Some, some clients are just like, oh, this is going to last 25 years. And we try to educate, like, nope, my roofer said it's 25, 35 years. That's what I'm going with. And I'm like, okay. So we sign a waiver of liability. they will have to remove and reattach and pay the labor to do so. Um, so that, that's something we really try to explain up front. Yeah, yeah, like, let's get this done now because you're gonna need it. Uh, year 15, your insurance company is gonna be yelling at

you. There's no point, and you're gonna pay for us to remove and reset. So now you got additional labor to that roof you're gonna do in a few more years.

And I get where they're coming from too, because like when I replaced mine, you know, we, you know, we obviously know guys in the roofing business, and he's like, hey man, I got a 40-year a 40-year shingle, and I bought the 40-year shingle. Yeah, why not?

Well, that, that brings me to a question. Have, have you noticed, um, and this may be a dumb question, I'm gonna state that— no dumb questions, only dumb people that don't ask them, right? Um, does— is there any difference in the way solar panels react on a metal roof versus a shingle roof versus— can you even them on clay roofs?

I mean, what are clay roofs?

Have you noticed any difference in performance based on— because those, those roofs get differently hot.

Yes.

Right.

Yes.

And they reflect like metal roofs reflect the sun differently too. So I'm wondering, like, do you get any additional color with color choice?

Do you get different performance?

Yeah.

I was just curious.

So in all reality, if you have what they call monofacial, which means it only receives sunlight from the front, you're not going to see a big difference.

Okay.

If you have what's called a bifacial, it can receive sunlight from the back and the front of the panel. On a metal roof, we have the data to show that all the perimeter panels will increase about 20 to 30% on production.

This is a good question.

Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while.

So, so using a metal roof with bifacial panels is is an absolute, uh, trackable data point.

So then you would only put bifacial on the perimeter, right?

Okay, because I'm sure those panels are quite a bit more expensive because they got—

No.

Oh, what?

Oh, you're talking maybe $10 or $20 difference in a panel.

Oh wow.

All they do is they don't put the rear glass and they add a couple more soldering points.

Oh, at that point, I mean, it's a no-brainer because now you're getting additional power. And what that probably means is you can— I'm, I'm gonna say something that you may not like, but like you could maybe go with fewer panels.

I was thinking the same thing. Yeah.

Absolutely. That, like, my perfect setup is a ground mount faced directly due south at a 30-degree angle with bifacial panels.

Okay.

You can't beat that. You can get the smallest system possible. You can maintenance it easy. Yeah. You know, rear light, you can put some crushed white rock down there, uh, really get reflections.

Mirrors.

Yeah.

Whatever you wanna do. Are those mirrors on your panels? Yes, sir, they are.

I just like to look at them from the back.

That's right. I get dressed in front of them every morning.

That's where I drink my coffee.

Well, let me— because I've— the solar people that we've had out to the house that have looked at our stuff have all told us, like, I'd love to do ground mount out in your pasture.

Yep.

And I'm just like, no, like, it takes up your pasture. Well, it takes up the pasture. And so, like, how high up in the air can I put these things?

Um, I mean, you can put them on a carport, you know, as high as you want to go, you know, whatever you can afford.

30 feet?

20, 30 feet?

Yeah. Oh yeah, really? Absolutely. We, we did one in, uh, uh, in Orange. They have to raise above, I think it's 10 foot, just to get above the floodplain that we need to be over. Um, and then she's like, well, look, can we go and just turn it into a carport for my RV? Yeah, we went up 35 feet with it.

Nice.

My issue with it is I don't want my kids getting decapitated while riding a horse you know, with a low-lying solar panel.

That is a problem for a lot of people, Craig.

Yeah, yeah, look, this isn't about everybody, right? I started this show so I can ask the questions I want to ask. It's about me.

It's a little about me. That's good.

Yeah, so I mean, you can get creative with it, you know, horse barn, you know, if you have any other, you know, if you want to build a— if you have a well house, you can kind of elongate that.

Well, going back to— this is a perfect example, talking about my church. My church just invested in solar, and the— there's a whole chiller yard out there for the AC equipment, and it's just always been open. I mean, it's got a big fence around it.

Oh, they're gonna cover that?

They're gonna cover it.

That's smart.

Yeah, because number one, you get— now you get the protection over the chillers, and it's a perfect place to put solar panels.

