Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Here to talk to you about your backup plan is
Speaker 2: the CEO of Jenerak, Aaron Yachfeld. Aaron, I thought it
Speaker 2: was great that you were coming on the same day
Speaker 2: that Microsoft was reaching for a big power supply solution.
Speaker 2: In terms of the weather warnings, though they seem to
Speaker 2: be increasing, we're losing power more and more often in Westchester.
Speaker 2: Do you see your sales actually kind of rising in
Speaker 2: line with climate change.
Speaker 3: We see our sales rising in line with lower power
Speaker 3: quality matt which you know, obviously it's clear the science says,
Speaker 3: you know, air temperatures are warmer, water temperatures are warmer.
Speaker 3: This is causing more severe weather, you know, hotter droughts
Speaker 3: and heat waves and colder cold snaps, more rain, stronger hurricanes.
Speaker 3: These are the trends we've been witnessing over the last
Speaker 3: couple of decades. And you know, and you put on
Speaker 3: top of that then the stress that the grid is under,
Speaker 3: and you know, you've got companies like the Microsoft announcement
Speaker 3: this morning with three Mile Island. You know, people are
Speaker 3: companies are are forced to try and find new power
Speaker 3: sources because the grid.
Speaker 1: Is you know, it's stressed right now.
Speaker 2: Do you have more sales in those states? I mean,
Speaker 2: we're always doing stories on Texas with power outages because
Speaker 2: their grid is so fragmented and fragile.
Speaker 1: Do you see more sales and states like that? Yeah.
Speaker 3: Nationally, we're about about six percent of single family homes
Speaker 3: have a permanently installed homestand by generator.
Speaker 1: Texas.
Speaker 3: Actually, you know, it's been a good state for US
Speaker 3: as as of late in terms of demand. But some
Speaker 3: of our best states are not the states you might
Speaker 3: think of. You know, places like Michigan where you've got
Speaker 3: pretty severe winter weather as well as severe summer weather, Ohio, Connecticut,
Speaker 3: you mentioned Westchester. Some of these states actually have higher
Speaker 3: rates of penetration in the product because they experience those
Speaker 3: multiple seasons.
Speaker 2: We're showing the video of, you know, these portable generators
Speaker 2: that are gas or diesel diesel powered. What I want
Speaker 2: for Westchester is the big built in They're like these
Speaker 2: portable ones you can get for less than one thousand dollars, right,
Speaker 2: But the.
Speaker 1: Big daddies are like thirty grand right.
Speaker 4: They're expensive, right, I mean, Aaron. At the end of
Speaker 4: the day, we have gone through a period of you know,
Speaker 4: very stifling inflation. Have people kind of put off this purchase?
Speaker 4: You know, is this something that you find that there
Speaker 4: is kind of a hurdle here for many Americans to
Speaker 4: buy in for a new home.
Speaker 1: There's no question.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is a home improvement project, right, So
Speaker 3: how you feel about your home financially kind of where
Speaker 3: you're at. You know, if you're locked into a mortgage
Speaker 3: that's a low rate today, but you want to move
Speaker 3: in the future, you're probably not doing big projects in
Speaker 3: your home today until rates come down.
Speaker 1: But we are seeing again when out it just happened.
Speaker 3: So the product retails for around five to six thousand
Speaker 3: dollars and then it's another five to six thousand dollars
Speaker 3: to install.
Speaker 1: It, so ten to twelve thousand.
Speaker 3: It's definitely an expensive product when you talk about you know,
Speaker 3: the overall cost, but these are fully automatic. They run
Speaker 3: off of the homes fuel system, and it's protection, protection
Speaker 3: for your home, protection for your family. A lot of
Speaker 3: people are working from home now, right, so it can
Speaker 3: protect your livelihood as well. So we're just seeing these
Speaker 3: trends continue and you know, the product has become very popular.
Speaker 1: What about businesses?
