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Select Quotes From This Episode:
“I am a believer that when you are building critical infrastructure, software and hardware are developed together, you have a much better control of how that hardware is actually working and distributing. –Charles
“If every tenant starts to ask for more power, you’re gonna run out of power.” –Charles
“We need to make sure we have a defensive strategy around energy and we’re going to be in buildings that have built-in resiliency and energy flexibility. We’re seeing more and more landlords looking to make those investments today and build infrastructure that is attractive to their customers.” –Charles
“The demand charges are exceeding the actual cost of the energy itself.”
–Charles
“Since 2023, in places like New York City or California, we’re seeing double-digit increases per year. Sometimes as high as 20%. ... you’re seeing compounding electricity prices that people have never experienced before.” –Charles
“My role is to find the problem and then find people who agree that that’s the problem and they want to help do it.” –Charles
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Imagine if every commercial building and data center in a city acted like a smart, flexible battery. That’s the world Charles is building.
Charles Conwell, CEO of Novele and a former commercial real estate guy turned energy CEO, joined me on the show to break down how they’re transforming buildings from passive energy hogs into active grid assets. And his insight into how the built environment actually works will probably change how you think about energy forever.
Novele’s system starts inside the building, at the point of consumption. Their Energy Boards are thin, wall-mounted batteries that slip into unused space instead of eating up rentable square footage. But the real unlock is the software, a “swarm architecture” that syncs hundreds of distributed devices in real time. Instead of reacting to energy spikes, the system predicts them and reshapes load before it ever hits the meter.
Why does this matter?
Because commercial buildings have been stuck in a broken model for decades.
Charles explained how landlords constantly overbuild electrical capacity because tenants wildly overestimate their needs. Add in the classic “split incentive”, landlords pay for upgrades, tenants reap the savings, and no one invests in efficiency. The result? Massive waste and massive bills.
But the world changed. Fast. New rules like Local Law 97 created real financial pain for inefficient buildings. Energy prices started climbing into double digits. Demand charges blew past the cost of the energy itself. And suddenly Novele’s solution went from “interesting” to “we need this yesterday.”
The kicker?
Novele runs on a Hardware-as-a-Service model. No CapEx fight. No landlord-tenant politics. Just a monthly fee that’s usually covered. Customers are seeing IRRs in the 20–30% range.
We also got into Novele’s Ripple Board for data centers and why AI’s power spikes are becoming one of the biggest electrical problems no one is talking about. Charles lays out how distributed storage smooths those swings and why storage + nuclear is the most underrated combo in clean energy.
If you want to understand better where urban energy is heading and why buildings are about to become one of the most important assets on the grid, tap play for this episode.
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📝 Show Notes:
Topics
Here are some key timestamps from the episode:
01:01 – Novele’s Product Overview
04:16 – Future of Urban Energy
07:51 – Deep Dive on Novele’s Tech
13:21 – Cost & ROI: Novele’s system is enabling customers to save on their energy bills, specifically by reducing demand charges.
14:48 – Competitive Advantage: Introducing the Ripple Board
22:19 – Career Arc and Motivation
31:30 – The Split Incentive Problem: Misalignment between Building Owners and the Tenants
33:49 – The Three Main Drivers Forcing Adoption and Fixing the Incentive Problem
35:41 – Energy Price Shock
40:51 – Hiring Philosophy
45:15 – Macro: Batteries and the Grid
46:30 – Nuclear and Storage As a Great Combination
48:00 – Legislation Driving Adoption
1:05:00 – Future Outlook and Scale
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