You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Next guest comes courtesy of one of our technical directors here at Bloomberg Radio, Sebastian Escobar. Yes, we listen to everybody on our team. He read about an interesting startup that's already raised millions of dollars and helped homeowners use evs as backup power for their homes. This is innovative. Yeah, it's called Decibel, And we got a Mark Andre Fourge, the
founder and CEO of the company. He's talking to us all about how homeowners can use evs as backup power for their homes. Let's talk about bi directional charging. Mark, Andre, It's great to have you with us. He joins us via zoom from Montreal. So, Mark, what's the problem that this is trying to solve here? I mean, obviously it's if your power goes out right, you can use the big battery that you've got to continue to power your home. But why is this so much more challenging than than,
you know, just simply flipping a switch. Well, you're absolutely right, Um, the second largest as a purchase for any family is or car, and the car sets in the driving most of the time. And right now California takes its Florida with hurricanes, we have lots of blackouts. The concept is very simple, how to use the energy from the ev to power the home during a blackout. Already pay for that energy, already pay for that ev so I want
to leverage it. It's looked at simples some papers. But now we need to combine the technology from EVY that is still in this infancy, and of course the world of regulation inside homes to make it universally compatibles. And this is really what we have achieved with our disabled technology and our disabled platform. We create a universally compatible solutions that can take the energy from the EVY to
power your home during the blackout. So this is this essentially you know people by generators right just in case? Is this essentially kind of forward looking alternative energy generator? Is that basically how we should look at it. I think it's one of the use case. But Discabel is a four in one device. We do much more than this. The Discabel is a home energy stations. It's also your solar energy, it's your blackout power using your EVY or
your stationary battery. It's also your home energy management system all combined into a single unit. So not only we can use we can charge your car fasters, we can use the energy from the EVY to power your home during a blackout, but also we can charge your EV using your solar energy that so far is still free and non taxable. Okay, So help me imagine what this looks like here because you said it's also for use for solar How do you how do you? How does
that work? I mean, is the idea that you have a solar power You have solar panels at your home and those charge your your e V and the EV is that power station in your home. Absolutely correct. You put solar panel on the roof of your home and it's going to generate absolutely enough energy to charge your EV and some leftover of the energy for your home or vice versa. And the car here is used as
a battery to start this excess energy. Are for examples to use this energy to reduce your energy invoice as the time of high costs like dinner time, to use your car as a battery, use seller to charge it, reducing your costs and protecting your ast. So okay, so it's not just for emergencies now, it's the idea is to offset the higher costs that you have of power to so it takes off the grid. So it takes off the grid a little bit. Right, Well, it's it's
a combinations. It's a combinations. Right. The grid right now require massive infrastructure investment. So we cannot go without the grid. We we need the grid in in North America. Remember something, there's one billion dollars a day of fuel. Let's go to the gas station every single day to power passenger car. Now, imagine all those cars charging at home in the near futures. In a decade or a decade or so, we're gonna need major investment in a generation at the home levels.
This is where this about home energy stations makes so much sense. We can differ infrastructure costs for the utilities, luring the rates. Therefore leveraging your assets in the drive ways enderating more clean energy and being more resilient energy. Mark, doesn't this wear out the battery? Well, that's that's that's the good questions. The answer is very likely. I can
say that to you. Well, it's very simples. When you drive your cars on on on the highways right now, you're using your battery right now to move your cars to power your home. It's impressive, but we only use a fraction of that energy power to power your home. It's funny, but it's take less energy to power your home then pushing your t V on the highway. Therefore, the usage of the battery is way less than driving your car on the highway. And still it's to your
own benefits. Is to power your home during a blackout is to reduce your energy invoice, and therefore it makes sense. Okay, we sall have a bunch of more questions, which means you can't go anywhere. We're going to come back and continue our conversation. We are talking with Marc andre Fourge.
He's the founder and CEO of the Montreal, Canadian based Decibel and we're going to continue this conversation because I want to get into costs sustainability right like, I want to see kind of the full loop when it comes to sustainability. I want to get right back to our guest still with us, as Mark andre four Je, founder and CEO of the Canadian based Decibel UH he's with
us still via zoom from Montreal. Hey, um Mark, So you're talking about what you guys are doing and these home energy stations and basically you know, making it possible to use your e V right to charge and power your home. Where are you? What's the growth of the business, what's your plans for coming into the US market. Well, I'm happy to announce that about two months ago we US cuts or certification on our platform, one of the most stringent certifications for our platform to allow us now
to communicate with utilities in real times. Following the certification of this platform, later this false, we're gonna start to roll out device and we're gonna start with California, following by Texas, Florida, in New York. When when does that happen? So this fall. Later this falls, we're gonna announce different pilot project and collaboration with different partners in California. So the first unit is going to be delivery and owns in California this fall. Texas may follow in Quan with
Florida and Texas in Quan. Three Do utilities hate you though? Because aren't you basically making it so? And forgive me? I go extreme occasionally, you know, aren't you making it so individuals can kind of be independent? Right, there's solar panels on your roof, it's recharging everything, and then they're tapping into that power. I don't know what about that Texas grid. It's it's you know, it needs all the help get right. Yeah, you can be surprised that I
still have friends in the in the utility business. The fact is no, Uh, we may say a love eight relationship, but most of the utilities really appreciate what disavel can offer. Lets me explain, when the utilities want to interact with homes today, nobody takes the call. There's no engineers, there's no CFO at home right, So if the utilities want to have the support of homes today to maintaining the energy cost, a device need to exist inside your homes.
