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In this episode of Owned and Operated, Jack brings a business to the table that provides passive income with minimal maintenance: Hydroelectric Plants. This unique and niche business breakdown explores the challenges and benefits of owning these facilities. From regulatory hurdles to potential synergies with solar and wind energy, this type of business is definitely one that John is now keeping on his radar.
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John Wilson: @WilsonCompanies on Twitter
Jack Carr: @TheHVACJack on Twitter
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John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Companies
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Jack Carr, CEO of Rapid HVAC
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Owned and Operated Episode #72 Transcript
John Wilson: I'm John Wilson. Welcome to Owned and Operated. Twice a week, we talk about home service businesses, and if you're a home service entrepreneur, then this is going to be the show for you. We talk about our own business in residential plumbing, HVAC, and electric, and we also talk about business models that we just find interesting.
Let's get into it.
If you like what we talk about on our social media, on Twitter, on this podcast, then you should be signed up for our newsletter. Go to ownedandoperated. com where every Friday we break down our business, we break down insights, things we're learning, things we're working on, and it's good stuff. Check it out, ownedandoperated.
com.
Welcome back to Owned and Operated. So today on the show, , Jack and I talk about a business that Jack is unreasonably fascinated with, which is small hydroelectric plants. I was pretty into it. I kind of want to buy a bunch, but apparently they're like billboards and they just don't go for sale, but fascinating episode.
If you can check it out on YouTube, we do some screen shares and we dive into some interesting stuff. Thanks for listening.
Welcome back.
Jack Carr: To Owned and Operated.
John Wilson: Very nice. How was your week?
Jack Carr: Man, it has been a good week. I'm happy. We have pre sold 90k into December already. Pumped on two jobs. Two really big jobs that we've been working on. I think I talked about it a little bit last week, but if not, we finally closed everything and we've got deposits in.
Oh, so good. we've just been picking up work and we got, our locations have been approved by Google and like everything, knock on wood, man. It's the rollercoaster of owning a business.
John Wilson: You guys are cruising.
Jack Carr: just enjoy it while it's up here before it crashes at some point.
Hopefully it doesn't for a while.
Yeah. Yourself, what are you guys up to?
John Wilson: Yeah. We're. Recording this on, what, the 29th? Second to last day of the month. November was kind of a whirlwind. And i posted about this on Twitter, but we had a weird month. So November started very strong.
Crazy strong. Petered out a little bit and obviously had a holiday. Which threw stuff off. Our revenue last week was off by a lot of money. Same as probably everyone else. But, Despite all those challenges, we still drove a revenue goal record of about which is incredible. we drove a call record by 20%. So we had 17, 500 contacts in the month of November. Oh, man.
That number is like a nonsensical number.
Jack Carr: That doesn't even make sense. If we're lucky, we hit that yearly.
John Wilson: I know. I catch myself all the time. Like I look at these numbers and you get used to them. And I think that's the fun part about doing this. Like I've been in this business for over seven years, like my whole life I've been in this business, but like I've owned it for seven years and like looking at the numbers that happen now, like it's normal life.
So you don't really think much about it. And then it happens and you're like, Oh my God. So like yesterday. We got 25 Google reviews.
Jack Carr: That's awesome. Yeah.
John Wilson: That's insane. Now, that's a high day for us. Usually we're 15. But, our goal a couple months ago was to drive 100 a week, and we're actually doing it now.
Um, Which, I didn't think was possible that quickly, but we are now doing it. but, you know, when we first started on this journey, I had 9 Google reviews.
Yeah.
And now I got 25 yesterday. So I think just like compounding efforts is just fascinating and being able to watch that whole journey is unreal.
And I know I've said it before, like I drive more revenue in a day. Now, then I used to drive in a month when I bought the business.
Jack Carr: That's the cool part. It's exciting to see, to know that you weren't always there and to see there is a legitimate path for smaller venues to, or smaller companies to actually J curve it up to the point where, I mean, those numbers, they don't like, I can't even imagine 17.