Yeah, so talking about churches and business, they, they have a different set of incentives versus residential. And this is where we as a company have truly shifted in the last 6 to 12 months to commercial applications and churches, nonprofits. Um, so they have incentives opened up that, uh, you know, they're crazy good. They're going to have the tax liability, right? They'll be able to take the 30K or 30% excuse me, in most instances. If we use domestic creative content, so American products or American assembled products, we can now get them another 10%. So now we're up to 40%. And then there's MARCS depreciation. I don't know if y'all know that program. It's Modified Accelerated— I don't

remember the full acronym, but it's— you're, you're bonusing your depreciation to take it all in one year.

Yep.

So you can take the whole system about right now you're looking somewhere between 50 and 60%. Last year it was around 80, but this year 50 to 60% of your system can be paid for— or excuse me, can be depreciated. So now you have the tax incentives, you have the depreciation, and you can get all that in year 1 of completing the install. So for them, the financial sense is very much better.

And for churches, I'm just gonna put this out there for any churches that are interested, that are, you know, listening to this, um, the— there was a big problem for a long time in getting solar because it's all tax-based.

Correct.

Well, churches that are nonprofit, there's no tax advantage because you don't pay taxes. And so what they've done is they've gone back and the government has said, no, no, we still see the value in this, and so now we're going to make it for nonprofits. There's a different system in place, and you can get between— you can still get what they're equating to a tax advantage. They're still giving it to you, plus that 10%, plus the depreciation. It could be up to, you know, 50-55% depending on what it is. And you're gonna get that back in year 1. And so immediate— almost immediately, you're gonna get that money back, and you can use it toward lots of different things. You can pay down your loan, you can do a lot of different things with that.

There are other things they're offering for the nonprofits specifically the churches is a grant. You can get a grant to pay for part of the system that would be equated to the tax credit you would receive. So there's a lot of good reason as a business or a church to seek solar right now.

Yeah, because for our church, and, you know, we've— this is public information because we've told our church about it. So it's not like I'm giving away secrets or anything, but like the thing that's great about it is We pay thousands of dollars every month for electricity.

Yeah.

Well, based on that number, uh, and the, the tax savings, uh, the, the solar is going to be able to be paid off in about 6 years. And so 6 years of what we were currently paying for, uh, electricity is gonna pay off the solar panels. And we have battery backups as well, including with that. And so at that point, you know, you're looking at a 25 to 35 year span on those solar panels. It's a massive, massive, massive year over year over year savings for a business.

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And that's, that's one of the other value points in residential or commercial, is seeing how much would have I been spending every month in my bill. Now I'm making my own energy and paying the system off, when's kind of the break-even point, right? That's right.

The ROI point.

And that's— we're seeing, you know, closer to 9 to 10 years on residential. We see about 6 to 8 on commercial and churches. So it makes sense in those applications. And kind of what I was talking about earlier though, to be mindful of, is that church is counting on a net metering package. So if that power they're sending back to the grid to run at night changes, yep, that 6-year goes—

it changes.

Big changes. So it's, it's kind of a, uh, you know, it's one of those touchy topics for people to really comprehend, to wrap their head around, because it's, it's, you know, that's why I really preach the, the, you know, paying it down as quick as you can, right? And getting, getting— taking advantage of what's available so that you can get—

Yeah, and not just using that dollar amount that you're getting back for, you know, a new car.

Yep.

Right. But actually using it, I mean, that's— it's, it's, it's set in many ways just to do whatever you want to. But pay, pay it down.

Yep.

Pay it down. That's it.

Well, man, we, we have about a half hour left. Do you want to keep hanging with us, or you got somebody else you want to bring up?

Let me go see who I can scrounge up. Somebody will come talk for a minute. I need to get a water. I've been trying to keep off on this mic. I understand.

Conversation.

So yeah, let me go get—

That mic's COVID-free, don't worry about it.

That's right. Thank y'all for having me.

Absolutely.

It's been a pleasure, dude.

Absolutely. Good to see you again, man.

Yeah, you too.

Have fun.

All right, talk soon.

All right, guys, we want to, we want to go ahead and take the opportunity to thank our sponsor for this show, Lone Star Appliance Repair, uh, the only appliance repair company in Montgomery County you need to be talking to.

That's right.

Uh, because man, they not only did they save, uh, my home's life On a couple different occasions. They actually helped my marriage.

And whenever you can do that, it's worth the price of gold.

Absolutely. Yeah.

