Inergy: Bringing Solar to Consumers | Sean Luangrath

 

About Sean Luangrath

Sean Luangrath is the CEO of Inergy, a company dedicated to bringing solar energy to the consumer. Sean background is in business strategy, operations, finance and product development. Over the years he’s been highly involved in both large companies such as Apple as well as startups in the Tech industry. Prior to joining Inergy, Sean was the Director of Global Business Processes at Aerohive Networks. Sean received a BS in International Finance from Brigham Young Univerity, and MBAs from both Columbia University and university of California Haas School of Business.

 

Interview Transcript:

Alan
Welcome back. I’m here today with Sean Luangrath He’s the CEO of energy. And Sean, welcome to today’s show.

Sean
Thank you for having me on.

Alan
So Sean, for the listeners, can you give me your background or give us your background of what you did prior to joining energy.

Sean
So most of my career has been in high tech, predominantly in the, in the Bay Area, San Francisco Bay area. I started off my career at PeopleSoft and then move to various high tech companies in the Bay Area, like Apple and Oracle, and so forth, actually did a stint with Apple. And most of it was actually in Cupertino. But the last stint was actually in China. So we actually moved out to China to expand the Apple stores. And so that’s that’s kind of my background, went to school undergrad at, actually San Francisco State did did a lot of community colleges out here until I got enough credits to transfer transferred to BYU in Provo, Utah, and then came back to the Bay Area and worked in East Bay. And then at some point, I got my MBA did an MBA with UC Berkeley and Columbia University as an executive MBA program. But pretty much till about maybe about a year ago, I’ve been pretty much in the Bay Area.

Alan
So would you call yourself a software engineer by background, which

SEan
I’m actually a business guy. So business background did a lot of operations. I started off my career in finance, that was my undergrad degree in International Finance, and started working in tech companies and just discovered I had an affinity for software and projects and implementing things. And that’s kind of how I parlayed into kind of more technology and, and operations and implementing large systems.

Alan
Now energy is a fairly small startup, it is getting ready to launch products. And basically, they’re, it’s a solar based technology.

Sean
Yes. So we are a portable solar generator company, in call us basically a portable solar solution company, we wanted to the mission of the company is to bring the world affordable solar power, we feel that, you know, Mother Nature has given us this free gift, and she just keeps giving it every day. And if we are able to just collect it, then you can take advantage of that. And that, you know, it’s a renewable power. And so it’s one of the things that we strongly believe in is is to democratize solar or to get solar out to everybody. And you know, the approach that most of the industry has taken is actually from a top down that what that means is, you know, there’s a lot of companies that deploy like large solar arrays or solar farms, and, you know, the big, big companies that put it on your roofs and so for a while we actually want to get solar in the hands of people, but from a consumer products perspective. So from the ground up from the bottoms up, actually, that’s our what we want to do is provide solar from a consumer products perspective.

Alan
You know, it seems that as technology develops, and it’s interesting I was at today, I’m a Tesla owner, okay, and they took us on tours of the plan and they showed us the big battery packs. I’m like that’s just a bunch of double A batteries. Yeah, that’s what it looks like. Yeah. And so So in your your your battery is it’s a different is it lithium based it is.

Sean
Lithium based, it’s it’s actually you are mentioning about the Tesla battery. So we use similar batteries to the Tesla electric vehicles. That’s what allows us to get our generators to be compact and small because it’s lithium ion batteries. So we have a product called the Kodiak generator, which is a one kilowatt, basically battery bank that has an inverter charge controller battery management system, all of the sophisticated technologies to to make it safe and efficient in a 20 pound box. And that’s and we’re able to deliver one kilowatt of power. And that’s because we’re using the lithium ion batteries.

Alan
So to give a to give a comparison, I guess one kilowatt will power, roughly?