I don't need to say
John Wilson: 17, 500. 17, 500.
Jack Carr: 17, 000 calls in a month.
John Wilson: No, so that's 17, contacts.
Jack Carr: Okay.
John Wilson: That said 14, 000 of those were phone calls.
Jack Carr: That doesn't matter. That's like after you hit like a thousand in the month, it's like, ah, you know, man.
John Wilson: Well, the crazy thing was November was a mild month.
It wasn't cold. It only got cold here. yesterday, yeah, yesterday. So yesterday was the first cold day. So in a mild 60 degree November that barely anyone used their heat. We drove a 20 percent month over month call increase. Just absolutely unreal.
Jack Carr: Let me ask you a question before we dive into anything else.
Yeah. How was your post so, historically, right? Plumbing is supposed to have a post Thanksgiving boom. Is that typically what you've seen or is that just a theory made up?
John Wilson: So, black Friday is a weird one for us. So Black Friday has actually never been a good business day for us. This year was the first Black Friday that we have ever driven meaningful revenue.
Between Black Friday and, what, Black Saturday? I don't know what they call that. We drove about 80 grand which was good for us. On a normal business day, we drive 85 to 100 grand of revenue a day. So we didn't drive full revenue, but last year I think we were shut down. And we didn't do anything Saturday.
Because historically what used to happen is we would only get a call or two. So this time we were much more proactive about filling the board, making sure we have called takers, make sure we have dispatchers. So we treated it like a normal day of business this year, which was new for us. And we drove over those two days about one full day of revenue.
Jack Carr: Okay. That actually makes me feel a lot better because this is my first plumbing. Thanksgiving. And what I was told going in is, Oh, the days after Thanksgiving are amazing because everybody's putting turkeys down their sink and you got all the family, they're breaking toilets. And we sat by the phone, just waiting like, Oh, this is going to be a great day.
And it fizzled out.
John Wilson: We used to always send people home at like noon. Yeah. So two years ago, this is my 7th Thanksgiving owning the business, right? Cause it was October 1st of 2016. The last two years we just shut down cause we were like, ah, we're not gonna drive anything.
But this year, everyone's bonus depends on gross profit dollars in revenue. So nobody was shutting down. Think about your comp structure folks. Cause it, it made an extra 80, 000 for us in November. So yeah, that number is going to keep getting bigger and bigger.
Jack Carr: That does make me feel better that it is traditionally not as a crazy day.
John Wilson: It's traditionally a slow day for us.
Jack Carr: Yeah, okay, good.
John Wilson: So slow that we actually stopped doing business on it until this year. But now after seeing the results from this year, we will continue to
Jack Carr: Yeah, but you went into this year actively like knowing, hey, we are going to
John Wilson: We're going to drive revenue.
Jack Carr: We're going to drive just like any other day that we drive. So that makes sense. Great, man. That's awesome.
John Wilson: What do we got up today? We're doing a business deep dive. What do we got?
Jack Carr: We were gonna do some deep diving, but we decided on a model cause I'm very excited again.
You know me, I love models. Yeah. So I was doing my normal, going down the rabbit hole and I've been, yeah. And I've been interested if you go back years into my Twitter, you'll find like bits and pieces of this. I love hydro electric power plants
John Wilson: and you're just like, why, like from an engineering perspective or yeah.
What's interesting
Jack Carr: partially, right it's a renewable energy source that runs on water. But the reason I love hydroelectric power plants is because one, we're always going to need power. Two, it's one of the cheapest sources of power and three it's just so niche, it is such a niche thing.
And four, it's passive, mostly passive. So it's this income source that has like a 20 percent ROI on it. So you make your money back about five years on most of them depending on the size of the plant. There's so many variables. However, that being said, just a general take on it, is you make your money back year five.
But the equipment on that, if it's well maintained, lasts 20, 25 years. And so these things are these little, single room on 50 acres out in the middle of nowhere, that just have a turbine in there that just run water through them and generate money with no work.