Speaker 2: When I was thinking about you know, having you on
Speaker 2: this morning, I thought about a power outage at you know,
Speaker 2: a hospital for example, can be life is life threatening.
Speaker 2: Do you have sales at big businesses or institutions like hospitals.
Speaker 1: We do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we have a whole division of or company that
Speaker 3: focuses on much larger generators for exactly as you said, Matt, hospitals.
Speaker 3: They're focused on data centers, manufacturing plants, distribution, government installations
Speaker 3: like wastewater treatment plants, some of the critical infrastructure. We're
Speaker 3: big in the telecommunications industry. So if you see, you know,
Speaker 3: the wireless cell towers along the highway along I ninety five,
Speaker 3: a lot of those are going to be backed up
Speaker 3: by our generators. Anywhere there's critical infrastructure where you know,
Speaker 3: a power loss would cause significant damage or disruption to
Speaker 3: a business or to infrastructure.
Speaker 2: How how big do your single site contracts get? I mean,
Speaker 2: if I'm on the on the one end of the spectrum, right,
Speaker 2: I can go to I guess home depot and pick
Speaker 2: up a generator for a few hundred bucks. What's the
Speaker 2: biggest single site number that you've seen?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, especially you get into some of these
Speaker 3: hyper scale data centers. You know, the Amazons, the Netflixes
Speaker 3: and the Microsoft's of the world. You're seeing some of
Speaker 3: these generator farms are up upwards, you know, to put
Speaker 3: it in context, there there's sometimes twenty thirty megawatts of power.
Speaker 3: I mean, these are again, this is why Microsoft's got
Speaker 3: a contract with a nuclear power plant, a defunct nuclear
Speaker 3: power plant to bring it back online, because the amount
Speaker 3: of power needed for a single site is so dramatic.
Speaker 3: Now that's you know, that's out on the far edge
Speaker 3: of the spectrum of use cases. A lot of times
Speaker 3: you're going to see for a typical grocery store or
Speaker 3: perhaps a you know, a manufacturing plant, maybe a couple
Speaker 3: of megawatts of power to keep those installations running, which is,
Speaker 3: you know, that's still a lot of power, but it's
Speaker 3: not nearly size that you'd see in some of these
Speaker 3: bigger installations.
Speaker 1: With the data centers.
Speaker 4: Today erin we're getting questions from viewers as well, one
Speaker 4: being is do you ever try to work with local
Speaker 4: electric companies to lower the cost for consumers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for us, we have programs with especially when you
Speaker 3: talk about rural cooperatives where you know, the rate payers
Speaker 3: themselves are part of, you know, solving for what they
Speaker 3: pay for their local utility. It's a little bit tougher
Speaker 3: when you get into bigger you know, some of the
Speaker 3: bigger power networks and some of the bigger utilities, but
Speaker 3: definitely on the smaller utility side.
Speaker 1: We've put programs together in the past.
Speaker 3: I think one of the things that you know, people
Speaker 3: are very concerned about, and this is going to be coming.
Speaker 3: It's not just that power quality is becoming more challenging
Speaker 3: with the storms and some of the grid stress, but
Speaker 3: power prices are going up, right, So just what you pay,
Speaker 3: what we pay every day for our electrical prices, you
Speaker 3: know that is that's rising. I mean, you've seen almost
Speaker 3: the doubling of power prices in some parts of the
Speaker 3: country over the last ten years, and the forecast is
Speaker 3: for another doubling. So you're seeing people take the know
Speaker 3: kind of kind of take the situation into their own hands,
Speaker 3: whether you know, whether it's backing up their home or
Speaker 3: their business, or it's doing something to produce their own
Speaker 3: power like solar or wind or.
Speaker 1: Something like that.