So I mean, like, anything from, you know, now what the office will tell you is, because me and the front office gal have a bit of a beef going, okay, because she doesn't think that sinks are appliances.

Well, she's right.

But I asked her if they worked on them. And they do. So it falls into the category because they do it.

Yeah, we've had this conversation.

Right.

Either way.

Yeah, right. And I win. And what happens is they work on the dishwasher.

Yes.

They work on the washing machine. They work on the fridge. They'll even work on the microwave. And if you didn't get to see the live episode from from Moonshine Deck. We actually get deep into like what actually goes wrong with a microwave, and I had no idea. Super interesting to me because it just gave me more ammo for why I hate microwaves.

Like you needed more.

Yeah, I did. And so it was, it was really helpful to me personally. But if you need any of your appliances fixed in your home, give them a call. You got the number there, Kev?

Yeah, I do. It's 936-647-2364. That's 936-647-2364. And that is not only a number that you can call, right? You can text them. And look, we live in a world of text, and I love the world of text. Um, I don't know, did I ever tell you my story of, uh, going on record saying that texting would never catch on? That was a problem.

I've got one even better for you. I'll tell you in a minute. Go ahead.

Anyway, so, uh, but text It has caught on, y'all. I don't know if you were aware, and you can text them and say, hey, I need my appliance repaired, and they will get back to you and figure out the best way to get out there. And, uh, so great, great people. Give them a call. Uh, look, I, I'm a huge advocate of don't just go buy something new if you can repair what you've already got. It's something that you're aware of, you've already paid for it, it's not going to go in a landfill somewhere. Repair what you've got. It's It's typically going to be a lot cheaper to do that. You can, with regular good maintenance, take care of your appliances

and keep them for a long time. It's going to save you money. It's going to save you time and energy going to those stores looking for new appliances. And look, here's the other thing. Most likely, whatever appliance you have in your kitchen is not going to have the same branding and logoing and handles and all that kind of thing if you have to replace it.

Right.

I mean, yeah, I mean, you bought those things to match in your home. Most people do. And just repair what you got.

Yeah, absolutely.

936-647-2364. Lone Star Appliance Repair. Thank you for sponsoring the show. And, uh, give them a call. Give them, uh, let them know that you found them on the show.

Awesome. Yeah, while we're waiting for, uh, somebody else to get up here with us, the, the one I am infamous for is when I got out of college back in 2003, I went to work for a church in 2004, and that's when like the first iteration, uh, it might have been 2005, but anyway, when the first iPhone came out.

Okay, that was '07.

'07?

Yeah.

Okay, I think it was '06 when like they started like—

They were touting it.

Yeah, yeah, and I— there was a couple guys on staff that had one, and I was like, that's the dumbest thing No one's, no one's gonna want a phone without buttons.

Yeah.

That was my thing. I was like, people, people like pressing the buttons, right? The touchscreen, that just, that feels fake and weird and nobody's gonna want to do it.

Yeah.

And I couldn't have been more wrong.

No, you were very wrong. So, so mine was back in, uh, '99. It was actually the, maybe even the summer of 2000. Um, I, I had a flip phone, Motorola flip phone, loved that thing.

I think I had a Razr at the time.

Yeah.

Which I thought was the coolest thing.

I couldn't afford that one, uh, because that was the nice one, but I had the lesser version of that. And it— back then, they didn't have predictive text, right? And so in order to type the word the, you had to press like 17 letters.

Yes.

Or 17 numbers to get all those letters out, right? And so like to send a text message, it like took me 4 minutes to send I'm coming home or whatever, like It was absolutely ridiculous. And so I was like, this is never going to catch on because nobody has the time to sit here and press the number 5 4 times just to get to whatever letter because I skipped it the first time. I got to go back all the way. You know, it like repeats itself. So like, it was awful. It was terrible. And I thought it would never catch on.

I—

it was probably the most wrong I've ever been.

I forget. I did have a Dude, I remember what kind of phone was it? It wasn't a BlackBerry. It was something like a BlackBerry though, because I had a full keyboard.

Oh yeah.

Did it have like a stylus and everything?

It did have a stylus.

Yeah. So there's, there's a couple. I had a BlackBerry Pearl at one point. It had that little— oh, the little, the little thumb wheel.

It was like a mouse.

Yeah, it was like a little mouse. I loved that thing.

But I thought I was the cleverest dude because I had a— it was— sorry, my audio is going like nuts right now for some reason. I had unlimited internet on it. I paid like a bunch of money to get like this package where I had unlimited internet, and I— it was around the time when like Netflix just started having like stuff that you could watch online instead of getting the DVDs sent to you.