John Wilson: Yeah, so I guess I don't understand what this is.
So when I think of a hydroelectric facility, I'm thinking of the Hoover Dam. So I assume is not what you were talking about.
Jack Carr: It is what I'm talking about, but in a significantly smaller sense. So to paint the better picture of this, there's about three to four of these per year that come up on the market.
Like it is not a something that's, it's very popular. There's not a ton of them. Yeah. There's three to four per year that come up for sale and they're generally about one megawatt. So they'll do anywhere, depending on where, if they're in California or if they're Idaho or Michigan, whatever they'll generally do about 300 K per megawatt, three to 400 K per megawatt in electricity revenue generation, excuse me.
And then if you have any kind of mechanical inclination to it they really don't have any kind of maintenance, right? It's a spinning turbine. There's some grease on bearings. There's making sure that, your spillways are clean. There's just not much to them because all that happens is water gets diverted out of a stream and then goes through a spillway and is redirected through your power generation facility that then goes back into the spillway, or back into the river, excuse me.
And It goes through that turbine and the process spins the turbine, creates electricity, sends it back to whatever contract, you know, if you're in California, PG& E or whatever your private electric company is.
John Wilson: How much do these things cost?
Jack Carr: There's one online right now that's out of Reading, California.
That I was discussing with the gentleman which we'll get into. He's a good guy. It's 7 million dollars it's a cattle ranch. Plus it has this with a 16 year contract on it.
John Wilson: Are the contracts usually that long?
Jack Carr: Yeah, they're usually I think 20, 25 year contracts.
John Wilson: Alright, so this is like cell towers, this is like a land lease.
Jack Carr: Correct.
John Wilson: Okay.
Jack Carr: It's a power generation. I think they're called a PGP or PCP contract or something like that where you're selling power back to the country or to the utility company at whatever rate, two cents, three cents.
John Wilson: Can a power company like say no like, do they ever not need extra power or is that always a demand that's required?
Jack Carr: I think that it generates it so cheaply that they pretty much always do these. They always renew them because there's no reason not to. And there's always downsides, right? You can't buy a business without any downsides. And it's best specifically in California. I know you have water rights issues.
You have fishery issues. You have endangered species issues, and so they're not really building any of these anymore, at least from what I can tell. They're just kind of grandfathered in. So these are these grandfathered in facilities that just keep rotating. So the one I was talking about, red California is just some metrics on it is $7 million.
But it comes with 566 acre cattle ranch with the house.
John Wilson: How many heads of, how many heads of cattle?
Jack Carr: I have no idea, the guy selling it as a, you know, from a generation facility standpoint, not from a cattle ranch standpoint, he's not a cattle rancher. But the point is, that facility generates three to 400 K a year, but 400, if you say, the high end on this one, the 400 K a year almost pays off a significant portion of a 7 million, 566 acre cattle ranch.
It's mind blowing.
John Wilson: That's crazy.
Jack Carr: So on a lot of the other ones right, they don't come with that kind of land swath or, cattle facilities or anything like that, barns and houses. They usually are just small little, 10 by 10 rooms with a giant generator in the middle or a turbine in the middle.
And so, they're significantly cheaper than that the money behind them is so great. For anyone not watching, I'm going to pull up this on. So John can see it,
John Wilson: but yeah, go to YouTube owned and operated. We're on the tubes. Make sure you hit subscribe and we're dropping shorts and all that stuff. that's where you can see this.
Jack Carr: Yeah. The other part I love about this before I show you is this website is literally from 1995, maybe 1998. I love it. And the gentleman that runs it has been doing this for 25 years and he said he's trying to create the Craigslist for this kind of world of power generation.
And you'll see he it's a wonderful website. So yes, for anyone not watching, it's RMA. global. com.
John Wilson: It looks like just like a Google doc. It doesn't even look like a website.
