How is Renewable Energy Changing Our World?

Overview:

In this episode we discuss “How is Renewable Energy Changing Our World?”

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Important Timestamps:

• 00:54 – Introduction to Jeremiah Broz and Renewable Energy  
• 01:07 – Jeremiah’s Background and Journey to Renewable Energy  
• 02:00 – The Birth of Energy Advantage  
• 05:30 – The Long-Term Worth of Switching to Solar  
• 09:57 – Metrics for Comparing Energy Sources  
• 12:08 – The Transition from Fossil Fuels to Renewables  
• 13:52 – Addressing Fears and Concerns about Solar Adoption 
• 16:29 – Monetary Benefits and Incentives of Solar Energy  
• 17:00 – Controlling Energy Costs and Time-of-Use Rates  
• 18:58 – Empowerment and Core Values 
• 19:23 – Navigating Energy Banking and Net Metering  
• 20:39 – Connecting with Energy Advantage

Transcript of “How is Renewable Energy Changing Our World?”

[00:00:23] Aaron Murphy: Hello everyone, and welcome to the Project Management Paradise podcast. 

Your passport to project success. I’m your host, Aaron Murphy. And today I’m joined by Jeremiah Broz to discuss the topic of how renewable energy is changing our world. Jeremiah is the CEO and founder of Energy Advantage Roof and Solar. Jeremiah’s belief in sustainability and renewable energy drives him to shape a greener future, making a lasting impact on both the industry and the communities he serves. 

Jeremiah, thank you so much for being on the podcast. How are you today?  

[00:00:54] Jeremiah Broz: Aaron, thank you for having me. It’s an honour.  

[00:00:57] Aaron Murphy: Pleasure. Thank you so much for being on. To get things started for anyone who might not know you, can you tell us about yourself, your background and how you ended up in the renewable energy industry. 

[00:01:07] Jeremiah Broz: Sure. Thank you. So, Jeremiah bros. Yeah I hail out here in Denver, Colorado, originally from Minnesota. Who am I? So I’m a father first and foremost, got two teenage daughters, right? I’m serial entrepreneur. This is my fifth venture. I feel like I know a lot of the downside of how businesses can fail because I have a lot of experience in failing. 

I know people, I recruited, hired and trained over a thousand sales reps in my career and developed a lot of them into either business owners or executives with other companies. And yeah, and I love my dog now.  

How did I get into renewable energy? That’s a great question. So I got into roofing in 2014 and I liked it, it was larger ticket items. I like working on the outside of the house. It’s usually a one day turnaround, stuff like that. But what I didn’t like was, when hailstorms would come through the States, I’d work in Kansas city and in Denver, a little bit in Texas. But when hail would come through, we would go and just replace the same stuff. 

We would take the shingles off, we would go put the same shingles back on. And a lot of these homes would get hit again in the next 7 to 12 years. And we do the same thing all over and over again. So all the while, we’re making money. Shingle manufacturers are printing money. Insurance companies are recouping their money. 

And really it’s just our landfills keep filling up and people’s premiums keep going up higher and higher. So the idea was that if we’re going to play in the restoration industry, how can we segue some of those funds into renewable energy? And that was the birth of Energy Advantage.  

Energy Advantage is really a program that started to sell solar components to roofing contractors. 

So as they had insurance endowments, they could fix the roof, take care of the asset for the customer, but then also help the customer to get into a lot of tax credit opportunities by seg-waying some money and getting over that bump into creating and producing their own energy. And then we developed other items like steel roofs to encompass shingles. 

So that way, we don’t have to tear off shingles and keep filling our landfills. And the ultimate goal is really putting on steel shingles over your asphalt shingles. And then solar on top of that, so now you get the insurance proceeds, you get government tax credits, and there’s no more claims or minimal amount of claims for the rest of your life. 

And. You’re now producing your own energy, clean energy, right? And that’s the concept and idea of energy advantage. 

[00:03:47] Aaron Murphy: That’s amazing. You can see you have that real entrepreneurial spirit. You’re not afraid of the failure. As you said, this is your 5th venture and no struggle, no progress. So you just kept going forward and trying to solve that problem of having to constantly make replacements and fortify what’s already there. Just amazing and well done. 

[00:04:11] Jeremiah Broz: Thank you. Thank you. And I’m a little older now. I’ve been broke three times. Like flat broke, like scratch broke right from bankruptcies, divorce, bad business ventures. Where you can’t even put gas in your car, can’t figure out how to pay rent in 30 days. 

