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Each episode of GAIN Momentum focuses on timeless lessons to help grow and scale a business in hospitality, travel, and technology. Whether you’re a veteran industry leader looking for some inspiration to guide the next phase of growth or an aspiring executive looking to fast-track the learning process, this podcast is here with key lessons centered around four questions we ask each guest.
GAIN Momentum episode #92: Why 2026 Is the Time for Solar Facilities at Hotels | with Justin Draplin
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Adam Mogelonsky: Welcome to the GAIN Momentum Podcast, focusing on timeless lessons from senior leaders in hospitality, food service, travel, and technology. We have a very special episode today because we are gonna be talking about renewable energy. Specifically, we have the CEO of Fortified Solar, Justin Draplin. Justin, how are you?
Justin Draplin: I'm very good, Adam. Thanks for having me.
Adam Mogelonsky: Great to have you on. And uh, our co-host today is Carlos Lugo, fellow GAIN Advisor. Uh, Justin, if you could start things off, give us a brief introduction to Fortified Solar and, um, what Fortified Solar is as a integrated supplier and manufacturer.
Justin Draplin: Ah, you made it sound way more complicated than it is. Um, I hope. Um, we basically manufacture building integrated photovoltaic. Which in short means a steel solar roof. So it's a solar panel that is made of. 22 gauge steel that can be used as a route. And with that we do a lot of, uh, covered parking. So being, being steel and solar, uh, you know, there's some added value, um, to not only covering the parking, but providing energy.
Um, so within hospitality, um, the value there is electrical bills tend to be pretty significant. Uh, so being able to offset those, uh, with free power, uh, is. Directly to the bottom line. Right? And, and it's also an added amenity for, for guests. So whether it's inclement weather, keeping the cars out of the heat or out of the rain or whatever, um, it just, it just presents a, a nicer atmosphere for parking your vehicle and, and entering the establishment on a positive note, right.
Adam Mogelonsky: So overall, uh, I think we can all agree that the world is becoming more renewable in its energy and, and the grid. But if you could talk just in one sentence, why now For solar in 2026?
Justin Draplin: Yeah, that's a good question. So energy demand overall is currently in the process of skyrocketing, right? You've got, um, ai, uh, who has this huge draw of data centers. Um, you know, not to mention Bitcoin mining, uh, and a continuing to grow population. Like there's all of these demands for energy and AI just being one of the biggest ones more, more recently.
And with that demand, um, you've got energy prices starting to go up quicker than historical. So as energy prices go up, um, you know, the sooner you can lock in a low cost alternative, the more Ben benefits there are. So the sooner you convert to as much renewable or as much cheap energy as you can, you kind of offset those future gains that we know are coming.
Everybody knows it's coming, right? Um, and you can lock in that savings today.
Adam Mogelonsky: I mean, so there's never gonna be a cheaper. Time.
Justin Draplin: Nope. It only gets more expensive from here
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah.
Justin Draplin: if if you, if you doubt me, just check your electrical bill.
Carlos Lugo: Yeah, I can attest to that. If you don't mind jumping in there real quickly because I, I, we are consumers of home solar today and one of the things that I noticed in the last couple years is how often there are now bumping up the cost of kilowatts, uh, throughout the year. So I think we took maybe like.
The, uh, the first year we had it maybe about two increases from the power company. Um, and then just this last year, it seemed like they increased it three times throughout the year. So the cost kilowatt just continues to go up. And I'll bring that, uh, because just, and I, I don't wanna jump ahead, but I'm sure there's, there's a play here versus whether they adopt batteries for storage of the electricity versus having like a bilateral meter.
That Right to kind of stay connected to the grid.
Justin Draplin: Yeah. And, and there's benefits to both, right? Um, you know, obviously when it comes to hospitality, uh, I mean, especially in our residents, but also in hospitality, uh, you know, there's some added value to having a battery backup. Um, you know, uh, what was it last year or, yeah, I think it was last year. We had a big hurricane here in South Carolina.
I, uh, I thought I was doing my wife a favor, um, by taking my kids down to the Columbia Zoo. I had, I had it pre-booked. It was for her birthday. Um, she just wanted a day alone at home, right. So Greenville, we lost power. I checked the map and the hurricane, you know, kind of went through right through us.
Greenville was the big hurricane. Trees were down. It was crazy. And I was like, well, I'm gonna, Columbia, I'm taking the kids. I rented a hotel. I made this silly mistake of only looking at where the hurricane went and not actually calling the hotel to see if they had power. So I drove all the way to Columbia, two hour drive.
Trees were down the whole time, go to the hotel. They had no power. They wouldn't even check us in. They're like, yeah, we don't have power. Nothing we can do. They ended up not having power for days. Um, the zoo where I was gonna take my kids also didn't have power, so they basically turned me away and had to refund.
My night stay. So if they were to have solar and a battery backup, um, they would've been able to stay open, maybe not provide, you know, full HVAC through that whole period, but at least have enough energy to continue to process and make money for, you know, the four or five days that they were out a pout.
