Navajo Power Home

There are 15,000 homes without access to electricity on the Navajo Nation. These homes currently spend $150-450/mo to power their homes with gas generators. This is costly and inconvenient and only an interim power solution. 

The energy crisis on the Navajo Nation has been a problem for over a century. Many Navajo households cannot get connected to Navajo's local grid, NTUA, for bureaucratic reasons: they don't have the right paperwork, they don't have the titles to their home site leases, the wait is too long... even when households can get connected, they find financial barriers: sometimes NTUA wants to charge the homeowner $5,000 to connect. 

Households without access to electricity are often multi-generational families-- households with up to 7 people living in them. Other times, they are single-parent households or elderly individuals living on fixed incomes and struggling to continue to buy gas for their generators. This question of "cost" has gotten even more severe in the past year as gas prices have continued to rise. 15,000 homes without power on the Navajo Nation amounts to at least 100,000 individuals who are growing up and/or living day to day without basic resources to thrive. 

We provide solar as a service. Customers sign up for a Plan that best fits their energy needs (consumption & price point). Customers pay a fixed monthly rate and we provide all maintenance and service. This is an ongoing contract-- we essentially become their electricity provider. Anytime a customer has an issue that they report, we have to come out and fix it-- free of charge. 

In order to do this, we install off-grid standalone solar home systems (lithium ion battery based) in the customer's home. The PV solar array is ground-mounted. Each one of our systems features a Smart Meter that has 3 primary benefits: 

1. It provides the customer with information about their consumption and systems status

2. It facilitates billing for the customer. It permits flexible, "pay as you go" like billing experiences, and reminds the customer when they need to make a payment

3. It protects the system for misuse and overuse, thus creating a more user-friendly experience for the customer and extending system lifetime care. We are not expecting people do to the labor of being their own electricians and engineers. We want the experience to be simple and friendly for them. 

The beneficiary is the household/family that is using Navajo Power Home’s solar electricity service in their home. This can be a household composed of anywhere between 2-7 members-- most commonly 1-2 adults and 2-3 children (under age 18). The benefit received is access to high-quality electricity, including all maintenance and servicing required, creating a hassle-free experience. The solar electricity service is a renewable form of energy, reducing immediate noise pollution from being able to turn off generators, and reducing air and environmental pollution by no longer having to use fuel to power the generator. Access to quality electricity has impacts on quality of life, availability in productive hours of the day, and safety. Additionally, there are savings and convenience benefits. Households who switch from generator power to a Navajo Power Home solar service plan can reduce their expenses by up to 70% due to the fact that they no longer have to purchase fuel for their generators. Prior to receiving our service, households pay around $275/mo on gas to turn their generator on 5 hours per day. With us, they pay $160/mo for 24/7 electricity access. 

Households will SAVE money every month when they contract a Navajo Power Home solar service, permitting new financial freedom, allowing a household to make important, relevant financial decisions with newly freed-up cash, or even just small important purchases that make a difference in comforts or daily life. 

This is a power solution designed first and exclusively for an indigenous market. It’s not a handout or pro-bono project-based solution for the Navajo market... it’s not a cool piece of lighting gear for camping that has been “donated” to Navajos without power...it’s not a generator, which is the average American's “emergency” power solution… This is a solution designed exclusively with the Navajo customer in mind. This is a solution and a company that prioritizes Native well-being, Native voices, and the Native market, rather than just having the Native market as an “afterthought” or a “charity case”. The energy crisis on the Navajo Nation has been an afterthought for centuries now-- we want future generations to grow up knowing that there was a team and a company out there whose sole purpose was to solve a solution that was unique to their experience. This kind of prioritization and attention leads to empowerment, respect, and a changing of mindset-- people think of themselves as customers, not beneficiaries, and customers have the right to demand a working and quality solution. This shift in mindset will translate to other aspects of life. 

Our solution currently benefits Navajo and Hopi communities. We target households without access to quality electricity. We are a traditional "business to customer" based model, so we are constantly engaging our customers directly from the origination (sign-up phase) through the installation phase and through the servicing phase. Each time a customer has an issue or question, they contact us through our Customer Support line and we talk to them over the phone or we send someone out in person. 

We have a Navajo preference hiring policy (this could extend by becoming a Native preference hiring policy when we move into other indigenous communities)-- currently, 100% of our team is Navajo and everyone speaks Diné either conversationally or fluently. Navajo Power Home's General Manager is Jerry Williams, Navajo, who spent his career working at the Navajo Generating Station (Salt River Project) and then was a Chapter House leader in LeChee. 