Yeah, right.

And I had a web browser on that phone, and I figured out I could log into my Netflix account and actually stream Uh-oh. On my phone. It was before they had the app.

Yeah.

And I was doing it through a web browser. I thought I was the smartest guy in the world. I was like, these dummies don't even know what they're doing because I've got access to it now.

And I just got—

no one else knows how to do this.

No one's even— no one's even around. I'm watching— I'm not even watching this. Yeah, I'm going to sleep and I got it on. It's a can. Unlimited.

Yeah. So I kept that plan forever.

Well, sure.

Yeah, it was Everyone, all those other suckers were paying for data, and I was like, I'm just gonna leave it on.

Yeah, I remember I did something like that. I was like, look, I've got this crazy unlimited plan. It's awesome, blah blah blah. And people are like, you know, they still have an unlimited plan. I'm like, yeah, but this one's better. They're like, actually, it's— you're paying $40 more per month than the new unlimited plan. I'm like, son of a— I need to go fix that.

Well, the controversy came in when like they started throttling. Oh yeah, like that you had unlimited, but you That they would lower your speed.

That's right. And that's the, that's the thing that I was like, look, I don't have throttling. I've got, you know, like this opportunity to use it as a hotspot. And they're like, yeah, they have all that now. I'm like, what? I've had this plan for 10 years. I'm like, yeah, they've made a lot of changes since then. Yeah. Really? They didn't tell me. Of course they didn't tell me.

Yeah, of course not. Why would they tell you like, hey, we're going to totally screw you at the end of every month?

No, why would they do that?

Yeah. Man, so when we were, we were getting packed up this morning, you noticed that I had a bit of— not really a treasure in the back of my truck, but I had a—

It was a drawer appliance that looked similar to like an air fryer, but it was massive. It was huge, huge, huge. But it was a microwave.

It was a microwave. So which is odd for me to be carrying something like that around.

Yeah, why would you have— that was my question. Why do you have this, Craig? What are you gonna— is there something? Have you changed your mind?

Nope, nope, nope. Actually, I am— I'm changing other people's minds. Well, and this is— this is one of the reasons I don't have them in my home. Like, if someone has like a roach infestation in their home, yeah, the microwave is like the first place that I look.

Yeah.

And this— that's exactly why I have it in my truck, is because I had a customer that had— that was like ground zero.

Sure.

And it's one of those— it's a really cool microwave. It's a drawer microwave.

Yeah, it is very cool.

So it's in— it's intended to go like on an island where you can pull it out like, you know, like a silverware drawer and just put the plate and slide it back in, hit the button. So it's cool, but I mean, that thing weighs like 150 pounds.

Oh my gosh.

It's so huge.

That's ridiculous. Um, well, now with air fryers—

uh-huh.

Do you have an air fryer?

I do.

Yeah, because the thing about air fryers is you can heat food up in a much better way.

Oh, for sure.

And it's going to crisp up again, you know, if you're reheating.

Well, and like ours, we, we went and got like the really nice one. I'm actually surprised we haven't done a review on it because we've had it for about a year now. It's like the big Ninja.

Oh yeah, does it have one drawer or two?

It's— well, it's one drawer, but it's got 2 shelves. Well, it's got 4 shelf slots, but you can have 2 shelves in at one time.

Okay.

And but like, it's an air fryer, it's a convection oven, it's a dehydrator.

It's—

I mean, like it has like 10 different functionalities.

And I like that.

Um, and it even has like combination ways that it heats up and things like that. And that thing is amazing. Yeah, we use it pretty much every day. We use it to make the kids' lunches for school because we're like making them like, you know, chicken fingers and—

Sure.

All that kind of stuff.

Man, that's, that's, uh—

It's like having another oven in the kitchen.

Right. But it also doesn't take as long to heat up, right? It doesn't take as long to cool down. Um, and, and ovens don't crisp things like, like chicken nuggets, for example. If you put those on a cookie sheet and put them in the, in the oven, they're still not going to crisp up, right? You put them in the air fryer and all of a sudden you got that convection thing going, they crisp up really, really nice.

Well, I'll tell you this, that is where the soon-to-be famous Craig Williams Monte Cristo jalapeño poppers were birthed.

Excuse me?

Oh yeah.

How do I not know about this?