Like it would've been nice to like. Be able to check in. They just, they wouldn't even let me. So that's like a real world example of kind of the value that a battery can bring. Um, that's pretty impactful when you talk about these emergency situations. Um, but there's also a added revenue aspect, um, where you can manage the energy that you're using.
So if you have the grid and a battery, you can kind of pull from the battery when the grid is expensive and then pull from the grid. When it's cheap. So it helps you to basically have increased cost savings. 'cause many of these areas now have demand charges. So when it's a heavy demand time period, they charge you more for the energy.
Well, that's when you use your solar and your battery, right? Um, so there's just all kinds of ways to, to benefit from solar and battery, um, if possible.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. You know, that's, that's an incredible aside because you know, you talk about that hotel that's down and that's all lost revenue. Uh, and so it really is a defensive play, uh, in the face of climate change, resilience, however you wanna phrase it. 'cause it's not like. There's never gonna be another hurricane for the next a hundred years, right?
Whether it hits in South Carolina, uh, southern Florida, Northern Florida, the Caribbean, uh, and then passes through to Galveston or somewhere we know there's gonna be hurricanes next year or 2028, et cetera. And um, the other one I remember was that freak snowstorm that Texas had. Uh, then it made the news because hotels that were still open that didn't lose power, were they, they, uh, started charging ridiculous rates and had, um, yeah.
Justin Draplin: Let's not throw any price gouging under the bus.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, yeah. yeah. But that, that situation would've never occurred if every hotel had a solar grid in Texas where you have a large amount of sun and they had the battery to maintain, uh, the ability to stay open. There never would've been that surge onto just those few hotels that were open, and then the automated systems that were controlling price never would've had the opportunity to gouge anyway.
Carlos Lugo: I would probably even go a step further too. Uh, I mean, I, I, my sister lives in, in Texas, I live in Florida and we all have electric vehicles, right? What happens then if you don't have that source of power to juice up at home, and let's say your entire town may be down due to the hurricane, and now there's no way for you to power to like juice up.
Right? Uh, so just kind of throwing out there, because I, I live in a, in a, uh, sun consumption and usability kind of world today, uh, where I'm highly dependent of that power, uh, today for just about everything we do, whether it's our home, uh, our vehicles. And even storing power or, or even trying to avoid paying additional fees for our overages, uh, because now the cost per kilowatt is, is a lot more.
And by the way, if I go charge today one of my cars to uh, let's say one of those superchargers, I'm probably paying about 39 to, in some cases 52 cents. Kilowatts per um, uh, per kilowatt, right, a kilowatt. And so here at home is about 14 cents.
Adam Mogelonsky: So Justin, just before we dive back into some of the financials here, to paint a visual for everyone listening here, could you tell us, uh, or describe the difference between solar roofs and solar panels?
Justin Draplin: Sure. Yeah. So the difference between solar roofs and solar panels, um, is a couple. Um, as a general rule, solar panels are made of glass. Um, you know, if you're in Texas or someplace that gets hail, um, you might have read, or, or even on the news you've seen like these solar fields that just get decimated, um, because glass does not do well against hail.
Um, and so you've got a, a, uh. An issue there with, um, durability, right? So when you take a 22 gauge steel panel that we have and 22 gauge for those that don't know, um, is thicker than most steel roofing already. So, uh, a traditional steel roof is gonna probably be 26 gauge. Um, we're 22, sometimes it'll be 24, but we're 22, so we're even thicker than the thicker of the steel roofing.
Um, gauges are weird. The smaller the gauge, the thicker the steel. Um, so being using a 22 gauge steel, we have a, a, a durability that, uh, it's been hail tested. And I'm not saying that hail can't damage it, um, but when you compare that to a glass panel, you've got a, a astronomically higher, uh. Durability, uh, and, and less effect from that hail damage.
Um, so that's a, that's a big piece of it. Um, additionally, like a solar roof is, it can be a structural element. So what I mean by that is it's actually built for load. So whether that's snow, uh, rain, um, what, whatever, whatever that is, like, it's meant to protect. Um, so a, a solar panel as a general rule, um, water.
Sun, those kinds of things can get through, right? There's either cracks between the panels because they're only, you know, a panel is only a certain certain size, so you might see like solar canopies over over parking that use solar panels. Nothing wrong with them, they look nice. You know, I, I, I don't, I don't have an issue with them.
Um, they're still glass, so there's still gonna be damage in, in some of those instances. Um, they still, um, as a general rule, will let water through and let sun through. Um, and so they're just not gonna be as, as protective of whatever's underneath them. In most cases, a car or a boat and rv, we do a lot of boat and RV storage as well.
Um, so we definitely add a layer of protectivity. Is that a word? Can we get a final answer on whether or not protectivity is a word
or if I created that, but
Adam Mogelonsky: it.