Speaker 4: Aaron, you know, one thing I've been wondering a lot
Speaker 4: about is the stress on power grids across this country
Speaker 4: and what that means you know that we talked a
Speaker 4: little bit about climate change, but also as the needs
Speaker 4: for power increase so meaningfully with this let's say AI revolution,
Speaker 4: you were talking about rising power costs, I mean, would
Speaker 4: the cost of your products also rise meaningfully in the
Speaker 4: next couple of years? Also given that stress and given
Speaker 4: these outages that we've seen, I mean I've lost power
Speaker 4: in my home twice this season already.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean our products just moved in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean our product costs have gone up, like everybody,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of with inflation here over the last
Speaker 3: few years, it's been tough.
Speaker 1: Things have leveled off now.
Speaker 3: But I think what what you know, I think homeowners
Speaker 3: and what business owners are very concerned about is where
Speaker 3: do their overall utility costs go in the future. You know,
Speaker 3: we're investing very heavily in decarbonizing the grid. Right on
Speaker 3: the side, which is great, We're adding a lot of
Speaker 3: utility scale solar, a lot of utility scale wind in
Speaker 3: favor of some of the gas plants and some of
Speaker 3: the coal plants that have been traditional sources for power.
Speaker 1: And then on the demand side, you know, you kind
Speaker 1: of hit the nail on the head.
Speaker 3: It's not only were we're electrifying everything, Like we're electrifying
Speaker 3: things in our homes, We're electrifying things in our business.
Speaker 3: We're just at the beginning of the electrification trends in transportation.
Speaker 3: And now you've got this whole artificial intelligence you know,
Speaker 3: kind of a demand cycle here which is driving huge
Speaker 3: construction of new data centers and that's going to put
Speaker 3: a lot of stress on the grid as well.
Speaker 1: So power prices are going up as a result.
Speaker 3: I think our products, you know, buy and large get
Speaker 3: used for resiliency, so for you know, those times when
Speaker 3: power's out, but I think the need for that, you know,
Speaker 3: as the grid becomes under more stress going forward, we
Speaker 3: think that need is going to grow because we think
Speaker 3: power quality, I mean the data is very clear over
Speaker 3: the last twenty to thirty years, power quality has.
Speaker 2: Gotten worse in the US well aired to your last
Speaker 2: couple of points, I mean the rising cost of power, and.
Speaker 1: You know, the the the green side of things.
Speaker 2: Microsoft is looking to nuclear because it's carbon free. You
Speaker 2: relaunched your solar and storage business, and Bloomberg Intelligence is
Speaker 2: focused on that, and your ev charger partnership with wall
Speaker 2: box and and Eco b Are you how optimistic. Are
Speaker 2: you for this business? And does it matter who gets elected?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 3: I mean, obviously I think it matters for a lot
Speaker 3: of us on a lot of points on who gets elected, right,
Speaker 3: And when it comes to power, of course, and power
Speaker 3: quality and the cost of power, I think I think,
Speaker 3: you know, from a from a bipartisan standpoint, we all
Speaker 3: agree on we want better power quality and we want
Speaker 3: to pay less for our power. So I think those
Speaker 3: things I think are are are agreeable points for the
Speaker 3: most part. You know, how we get there is maybe
Speaker 3: the you know, is maybe where the details are are different.
Speaker 3: But I do think that with our business, you know,
Speaker 3: when it comes to some of our solar products, our
Speaker 3: battery storage products you mentioned, our EV charging products, Matt,
Speaker 3: you know, this is about the future and trying to
Speaker 3: help homeowners reduce the cast of their power right by
Speaker 3: self production either on the rooftop with solar, but also
Speaker 3: having some amount of storage and the ability then to
Speaker 3: control kind of how those systems work together with your HVAC,
Speaker 3: your EV charging, all of those systems together to make
Speaker 3: sure we're maximizing your ability to have resiliency, but also to.
Speaker 1: Reduce the amount of power you use and consume.
Speaker 2: Such a cool business for the data and me loves it,
Speaker 2: but Janai loves it too, So.
Speaker 4: I do I want a generator before I buy other
Speaker 4: cool things.
Speaker 2: Very cool, Aaron, thanks so much for joining us Aeron Yaxfeld.
Speaker 1: They're the CEO of Generac