What am I going to do? Always rested on the laurels of I’ll go knock doors. I’ll go sell. And that’s how I started at energy bed too, right? It’s getting out there and just knocking doors. So through multiple failures, I always had that comfort that I could pick myself back up and I could get out there and do it again. 

But this time around, I’m like, I’m going to bring up as many people as I can, including my community, including our environment, including people who are probably even struggling more than I was. et cetera. And so I think through the attention of failing and through the strength and trying to fight back up, right? 

We can just do a greater good. And we think beyond ourselves. 

[00:05:12] Aaron Murphy: and taking the risk into going into solar really has provided many opportunities for both you and the community that you were serving. And just to ask a general question, is it worth taking the risk switching to solar for individual homeowners and maybe corporations? 

[00:05:30] Jeremiah Broz: Yeah, that’s a great question. That’s like the question. Is it worth it? We have, on the federal side, like we have a goal to reduce carbon emissions by 50%. Your two biggest contributors to CO2 or carbon dioxide is automobiles and coal. You’ve probably, I don’t know if it’s like this in Ireland, but you’ve probably seen this mass movement for electric vehicle production where, I think by 2030, every auto manufacturer needs to have 50 percent of their line is as EVs. 

Okay so you’re charging your car at home. You’re using more energy. If that energy doesn’t come from solar wind, where is it going to come from? Awesome. Yeah. So it’s like the cart and the horse, right? It’s we need to Push both initiatives at the same time. Otherwise, like one, if we’re just pushing that EV side, it’s going to pull a lot more energy. 

That’s going to, and then two our current grid, most of our grids can’t really handle all of that increase in demand, right? So, what I like about solar is we know we’re going to need electricity. I don’t know if there’s coming a day where we’re like not going to need it. And when you have it on your rooftop, for example, versus let’s say in a big solar field, far away, you don’t have to go through transmission loss and all of that extra work to broker it back in to where you actually use it. 

I like the idea of a smart home and an energy efficient home, right? Buttoning up a home with. Addict insulation, better windows automating the lights, automating the heating, switching the heat pumps, all within our own home. So it should cost less down the road. There might be an upfront bump in payment, but it should cost less, not just monetarily, but the off gassing, like the excess energy and waste. 

That we’ve come to almost be comfortable with. In that respect, yes, I do think it’s worth it. The days of where solar is cheaper than your energy bill. I don’t know if that’s in current economic conditions due to interest rates. So get used to not that, that not being a thing I would tell people, but just be okay with it, because with inflation and with rising energy costs in no time that those costs will be higher than your permanent solar alone.  

[00:08:08] Aaron Murphy: Yeah, and it’s playing the long game initially making that investment up front first. It might be a big payment, but it’s going to pay off in the long term when your energy bills, it’s less and switching to more of an electric, more sustainable lifestyle, as you said even putting like different new windows, ticker windows. It’s a small change, but it does make a big impact on the home. 

[00:08:29] Jeremiah Broz: Yeah. And our home is our sanctuary, right? If you have kids or family, It’s where we raise our families, where we have our traditions. Wanted to be around. We want our family to be around. 

[00:08:42] Aaron Murphy: Exactly and the heat of the family and the heat of the home all goes hand in hand.  

[00:08:47] Jeremiah Broz: Yeah I don’t know if other people can relate where your bills, I have some customers where their bills in August and September down in Texas are like 1300 dollars a month for electricity. They want solar by the way. Okay. And it’s crazy because it’s so hot. 

And I think July this year was like the hottest month we’ve ever had on record in history. Something like that. I don’t know if you heard that. Isn’t it a shame like people now look at their energy bills and then they’re like mad, they’re upset, and they probably feel helpless and a little bit, taking advantage of, but the truth is, I don’t think that stuff’s going to go away, right? 

Let’s show somebody a door to make a change where they feel empowered. They feel empowered, not helpless.  

[00:09:39] Aaron Murphy: Amazing. And just to tie into the energy sources what metrics do you use to compare it to other energy sources? Would it be its performance, its return of investment, or even simply the reduction in our carbon footprint through the manufacturing? 

What one would stand out the most in your opinion?  

[00:09:57] Jeremiah Broz: Well, solar. For sure.  