Justin Draplin: are you Googling it into Wikipedia? Um. So it's just a better overall product, um, especially when it's all inclusive. Now ours can actually be used as roofing as well, so it is a steel roof.
So it's really gonna only make sense, you know, where you traditionally see steel roofs, like I actually, we developed it with a partner overseas when I was doing tiny homes, um, because I wanted solar for tiny homes and tiny homes, as many people may know, traditionally use steel roofing. And so that was kind of where it kind of came from.
So tiny homes covered parking, self storage, commercial and industrial buildings. Like that's gonna be our, our, our primary markets. Um, but, but the benefits could be used in a lot of other places as well.
Adam Mogelonsky: Just to, uh, put a pin in this, uh, steel versus glass for the solar rubes. Um, even if it isn't just, uh, some free hailstorm that. Destroys the glass of a photovoltaic. Uh, how does the steel frame influence the lifecycle of the actual, uh, design in terms of, um, how long it can last in nature?
Justin Draplin: Yeah, good question. Um, so the, the, the basic. Um, gauge of a solar panel is gonna be the cells, so it's gonna be actual cells within the panel that are generating the electricity from the sun. And so the cells in our panels aren't gonna be any different from the cells in another panel. Um, so there's very little difference in the degradation there.
So it's, it's basically the materials within those cells are what degrade over time. So the, the, the energy generation portion, um, will be pretty consistent. Um, now when you look at, um, solar on a Roof, you have this other hurdle of the lifespan. The right. So if you're installing solar on a existing roof, well one, how old is the roof already when you've installed solar, um, and now you're puncturing holes in that roof as well.
But, but let's just say your roof is, you know, 10 years old when you put your solar panels on. Well, that roof is gonna need to be replaced in another 10 or 15 years. So your longevity, um. Runs into issues. When does it make sense for you to actually pay somebody to come remove all of the solar, set that to the side so you can reroof your house and now you put old solar that's now 10, 15 years old and puncture holes into a brand new roof.
Um, there gets to be some, some, some interesting like calculus that needs to be figured out to like, is this worth it? So our, our steel roof, there's a 40 year warranty on the steel. So as a, as a product, um, you've simplified your equation greatly, right? You do have a degradation of the solar cells over time, right?
So in 40 years you might only be getting 70% of your energy value from, from that, but you're still getting it and your roof is still good, right? Instead of, you know what people will do is they'll throw away the old panels and pay for a whole new install. Um. Based on when their, when their roof needs to be replaced, right?
There's just, there's just a lot of variables to that. So it is looked at differently, right? Um, it is a different type of product. Um, and it's not right for everybody, right? Like, we aren't doing currently a lot of reroof, we're not doing any reroutes. They're more complicated. They're we're, um. And all that kind of stuff versus the, the focus that we're currently doing of the, of the covered parking.
Um, it's just a better, better fit for our, our current business model to scale.
Adam Mogelonsky: Uh, so to look at the, the financials of this and just the feasibility for hospitality, uh, for. Covered parking and, and other, other ways you can work with hotels. Uh, how do you see solar fitting into the overall sustainability strategy of a hotel?
Justin Draplin: Yeah. Uh, I'll touch on I think two points of sustainability. There's, uh, um, energy sustainability. Renewable energy, but there's also financial sustainability of the, of the, of the hotel. Right. Um, and I think we, uh, we help with both significantly, right? From a, from a sustainable energy kind of standpoint. I think that one's pretty cut and dry, right?
Um, it's powered by the sun. If the sun goes away, we got much bigger problems in whether or not your solar's working. Right? Um, so that's gonna be there. The financial sustainability. Um, a lot of people have this misconception because of some stuff that's been done historically within the solar space. Oh, it's gonna take too long to break even.
Oh, you know, uh, it's too expensive. Those kind of things. Well, you know, the structure that we use is like, Hey, zero down, we'll install the whole thing. And if you don't save money, you don't pay a penny. Right? So you end up with this different equation. Where hotels generally have an electrical bill, uh, day in, day out, whether or not they're fully rented or not.
You know, if your occupancy, if you have eight 80% vacancy, guess what? Your electrical bill isn't down 80%. Um, especially if it's like really cold out right. Um, or really hot, like you don't want your whole hotel. Be a hundred degrees and then you rent a room and now you gotta worry about you just rent a room.
That's a hundred degrees. Right? Um, and you guys probably know more of the issues with this than I do, but that energy is a constant. So when you have a, a free, a source that you can say, well, you only pay if you're saving, you've immediately added the difference to cash into your bottom line. So when, uh, when COVID hit.
And there were these issues with hotels not being allowed to rent or, you know, basically closing down. We still had an electrical bill, right? Um, people couldn't travel, but you still had to pay for the hvac. Um, and so we, we can eliminate that, right? We offset that, um, for the hotel. Um, and the other side of that is we actually, with our structure, they can pay for it with unused room nights.