Jack Carr: So when I say that he's trying to base it off Craigslist, It looks like it was built like Craigslist, just a notion page, if you will.
But look at some of these URLs that he owns. He owns utility warehouse. com. Tower plants online. com. He bought these things years ago at the start of the internet.
John Wilson: Oh my God. I love this.
Jack Carr: So I'm going to click on the power plants online.
John Wilson: So how many of these does he sell? Oh my God. He's on Twitter.
Jack Carr: I know. I just saw it. He sells a bunch of stuff, right? His name is Milt. He's gotten into mining and selling, four megawatt mining crypto facilities. Like he has branched out. He sells wind hydro plants, coal waste plants, heavy equipment steam turbine generators, like just really big equipment that you can't, like, where do you move transmission lines?
If you own a transmission line and you're trying to sell it, who do you sell it to?
John Wilson: What is a transmission line? I don't even know what that is.
Jack Carr: Like a power line, like those giant power lines that move, huge amounts of electricity across the country. He's created a place for people to come And facilitate that and he takes a portion of that.
But anyway so here's the wind and hydro plants. Look at these he's got listings that have sold back from 2010 on here. I love it. I absolutely love it. But the one that I was referring to is this one.
John Wilson: So all he's doing, he's taking this, I mean, honestly, maybe that's the business to deep dive into. So he's like this random dude has built essentially a brokerage of some of the most unique assets in the U S that's how I'm hearing this
Jack Carr: highly specific. Yes.
John Wilson: Like what is demand? So he's thinking he's going to get 7 million for this plant that drives 300 grand of revenue.
Is that realistic? Is that what the demand looks like?
Jack Carr: I think that , there's definitely demand it's lower than you would expect. I know that I looked back a few years ago and there were certain companies kind of buying these and conglomerating them. I don't think they're going for these really small ones.
They were going in Idaho for really six and eight and 10 megawatt ones. But when I was talking to him, he said that he was selling 27 million hydro plants. You can see that there's a few on here. There's half a million, 850, 000, and these were in 2012, one in 2014, located in Europe.
It's not just the US that he's moving these things. but this is what they look like, right? This is without the 600 acres.
John Wilson: uh, If you're not watching this on video, it's obviously over a river, you need flowing water. This looks like a garage made out of brick with a couple barred windows and a door and like some fence.
So very simple building, maybe. I don't know, 800 square f even, maybe not even that, 400 square feet? This is a garage. This is a two car garage. That's made out of brick. Yep. That's fascinating. , as I'm looking at this and as I'm watching this, what I'm not understanding this sounds like a sweet gig.
I get it. This sounds like fun. Why can't you just build them?
Jack Carr: So I think at the end of the day, the problem becomes it is all the regulation, right? So with the regulatory and the EPA and everything, it is so difficult to get one versus to get, you have to buy the right property with water rights.
John Wilson: Hey, this episode is sponsored by service scalers. So service scalers is actually a brand that I've used personally with our companies for a little bit over a year now, uh, they've helped us manage our digital advertising. Frankly, they did a lot better than our last agency leads went through the roof and cost per click went way down.
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Jack Carr: So you could potentially do that somewhere like Washington, Montana two, you need to find somewhere where there's decent sale price of electricity. So in that Reading example, I was looking at they sell that he said he sells electrical for 12 to 25 cents
John Wilson: that's a big range.
Jack Carr: That's yeah peak 25 cents .12 at the cheap selling power for 12 cents Is still high.
Here in Tennessee. We pay 9 cents. I think I know I was paying 7 cents in Reno Boise was even cheaper. So you have to find somewhere, I think that balances with that. And then you have to mix that all in with constraints on so you have all the water rights, you have the location, you have a good power contract.
Now you need to get past any kind of fisheries, hatcheries, endangered species. Because you're taking water out of the river, the main river. And so if you take
too much, then
John Wilson: But aren't you putting it back?