Sean
What so you can watch a maybe a 50 inch TV for about 18 to 20 hours, you can our customers have actually been using in the field. So we have these examples from them. So there’s a gentleman that ran three loads of laundry on on on one, one full charge, you can charge your iPhone over 150 times. You can run a refrigerator for about 28 hours or 18 cubic foot freezer chest freezer for about 33

Alan
hours. Now when we’re using these numbers, this is without a charge

Sean
Correct. Once you’ve fully fully charged it then you just basically draw on it. Now if you actually set up solar panels that that connects to it, you’re actually able to use it while you’re charging so you can actually pay use it over a much longer period of time.

Alan
Amazing. Yeah, Sean, I need to take a quick break. I’m busy here today with Sean Luangrath and we’ll take, we’ll be right back after these messages.

Alan
Welcome back and bid me here today with Sean Luangrath. And he’s the CEO of energy and Sean, the first segment we talked about your background a little bit about the product of solar, solar batteries that the energy is putting out. But how did you come to get involved have, you know with with energy?

Sean
Sure. So I mentioned that I spent a little bit of time in China. For startup, actually, I was with Apple. But then I actually went and joined a software startup the Sequoia back startup as their regional VP for the Greater China region. So I ran that for two years. And then in in many startups, there’s a pivot a major pivot, so the strategy chains where the company closed all of their international offices. So that actually brought me back to the to state side. So I was actually looking for an opportunity in a place that I know and not too many people know about. It’s called Silicon slopes. Silicon slopes is actually a name for actually the startup environment of the startup community there in Utah. In the Utah Valley, there’s a lot of tech startups out there. You know, a lot of great companies that put put it on the, put that company on the board like Omniture, Domo inside sales eats these companies are really doing really good. So I actually wanted to go out there and join that, that effort. I was actually introduced to somebody that, you know, did some investing in that area. And it actually didn’t work out. So So I ended, I ended up joining a company in Sunnyvale instead, late stage startup Aerohive networks, where I basically wanted to experience the the, the IPO experience. So after we went IPO a year later, that that friend that actually helped me look for those opportunities came back and said, Hey, there’s an opportunity to be the CEO of of a young startup called energy solar. And, you know, we were looking someone that has Chinese background, who’s got Silicon Valley ties, who’s got ties to Utah. And I seem to check all those boxes. And it was a great fit. I think it was a company culture and what I was looking to do, and what I was interested in doing, frankly, speaking, energy solar, is basically was a great opportunity I felt to allow me to give back to the world. So I actually am a refugee from Laos. And we came United States and I went back to Laos just recently. And there’s, there’s still a lot of people that don’t have access to power, don’t have access to electricity to light. And so this company will allow us to bring people like like that, you know, in developing countries, access to power and light. And that’s what drew me to this company. And I basically, my wife supported us to move out to Utah. And we moved out to Utah and and actually, we’re running energy from from out of Utah.

Alan
It’s a big move. And I think that one of the things that you mentioned earlier is that during the break is that you actually have operations in Pocatello, and then headquartered down in Utah.

Sean
So actually, their headquarters is actually in Pocatello, Idaho, and I do the commute from UP UP and DOWN Utah. So we expect to expand our our operation, we actually have in obviously, me being in Utah, that we actually have operations by default in Utah, but we’re going to expand a little bit more in the Utah area to access some of the talent pool that’s out there and the different kind of the startup vibe that’s out there.

Alan
So you’re fairly new, a early stage startup, as you mentioned before, but till you get ready to launch, do big product launch. Yes.

Sean
So we’ve we’ve actually launched a product that I mentioned about the Kodiak and you know one of the things that has recently come up in the in the kind of the startup world is crowdfunding, which is a great vehicle for to allow young companies to get their products out. We launched a our first major product last year in November, which is that one kilowatt generator, we actually put that up without even actually having a production operations up and we pre sold over $700,000 worth of that product. And that funded the the production of that. So now we now have Do you have that solar generator, the coal, the Kodiak solar generator, we’re actually getting that off the production line now. And so we’re actually getting that out to people and so forth. And we just launched a new product called the Raptor, which is a smaller unit.