So now not only are they saving cash, but they don't even have to pay for the savings. Um, they can actually use unused room nights that we will monetize with a th uh, third party, right? So a hotel can, uh, take 10% of their, uh, unused inventory that will be, you know, sold to either charities or workforce groups or something like that, that is looking for a, a, a source.
That we'll monetize that way, and, and that'll just be used to pay for their basically free energy, right? So it, it really gets to the bottom line really, really quickly when we don't ask for any cash.
Adam Mogelonsky: Um, I'm hoping that you could color this a bit, uh, if it's possible to do some mental calculations in your head. So, suppose you have a resort in California. So you have a place that's in the Sunbelt high ki a high cents per kilowatt hour. Um, and what could they expect to save if you were to do covered parking for, let's say, a hundred spots of parking?
Is that enough to go on to come up with a figure to talk about?
Justin Draplin: It's a little more complicated than that, but
Yeah.
what I can say is no matter what state in the country, no matter how much we install, I can guarantee you that we will save them money and increase their profits. Um, whether that's a thousand dollars a month. Or $10,000 a month, um, that's gonna be a little bit harder to dial in.
But we can get a, we can get an electrical bill, we can actually do a design in advance and we can model that, um, to within very good accuracy, including degradation of the cells over time and energy pricing and all that kind of stuff. We could provide that in advance. Um, and as part of. any Contract. Um, so there'd be a performance clause in that saying that yes, we can do it.
Now, to your point, in California with a historically high electricity rate, we can help a lot more than we can in a state with very low electricity cost. But in either situation, we can help.
Adam Mogelonsky: And, uh, now to circle back to how this ties into AI to sort of double click on, uh, the knock on effects of data centers. Could you walk us through the chain between all this hype around AI and people wanting more AI tools all the way through to increased costs on the hotels?
Justin Draplin: so obviously we have this big demand issue. Um. AI and the processing that goes into generating these phenomenal answers and amazing spreadsheets and amazing tasks and data that is organized in a very clear, concise, accurate way. It takes a lot of energy. So while the tools are great, um, the more tools we use, the more energy will be demanded.
So, you know, let's just say hotels are using more and more AI to manage room nights, to manage room night monetization, to run their marketing campaigns, and all of the wonderful things that AI can do. On the backside of that, you're basically guaranteeing your increase of energy cost. Right, because you, you, you basically are requiring these data centers to use astronomically more energy than we've ever used before.
So as that happens, the cost of energy goes up. Now the, the kind of, the last part of that about that is, is, you know, there's been kind of rumblings of arguing an a, an ai, um, bubble. Right? Believe what you want, right? But you've got. Billions to trillions of dollars being spent on AI infrastructure that will literally only last five to seven years.
Right. Um, before it needs to be replaced or is severely degradated or whatever. I mean, and I, I, I'm not a data center expert, so I, I can't tell you all this, but everybody here has a computer, has a laptop. How long till you have to replace that laptop? 'cause it completely fails. Yes, maybe the technology is a little better, but you get the idea like these, these data centers are gonna degrade, right?
They just do their computers. Um, and so they're spending astronomically on this infrastructure. And if that bubble pops, um, what they're having to do is increase energy demand, right? So your, your costs are already going up, but a lot of that is being offset because of the data centers buying a lot of the energy. Well, the infrastructure that they're requiring, right? I can, let's use, um, meta is building this giant data center in Louisiana, the size of New York or Manhattan or whatever, right? Like they literally have to build like entire power plants that the utility company is required to build, to fund that data center or to, to, to energize that data center.
Well, that energy is going under the grid, but all of that infrastructure has to be paid for. And that's why our energy prices are going up, because we're all help helping to subsidize that, right? Well, guess what? We're just subsidizing it. So you see your energy going up. You're subsidizing these data centers, this, this energy creation for the data centers.
Well, if this data center boom does become a bubble and does pop, and we've got all these data centers that shut down and are no longer using the energy, well guess what? Your energy rates have to now go up high enough to make up for that bubble that popped because all that energy went off the grid.
Well, they still have to maintain, they still have to pay for the equipment. Any of the financing that goes into the equipment, they still have to maintain the power generation within that facility. Um, and that means somebody has to pick up the bill. And that's why people are getting frustrated and demanding that data centers not go in their backyard.
Right. Not by me because if this happens, all of the utility bills of anybody that that data center has, has created that energy for all their bills are gonna go through the roof. And everybody, everybody's kind of catching onto that. Like, wow, this is a lot of money being spent to build data center. And I'm sorry if this is more, we are definitely not in hospitality land
anymore,
Adam Mogelonsky: But, But,
it affects, it. It's, it's, uh, it's, it's an interconnected ecosystem, right?
Justin Draplin: Yeah. And I, and I'm not pretending to be an expert on data centers by, by any stretch of the imagination, but I, but I have done a bit of research. I've been to the meta center in, in Louisiana and drove around that thing. And, you know, you're talking 20 minutes to just drive around the footprint of a data center, like it's big, right?