I don’t know, I don’t know fully the cost of what it takes to create a jewel of energy or kilowatt of energy from whole plant to what the production is of solar compared to wind, whatever those ratios are. I imagine wind is probably a much, much higher upfront cost. Right turbine, and I don’t know fully how much it generates or creates. 

So, a, I would say solar put an investment in solar. I don’t think I have seen residential turbines that can generate energy. I know there is gas generators, right? Both diesel and propane. They’re probably pretty cheap compared, but then you’re still using fossil fuels and then solar and battery. 

I think batteries, we’re going to start seeing battery backup start to come down in price, right? We have, some pretty good batteries right now. That can go direct to the consumer right at 14 grand all in and when you think about it, you get tax credits back of 30%. That’s 4200 bucks and then you get another rebate from the electric company of another 3500. 

So now we’re getting down to 5 to 6000 bucks for battery backups. I think every solar install should have a battery, by the way. We start to see vehicles charging homes too. So now your vehicle, your battery, your solar, right? That’s your source of energy that I think is going to be most cost effective, probably the cleanest. 

Probably the easiest to install, and I would probably hedge my bet on that over probably wind or natural gas.  

[00:12:08] Aaron Murphy: And just out of curiosity, why don’t we retire fossil fuels in the morning completely? Is it we haven’t fully made the switch or the trying to like, think how to process this? How we haven’t made the full the switch. 

We haven’t got all that’s needed for. Fully electric lifestyle yet or fully renewable energy lifestyle.  

[00:12:29] Jeremiah Broz: That’s a great question. I would imagine there’s probably infrastructure change that gradually has to adjust and change. Out in large solar farms when hydro costs a lot of money, right to develop those and then they probably have to go through like testing patterns just to make sure that it’s feasible, that it’s working and we’re probably in that stage. 

I know there’s motivation to retire coal plants. I think Excel has a goal to be 100 percent renewable by 2050, 80 percent renewable by 2030, and retiring two coal plants, I think, per year is their goal. And we’re not the only country, by the way that has these goals of reducing carbon emissions. I think China is now even on board. All right, by having a reduction by 2050. So it’s not just us. It’s a world thing, but I would say we just don’t probably have the infrastructure in place to make the switch tomorrow. And there might be special interests or, people have been doing certain things for certain timeframe that don’t want to change yet. 

[00:13:40] Aaron Murphy: For individuals that have decided to, dive in fast in the switch to solar and renewable energies, but they have fears. How do you help someone who’s worried about making the switch? 

[00:13:52] Jeremiah Broz: So that’s a great question. Fear is normal, right? We can’t avoid it. 

Don’t get away. You’ll never get away from it. It’s normal. You deal with it. But on the other side of fear is love, right? So when you get over the fear of solar, you’ll love your solar. And here’s the thing. What I tell a lot of people too is look, let’s say I install your solar and it’s January and it’s covered with snow and it doesn’t work. 

Which could happen, don’t be afraid, don’t worry, don’t get up there and try and shovel off your panels. Sometimes we just get really impatient about the outcomes that we want, but we just got to trust the process and trust what we’ve done is right. It’s right more than just, return on our pocketbook right now. 

In solar, you have 2 major metrics that you look at, you have net metering, and you have energy banking. Net metering is your overproduction during the daytime, which then the power company will store that for you to pull back those credits at night and then use your overuse or what you overproduced at night-time. 

The second one is called energy banking, which means you overproduce in certain months, like February, March, May. And then you’re going to use that access over production and months of say, June, July, August, right? When your AC is going, your electric bills are really high. That’s called energy banking. 

If over 12 months, you have a surplus of energy, right? Then it rolls over to the next year. So your system itself. As long as you keep overproducing a little bit will actually accumulate more electricity than it holds. So then when you do have that snowy month, you have banked energy that you can pull off of. 

Right? And then you’ll really love it. Because then the next neighbour who just got solar installed on a snowy January who’s solar is a crock, it doesn’t work. You’re like, no, hold on, be patient, bank your energy.   

[00:16:00] Aaron Murphy: Patience is the key, really. And that’s really interesting. I didn’t actually know about this banking aspect of it. 

So whenever it’s sunny, just say in the summer months, and we’re overproducing the energy from solar, we can use that then during the winter months when it’s going to be darker earlier, sooner, and that’s just incredible. That’s a really good way of thinking about when you’re going to make the switch.  

Would there be many other benefits just like this that many people mightn’t be aware of?  