Alan
That’s the 20 pound unit or smaller than

Sean
The Kodiak is the the 20 pound unit. So one kilowatt of power in 20 pounds. And then this one, which is basically a portable solar charger, it’s about 10 ounces. And that’ll charge your phone three, four times, using just the solar panels and the battery bank.

Alan
That’s amazing and busy here today with Sean Luangrath. He’s the CEO of energy and Shawnee need to take a quick break, and we’ll be right back after these messages.

Alan
Welcome back and begin your day with Sean Luangrath. And he’s the CEO of energy. And Sean, we’ve been talking about you’re you currently have a product on the market, but you’re getting ready to launch a new product called the Raptor. Yes. Okay. So let’s just show us what you have?

Sean
So I have the Raptor here. And what it is, it’s the world’s first solar powered, quick charge battery bank. Okay, so what that means is, I’ll explain what that means is basically it’s a, it’s a battery bank, but it’s a quick charge, meaning that, you know, if you took your your, it took an hour to charge your phone with the Quick Charge technology, you can get it up to like minutes, you know, basically et Cie, you can take, you can charge it, you know, about 70% of the way in about 30 minutes. And that’s that’s what you’ve seen, probably the commercials out there, there’s a couple of technologies out there, Qualcomm being one of them, that allows you to quickly charge your phone, many Android phones support that, that technology and so forth. And so you can just quickly charge it. But the difference between our battery bank and whatever, all that’s out there is that we’re the first solar powered, quick charge a battery bank. And so what that means is, you can literally be out anywhere, off grid, you know, hiking, camping, fishing, hunting, where there’s no access to the to the, to the AC port, you can recharge your battery bank, and you can actually charge your battery bank using the solar using the sun. So in one day’s chart, you can recharge your whole battery bank, and you can basically be out there indefinitely, charging your phones, your GPS, your GoPro.

Alan
It’s absolutely amazing that the the the efficiency, I mean, we’re getting smaller, yes, but we’re having more power with smaller units. And where do you see all this going.

Sean
So there’s a lot of technology out there, getting the batteries more powerful, getting the solar panels more efficient. So you can actually get it smaller and smaller to the point where now instead of having a rooftop full of panels, you can actually just put it on your balcony. And it it’ll be enough to charge like a battery bank or a like a battery storage unit that actually will power your home if the sun’s out. And it will get to a point where we’re actually working on something where you can actually be off grid if you want and just still be tied to the public utility in case you need the power. But for the most part, you can actually use what you’re collecting from the sun on on one day’s charge, you can actually you know power your TVs, your washer, dryer, your AC unit, that type of thing. So that’s that’s what gets me excited is that we can actually be self sufficient, you can actually be off the grid and not you know, less than your footprint less than your carbon footprint. And that’s, that’s again, that’s our mission is to bring the world affordable solar power, because again, it’s renewable power, and that just helps the world all around.

Alan
So the Raptors seems like it’d be a great little tool for campers. Yes, yes. Yeah.

Sean
We actually have a lot of.

Alan
You got to put a 50 inch TV screen on your backpack.

Sean
Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, that’s for the Kodiak with this this unit here actually is for a lot of people that go you know, you know, there’s there’s a there’s a thought that you know, when you’re out in the in the country, you just roughing it but many people they take their iPads with them, and they watch movies you know, at night when you have nothing to do and you’re it’s all dark, a lot of people watch their iPads or on their on their phone, you know, movies that they’ve downloaded. But a lot of that time that takes a lot of battery and so what happens is when your battery dies, that’s it. You can’t really recharge it. And when your battery bank that you brought dies, then you can’t recharge that but with this portable solar quick charger, you can actually now reach During the day, you can clip it to the back of your backpack or leave it out, you know, and let it you know, soak up the sun, soak up the power. And then at night, you have lights and you have power.

Alan
And that has a flashlight on it. Yes.