Um, but, but those are the things that are, are. Are taking into account and gonna increase this energy demand even more. So whether AI keeps growing and keeps demanding more energy, that's gonna put your prices up. And if it pops, it'll probably go up even faster, right? There's no winning here. Energy is going up.
Adam Mogelonsky: Wow. You know, when you put it like that, it's a little bit of doom and gloom, but at the same time, uh,
Justin Draplin: I mean, so it's good for, I guess, but unfortunately.
Mm-hmm.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, it, it gives a very important context because, uh, you know, everyone in some way, shape or form has thought like, Hey, you know, I have a building. Why can't I put solar on here? And then, ah, next year, ah, next year. Meanwhile, they see their energy bills are going up tremendously over the past three years, and they don't understand why.
Well, that's the answer is, uh, there's a lot more stuff using the energy on the grid. And then if that stuff is no longer used, it's not like it's a variable load. It, uh, it meets, uh, there's utility companies that still are distributing that and they, uh, they can't absorb the cost through the AI center. So they, uh, will absorb it through everyone else.
That's, uh, quite the picture. Um, so let's talk about fortified solar for hospitality. And, um, one thing that fortified solar is able to do is offer, its, uh, its solar facilities on a lease agreement. Is that correct?
Justin Draplin: Yeah, we do. That's our primary, um, method of doing it, um, where we basically will. Calculate the energy usage and, and base any lease on energy savings. Right. Um, and then what we do is kind of, we piggyback that with, and this lease can be paid with room nights, right? So then there's a, a, a model or a, a calculation that we be done and say.
And this, you know, this is negotiated by a hotel to hotel. Um, but it would be like, this is how many room nights over this amount of time, um, to basically pay for the solar using those room nights. So you're paying your lease, but your payment is in these room nights that you're not using. Right.
Adam Mogelonsky: So that's interesting. I'm wondering if you could, uh, unpack that a little more. 'cause that's, uh. That is a unique innovation, uh, for a business model in hospitality. Um, could you walk us through, uh, what a, a little bit about how that room night trade would work in a general sense?
Justin Draplin: A little bit. Right? Um,
What we would do is if, if there's a hotel that has interest, right? First thing we do is get their electrical bill, right? What are you paying and how much electricity are you using? We need, we need that information to make sure that we can do something that's gonna be beneficial for you.
and we have to know the utility company that we're working with because they all have different rules and we have to play by their rules. Unfortunately. So we get that. Um, and we can take, uh, we may or may not need to do a site visit in advance, take pictures of what we're working with the, the parking lot.
We can also do aerial, right? So we will take that. And we will work with our team to design something that we think will work right? And we'll put solar. We, maybe it's over the whole parking lot, maybe there's some rooftop solar and some parking. Um, as a general rule, we'll put a battery on every single one, um, just because it's such a value add for the hotel.
Um, as far as just managing their load. Costs. There's just so many benefits that go with that battery. We, we would generally just include one. Um, and so we would, uh, have that designed and that would go, uh, for an approval to the hotel. And that would include this lease and these calculations of value on that energy.
Um, so once we have all of that information together, that's when the hotel would obviously need to make a decision of, It's worth it for them or not, or make adjustments. You know, maybe, hey, we don't want that many carports, we only want half as much. I know we're not gonna save as much money. Um, you know, because it's, it's directly related, right?
The more solar we put on, the more money we can save you. Um, but. There, there are gonna be hotels that use so much power, we can't offset all of the energy. Right? Um, or it might be hotels that just don't want us to, because they, they, you know, the, the, the visuals of the front of the, the hotel for whatever reason, they wanna not put any solar on these areas.
There's a lot of variables to take into account, but that would be, um, something that we could put together, present, um, to the hotel and present them, uh, you know, a monetization, um, calculation on, on what those, what it would take to get something like that done from the room night piece.
Carlos Lugo: Yeah, that, that kind of falls there. Adam, I think on the side of like really talking through or thinking through what would be a strategy for solar when it comes to like limited service, select service, a full service or resort property, how many, how many restaurants they have on site, et cetera. Right?
We'll determine how many ovens they need to use, what kind, you know. So I understand that Justin, uh, clearly and, and I think there's a case to be made, but my question will probably be. More around like, uh, you know, where does the strongest business case usually exist in hotels? Right. Um, so then, you know, is there like a particular, um, you know, preferred type of hotel that you say this is ideal for these types of hotels.
Justin Draplin: our favorite is ones with big parking lots. So, you know, our, our primary bread and butter is, um, you know, covered parking, right? So, um. That's what we like. 'cause that means that we have a bigger opportunity to use our product in the solar implementation. but the reality is it really is a benefit for anybody.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. You know, my, my ideal use case is, uh, you take a hotel with a giant parking lot that's sort of, let's say in Texas, uh, in summer where it's, uh. 120 degrees with high humidity outside and somebody has to park at the far end of the lot and gets the, uh, is leaving for a business meeting and, uh, leaving at 11:00 AM and it's, uh, they can either go under some covered parking and they can maintain their shirt from, uh, changing color from all the sweat just to make it to their car and back.
