(country music) - [Dave] Here at this farmhouse, we have got so much going on. We've got five kids, a blueberry farm, construction business. We've got more animals, I think, than I can count. - [Jenny] Never enough. - "Never enough," in Jenny Marrs' opinion. It's a mess, but it's a beautiful mess, and it's ours. (country music continues) (birds chirping) - Right, so what are we doing? - Brad and Tim from Barron. - Yeah? - Remember I worked with them on the sustainability series? - Yes. - So they have graciously agreed to help me figure out solar and battery backup. - Yeah, it's amazing. - Yeah. They are actually right there. Hello, hello, hello. - [Brad] What's going on? - You made it. - We're in Arkansas, baby. - Welcome to Arkansas. - Hi, I'm Brad. - Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you. - Tim. We've talked on the phone. - [Tim] We have. - It's nice to finally meet you. I feel like I've been a long lost pen pal with you. What's up, man? - I think we need a hug. - [Jenny] I know, I was like, wow. - We've met before. - I met Brad about a year ago. We did a sustainability series with Daikin. Talking about the solar that Barron was putting up on houses in a climate that you would not think solar would be optimal. After talking with Brad, came home, and I was just blown away by what I saw and what I experienced. And so, as a contractor, the next logical step for me, when I see something that I really love, is to find someone that is doing it and doing it well. - I feel like Dave just likes the idea of solar because he doesn't have to yell at the kids anymore about changing the thermostat. But I will say I am very adamant about turning the light out when you leave a room. So the kids know like that is a big deal, but they don't really know why. Like, we just say, "Turn the light out, it costs money." Where I think this is a chance for us to have conversations about why, you know, not does this just cost money, but it actually is draining resources from our earth. And so now we have this other option. - [Brad] You guys ready for it? - [Dave] We are ready. - We've got solar coming for you. We've designed a battery backup system for you. And we're going to be able to make sure that you guys have your power taken care of. - [Jenny] Awesome. - So you're going to produce all your own electricity. And if your power goes out, I know you guys get storms down here. - Yes. - Wind, all that kind of stuff, we're going to make sure that you're taken care of when the block goes dark. So you're going to be the house everyone's coming to. - All right. - When power goes out. Good to see you again. - Let's get going. - Nice to meet you, Jenny. - Yes, welcome to Arkansas. - Yeah, you got it. - Nice to meet you. - Let's go get after it. - All right. All right. ? Arkansas, Arkansas ? ? You knew I'd sing this song ya, ya ? I'm just kidding. (laughs) The mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems of a house consume up to 80% of the energy in a home. At Barron, one of our original mottos when it came to solar was heating and cooling systems powered by the sun. We had a vision that if we could take an HVAC system that was incredibly inefficient, and convert it to a really efficient system, and then couple that with solar, we could actually reduce the size of the solar array because the two of those things work hand in hand. And the Marrs family wanted to be able to work with us to do that. I brought in Tim West, one of our awesome solar design experts, to be able to help them put together a design. Tim's a great man, a very brilliant designer, and I couldn't think of anyone better to bring down to Arkansas to help Dave and Jenny go solar. - Welcome to our home. - All right. - Man, what a lovely, awesome spot. - This is incredible. - Jenny, you sit here. - Love this. - By the way, just to let you know, got the alert, good news, the Silfab panels and the Franklin batteries are here. - Sweet. - So I'm going to go check on that and let you talk to Tim. This man's going to take care of you guys. - You're going to leave him with us. - I know, I'm going to leave him with you, but I'm going to go check on that stuff, and I'll be back. - Okay, thanks. - So as we kind of went back and forth, we were kind of talking. Like, you have these massive barn garage shops. - Three times the size of our house. Yes. Thank you for - - Can you just say- - Reminding us. - You have a normal-sized barn? - No. Seeing it overhead like this. - You would've needed like four panels for