So I, I've— I, you know me, I don't, I don't do recipes and all this kind of stuff, but I, uh, one, my family loves jalapeño poppers. I really like, uh, brisket jalapeño poppers.

Jeez, you're making me hungry, dude.

So, but I, I was like, uh, we accidentally got like 2 jars of raspberry preserves Okay, like organic raspberry preserves from H-E-B. They were like accidentally like in our curbside or something like that. And so we put it— yeah, come on, come on in, man.

Yeah, come sit down.

And, uh, I was like, you know what, so I got some, some whipped cream cheese.

Yeah.

And because I don't like it when it's thick.

No, I like the whipped.

So I put the whipped in the, in the jalapeño, and then I put a layer of raspberry preserves on top of that, then wrapped it with the bacon. Let me tell you something, man, that is one of the most delicious delicious things I've ever put in my mouth as far as like jalapeño poppers go.

Okay, I haven't— okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask a question. That sounds delicious. What if—

uh-huh, what if—

hear me out. What if you did the same thing instead of the raspberry? What if you put pickled watermelon right in there?

I've done that, and it's— the raspberry is better.

I'm gonna take your word for it. I need to try this.

Now we could try, we could try both.

Okay.

And do like an A/B test.

I'm fine with that. Can we make a show out of it?

Absolutely.

Okay, let's do it.

All right, so you're gonna want to scoot up just a little bit so we can hear you.

You're gonna want to be up on that mic.

So tell us who you are and what you do.

Okay, so I'm Mickey Lee with True Texas Solar. I am a meteorologist.

Okay.

My background is a lot of— I served a lot of companies in the energy industry.

Okay.

Both refining, downstream, upstream oil and gas pipelines. So the companies I've been with, assisted the companies in preparing for major weather events.

Okay.

So like hurricanes, severe storms, ice storms, cold, that sort of thing. I've also been involved with energy trading, and one of the reasons why I got into the solar industry and backup power industry is because I really believe that we're moving into a period of an energy crisis. So with the gyrations in the natural Most people don't know that the electric utility rates are very closely tied to the price of natural gas.

Well, because for many people— hold on just a minute. Could I ask you to get a little bit closer to the microphone? Yeah, I'm having a little trouble. Thank you. That's way better. So, let me— most people don't recognize that a lot of their energy is produced by natural gas. Right.

It's about 40%.

Yeah, it's a lot. 40%, that's, that's not a small amount.

And as renewable— as renewables come into play more and more, which are of course intermittent, the sun doesn't shine at night, the wind doesn't blow every day, the natural gas is the fuel that fuels most of the power that comes into play when the renewables aren't producing.

Yeah, because we're not going to use nuclear apparently.

Nuclear is what they call a baseload. So it runs all the time, pretty much runs full out all the time, and they can't turn it off. And so there's also coal generation still here in Texas and across the US, and it's not going to go away, but it's being reduced. So as natural gas comes more into play. The intermittency means that you've got to have that reserve capacity on the grid at all times, but they're not making money because they're producing power all the time, which means it's just adding cost into the system. So the real effect over the next few years years with natural gas is that we're building lots of LNG down on the Gulf Coast. And we've gone from, in the last 6, 8 years, from

about zero exports of natural gas from North America to places like Asia and Europe to about 10 to 15% of all of the North American production. In the next 3 to 5 years, we're going to double that. And that's going to be And the danger there is that if we get a cold winter or 2 right in a row, we may have to start pricing natural gas or have to match global prices of natural gas. And well, we're already getting—

I mean, uh, you know, it's— I'm out in on MidSouth's, uh, grid, uh, in Montgomery, and we're already— and it's not just us, but we're already getting hits 2 or 3, 4 times a year on an additional fee to cover the production of natural gas. And it's to the tune of like maybe $400 for, you know, for one bill that's coming in to help cover this quote unquote like a one-time boost to the natural gas. But doing it 2, 3, 4 times a year.

Yeah, in 2022, the natural gas prices shot up to $7, $8, $9 an MCF, a million cubic feet, on the wholesale market. That's not what you're paying, you know, to power your stove and your furnace at home.

No.

But those prices caused the, like with Mid-South their WPCA charges, their fuel charge, and it added, oh, probably 30, 40% onto a lot of people's—

Oh, it was massive.

It was a lot.