Jack Carr: You are, but anything that goes through your area is getting chopped up by a turbine.
you take that water and then it creates fishery hatchery problems, but it also can create issues for farmers, right? So farmers have pumps that are in canals and in rivers. And if they have water rights downstream and you just pull opened up your, I think it's called slew.
You open up your facility and now the water drops two feet. Now they're not pumping the same kind of water they were able to pump before.
John Wilson: How big does the river or the body of water have to be to run a kilowatt?
Jack Carr: To be honest, I don't know. I know that when I was looking at
John Wilson: So, like, my family has a creek, and it's not like a small creek.
It's like a 15 foot wide active body of water that runs through it. Through their property. And I'm sitting here like, could they drop this on their property?
Jack Carr: I think they'll run into the same issue if they just won't be able to build it. They're not going to be allowed. I could be wrong.
This is not my area of expertise. However, that being said from what I've gathered is that's the deal is it's so difficult to build these things that you're just not going to, you're not going to build.
John Wilson: Yeah, so this is like mobile home parks or billboards. It's sort of like these asset classes.
Jack Carr: Billboards is a very good one, yeah. Where they just won't, they're just not building them. They're not allowed because D. O. T.
John Wilson: Yeah, you're not really allowed because that, yeah, that law. Yeah. That's fascinating. So I'm still focused on the build because the business, it literally looks so small.
And I know that people are doing it, right? So I looked at the building, I looked at that picture, and I'm like, I've seen that building a million times. I see that on every public lake. I see it on every public pond. There's that little building that's driving power. So I'm like, okay, that makes sense.
So the products are available. The hard part is permissions registration. Okay. That's fascinating. I think, obviously we need to turn this into a passive income pod that'd be like a really interesting way to drive dollars.
Jack Carr: That's why I've been obsessed with it about two or three years is because I, I would love to own one of these things partially just because I want to see if it's as good as, you know, it seems, but also I don't think That unless they start relaxing those regulations in certain areas, they're just not going to be able to create more of them.
So the people who have them, you know, they're just small inconspicuous old buildings that are just generating, three to 400, 000 a year is, great for just
John Wilson: going off hardly any friction cost. Yeah. Like that is sick. And I think it would suck distributed. It seems like I'm curious what gallons per minute of the river has to be. Cause I think that would be fascinating. If you could find these very rural creeks, buy up a bunch of land that encompasses that river, and then drop one of these over there, I think that would be fascinating. And how big can you get one facility?
Cause I think the one house is interesting, but, like, why can't you build the 27 million dollar, if you have enough gallon per minute to do it? Yeah.
Jack Carr: And so I think that's where that is interesting. And I know if you look in places like certain parts of Washington back when I was doing Bitcoin mining that was, the goal was to find these giant hydroelectric facilities that are owned and run by the state or the private electricity company, utility company, because , there's parts of Washington where they sell power for two to three cents.
It's per kilowatt hour. Yeah. It's just so cheap. , perfect for doing servers or Bitcoin or whatever you're going to do high power sources. And it was because they have 10 or 11 of these giant hydroelectric facilities. But what would be cool is, yeah, like you said, going down to somewhere that's a little smaller and owned, like the one I showed you was that four different ones, those were all owned by a single person.
Up in Wisconsin.
John Wilson: Oh, interesting.
Jack Carr: Yeah, and he wants to sell the package. So anyone go look at this website. Honestly, it's wonderful just even just to see the website itself, but he owns four of them. He wants to sell it as a package and he wants to stay on as like the maintenance guy. You know, He's probably in the sixties or seventies.
He just said, I just want to snowplow it and grease up the bearings every couple months. There's just, there's not much there. I mean, what I can say that I bet is a, another issue you run into is water flow, right? So you can't predict the weather. You can't predict a drought. You can't predict.
So one year you might have a boom year where. You upsize your turbine, right? Cause you can do that. You can upsize your turbine in these facilities, get more electricity generation, but like you were saying, you can only pull so much from the river that they allow you to. And then the more water you pull, the bigger the turbine, it can spin the more power generation, and vice versa, right?