I think that the painted a good visual for the benefits of covered parking. That would be pretty amazing to see. And if you think about it, uh, you know, there's not a, not a hotel in the United States that wouldn't want that. It's just a, it's a no brainer in my mind. So, um, I'm wondering, uh, I have two people that specialize in infrastructure on the line here and one is in solar.
Uh, we talked a little bit about starting from that energy bill and then sort of going into the aesthetics of where are you gonna put the covered parking, what you wanna offset everything. Um, Justin, what other aspects, are, would you consider to be the most important for the physical installation that hotels should consider?
Justin Draplin: if they decide to install, you know, the, the, the, the little bit of the headache is how long does it take and what portions of the parking lot are we using while you're in business. Right. I get that. That's a, if you didn't think about that. You need to think about it, but we're also thinking about it on your behalf, right?
So when we do an install, we just have to make sure we plan and our and our internal team will help help with that. So when you're looking at, we're gonna, you know, let's just say we do the whole parking lot. Well, we can't just shut down your whole parking lot. You're in business and we don't wanna shut you down, right?
So we just have to be intentional with the way that we, uh, do the installation. You know, just take it piece by piece. Make sure there's plenty of parking available, um, while we're. The construction period and, and try to not be, um, you know, a hindrance to any of the clients. Um, and we'll work with the hotel on that right there.
There's ways to do that more quickly. Um, and ways to do that slowly. It just depends on the tolerance of, you know, how much of the parking lot we wanna shut down, what days of the week are available to us to do it. Um, and, you know, we can be somewhat flexible with the hotel on making sure it works for them. That answer the question or did I
Adam Mogelonsky: Completely. Yeah. And you took my next questions about not
disrupting.
Justin Draplin: hey, well I can talk. I keep talking. I'm sure I'll answer another one. Eventually.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, my, my next question was about, uh, what does it mean to be an integrated supplier?
Justin Draplin: Integrator supplier. Um, I mean, we're. We're pretty vertically integrated. Um, so along those lines, we own our manufacturing facility. So we manufacture in South Carolina world, US domestic. Manufacture domestic content, um, which allows us for additional tax credits, which is partly how we're able to do, offer this to, to hotels.
Um, and so because we have that level of manufacturing all the way to development and financing, we have that vertical stack. That most people just don't. Um, you know, most solar installers, they're getting their panels from somebody else. Um, they're getting their financing from somebody else. Um, you know, most manufacturers that are manufacturing a panel, all they do is manufacture a panel and give you a panel and you gotta figure out the other pieces.
And, um, so we're, we can be a one-stop shop to just kind of do all of that. and. When you can have your project financed, um, constructed and manufactured, um, with one company, there's a level of accountability that isn't there otherwise in the space. Um, you know, sometimes with a solar, you'll have a lot of finger pointing, right?
Um, well, this product went bad. Well, whose fault is it? Did the installer do it? Or did the, is it a manufacturer's defect? And you're gonna have the manufacturer say, Nope, the installer did it wrong, and you're gonna have the installer say, that's not my problem. That was the manufacturing product. Right? So when you're vertically integrated like we are, we basically take that off the, off the table.
Like there's no one to point the finger at but ourselves. Um, so I think there's a lot of value in that.
Carlos Lugo: I got kind of, kind of like a stackable question to this one because I'm, I live in the infrastructure stack of things for technology and, and I see, um, solar also becoming part of a technology stack, right, per se. And so how should, uh, like a hotel owner, uh, or operator. or start looking at future proving the electrical infrastructure today, right.
For solar, uh, and storage and like EV growth, right? Like is that something that we should be thinking about? Right. Because today, and I only ask that because today when I actually search any of these brands that I'm going to go stay somewhere and I'm driving there. One of the amenities that I look for to narrow down my list should be EV charging.
Right. Um. So, yeah. So I guess the question is how should we be thinking about future proving our assets for, um, for solar infrastructure?
Justin Draplin: Um, I mean, the easy thing is to just call us.
Carlos Lugo: Yeah. Great answer. Yeah.
Justin Draplin: Um, no, the, these are all good questions. Um, they're important to think about, especially when you're in a service industry, right? Um, you're all about guest experience. Um, if you have a terrible guest experience, they're not coming back. And so I think, um. Being able to provide a better guest experience and, and solar and battery and car charging is all part of that, right?
Um, you know, if you wanna offer car charging. Great. It's very easy to do and it doesn't cost you anything because they're using the energy that we're generating, um, that ultimately is gonna be paid for with unused room nights that you're not using anyway. Um, there's a lot of ways that you can stack those benefits.
Um, and I, I think there's a huge, the, the first to market, there's a huge marketing value to that, right? So if you are, um, one of the first hotels that has solar covered parking. I think there's value both from a marketing as far as saying, Hey, we're a renewable company, but also hey, you know, we're, we're in, uh, you know, someplace that gets a lot of rain, whatever, we're in Seattle, right?