Unfortunately, the last year or so, prices have— natural gas prices have come down, but that's still a symptom of this energy crisis that we're moving into in the coming years. And so the danger is that we go into a period period where we have high natural gas prices for, for a long period of time. The utilities have to add that fuel charge in, and we're looking at— well, natural gas and electric rates have stayed flat for most of the last 10 or 15 years. We got a taste of it in 2022 when prices shot up, and I think that we're coming in— we're going to go into a trend in the coming years where we're going to see much higher. Natural gas, much higher electric

rates. And then you've got all of the grid, like the electrification of transportation as EVs and other electrification of buses and over-the-road trucking. All of that comes into play. It's going to disrupt the whole grid. The places where the power is produced and where it's used is always changing, especially here in Texas. where we've got such a vast increase in population. So the grid is gonna be strained. They're gonna have to have more reserves as far as generation. And the stresses on the grid, as well as just adding to the infrastructure, those costs are eventually gonna be borne by the ratepayers. And that's why I got into solar, is I see this tsunami coming over the next 4, 5, 10 years.

And The requirement or the demand for rooftop solar is gonna really gonna be landing at everybody's doorstep.

So because of that, I mean, there's only so much that the government can really do to produce more. Is that— are you— is that the true reason they're trying to get more people to have solar by offering the tax incentives? And do you think that when those, when those numbers start changing in, let's say, 5 years down the road, let's say that what you're predicting is actually going to come true in 5 years, do you expect these tax incentives to go up? Do you expect them to change? Because what else can they do to produce more energy than to allow people to produce their own? And to buy and to sell their own power. sell it back, right?

Yeah, the, the— it's going to be a period of turmoil as the prices go up. People demand that the government do something about it. As far as renewables, the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022 and came into effect last year extends the 30% tax credit for the next 10 years.

Oh, okay.

So that's pretty much locked in now. Congress's inability to pretty much pass any bills now is going to mean that that's going to stay in place. And that's going to give that incentive for people to go to— for the renewables to be built mostly at the commercial level and at the homeowner or residential level. So we're going to continue to add to the generation with the renewables, but it's simply not going to be enough to offset the increased demand that's coming.

When you talk about demand, you're just talking about like just power in general, right?

Power in general. One of the major trends, if you follow what Wall Street says and the geopolitics around the world and the macroeconomics, there's since COVID You know, they say that COVID kind of accentuated other trends that were already in place. Well, one of those was the deglobalization. We went through 10 or 20 years where China became the world's manufacturing hub, that we found that the world's economy found the cheaper labor overseas and manufacturing went to those, to to those locations. Well, that trend is reversing. We're bringing manufacturing back to the United States. We're building semiconductor plants here.

We have to because we're so scared of Taiwan getting invaded and taken over. And that's like, that's pretty much where all the microchips are being made.

Exactly. Supply chain issues really came to the fore. Everybody realized how fragile the system can be. But that game has kind of played out. Where the labor costs— there's not as huge a differential between labor costs in China and the United States. And so these other demands, like having the supply chain issues reduced, are coming into play. So we're bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. There's a tsunami of new manufacturing being built. So that demand, especially here in Texas— I mean, they're building that huge— I think it's a Samsung chip plant over in Taylor. But there's— with the population growth in Texas, with the manufacturing coming back to the US, there's just going to be

an elevation of the demands on the electric grid. None of us are using less power every day.

No.

And it's not going to be like— I was, I was just looking some numbers up while you were talking about natural gas. Back in February of '22, it was at like $5.50 per whatever, BBBTMU or whatever.

BTU.

Yeah, yeah. And now it's sitting at like $1.75.

Yeah.

You know, and so like, but like that spike happened over the course of like 3 months. And there's no reason to think that it couldn't go back to that amount. I mean, because people like back, I mean, just at the end of last year, it was sitting at around $3.50. And so like this, like this is sort of like interest rates. Like we don't need to just believe that it's going to continue to be this cheap.

Yeah.

Moving forward.

Yeah, it's actually, it's actually reflecting this energy crisis. The shortage of energy is creating that volatility.

Right.

The only reason why we're sitting at $1.50 right now is that We had a warm winter. They have to put enough natural gas in storage to get us through the winter, enough to get us through a cold winter. So when we have a warm winter, then there's just way more supply.

Surplus, yeah.

And so the prices, the spot prices, but if you look out over the terms, what they call the term structure in the futures market, if you look out 2 or 3 years, the prices About $3, $4.

Right.

So this is just a short-term blip. It's probably going to be here for this year. We're probably going to stay at $2 or under.