[00:16:29] Jeremiah Broz: Yeah. So monetarily in the United States we have a federal tax credit. That’s 30 percent of the credit. So you got to make sure that you have. The tax appetite, you’ve paid in that amount of taxes and then there are local incentives, sometimes by the cities or the county that offer another rebate there’s even incentives by the energy companies, right? And like Excel right now, we have a rebate with Excel for 3, 000 for a battery that goes directly to the consumer. And that’s a check, right? That goes back. And then for in Denver County, we have more rebates, right? And then if we put in heat pumps and we make the home energy efficient, we have more rebates. 

So monetarily, if you just do your homework or talk to an expert like us we’ll find all the little Easter eggs that help make it a really good deal. That’s the cool thing. As much as we like to trance the government, the government’s really partnering up and trying to make this work. Because, we have to.  

Some of the other benefits I’d say is like you’ll have a monitoring system on your phone so you can actually dictate at what point of the day you’re producing the most amount of energy, right? And then if you have what’s called time of use rates, which means that throughout a 12 hour period or throughout the day, the energy company will bill you at different rates. 

You can then determine, especially if you’re a battery backup, how you want to store energy and then how you want to discharge it. So if you want to produce it at 10 cents a kilowatt hour, you store it at kilowatt hour, but during peak time of 3 to 7 PM, the energy company might charge you 30 cents a kilowatt hour. 

Any energy use at that time, right? You pull off your energy bank because it was 10 cents. So there is an algorithm between solar production and storage and discharge that you can actually make money that offsets that cost of the battery, right? That offsets that cost the equipment and we show people how to do that. 

I know it’s complex right now as I’m explaining it. Again, one of our core values is empowerment, right?  

Our core values are race, gratitude, resilience, accountability, connection, empowerment. We want people to be empowered with their asset that they’re adding to their home.  

[00:18:58] Aaron Murphy: That’s incredible. And it’s really helping. Them have a control over their energy costs, their bills, where they’re actually saving money and having these tax credits and government incentives. That’s a great way of really helping people switch because if they are going to be saving money and determining how much energy they can use. 

[00:19:19] Jeremiah Broz: Yeah, it’s a real game changer, right? That’s what I’m telling you. Thank you.  

[00:19:23] Aaron Murphy: You just opened my eyes to this. And it’s incredible. I’m just going to draw back. I know I’ve said this already, but that banking part, I didn’t know about that. And for anyone like myself who didn’t know this and has been shown or told this information that’s game changing that really will help and drive for a greener, more sustainable future when you can just use up the energy that you’ve stored.  

[00:19:46] Jeremiah Broz: Now, here’s the crazy thing is the power company, because really the solar is a contract between the homeowner and the power company. 

Not every power company, by the way, does energy banking. And not every power company allows net metering. So when you’re looking into solar, definitely check with your current energy provider and see if those 2 things are available, net metering and energy banking, determine what is called your azimuth of your house in the array. 

So are you perfectly straight south? You only have a north facing slope, right? Or depending on where you’re located to determine how much production you can have. I think that’s also important. And then the last one, I would always entertain a battery.  

[00:20:39] Aaron Murphy: Amazing, thank you so much for all this information. 

If anyone wanted to reach out, find out more information on your company yourself and best ways to make the switch, essentially, where would be the best place to reach you? 

[00:20:51] Jeremiah Broz: Yeah, yourenergyadvantage.com. That’s our website. You can check us out. You can check us out on Instagram, our YouTube channels. We have tons of content on YouTube as well. Just trying to help people, tutorials, both on the hail restoration side and on the renewable energy side. You can see us, how we do our installs. But yeah, come check us out.  

[00:21:16] Aaron Murphy: That’s amazing. Jeremiah, thank you so much for your time today. I’ve really enjoyed this. 

This has been educational more than you will ever know. Thank you so much for this. And I hope you have a great day. And once again, thank you so much for being on the podcast.  

[00:21:32] Jeremiah Broz: Appreciate you. Thank you so much. Have a great day.  

Thanks for listening to the Project Management Paradise podcast at projectmanagementparadise.com.  

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Show Notes

This episode serves as an engaging discussion on the importance of renewable energy and how it can positively impact individuals, communities, and the environment. 

Learn More About Jeremiah Broz: 

yourenergyadvantage.com   

Check us out!
https://corasystems.com/ 

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