This is exactly what the disabled home energy station is. So if the price of electricity go very high on the market and they want to support and want to give you back money, for example, to use a little bit of energy from your ev the discavel and energy station is going to basically automatically react to that call and if you agree to it can push back energy, reducing the stress on the infrastructures, reducing the energy cost. This is really where the complimentaryy when the grid happen.
But wait, what am I missing? Because I'm just thinking you're then taking essentially money away from a utility. No, right, because you're not. Because you because it gives an individual or a homeowner the ability to pop off the grid. Right. Well, the price of electricity vary during the day, of course, when you have a lot of for example, renewable generation solar generation. At noon, the cost of energy on the
old sales market is quite low. However, at dinner time we all cook dinners, we have the path, we have a high demand for electricity, putting the grid at stress. Utilities want to try to level up or flat this curve. This is exactly where the home energy station come at play for them, right, use it and re resell it at dinner time. Okay, let's talk Tesla here, because this is a company that has a power wall. It's a
battery for your home. Got solar small part of the business, to be sure, compared to the vehicles that it sells. But what's going to stop Tesla from building exactly what you're doing at decibel and including that as part of a supercharger, because I look at this on your website and it looks like it's a supercharger, But couldn't Tesla incorporate the technology you have and therefore bleap frog you
bypass you? Well, we we share a common passion with Tesla is to serve their homeowners with more cost effective, renewable and relable energy. The difference is Tesla, of course is virtically integrated to the Tesla technology, where decibel is a universal for in one devices. We support all evs, we support all solar installers, and we support multiple brand of storage. So it's kind of an open eco system
versus a closed ecosystem maybe, but agree. The second point is also we have seventeen families of patents that basically passionately developed over the last seven years that also provided we can build this disable at the price point of the market. Compare today, what's the cost the cost for
right now the discable are sixteen. If you look at our website at discabele dot energy, we this is an upscale unit is designed for solar storage a V and minds haunted us three thousand's per feet and up and this unit if you fully install, is an average twenty less expensive than the competitions. Why power of integrations we mix four different I can say that four different use solar bi directional EV charger, blackout power energy management into
a single box. That dramatically reduced the installation cost the number of hacks that do be moved. That is the power of integration. So and averagely to percent less expensive than a comparable system by the competition. Two. Okay, so
what is cost? Give me real money here? Okay, So the discabelue and its start at five thousand dollars and after that the costs me very according to the number of solar panels gonna put on your house, the installation costs, and if you decide or not to put permanent storage into your home, So a typical installation can go as high as thirty thou dollars can be as low as seven thousand dollars, according to your need, according what is
good for your family. It does. But what is important to remember here return and of an investment for your system is usually between three to five years, and this system is designed to last ten to fifteen years, so it's going to generate more money than you're gonna pay for it. Are there any tax incentives in place now in different states in the US or as part of the Inflation Reduction Act that this afternoon was assigned into law by President Biden that will help offset some of
these costs? Absolutely, I just give you the full cost right now. I must say in some county in the US, the sum of the system is very close to almost zero, or with return of ensmissement, that's going to be less than the years. Absolutely, in the Biden Inflation Reddiction Act of three and sixty nine billions or something, there's a large aspect it's gonna go as up as twenty eight thousand dollars cash back per house in desk program. If
you consider everything very interesting. Let us know as you start to move into the United States, as you said in the fall, California, Texas, Florida, New York, you're communicating with the utilities, and so you're gonna move along. Let us know as you roll it out. We'd love to hear uh more. Mark, Thank you so much. Mark Andre Fourge, founder CEO at the Montreal, Canadian based Decibel joining us
there for you, Zoom, you're ready to go solar? I'm that we thought about it once when we redid our roof. I mean, we're a small row house. We don't have a lot of roof space, but we kind of wanted to. Um, so I think technically we could. We're trying to do it on our condom. Are you trying to do it? We just can only get like five kind of electricity based from the sun. That's it, right, because because there's not electricity all right,