708: Inside Sunrun’s Customer-Led Revolution with CEO, Mary Powell

SunCast

Mary Powell, CEO of Sunrun, has cast the vision of the leading solar brand in North America as a clean energy lifestyle company. She recently shared with Nico how Sunrun is accelerating the transition and nearing its millionth customer despite the typical electric utilities' “no and slow” culture.

Under Powell's leadership, Sunrun installed more than 1 GW of solar in 2023, maintaining its position as the nation's leading residential solar provider. Even more impressive, perhaps, is how Sunrun’s “year of energy storage” netted an unprecedented growth rate of battery attachment to solar projects. They’ve also set a few key milestones in key markets like CA and Puerto Rico for grid services of distributed batteries.

As a former utility executive, Nico asserts that Powell is “bilingual”, understanding how to navigate and communicate in both the private sector and Utility environments facilitating the integration of more renewables into the grid. Now, she is proving that distributed energy resources (like rooftop solar) can support grid reliability when networked as virtual power plants (VPPs), and promises we are in the midst of a ‘customer-led revolution’.

Expect to learn:

• Details of the largest virtual power plant (VPP) in the nation.
• Why “customer obsession” is key to consumer confidence.
• The role of virtual power plants in creating a resilient grid.
• How Sunrun achieved a 50% storage attachment rate.

Click play to hear directly from the CEO proving that distributed energy resources can support a stronger, more resilient grid.

If you want to connect with today's guest, you’ll find links to his contact info in the show notes on the blog at https://mysuncast.com/suncast-episodes/.

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