Lunar Energy Founder and CEO Kunal Girotra

07/27/23 • 67 min

From induction cooktops and heat pumps to the rooftop solar needed to power it all and the batteries to store excess energy for use during blackouts, we’ve had incredible success building the tools we need to decarbonize our homes. But to the regular consumer, the universe of electrified solutions can be overwhelming. What we need is a home battery system and an integrated ecosystem of all electric products to make it easier than ever for homes to switch from gas to electricity, alongside software solutions to help manage residential energy production, storage, and usage. And that’s exactly what this month’s Watt It Takes guest, Kunal Girotra, Founder and CEO of Lunar Energy, is building.

Lunar emerged from stealth last year with $300M in funding from SK Group and Sunrun, now has 250 employees, and publicly unveiled their integrated residential energy product last week.

Emily sat down with Kunal to learn about how they're building the future of residential electrification, his journey from growing up in India to leading energy at Tesla, and the story behind the growth of Lunar Energy.

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To hear more stories of founders building our carbon-free future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review on Apple podcasts.

Lunar emerged from stealth last year with $300M in funding from SK Group and Sunrun, now has 250 employees, and publicly unveiled their integrated residential energy product last week.

Watt It Takes is brought to you by Shell Ventures and SPAN.

To hear more stories of founders building our carbon-free future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review on Apple podcasts.

Previous Episode

Lilac Solutions Founder and CEO Dave Snydacker

If the world is going to make the switch from fossil fuels to clean energy, we’re going to need lots of energy storage, and a lot of lithium. The global transition to clean energy is expected to trigger a 40-fold increase in the demand for lithium by 2040.

Lithium is in high demand, but current methods for lithium extraction make it difficult and expensive to source. Conventional extraction methods take up lots of land, use lots of water and energy, and often have devastating environmental impacts.

Traditional lithium extraction uses massive evaporation ponds, where lithium-rich-brine, (meaning saline groundwater that is rich in lithium) is pumped to the surface and evaporated until it can be processed and extracted.

These projects often require as much as 10,000 acres of land, and only recover 40% of the lithium available in the brine.

To make the lithium ion batteries we need to power our electrified world, and more specifically to power the electrification of transportation, we’ll need to source lithium in a way that doesn’t harm the environment, yields tons of high purity lithium concentrate, and uses as little land as possible. And that’s exactly what this month’s Watt It Takes guest, Dave Syndacker, Founder and CEO of Lilac Solutions, is building.

Lilac Solutions created superior ion exchange beads using ceramic materials that absorb lithium from brine. Lithium rich brine is pumped into a vessel containing the ion exchange beads, which absorb the lithium. Then, hydrochloric or sulfuric acid is used to flush out the lithium to produce lithium chloride or sulfate. Those intermediate forms of lithium are then converted to lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide which get used to make batteries.

Emily spoke to Dave about his journey to becoming a founder, from his childhood on the beach in Rhode Island, to leading seminars about battery technology at Northwestern where a few provocative questions from fellow students put Dave on the path to create Lilac.

Watt It Takes is brought to you by Shell Ventures and SPAN.

To hear more stories of founders building our carbon-free future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review on Apple podcasts.

Next Episode

Petra Co-Founder and CEO Kim Abrams

Climate change-fuelled natural disasters and vulnerable transmission infrastructure have defined some of the worst natural disasters of the past decade, including the 2020 wildfires in California. It’s clearer than ever that in high-risk areas, above-ground transmission lines need to be dug underground to protect communities from fires and to ensure their access to electricity in the face of increasing natural disasters. And that’s exactly why this month’s Watt It Takes guest, Kim Abrams, founder and CEO of Petra, is building a trenchless digging platform to make undergrounding utilities easier and more cost-effective.

Today, Petra has 72 employees across multiple continents, has raised $45M, and is winning contracts to underground transmission in the US and Colombia.

Guest host Lara Pierpoint sat down with Kim to learn how they're enabling utility undergrounding, more about their trenchless technology making it all possible, and the story behind how she founded Petra.

Watt It Takes is brought to you by SPAN.

To hear more stories of founders building our carbon-free future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review on Apple podcasts.