So if you have a big turbine and there's a drought, you can't pull as much water, doesn't spin as fast, doesn't create as much electricity. Talk about HVAC being, my life is run by the weather. I'm trying to buy another utility company or that's run 100 percent by the weather.
If it rains, I'm happy. If it snows, I'm happy. If it's a drought and nice and warm, I'm upset. Not gonna make money today.
John Wilson: And now I'm gonna go down a rabbit hole. All right So this is announcing the spinoff of the into the owned and operated passive income It's passive
Jack Carr: There's nothing that's passive
John Wilson: Yeah
Jack Carr: With that though back to this guy's website I mean if anyone wants to take a look at I'm gonna pull it back up on the screen actually
John Wilson: yeah, what's the URL and I think like, this wasn't the core focus of the ep, but it is interesting the niche that this guy's carved out in this very unique set of assets, so Maybe that's an argument here, find something random. And sell it and be the only person that sells it
Jack Carr: Look how big this turbine is in here, right?
So this is that room. There's just nothing. He's got like his pictures on the wall and stuff and a couple chairs that he probably hides out from his wife in or something. But there's just nothing. He's got nothing there. I mean, I can't imagine buying 577 acre cattle ranch in Reading for 7 million 80 percent of it being paid off by this 10 by 10. Building like it's crazy. but also, on here, there's some other cool stuff. I went down a rabbit hole and power barges. He sells the parts for these things. Like I said, excelling giant crypto rigs. This guy is uh, I like him. He was one of these guys who's been doing this for a long time.
And he was telling me stories about just about everything back from, you know, Selling these units in 1991. One of those kind of guys. He's been doing this forever.
John Wilson: Oh my gosh, I love it. Yeah, click on his Twitter. I want to see what he's tweeting. Alright, we found his Twitter.
This is sick. It's like actively. Nope, that's not active. That's four year old content.
Jack Carr: Is it?
John Wilson: So what I'm wondering is, with regulations, this has to be starting to get loosened up at some point.
They seem to want us to go green. They seem to be encouraging that. They're pushing solar. This feels way more sustainable than solar, because solar's got all those crazy chemicals and I don't even know what all's in there.
Jack Carr: The other thing I was wondering, this is just like water.
Yeah. I was asking him, he's a broker, right?
At the end of the day, he owns the website. He knows a little bit from selling these, but he's not the area expert. I remember talking to Nizar. He's on Twitter as well. I know a lot of people have seen stuff about solar and building solar farms. And I'm wondering if there's a kind of an area where you could even increase ROI on this, you buy this, you sell the power to, You know a low income area or a opportunity zone area, you know There's lots of those little kind of hidden gems in these new deals and new programs that are coming out which would make it yeah
John Wilson: Then you drop solar or you drop wind or because this cattle farm like you could do some real interesting stuff With that amount of land depending who can buy it from you
Jack Carr: Yeah, that's another point is you already have the connection to the power company.
So yeah, doing a two or three or five or 10 acre solar farm on the backside of that the land's getting paid off by the hydro, you throw some solar on there, you make a little bit more money. And you offset it with all the green new deal incentives. I'm just shooting from the hip.
This is, anyone listening, talk to somebody who knows more about
John Wilson: I'm curious too. I know that like, we'll drive through Pennsylvania, or New York, or some parts of Ohio. I don't see it as much in Ohio.
But you just pass these turbine farms. Just massive.
Jack Carr: You mean like wind turbine farms?
John Wilson: Yeah. And it's as far as you can see, there's just thousands of these turbines, and it's like entire communities, like Basically just there to serve the turbines as far as I can tell cause that's almost all there is.
And I don't even know what the return is on those either, but renewable energy it's an interesting asset.
Jack Carr: Speaking of that, that actually would be a good model to deep dive is when I was at the wineries, we would have these turbines that weren't electric.