Yeah, I mean, I mean, to your point, I pulled it out over 10 years. This is the cheapest it's been in 10 years right now.

We're plumbing the lowest prices we've ever seen.

Yeah.

And it's not going to stay down.

No, there's, there's— I mean, like, one, the people who are having to sell it, they're just not going to tolerate that for any amount of time.

They're going to cut back on the production. The oil and gas companies, what they call the upstream oil and gas, they're already scaling back. And so that will run its course this year.

Yeah.

And the real danger, or the real risk, is that we— because we're going to be exporting about 25% of all of North American natural gas production, in the next 3 to 5 years. Those plants are already being built, right, and come online later this year, 2025, 2026. And the natural gas market knows this. And the producers are trying to ramp up for that in the future. But these hiccups like this, prices under $2 right now means they're having to pull back, which means that we go into 2025, 2026, and we have a cold winter, and the demand goes up and we bring these plants online, then if we have a cold winter, then we may have to compete at the

global price level, which you pointed out, we're looking at $1 to $2 right now for natural gas. After the Ukraine war started in Europe and the Nord Stream pipeline went offline, Yep. We shot up to $7, $8, $9 here in the US. And that was when we still didn't have all of the LNG production that we even have now, because it's going up every year. The price in Europe for natural gas, when they lost most of their Russian supply—

Because most people don't know that most of Europe's natural gas comes from Russia.

Well, not anymore. Russia's being treated like a pariah state. a lot of European countries that say that we're never going back to the way it was. We're not going to be dependent on Russia again, which means that they are going to be dependent on LNG. The price during 2022 that caused our prices to bump up to $7 or $8 or $9 an MCF went to $50 to $70 an MCF.

Whoo!

So it's not hard to see that if that were to occur again, how our prices might get up to $10 or $12 or $15 or even $20 an MCF if they're $50 to $70 to $100 in China, Japan, Europe, and other places across the world.

It's crazy.

There will be political turmoil around that because they'll be wanting to say, okay, well, we're gonna— we want the president to cancel exports, right? The turmoil that that would cause in the global markets would be even more extreme.

Right.

So we're not likely to do that, although some people say that's gonna happen. So we don't really know what that future is.

Yeah.

So what I want— what I like to tell people is buy yourself a little insurance policy.

Uh-huh.

Put some solar panels on your roof and maybe get some batteries for backup power or a generator and distance yourself from Right.

Yeah.

Which might be $10 or $15 a gallon.

Exactly.

So you're going to be paying a whole lot more for that fuel.

I mean, at that point, are we looking at natural gas being more expensive than traditional gasoline?

If you do an energy weighting, like the amount of work produced by a barrel of oil or a barrel of gasoline or a barrel of natural gas, gas. Natural gas is exorbitantly cheap right now.

Right.

It's all— it's like, I don't remember what the number is, but it's like 3 or 4 to 1. Where it used to be, there were times even 10, 15, 20 years ago where the amount of energy produced by a barrel of oil or a barrel of gasoline versus what a comparable amount of natural gas produced were closer to 1 to 1.

Right. Okay.

It's almost inevitable that the molecules, the amount of energy produced by a molecule of one piece of energy is going to be priced fairly close to another piece of energy.

Right.

So the natural gas play, it's coming.

Is it being offset just because it's cheaper to harvest natural gas? Or like, I imagine there's a lot of mitigating factors involved.

The United States is the Saudi Arabia of natural gas.

Okay.

So you've got fields like the Permian, the Marcellus, and the Haynesville in Louisiana, the Bakken. They all produce natural gas associated with oil production, as well as what they call dry gas production, where it's just drilling for natural gas. In the last 10 to 15 years, the shale gas revolution, or the shale revolution happened, which at first was natural gas.

Mm-hmm.

And so we started tapping reserves and resources that we hadn't ever been able to tap before. We didn't have the technology. We didn't have the fracking and the horizontal drilling. But that's come into play. That's why crude oil and natural gas collapsed in 2014, 2015, and we went into this new era. Well, we We've kind of played out, we've lived in that Goldilocks era for the last 10 years of cheap oil, cheap natural gas, and I say that it's coming to an end.

Yeah.

Everybody in the oil and gas and energy world sees this coming, but most people don't see how it's going to play out for the individual homeowner, for the residential. I think there's going to be turmoil on the grid, not just related to the price of natural gas, although that's going to be a big part of it. One of the things that's out there in the— just in the last 2 or 3 weeks, the stock market has been skyrocketing because Nvidia stock has gone up. All the AI players are coming in.