the house, that's it. - Literally killing me here. - I knew how ridiculous the barn was, but that's going to power not only our house, which we don't need that much, but this barn. - It's going to power the barn. - Really? - Yeah, so the cool thing is we had this big, beautiful, southern-facing section open, right, to work with. Is that- - And we have this big, beautiful barn to work with. - Oh, my gosh. - [Tim] Hey, we got a ton of solar that's going to be awesome for your house. - Yeah. - You don't have to look at it. But the battery and the stuff that is visible actually looks pretty sweet. - It looks real sweet. I want to work in this process. Let's do it. - All right. - All right. Great. Let's do it. - Let's go, let's go. - [Dave] Yee-haw. (country music) - Stepping into this, with our home base being up in the Pacific Northwest, and we're putting together a project that's going to be done in Arkansas. With the technology that we utilize for design, we were able to, over the course of months, put this together. So we came up with a plan to put 52 430-watt panels with a 15-kilowatt-hour battery. In case of an outage, the things that were most important to them would be backed up, and that's in the home. - [Brad] When Dave asked Tim, "What type of system would you put on your house?" Tim said, "Silfab panels and a Franklin battery backup system." And Dave said, "Sounds like we're doing those." - I'm pumped. I'm pumped. I'm ready. - [Brad] Right, Dave, Tim, come on over, guys. - [Dave] Hey. - Dave, I want you to meet Devan with Silfab. - Devan, you must be an all right guy if my dog's sitting next to you. - Hey, we're just getting along well. - We got the panels here. - [Dave] This is it? - They've arrived. - [Devan] This is it. - So I have 52 of these going up on my roof? - [Devan] That you do. - Indeed. - We build these panels up in Washington State. 20 miles from Barron. - [Devan] Yeah, exactly. Right down the street. - We literally have done a tour of the facility and watched these things get made. - Love that. - You're getting the 430 prime model. It's actually one of the highest efficiency panels on the whole market. We have a 30-year warranty. It'll still be operating at over 90%. - When I'm long gone, my kids still be getting something out of these panels. - [Devan] That's true. - Okay, so is it difficult to hook it all up? - I'd say, you know, you want someone that knows what they're doing. - Right. - You wouldn't want to get on the roof and do it yourself. - Dave might. - [Dave] Put the racking and all that. I'm going to. Once we get the racking and all that- - It's pretty much just lay them down, plug them in. - Just have to wire it up? - It's pretty straightforward. - Actually, should we flip the panel? Let's take a look at that. - Yeah, let's have a look at it. - [Dave] Oh, there's literally a plugin. - Literally, you take this, you plug it into the inverter or the micro and- - Male, female. - Hook it up. - I can't even screw that one up. - We call it slapping glass. - Slapping glass. - There we go. - Let's get some racking so we can slap some glass. - Let's go. - Man, I appreciate this. - Absolutely, Dave. Thanks so much. - Appreciate it. - Go have fun up on that roof. - Oh yeah. Oh, yeah. (country music) - [Tim] We've got that bottom row in, and once we were dialed, it just started falling in place. I'm going to get the two end clamps. - Tim was like, "Hey, we need this, this, this, this, this." - Move them down, zip tie up. - [Dave] Man, it was like putting a puzzle together. - Push your panel all the way in. - Good? - Yep. (drill whirring) - [Dave] I'm so proud of what we have been able to do in such a short period of time, and it's all thanks to Barron. How long has Barron been around? - 54 years now. - So Brad is what, fourth generation, third? - Fourth generation involved. Grandpa and great-grandpa got things started back in the '70s. - When my dad called me in the summer of 2016 and said, "Brad, do you want to join the family business?" I asked of him, "Can we look at building a clean energy division within the company?" And since that point, Barron has installed over 600 solar systems all across Northwest Washington. - [Dave] Tim, we're about there. - [Tim] We're almost there, home stretch. (country music) - [Tim] Solar's done. And so we're shifting gears onto our battery. - Yeah. You guys have the biggest, baddest battery on the market. So here we are. Let's go check it out. - [Brandon] All right, let's go. - All right, so I figured