Sean
So one of the things that we’ve, that we’ve looked at is actually the developing countries, you know, there’s like 1.3 billion people in the world that live off grid. And what that means is they have no access to electricity. And the surprising number that that not many people know about is about a third of those people actually have a cell phone plan. How does that work, if you have a cell phone plan, you don’t have access to charge it, a lot of people take the bus to the nearest town and pay to charge their, their cell phones, because their cell phones allows them to do banking, let’s let’s allow them to talk to family and so forth. And so this product, we really want to get this into their hands. So that way they can, you don’t have to pay, you know, 20 to $60 a year out of their pocket to go and charge their phone, they can actually use this product, and actually just use the sun to recharge all of their devices.

Alan
Yeah, I’m looking at it’s almost the size of a flip phone.

Sean
iYeah. 10 ounces. And that’s, that’s how big it is. Yeah.

Alan
So now, in this product, if a person wanted to get this product, the Raptor, how would they go about that?

Sean
We, we are big proponents of crowdfunding. And so to launch this product, we actually put our product up there on Indiegogo, which is a crowdfunding campaign platform. And so if you actually go to indiegogo.com, and in search for Raptor, it’s, it should be there. And then basically, we’ve given everybody who’s buying on Indiegogo 30% off of what the retail price will be. So this is a a basically a thank you to all those who are supporting us and getting this product out there. And one of those currently running then the Raptor Pro is at $55, roughly, okay, and there’s a lower version. That’s not a Quick Charge. That’s, I think, like $50 or something like that.

Alan
And then how long does it take usually, for that turnaround there? We take the Raptor What’s the order?

Sean
Once so right now, when you order it, we will actually take that money and go and actually mass produce it and actually deliver it in the April May timeframe.

Alan
April, May time but yeah, okay. Okay, so whatever what other products? Yep. On the coming out?

Sean
So we’re talking about providing power to the world, we’re actually working on a product that is called the home base plus, and that’s a six kilowatt portable battery bank that can power your home. So it basically can do to 20, which will run your AC units and your dryer. But it’s six kilowatt of power, and then you can recharge using solar panels and that old basically, it’s a whole home generator, this is disrupting the industry. Yes, it’s, it’s it’s basically a more portable version of the Powerwall. You probably heard of the Tesla Powerwall, which is around six kilowatt, they’ve asked here, Elon Musk has actually upped it up to about 10 kilowatts. But at at six kilowatt, the original version was at six kilowatt, and that’s enough to actually power a lot of your major appliances at home. And that’s what we’re doing. So basically, our version is, is a movable version, it’ll be about 50 to 70 pounds. So you can still take it and take it, you know, to a campsite or show your cabin or in your RV. Or actually you can take it to like a construction site, and it can power a lot of your things when you’re off grid.

Alan
Wow, it’s really, it’s neat to see the progression, especially for those developing countries that don’t have the power grid currently in place.

Sean
Yeah, one of the things that’s one of the features about it that we’re really excited about. So we’re in Idaho, and we’re actually working with the local national lab out there, which is the Idaho National Lab, and they’ve got some technology that we’ve been able to to actually to use and actually tweak it or port it to a smaller size. So it actually becomes what they call a nano grid. So we’re actually installing some technology into our generator. So it becomes a nano grid. And what that means is you buy one generator, and then it’s it’s basically, you know, you have one unit, but if you actually buy a second one, you can actually connect them together, and they’ll talk to each other. So if you imagine, like in your in your neighborhood, if you have five homes, all connected to each other, and then you actually have a power outage, you can actually be self sufficient, because, you know, all those homes can actually share and pour power. And that’s one of the features that you know, and if you actually take this and apply it to the developing countries, you can actually build a city or a town grid, one generator at a time you don’t need the you know the utility anymore to actually wire everything up. If you actually want you can build you know, power for the for the for the town, one generator at a time. We’re really excited about that.

Alan
Well, Shawn, we’re out of time, but appreciate you being here. I’ve been visiting with Shawn loon graph and he’s a CEO of energy and Sean for the listeners. How would they find more information on on your products?

Sean
Sure. You can visit us easily by going to our website www.inergysolar.com

Alan
Sean thanks for being on today’s show

 

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This transcript was generated by software and may not accurately reflect exactly what was said.

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