Well, it's been hitting the cryptos as well.

Yeah, the crypto. So everything's— there's kind of this surge of interest in AI, those chips that Nvidia— I just heard this just about a week ago— those Nvidia is planning on selling something like 2 million of these AI chips in the US market in the coming, I think, year or two. Each one of those chips uses 700 watts. Well, if you run the numbers on your electric bill, you're going to find that that's a about the base load of a typical house.

That's crazy.

Wow.

So there are some utilities that are trying to get ahead of this or trying to anticipate. So there's one utility up in the north— well, not the Northeast, in the Mid-Atlantic.

Real quick, is that just to operate the chip or is that like over a span of a year?

The chips will run 24 hours a day. So they're pulling 700 watts. So that's 700 watt-hours.

Every hour.

Oh my gosh. So it's basically each one of those chips is like a house.

Are they?

In terms of its demand. And they're going to be— they're putting 2 million out there. So these are going to go into these, these, uh, these, uh—

And it's not like AI slowing down. I mean, like, no, more and more.

These, these data, these— all these servers in these AI, uh, I'm not thinking of the right word, but all these cloud server systems, there's one utility in Dominion Power up around the Washington, D.C. area where they're going to build a lot of these Amazon and IBM and Google, where they're going to put a lot of these server farms that are going to house these chips. Their anticipated growth rate in their demand for electricity in this particular utility has gone from fairly flat, you know, 2 years ago, what they anticipated it would be for the next 10 years, to dramatically higher growth of 10 or 20% a year.

Yeah.

So it's just another one of the factors that's coming in that's gonna cause It's gonna cause turmoil in the—

Yeah, well, we're running up against our time that we're allowed to be here today. I mean, can you tell us a little bit— I mean, like, what would be your pitch to everyone that's on the fence about solar right now?

So solar, you can pretty much— if you put solar panels on your roof, you can pretty much match the cost of So you can come up a little bit closer here. You can get a zero-down loan, um, that would be— your payments would be similar to what your electric bill is now.

Okay.

Now, if you've got batteries or generators to go with that, it's going to be a little bit more, but you can get a 20 or 25-year loan to offset the, uh, the cost of it. And you can just look at that as an insurance policy against all the disruptions that Potentially could be coming in the electric grid in the coming years.

Yeah, I love it. Well, and, and one of the things Josh was telling us earlier, these batteries, like, you can get like this one right here in front of us, you can get that one, but he said they're modular. So like you can stack them, like if you're not getting the amount of power that you want or you want to upgrade your system, it's not difficult.

Or you put in a pool and spa or something and your electric usage goes up, then you can add to the Yeah, which I think would actually—

I mean, especially like hurricane times, you want to be able to run your pool equipment because, I mean, that can quickly become a mosquito farm, an algae farm, you know, if you're not operating that equipment on a regular basis.

Yeah, so we could potentially have a week where you don't have the grid.

Right, yeah, that's happened before, or freeze. I mean, like, you know.

Or an ice storm. There were people out for a week with that line of storms that came through the Houston area back in June.

Right, yeah, it's nuts. So, well, if people want to get a hold of you guys, what's the easiest way to reach out and have a conversation?

truetexasolar.com is our website. You can email me at mickey@truetexasolar.com. So if you go on, we're also on Facebook, also on— I don't use it. What's What's that one that the kids all use today?

Instagram. Okay.

So you can find us, we're truetexasolar.com, right here in Conroe, Texas. We serve this part of Texas. And yeah, we'd love to talk to you, talk through your backup power issues, what might be the best fit for you, whether it's solar or batteries or generator or a combination of one or two or all three.

Yeah, I mean, I really appreciate you sitting down with us. I mean, just a brief conversation. You're obviously a wealth of knowledge. I really appreciate your insight and everything that you share with this guy. I mean, I learned a bunch just sitting here listening.

For sure, me too.

Kev, you got anything else for us, bud?

No, I think that's it. Thank you everybody who has joined us for today and, uh, joined in on our live event. And if, uh, you have not already, please go and like and subscribe all of our content. Whether it's YouTube or Facebook, Instagram, uh, we are all over the internet. You can find us on Apple Podcasts as well. Leave us a 5-star rating and review. We would really appreciate it. Thank you for listening. Craig, we'll see you later.

Come out to the show.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

All right, all right.