And, uh, you don't wanna get soaked. We're one of the first hotels with covered parking. Um, you know, there's a lot of cars that, you know, there. Different ways. You cover parking, there's parking structures and stuff like that. It's just all part of the story. There's all these little different ways. Car charging, right?
You can be, Hey, we're the first ones in, in the area that have car charging. You can car charge your car overnight while you're staying with us. You know, there's, there's little marketing pieces and little nuggets to that to get more people in, um, before everybody else is doing it. So I think there's, there's immediate value from a marketing standpoint.
There's long-term value from, so there's, there's customer acquisition value. Um, of, of doing solar with us in particular. Um, and then there's a customer retention value, um, of doing solar. So when you start to look at the customer experience and the customer life cycle, like, you know, we, we help with all of that.
And by the way, you just made more money too, right? So you're making money on top of money. Not that everything's back to money, but let's face it, we all run a business. We have to make business decisions. Um, and part of that making a good business decision is the customer experience, but ultimately that customer experience is what's driving profitability of the business.
So it does all come back to that we're in a business and if anybody listening to this is not in their hotel to make money, call me. I will gladly take over ownership of your hotel.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. Well I loved how you threw in the note there about, um, ev charging stations as another way to, uh. To, I guess, offer service to guests who are gonna be coming with EV cars and, uh, where that power is gonna be coming from in terms of the costs. And, uh, my question here is, we've talked about solar, we've talked about batteries, we've talked about now ev, car charging units.
How does solar fit actually fit into the, the electric electricity grid?
Justin Draplin: as a general rule, we would intend to interconnect. All of the solar with the local utility company. So we basically run, run electrical wires to the, to the meter. Right. And um, you know, it was mentioned earlier in the call, I think it was Carlos mentioned it, um, a bi-directional meter. Right. So what happens is, um, what we'd have a battery, which we fill up and use to manage power and all that kind of stuff.
But the reality is you only get sun, you know. Well, I, I'm from Michigan. Sometimes you don't get sun, um, but it's not all day, right? You get, you know, five, six hours of good sunlight, right? Well, you still wanna power for the whole, whole period. So as a general rule, what you would do is you'd put more solar on, um, and you need to bank it, right?
You either need a lot of battery or you interconnect it with the grid. And, and with a bi-directional meter, the power company will actually take that energy for you and basically store it on your behalf. And so you push it to them, they take it, and then depending on your jurisdiction, they give it back.
They. Right. Um, there are ways to actually turn that into a profit center. There are different utilities that actually charge you a little bit of money to do it. It gets, it gets a little more complicated, but, um, as a general rule, we would do both. We would do battery and interconnection with the grid. The utility companies who manages where that power comes, goes from there, right. They're not like they don't have a battery that your energy is, is being used at, they're basically taking your excess energy and giving it immediately to somebody else. Right. Um, because they need it in this area. Right. Um, so when you pull, you're pulling energy that was generated from somewhere else, right?
Like it's not. Apples to apples, you're not pulling the same energy that you generated, but it's all energy, right? Um, but that's how they manage their grid. And that's where having the battery, having solar, you know, that's where you can start to squeeze some extra profit out of the utility company. Um, in some of these areas, when they charge more during the day, less at night, you can manage that with software.
You know, talking about technology. There's software that manages that battery and manages your energy flow to maximize the. Savings, um, of that energy.
Adam Mogelonsky: You're, you're making it very hard not to want to install solar. Um, I guess the final question on my part is, can you talk about the maintenance on solar? You talked about, uh, glass versus steel as well as, uh, some of the cells that can, um, lose their capacity over time. What's the general ma maintenance process for a solar facility?
Justin Draplin: Yeah. Um, you know, there, there isn't a ton. Um, but as a general rule, panels do need to be cleaned. Um. If you've ever seen like a, a steel parking structure that doesn't get clean, it collects dust. Um, and so even if it rains, like it doesn't matter, like it's rain doesn't get off everything, it just doesn't, I don't care how much it rains.
Um, so those need to be cleaned occasionally. Um, you know, varies based on where you're at. Um, you know, maybe every six months might be enough. And, and the reality is it's not that they have to be. Um, 'cause really, if you don't. There's nothing wrong with that. It just reduces the efficiency. So you're just generating less energy, so you're gonna wanna clean them regularly, and then you, you just need to make sure the electrical system's working, the inverters working Now, uh, on the inverters, the inverters are what takes the solar energy, um, and uses it and inverts it to a different kind of energy that you use, right?
You, you generally aren't using the energy directly from. The sun. It has to be, you got ac dc there's like this, it's, oh, electricity is really quite annoying actually. Um, so you, you have this inverter and that inverter that manages that power, um, whether it's from the sun or from the battery to you to being used, um, is generally tied in with wifi.