here that if we have, you know, a tractor, let's get it as close as we possibly can because Tim was telling me, what's the weight on this guy? - [Brandon] It's 360 pounds. But, if you want, I'm starting these personal training sessions through Franklin and I can help you out, and we can do it together. - Is that a requirement to work at Franklin? Oh, yeah, you have like 24-inch pythons. You're good, let's go, let's go. We ready to get going here? - [Brandon] Let's do it. - We're going to try it. Oh, my gosh. - [Tim] This is the Franklin whole home system, which was an aGate, which is the whole controlling mechanism, with a 15-kilowatt-hour battery. The cool thing is we can add additional batteries to that in the future. And the aGate has flexibility to integrate in a backup generator, a future EV. They have the ability with smart management modules, to be able to control things from a customer-facing app. This is what Franklin does. They are a battery company. They want to be the best in the industry at what they provide. - Okay, so we are hung. - It didn't fall off the wall. - [Dave] I mean, that's always a win, if it doesn't fall off the wall. - Hey, look at that. - It looks sweet. I feel like I got a Lambo sitting on the side of the barn now. (bright music) - So this becomes the main hub for everything. - Okay. - Right? So we're going to pop this open, and we have our power. - Basically I'm seeing just, it looks like a foreign language to me right now. - Right. Basically, we have an input for our solar. We have an input for our battery. But then there's smart circuit module, generator module. These are add-ons that just make this even better. - You've got a certain amount of juice that you get to delegate where it goes. So having like a variable-speed motor, having like fit systems like that, it just helps increase what else I can do. - [Tim] Absolutely. - Okay. - Right. So, options, lots of options. - And the greatest thing about this, it looks so pretty. - [Tim] Awesome. - It looks so nice. Jenny's not going to curse me when she comes out and sees the batteries, so I'm going to run and grab her. - Sounds good. - I'll be right back. I want to show you how excited I am. (Tim laughs) You can thank me for building this big, beautiful barn because now there's tons of roof space that we put 52 solar panels on. And so we're generating electricity that we can then store. And once we cap this guy off, we're sending it back to the grid and cutting that bill down, babe, that's what I do for you. Cutting that bill down. Cutting that bill down. - This was for you. I think there was something about it was a Mother's Day gift. (Jenny laughs) - And next Mother's Day, you're going to have another- - Another battery. - Battery right next door. - All right, you guys carry on. It was awesome. Thank you. - See ya. - Thank you. - [Brad] Solar is actually a lot more accessible than many people think. You can have a conversation that starts really simply, what is your electrical usage in your home? What type of roof do you have? What direction does it face? What are your goals? Are you trying to make sure you cover all of your electrical bill? Do you want to make sure that when the power goes out, you have lights? These type of questions happen in a discovery call. And from there, within a matter of days, we can design a system that's custom tailored to your home. And then, by partnering with local contractors in the areas that homeowners live all across the US, we can help them go green and achieve their clean energy goals. And we're really excited about that vision for the future. Well, Dave and Jenny, we've reached the end of your solar journey at your house. - [Jenny] Yay! - I've got an app that is showing me all the energy and money that I'm saving. - Have you been checking that app? - As a dad, you know, I'm the dad with like, "Did someone turn up the thermostat one degree?" - Oh, it drives me nuts. - And you know what? It's okay. We're getting full sun right now. We're good. - We're allowed, yes. Well, and for me, as a mom, I love knowing that we're doing something that is making our lives better, and it's not hurting our earth for our kids and for their kids and their kids. - On behalf of Tim and I and the Solar by Barron team, just thank you so much for inviting us into your house, your life. - Absolutely. - Yeah. Thank you, guys. Tim, you got to see the chaos around here. - Oh, yeah. - It's not a dull moment. - Not a dull moment. (everyone laughing) (bright music)
