A few years ago, mattress company Casper’s co-founders Philip Krim and Jeff Chapin were banging their heads against the wall. Krim was in Long Island in New York while Chapin was in Wyoming. The weather in New York can be pretty different from that in Wyoming, but when bad storms roll through, they both suffer power outages.
“I spent most of COVID out on Long Island, where the power lines are old,” Krim told TechCrunch+. “They would go down through bad storms. I had solar, and my wife’s like, ‘We have solar, why do we lose power?’ I’m like, ‘Well, we don’t have a battery.’ I tried to add a battery. I struck out with three different electricians. I called the people who installed our solar; they said we would not roll trucks just for a battery,” he said.
“And then I called Jeff because he’s smart and honest. I’m like, ‘How do I do this?’ He was like, ‘It’s really frickin’ hard.’”
Chapin’s experience hadn’t been much better. After moving to Wyoming, he grew concerned that his home would be without heat if, during a blizzard, the nearby cottonwood trees started shedding limbs onto the power lines. “That’s how they survive in a windy climate: They drop branches,” he said.
His neighbor was a solar installer, so the process should have been easier than it had been for Krim. But his neighbor’s company would only install batteries alongside solar panels, and Chapin’s roof was too complex and shaded to work for solar.
After the two spoke, they knew they were onto something.
“Given my background,” said Chapin, a former IDEO designer, “when you run into a consumer experience that is near impossible to navigate through, it generally means there’s a new process or system that can be designed. And there’s probably a business opportunity there.”
The pair eventually found Vinnie Campo, who had also been frustrated with power reliability at his home in Austin, particularly during the widespread outages in February 2021, which left over 240 people dead.
“That trend is happening all across the country: You’re seeing rising electric rates and more frequent power outages,” Campo said.
Realizing they all shared the same experiences in different parts of the country, the trio founded a company to help homeowners install backup batteries. Haven Energy launched Tuesday with $4.2 million in seed funding led by Lerer Hippeau and Giant Ventures, with participation from Quantum Innovation Fund and Raven One Ventures, TechCrunch+ has exclusively learned.
Haven seeks to become a “turnkey service for anyone who wants to have backup power,” said Campo, the startup’s CEO. The company begins by asking homeowners for a range of information about their house, power usage and what they hope to use the battery for (e.g., whole-home backup or select appliances and electronics). They then recommend a battery and have a specialist vet the design. Once that’s approved, Haven handles permitting and assigns an electrician with the necessary expertise to install it.
After the battery is installed, it’s connected to Haven’s cloud, which helps manage its use. In California, where the company is launching, it’ll optimize charging and discharging so the battery charges when tariffs are low and discharges when they peak. Campo estimates that homeowners operating the battery in such a way will save around $500 to $1,000 annually. “We’re also hoping to add the ability to plug it into our virtual power plant to earn additional revenue from there,” he added, though the specifics of that will depend on state regulators.
“Our goal is to bring down the cost of ownership of batteries for consumers as quickly as we can,” said Krim, who’s serving as an adviser. “And part of that will be creative financing structures that we hope to bring to market over time, also helping with all of the government incentives: federal, state and local. The platform is designed to streamline all of that.”
Haven is another entry in a growing field of B2B2C companies hoping to help consumers navigate the complex world of home electrification and the byzantine regulations and incentives that accompany it.
“We feel like home battery technology is headed down a path of commoditization. What’s lacking in the home electrification world is the service side,” said Chapin, the company’s chief product officer.
Their timing couldn’t be better. “Where we got super lucky was we started working on the idea before the Inflation Reduction Act,” Krim said. “When it passed, we’re like, ‘Alright, this is gonna be supercharged. We better run fast.’”
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