Zach Dell's Base Power has raised over $1bn for a vertically integrated home-battery model that installs batteries, serves the grid, and shares revenue with customers as lower prices.
Base Power holds an Illinois retail license and has announced five deals with regulated utilities, positioning it to expand beyond Texas.
Zach Dell argues America must inflect electricity production to compete with China, framing energy as a national security issue and Texas's volatile island grid as its first market.
Base Power bets the home battery can remake the grid
Base Power is betting that the cheapest place to put a battery is the home, and that owning the chain from factory to retail is how to win American electricity. Dell argues energy is the input to everything and that the United States cannot compete with China without more of it, while the incumbents still build for coal and gas. Base Power installs batteries in homes, sells their capacity into Texas's volatile island grid and passes the income back to customers as lower bills.
Takeaways
Energy is the constraint on America's competitiveness. Dell argues energy is the input to everything, and that if the United States cannot inflect its electricity production it cannot compete with China, which makes the problem a national security issue rather than a utility one.
Base Power is a vertically integrated battery retailer. It installs batteries in homes and uses them to serve the grid when the grid is up, then shares that income with customers as lower prices and backup power. Dell says the retail short position is offset by the long position of the batteries.
Rivals price home batteries by the kilowatt-hour. Existing units cost around $15,000 installed and are less than 5% penetrated in the US. Base Power's battery is three times the size. It is cheaper to install, and installation is decoupled so an electrician is not needed for the whole job.
Incumbents are built for the old energy paradigm. NRG, Vistra, Constellation and GE Vernova are oriented around coal and natural gas and trade at 30 to 40 times earnings. Dell says none of them is an engineering-led, R&D-driven energy technology platform company.
A host calls the product an IQ test. Dell agrees with the framing. Base Power is cheaper power with better reliability, so the choice is obvious, and almost half of customers arrive through word of mouth rather than paid acquisition.
Texas is only the first market. Base Power holds an ARES retail licence in Illinois, its next market, where it will also bring batteries, and has announced five deals with regulated utilities. Dell's ten-year vision is millions of homes and a team thousands strong.
How Base Power's founders met
Dell spent two years at Thrive Capital, which he joined to learn what good looked like, and was doing diligence on Anduril when he toured the company's Costa Mesa factory with partner Philip Clark.
Justin was running manufacturing at Anduril. Before that he ran manufacturing for SpaceX's Starship site in Boca Chica.
The two spent about three months on nightly 9pm calls, sometimes thirty minutes and sometimes three hours.
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On this episode 3
Show 1
After a week together in Austin they started Base Power. The company has since raised more than $1bn.