Our Board is made up of three members who represent the JV founders of Navajo Power Home-- Morgan Babbs (white, non-Native), Manuel Wiechers (white Mexican), and Brett Isaac (enrolled member, Navajo Nation). Our Board observer is Garry McBerryhill (enrolled member, Muskogee Creek Nation) of Raven Indigenous Capital Partners. 

Lastly, we are in the process of transitioning to a cooperative governance structure, where we will create a customer ownership class. Along with this, we will create a Customer Advisory Board that will meet quarterly and make recommendations for governance. 

The entire team at Navajo Power Home is Navajo-- born and raised on the Navajo Nation and conversational or fluent in Diné. Our General Manager, Jerry, worked at the Navajo Generating Station (Salt River Project) for his whole career, generating electricity for Phoenix, AZ. Now, transitioning into Navajo Power Home, Jerry gets to focus on energy solutions right here in his own community. The rest of the team consists of installers, electricians, technicians, and a Customer Success Coordinator.  

The Navajo Power Home Board is a mix of Navajo and non-Navajo, but the 3 individuals have combined 30 years of experience developing and deploying solar solutions for marginalized communities. The Chairman of our Board, Brett Isaac, is a member of the Navajo Nation and has worked with local chapters in the Nation to execute on numerous community development initiatives. Brett collaborated with the Navajo Community of Shonto in the development of Community Owned enterprises leading to the creation of a solar company on the Nation called Shonto Energy. Brett’s former company deployed over 200 off-grid solar systems to serve households without grid electricity. Brett is currently a Founder and managing director of Navajo Power, one of Navajo Power Home's owners, and a utility-scale solar developer for tribal lands. 

Our lead investor is Raven Indigenous Capital Partners, a Native-founded and focused venture capital firm that seeks to generate impact for indigenous communities for 3 generations forward. 

1) Our team needs more access to resources, mentors, and role models aside from our Board. I want our team to feel proud and to understand that they are participating alongside other innovative Indigenous led/focused ventures. Ideally, I want Jerry (our GM) to participate in the program (not me, Morgan). The only reason Jerry isn't doing this application is because he just started in Feburary. 

2) One of our challenges is the talent gap we face and we worry about that as we grow and become more complex. We are hoping that participation in Solve will help us source talent for our mid-management and high-management roles. 

3) We'd like continued support navigating federal funding and/or tribal-focused resources that will help us grow our solution and provide subsidized services to our low-income customer base. We think our org and model is unique: we have a tried and true solution and we are selling it directly to customers (we're not waiting on federal funds, we're not dependent on donations; we're focusing on deploying and doing it NOW). We want to get into circles and share our knowledge and help shift policy / thinking around energy transition in Indigenous communities 

Morgan is a Board Member and co-founder of Navajo Power Home. She works directly with Jerry Williams, Navajo Power Home's General Manager, to support him with strategy, finance, governance, and growth. Morgan has 10 years of experience launching and operating solar-service companies in off-grid markets (in Mexico, Nicaragua, Colombia, and Navajo Nation). Morgan sourced the first 100 customers for Navajo Power Home. HOWEVER, it is likely (and more beneficial from a Human Capital standpoint) that Jerry would participate as the Solver-- Jerry is a member of the Navajo Nation and started at Navajo Power Home in February 2023. 

We measure the following KPIs: 

- Active Services (Customers who contract our service)

- Use Rate (Days used over total days with the service)

- EBIDTA

- Revenue

- Churn (how many customers cancel the service)

- Operating Cost per Customer

- Cost of Customer Acquisition

- Cost of Installation

- Average Revenue per Unit (per month)

- Household Size

- Previous Energy Source

- Previous Energy Expenses

- Gender Breakdown, team

- Customers that Speak Diné (or other indigenous language)

- Customers on Fixed Income

- Customers on Disability Benefits

- Elderly Customers

- Off-grid solar home systems sized 1.6kWh and larger with lithium-ion battery banks

- Proprietary Smart Meter that provides visibility into system status and consumption, permits flexible billing/payments, and protects the system from overuse or misuse. 

We have a Navajo Preference Hiring policy. This can change to become a Native Preference Hiring policy once we work on other tribal lands. 

Our full team is Navajo. Two of them are formerly incarcerated. 

Our Board is one white man (Mexico), one Navajo man, and one white woman. 

In our B2C line, Our customers pay a month rate for use of the service. In terms of unit economics, each service reaches cash flow positive in 4 years and has an IRR of 25%. 

In general, we reach EBITDA positive at approximately 1,400 Active Services will happen by 2025). However, this can be significantly catalyzed (both in terms of time for break even and return) if we bring in funding that subsidized our OPX and CPX costs (B2B or B2G), also allowing us to reduce the monthly rate paid by the customer.

We have received 2.4M USD in funding to date in a mix of grants, promissory notes, and traditional loans.