Where like our company will monitor, um, how that inverter is doing and how the system is doing. So if there is an issue, um, we get notified. And depending on what that issue is, we may have to send a crew out, may just have to reset the inverter or you know, whatever. Um, but so there's, there's, there's kind of.
Maintenance, maintenance, maintenance. And then there's kind of repair maintenance. Um, and so as a general rule, the structure that we set up, we just take, we just take over all of that. So the hotel doesn't have to worry about that. Um, we'll monitor the site, um, make sure it stays up, make sure it stays clean, generating the right amount of minimum energy.
Um, replace panels if needed, if there is a defect. you know, and the, and the goal being that the hotel never even notices that. Other than we notified them, Hey, we're gonna be out here this day to replace two panels, or, you know, reset an inverter. Um, you know, the goal is they would never notice that there was ever even a problem.
Right.
Adam Mogelonsky: No, I think that's, uh, a great way to cap off here is it's, it is a really a full end-to-end, uh, solar installation management process that you're handling, um, to make it as easy as possible for hotels. So you can add value through. Um. Increased energy savings, supplying power back to the grid, being able to have EV stations, uh, or the marketing angle of giving cover for people in sun or rain.
And, um, with all that, uh, said, um, is there anything else important that we haven't touched on that you'd like to cover, Justin?
Justin Draplin: Probably, there's probably a whole lot that I could talk about, but, um, but it's a very, you know, the reality is, um. You know, what we do isn't rocket surgery. Um, but it's a lot easier when you're doing it all day, every day. So, um, and then, and then it's very customized to the site, so. Um, you know, we have a, a team that we can schedule time, talk through it, answer questions.
We're gonna be actually launching some of our own webinars where we can just invite hotel or owners with kind of our own open q and a with directly people that would be interested. Right? Because that's the thing is everybody has their own questions. Um, and there's a nearly infinite number of questions that can be asked.
Um, some of them are seem crazy and. But there's still a question and I'll still answer them. So, um, we, we definitely wanna have that opportunity for people to, um, ask their questions, alleviate their concerns. 'cause the ultimate goal is we want, um, the hotel owners that work with us to be successful. And part of that is, um, helping you make more money.
Um, but also, you know, I'm a business owner like relieving anxiety, stress. Um, so if there's questions that need to be answered because of those things, because of what you heard about solar or a bad experience or something you saw on TV or tax credits expiring or like, there's a lot to unpack based on per people's personal experience.
So we just need an opportunity for the discussion. And so if there are a bunch of questions, which I'm sure there are, we just have to have that conversation.
Adam Mogelonsky: Carlos, anything else to add before we close out?
Carlos Lugo: I got one question for us here in the room and, and if we all had a magic ball today. Um, and we could look into the future, or let's say five, 10 years from now, at what point does solar actually become as essential to an asset in the hotel space, like a fiber backbone or maybe a redundant internet circuit, right?
Kind of like a lifeline of the property.
Justin Draplin: honestly, I think it already is. It just hasn't been realized yet. Um. if the hotel owners actually look at their bill and look at how much they're spending on energy, whether or not they have rooms leased, what's gonna happen? The next pandemic, um, where you're shut down for potentially three months, um, and you still have that $10,000 a month electrical bill.
Um, or who knows longer the, the next depression, the next, the next big downturn that really destroys the hospitality industry for three to five years, right? It's gonna happen. It's just when we don't know. Um, so I think the need for that lifeline is already there. It's just, you know, you, you haven't realized it yet.
It is, you know, and I'm biased, right? I'm trying to sell solar. I get that. Um, but I also believe that quite frankly, I wouldn't say it if I, if I didn't think that there was truth to it. So, um, that would be my standpoint.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. I, I was just gonna add the, the joke that, uh, you know, we're, we're all still, uh, waiting on, uh, on Fusion power to come out, but, uh, you know, they keep making progress, but it's, it's still, it's still, it's still only 20 years away,
Carlos Lugo: I mean, I walk away from this. I mean, this is a good conversation to be have with owners, but. you know, the conversation is really geared towards, they need to understand that solar supports, you know, not only GOP margin protections, but storm and, and outage resilience, right. And long-term asset value.
'cause there is a value out here brand and, and, and the brand and the lender expectations are much clearer and then, then actually sets the asset for future AI driven systems. Right? And so, because without power, you can't really feed the AI engines, uh, or anything that you got in your ecosystem, collecting that information because it needs to, uh, actually learn real time, um, and, and spit back out information on, on, on real time.
And so, yeah, I, I really appreciated, uh, Justin, you gave us some really good information here and, uh, you know, any way, shape or form, uh, that we can help in any, uh, way we, we would love to, uh, partner up.
Justin Draplin: Sounds good. Appreciate it.
Adam Mogelonsky: Justin, thank you so much for your time. Really, uh, a masterclass education in, uh, in solar, both how it works and the benefits.
Justin Draplin: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
Adam Mogelonsky: Thanks.