They wouldn't generate electricity. They were to move air so that the grapes didn't freeze it when it got really cold. And the guys that would maintain those that come out once a year, they do one maintenance on them a year and they would pay ungodly amounts. And we're talking to them and that's all they do is they do the Central Valley.
They do Napa Valley. Then they drive into Oregon and do Oregon turbines and. I was talking to them and the amount of money that those service techs make is something, and this was about six years ago, and they were making something crazy like 65 bucks an hour, 70 bucks an hour. So you could imagine what the company that is running those guys is making just maintaining these turbines.
Yeah. And there was one or two companies no competition. It was incredible.
John Wilson: That reminds me of that one business that services Topgolf's nets. Did we ever talk about this?
Jack Carr: No, we haven't. I'm so interested.
John Wilson: someone told me this. I gotta look into it. But what they said is there's literally one company. One. services top golf's nets nationwide. That's all that they do. So if there's a tear, if there's a windstorm, if there's whatever, this one company has to go out. So there was a windstorm a couple of years ago and it tore the net down and like those nets are.
Yeah, that's a net, right? And it was down for a couple weeks and everyone was like why, And it was like, the one guy in the US who can work on these things hadn't flown out there yet to do it. it was like covid. Remember when they were like, yeah, that one company in China makes literally everyone's chips or whatever.
Yeah, it was the same thing for Topgolf's Nets.
Jack Carr: I'll have to ask my cousin's. Actually, he's high up at Topgolf, so I'll have to ask him what the deal is there. That'd be neat.
John Wilson: That'd be funny. Yeah. I would love to know if there's like validity to that, but I think all that to say there's these like random little niche things or in hydroelectric.
So I have a friend who bought a company that services water plants and I believe hydroelectric plants and what they do is they service these annually and they changed the filters.
Jack Carr: Yeah, that would make sense.
John Wilson: So that's a big part of their business is recurring filter contracts. On these plants.
Jack Carr: Yeah. So anyone out there who has any kind of deep dive into this that we're missing You know just from a personal level send me a dm the hvac jack at
John Wilson: he's deeply interested.
Jack Carr: I'm super interested I love these things man. Yeah, don't mess with me. I mean don't mess with me. I love this
John Wilson: I want to put one up
so like I think you buy a giant plot of land you put a lake on it you force a fake river and then you just You know, you've got your own water rights.
Jack Carr: I was talking to someone out in Hawaii that was doing something like that. They were buying up large swaths of land, and then they were using the water sources to run through the kind of the old irrigation ditches that they had there.
And they were putting these little mini turbines. So not like the big 10x10 houses, but I guess like a miniature size of that. And they were creating something crazy like 2 megawatts out of 6 or 7 of those little turbines.
John Wilson: That makes sense. Like when we're sitting here talking about water rights, I'm like, okay, that makes sense for like a big building. What if you just live next to a lake and you just drop a mini piece of machinery in and cover a couple of houses or there has to be something there.
Jack Carr: Yeah. If you have a lake in your own property and that, see, I don't know enough about water rights either. Cause I know that, if it's a river, then.
There's some issues with water rights. You don't own the water, even though you own the area of the river, which is crazy to me. However, that being said, I don't know if that's the same for a lake and then the runoff of a lake. As it fills up and overflows and whatnot,
yeah. Anyway.
Deeply interested.
John Wilson: Deeply. thanks everyone for tuning in to Owned and Operated. We're on here a couple times a week. Make sure you check out ownedandoperated. com. Sign up for the newsletter. We're constantly dropping good stuff. And make sure you check out the Breaking 5 million event.
Also on the website. It's coming up in March. Should be fun. See you next time.
Thanks for tuning in to Owned and Operated, the podcast for home service entrepreneurs. If you enjoyed today's episode, please hit the like button and subscribe to the podcast. If you have any questions or topics you'd like us to cover, feel free to reach out. You can find me on Twitter at at Wilson companies.
I'll see you next time.
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